Elias Boudinot

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(b. Philadelphia, Pa., 2 May 1740; d. Burlington, N.J., 24 Oct. 1821), lawyer and statesman. Boudinot, a distinguished New Jersey politician and statesmen of the Revolutionary era, was the first lawyer admitted to the Supreme Court bar. Of Huguenot descent, he was licensed as an attorney in 1760 and gained the high professional rank of sergeant‐at‐law in 1770. For many years Boudinot was a trustee of Princeton University, and he held numerous public and private offices. Contemporaries found him a well‐tempered and tolerant man.

Boudinot was active in New Jersey colonial politics as a conservative Whig, but he joined a committee of correspondence and slowly embraced the ideals of the Revolution. In 1777 the Continental Congress appointed Boudinot commissary‐general of prisoners, a post he filled conscientiously, even contributing $30,000 of his own money for prisoners' care. He had a close political and personal relationship with George Washington.

Boudinot was elected to the Continental Congress in 1777 and served until 1784. During his last two years of service, he was president of the congress, and from 1783 he also served as secretary of foreign affairs. He was a signatory of the 1783 peace treaty with Great Britain.

After the Revolution, Boudinot became a Federalist and helped secure the Constitution's ratification in New Jersey. Three terms in the House of Representatives were followed by ten years as director of the U.S. Mint. On 5 February 1790, Boudinot became the first member of the Supreme Court bar. Later president of the American Bible Association, he filled his last years with religious study.

— Francis Helminski

Elias Boudinot (ca 1803-1839) became the first editor of the bilingual newspaper "Cherokee Phoenix", which began publication in the Cherokee Nation East (now Georgia) in 1828. He later became a primem over in the Treaty Party and was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. This treaty was not authorized and had the effect of ceding tribal land, a capital offense. The tragic consequence of the treaty was the Trail of Tears, during which over one-fifth of his tribe died enroute to Indian Territory.

Elias Boudinot was born in the old Cherokee Nation (the area is now part of the state of Georgia) around 1803 (some say 1805). His father was David Oowatie. Stand Watie, the noted Confederate general, was his younger brother. His Indian name was Galagina (pronounced Kill-ke-nah). He assumed the name of Elias Boudinot, a prominent Revolutionary statesman and his benefactor, at Boudinot's request.

The education of the Cherokee Elias Boudinot began at the school of the Moravian Mission at Spring Place (now part of Murray County, Georgia). The Moravians had been active among the Cherokees starting in 1800, when two Moravian brothers travelled from Salem, North Carolina, to Tellico, the Cherokee capital, to address tribal officials with the proposition of setting up a school among them. Around age 15, Boudinot travelled to the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, spending one night with his benefactor en route.

After graduation, he announced his intention to marry a white girl from Cornwall. Boudinot's cousin John Ridge had caused a controversy in the community two years earlier by marrying a white girl, which prompted the local newspaper to call for closure of the Cornwall Mission School. It was with this background that Boudinot asked Harriet Ruggles Gold to be his bride. The marriage was strongly opposed by many Cornwall residents, and the bride's brother burned the two in effigy as Harriet went into temporary hiding for her own safety. During that same demonstration, the church bells tolled a death knell and members of the church choir, to which Harriet belonged, were asked to wear black mourning bands for their lost sister. Harriet's family also struggled with approval of this union, and Harriet became seriously ill. As she grew steadily worse, her parents rethought their position and approved the union, trusting they were following God's will. Eventually, Harriet's health was restored and marriage plans proceeded.

Harriet was very religious and longed to do missionary work. Her love for Boudinot and for a life of religious work combined to help the couple weather the storm. Boudinot had taken classes at Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, it being his goal to take the gospel of Christianity to his people. Love prevailed, and the couple was married in the home of her parents on March 28, 1826. However, this incident resulted in the closing of the Cornwall School in the autumn of 1826. Harriet Gold Boudinot died ten years later, at age 31, after bearing six children. In 1836, Boudinot married Delight Sargent, also a white woman; they remained childless.

