[2] In 1836, Jones supported the presidential campaign of Hugh Lawson White, a former Democrat who had turned against Andrew Jackson and joined the Whig Party.

The Whigs believed that Jones, widely known as an entertaining speaker and storyteller, was their best shot to defeat incumbent governor, James K. Polk.

One of the first tasks of the new government was to fill the U.S. Senate seats left vacant by the resignations of Alexander O. Anderson and Alfred O. P. Nicholson.

[3] Though the government was mostly gridlocked by the Immortal Thirteen during Jones's first term, it did manage to enact debt reform legislation in 1842.

[2] In the election of 1843, Polk canvassed the state extensively in hopes of taking back the governor's office, but he was again unsuccessful.

[3] Jones did not seek a third term, choosing instead to accept an offer to become president of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.

Jones supported Winfield Scott in the presidential election of 1852, but afterward began to drift apart from the Whig Party, which was imploding over the issue of slavery.