Adam Rankin Alexander (November 1, 1781 – November 1, 1848) was an American slave owner^[1] and politician who represented Tennessee in the United States House of Representatives.

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Alexander was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on November 1, 1781, to Oliver and Mary (née Craig) Alexander. Educator Eben Alexander was his grandson.^[2]

During the War of 1812, Alexander served from October 4, 1813, to January 4, 1814. He served as a private in Captain William Dooley's Company; and as a Lieutenant and Quartermaster in Thomas McCrory's 2nd Regiment, West Tennessee Militia.

He married Leah Reagan, a Virginia native, on March 26, 1805, in Blount County, Tennessee.^[3]

Alexander worked as a surveyor, and afterwards, he was the register of the land office for the tenth surveyors' district in Madison County, Tennessee. He was a member of the court of Madison County in 1821. He became a member of the Tennessee Senate in 1817.^[4]

Elected as a Jacksonian Republican to the Eighteenth and as a Jacksonian to the succeeding Congress, Alexander served as a U.S. Representative from March 4, 1823, to March 3, 1827.^[5] He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election to the Twentieth Congress in 1827, and lost his seat to frontiersman Davy Crockett.^{[citation needed]}

Alexander represented Shelby County, Tennessee, at the Tennessee constitutional convention in 1834. He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1841 and 1843.^{[citation needed]}

Alexander died on November 1, 1848, aged 67, in Marshall County, Mississippi. He is interred at Alexander-Pryor Family Cemetery, Laws Hill, Marshall County, Mississippi.^[6]