Not Your Father's Founders (6 page)
Read Not Your Father's Founders Online
Authors: Arthur G. Sharp
Princess Anne, Maryland
April 17, 1741âJune 19, 1811
Committees and Chicanery
There was nothing in Samuel Chase's early life to suggest that he was destined to play a leading role in the American Revolution or its aftermath. He was homeschooled by his father, an Episcopalian clergyman, earned a law degree, and practiced law for several years. Chase engaged in activities as a member of the Sons of Liberty that might earn him a label of “terrorist” today. Nevertheless, he was elected to the Continental Congress, where he served on twenty-one committees in 1777 and thirty in 1778, convinced his fellow Marylanders to vote for independence, signed the Declaration of Independence, fell afoul of Alexander Hamilton when he tried to make a few dollars, became a Supreme Court justice, and was impeached. He was a sometimes controversial, but always well-meaning, patriot whose penchant for acting rashly at times separated him from most of his contemporaries.
Chase got an early start in politics as a member of the Maryland General Assembly, where he served from 1764â1784.
Chase, an ardent proponent of independence as a young man, was not shy about letting people know where he stood on the issue. He did more than talk about his patriotism; he acted on it.
One of the proposed laws Chase supported in the Maryland General Assembly would have regulated the salaries of the colony's clergy. He believed the law would serve the people's best interestsâeven though it would have cut his Episcopal clergyman father's salary in half.
Chase was an active member of the Sons of Liberty, a group of American patriots who banded together in 1766 to protect the colonists from a growing number of onerous British laws. After the passage of the Stamp Act, he led a group of Sons in a raid on the Annapolis, Maryland, public offices, where they destroyed the tax stamps and burned the king's tax agent in effigy. He was twenty-four years old at the time.
Not surprisingly, Chase was not a popular young man among town officials in Annapolis. They preferred that he take his tendency for rebellion and insurrection elsewhere. In a classic “be careful what you wish for” case, he did. The leaders of the movement for independence wanted men like Chase on their side. In 1774, Chase and four other Maryland patriots were appointed delegates to the First Continental Congress.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“[S
AMUEL
C
HASE IS A
]
BUSY, RESTLESS INCENDIARY, A RINGLEADER OF MOBS, A FOUL-MOUTHED AND INFLAMING SON OF DISCORD AND FACTION, A COMMON DISTURBER OF THE PUBLIC TRANQUILITY, AND A PROMOTER OF THE LAWLESS EXCESSES OF THE MULTITUDE
.”
âA
NNAPOLIS TOWN OFFICIALS
Chase performed so well at the First Continental Congress that Maryland offered him the chance to return to the Second Continental Congress in 1775. When it came time to form a committee at that Congress, Chase was usually available. Due to his popularity and indefatigable nature, he remained a member of Congress until 1778.
When the members of the Second Continental Congress gathered to sign the Declaration of Independence, Chase was among them. It was a proud day for him, but signing the document did not curb his relentless pursuit of liberty or fairness for soldiers and citizens.
Amidst all his hard work Chase hit a bump in the road. In 1778, he and a group of individuals capitalized on some insider trading information. They cornered the market on flour in anticipation of making a huge sale to the French fleet coming to the aid of the United States. Alexander Hamilton exposed the scheme and wrote about it in New York newspapers under the pseudonym Publius. The affair did not attract a lot of attention, but Maryland left Chase out of its congressional delegation for the next two years, possibly in retribution for his involvement in the grain affair. He was reappointed in 1784, but stayed inactive in congressional proceedings after his return.
One of Chase's early 1776 assignments was to work on a committee with Benjamin Franklin and fellow Marylander Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who used the “Carrollton” to distinguish himself from his father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis. Their assignment was to win the hearts and minds of Canadians. The trio visited Canada in an effort to convince the residents to side with the colonies in their attempt to separate from Britain. There was an ongoingâbut unrelatedâattempt by patriot militant forces to oust the British troops from Canada. That ended in June 1776, when British troops drove the Americans back to Fort Ticonderoga. In the end, the American army and the committee failed miserably.
In 1786, Chase moved to Baltimore, where he became chief judge of the criminal court and later chief judge of the General Court of Maryland. Those assignments paved the way for his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court by President George Washington on January 26, 1796.
Chase served on the Supreme Court for fifteen years and became the firstâand onlyâSupreme Court justice ever impeached. The impeachment happened when President Thomas Jefferson “suggested” to the House of Representatives in 1803 that it impeach Chase, ostensibly because he did not give John Fries, a defendant in a treason case, a fair trial. The real reason may have been Jefferson's desire to get rid of Chase because he did not agree with Jefferson's political views. The impeachment proceedings in 1805 became a politically motivated circus. Congress failed to get the two-thirds majority it needed to convict Chase.
The Americans named a committee in January 1777 to investigate British atrocities at New York and New Jersey in late 1776, e.g., when they implemented martial law in Queens, New York, and their troops raped, robbed, and cheated the inhabitants. Chase was named as a member. In addition to participating in the investigation, he vigorously advocated for higher pay for the soldiers fighting the war, even if it required wage and price controls throughout the colonies to raise the money.
Chase campaigned against the U.S. Constitution for two reasons. He believed that the federal government's ability to tax citizens and regulate commerce would inhibit the states' rights to do the same, and he did not see any protection in the Constitution for individuals' rights. Chase saw the proposed Constitution as a reversion to British ruleâwhich he had spent a good part of his life fighting to throw off.
