Joseph Inslee Anderson (November 5, 1757 – April 17, 1837) was an American soldier, judge, and politician, who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1797 to 1815, and later as the First Comptroller of the United States Treasury. He also served as one of three judges of the Southwest Territory in the 1790s, and was a delegate to the Tennessee state constitutional convention in 1796. In 1776, following the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, he enlisted in the 3rd New Jersey Regiment of the Continental Army, and rose to the rank of captain and paymaster in less than two years.
Anderson was a Freemason. He was a member of Military Lodge No. 19 of Pennsylvania and became a member of Lodge No. 36 while in the New Jersey Brigade. After the war, he was the first Senior Warden of Princeton Lodge No. 38 in Princeton, New Jersey.
Early Tennessee politics
In 1791, President George Washington appointed Anderson United States judge of the newly formed Southwest Territory.
In 1796, Anderson and his father-in-law represented Jefferson County at Tennessee's constitutional convention in Knoxville. Anderson was re-elected to this seat in 1803, and again in 1809. In the latter election, he defeated retiring governor John Sevier by a vote of 23 to 16. He voted in favor of the War of 1812.