Jacob M. Campbell was born at "White Horse," near Somerset, Pennsylvania. He moved with his parents to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, in 1826. He attended the public schools and learned the art of printing in the office of the Somerset Whig.
Campbell served in the Union Army as a first lieutenant and quartermaster of Company G, Third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He recruited the 54th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and was commissioned its colonel on February 27, 1862. He was brevetted as a brigadier general in the 1866 omnibus promotions following the war, to date from March 13, 1865.
Postbellum
After the war, Campbell returned to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and served as surveyor general (later secretary of internal affairs) of Pennsylvania from 1865 to 1871.
Campbell was elected as a Republican to the Forty-fifth Congress. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1878. He was again elected to the Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, and Forty-ninth Congresses. He served as chairman of the United States House Committee on Manufactures during the Forty-seventh Congress. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1886.
He remained financially interested in banking and in the manufacture of steel, and served as chairman of the Republican State convention in 1887.