The impeachment and severe attacks of gout had an adverse effect on Chase. He lost some of his fire after 1805, but it had burned brightly up until that pointâenough to fuel the flame of liberty for the crucial years during the struggle for American independence. Chase had gone from incendiary to being impugned and impeached in his lifetime, but he exemplified the resiliency of the men and women who established American independence.
Hanover County, Virginia
April 12, 1777âJune 29, 1852
The Bridge
Henry Clay, an active politician in the first half of the nineteenth century, was one of the people who supported and maintained what the Founding Fathers had built. He moved to Kentucky five years after it became the country's fifteenth state in 1792, and served as a state representative, U.S. congressman and senator, governor of Kentucky, and United States secretary of state. The experiences he gained in these positions molded Clay into an astute politician capable of dealing with national problems such as the implementation of a new economic system and the slavery issue. Clay was a throwback to the original Founding Fathers. He bridged the gap between the infant and adolescent United States and influenced a new style of political leadership that introduced innovative policies that steered the country into its adult phase. He was a perfect example of the right man in the right place at the right timeâfor a long timeâjust as the Founding Fathers had been.
Henry Clay was elected to the Kentucky state House of Representatives in 1803. Three years later, he was appointed to the U.S. Senateâin violation of the U.S. Constitution, which mandated that senators had to be at least thirty years old. He was twenty-nine years old when he took office. Clay's stay in the Senate was short. His appointment lasted from November 19, 1806, to March 3, 1807âand he was still not yet thirty when he stepped down.
Henry Clay defended Aaron Burr in 1806 on charges that he was conspiring to separate the western states from the rest of the country. Burr beat the rap. Thomas Jefferson persuaded Clay later that Burr had been guilty. The victory in court turned into a bitter defeat for Clay. When he bumped into Burr in New York nine years later, Clay refused to shake his former client's hand.
Clay returned to the state assembly for the 1808â09 session, becoming Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives. After Humphrey Marshall objected to Clay's motion to require members of the Assembly to wear homespun suits instead of British clothing, the two engaged in fisticuffs on the House floor. That led to a three-round duel in which Clay inflicted a slight flesh wound on Marshall's side during the first round of shots. Both men missed their shots in the second round. In the third and final round, Marshall shot Clay in the thigh. That ended the duel.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“G
OVERNMENT IS A TRUST, AND THE OFFICERS OF THE GOVERNMENT ARE TRUSTEES; AND BOTH THE TRUST AND THE TRUSTEES ARE CREATED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE
.”
âH
ENRY
C
LAY
Then, it was back to the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C. to replace Buckner Thruston, whom President James Madison had appointed to a judge's seat on the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. Clay was of legal age this time.
After completing his second short term as a U.S. Senator, Clay returned to the U.S. House of Representatives until President James Monroe appointed him as one of the commissioners charged with negotiating a peace treaty with Britain to end the War of 1812. And on it went. For the next thirty-seven years Clay made his presence known in every major event in the nation's evolution.
Henry Clay once filled his own vacant congressional seat. The governor of Kentucky declared Clay's seat vacant so he could accept a position as envoy to Britain. Once he completed the assignment, he won a special election in 1815 to fill his own vacant seat.
Clay encouraged the United States to go to war with Britain in 1812 to end once and for all the indignities he felt Britain had been inflicting on the United States since 1805, such as the seizure of American merchant vessels and the impressments of their crews.
Clay advocated tariffs on imported goods to help bolster the country's economy as part of “The American System,” a program he designed to balance the roles of agriculture, commerce, and industry in the nation's economy. He refereed the Missouri Compromise to settle the slavery impasse, working out an agreement where new states except Missouri above a fixed line between the north and south would be slave free, while those beneath it could retain their slaves. Thus, he contained the spread of slavery, although it remained legal in some states. The compromise was Clay's signature achievement, although it turned out to be far from a permanent solution to the slavery problem in the United States. Based on his achievements and negotiating skills, Clay was among the first statesmen people turned to when they sought settlements in thorny issues.
Quotations to Live (and Die) By!
“S
HOULD ANY OF OUR VESSELS BE HEREAFTER SEIZED AND CONDEMNED, HOWEVER UNJUSTLY, AND THAT ALL WILL BE SEIZED AND CONDEMNED MAY BE CONFIDENTLY EXPECTED, WE MUST BE SILENT, OR BE HEARD BY FOREIGN POWERS IN THE HUMBLE LANGUAGE OF PETITION ONLY
.”
âH
ENRY
C
LAY IN A LETTER IN SUPPORT OF THE
W
AR OF 1812
Clay was not always appreciated by his fellow politicians. One of the low points of his career occurred in 1824, when he ran for president of the United States.
The 1824 presidential election was one of the most confusing campaigns in American history. Four members of the Democratic-Republican party vied for the presidency. They included Clay, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and William Crawford. None of them earned the victory after the election results were tallied.
Clay finished fourth in the popular and Electoral College voting. He won 13.1 percent of the popular vote and 37 of the 261 electoral votes. Jackson and Adams had the highest number of electoral votes. Clay believed that Adams was more amenable to his policies and would be more helpful to him than Jackson as presidentâand might even appoint him to his cabinet. He used his influence to sway the House of Representatives, which would settle the issue, to elect Adams. It did, and Clay got his coveted cabinet position.
Adams appointed Clay as secretary of state. He served in that position from 1825â29. Jackson and his followers declared Clay's action as a “corrupt bargain.” Clay did not see what he did as corruption; it was politics as usual.
Despite the stain on his reputation, he exercised his influence for the rest of his career, which ultimately spanned half a century. His list of accomplishments was significant throughout that time. He was still serving in the U.S. Senate when he died, well over the legally mandated minimum age.