WOODBURY, LEVI (1789-1851), American political leader, was born at Francestown, New Hampshire, on the 22nd of December 1789. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1809, was admitted to the bar in 1812, and was a judge of the superior court from 1816 to 1823. In 1823-1824 he was governor of the state, in 1825 was a member and speaker of the state House of Representatives, and in 1825-1831 and again in 1841-1845 was a member of the U.S. Senate. He was secretary of the navy in 1831-1834, secretary of the treasury in 1834-1841, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1846 until his death, at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 4th of September 1851. From about 1825 to 1845 Woodbury was the undisputed leader of the Jacksonian Democracy in New England.
See his Writings Political, Judicial and Literary (3 vols., Boston, 1852), edited by Nahum Capen; and an article in the New England Magazine, new series, xxxvii. p. 658 (February 1908).