Returned to Georgia

With his course at Cornwall and his study at Andover Theological Seminary completed, Boudinot was one of the best-educated citizens of the Cherokee Nation. He went on a fund-raising tour before taking a teaching position at a mission school in High Tower, Cherokee Nation, from 1826 to 1827. In 1828 he became editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, which made use of the Cherokee alphabet Sequoyah had developed. Much of the paper was printed in English, but at least a quarter of each issue was in Cherokee. Boudinot resigned as editor in 1832, after a disagreement with tribal authorities about whether the newspaper should be a vehicle for discussion on the issue of removal of the Cherokees to Indian Territory. By 1833, Boudinot published a novel in Cherokee, Poor Sarah; or, The Indian Woman.

In 1827, Boudinot was named clerk of the Cherokee National Council (legislature). The major issue facing the council was increasing pressure from the U.S. government to remove the Cherokees from their ancestral land in Georgia to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. The Cherokee council, meeting in October 1829, decided to stand firm, alarmed at the loss of their ancestral land. The resolution that was adopted (drafted by Major Ridge, Boudinot's uncle) called for the death penalty for any tribal member who thereafter undertook "to cede any part of their tribal domain." The Boudinot-Ridge-Watie faction was apparently content with this posture until 1831, when the council named John Ross principal chief (over John Ridge) for an indefinite period. Ross and his majority believed that they could retain their land by using the U.S. court system and by eventually treating with Georgia and/or the U.S. government to keep their lands.

In March 1832, Boudinot and his cousin John Ridge traveled to Boston and other northern cities to speak and raise support for the Cherokee cause. In the meantime, Georgia continued its encroachment and its efforts to enforce the Georgia Compact, which would move the Cherokees to the West. Upon his return to the Cherokee Nation in the summer of 1832, Boudinot assessed the situation and the deteriorating fortunes of his tribe and began to change his position on removal. He resigned as editor of the Phoenix in September, under pressure from the tribal government. He wanted to use the newspaper as an instrument of discussion, but John Ross forbade the editor to print a word in favor of removal.

Reversed Position on Removal

At this time, Boudinot and his family began considering their own situation. They ultimately decided that a treaty with the U.S. government, ceding land in exchange for new land in the West, was their best hope. They formed the "Treaty Party" and made a trip to Washington, D.C., in 1835 to negotiate unofficially on behalf of the Cherokees. On December 29, the Treaty of New Echota was signed by Boudinot, John Ridge, Major Ridge, Stand Watie, and 15 others, none of whom had authority to do so. The treaty provided for surrender of Cherokee lands and removal of the people to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The lawful government of the Cherokee Nation was outraged and sent petitions with signatures of more than 90 percent of the tribal members to the Senate, pleading against ratification. Nonetheless, the treaty passed on May 23, 1836, by one vote.

Boudinot and his family were able to choose their time for passage to the West, since they were part of a favored group who had signed the Treaty of New Echota. They traveled to Indian Territory in September 1837, along with John Ridge and his family. When they arrived, they joined Dr. Samuel Austin Worcester, a medical missionary, in Park Hill, near the capitol at Tahlequah.

Joined Worcester in Publishing Venture

Worcester, known as the "Cherokee Messenger" among the Cherokees, had worked with Boudinot since 1826 in the old Cherokee Nation. He established the new Worcester Mission in 1836. Worcester worked fervently among the Cherokees, learning their language with Boudinot as his interpreter. Together they wrote textbooks and translated several books of the Bible into Cherokee. Worcester was imprisoned in Georgia for helping the Cherokees and became famous through the U.S. Supreme Court case Worcester v. Georgia. This case, decided in 1832, established tribal sovereignty and protected Cherokees from Georgia laws. The decision also freed Worcester, although Georgia ignored it until Worcester was pardoned in early 1833.

One of the conditions of Worcester's pardon was that he leave Georgia. When he did, he took his printing press to the new nation with him, with the intention of teaching and preaching among the Cherokee. In 1835 he set up his press at Union Mission, on the west banks of the Grand River south of the present-day Pryor, Oklahoma, in Mayes County. Textbooks, religious tracts, the Cherokee Almanac, and other items were published here. Most notably, the collaboration of Boudinot and Worcester produced the first book published in what is now Oklahoma in August 1835. The title was "I Stutsi in Natsoku," or "The Child's Book." In 1836, the press was moved to the recently established community of Park Hill and Worcester's mission work continued. Boudinot had served as his interpreter and assistant for several years and together they issued more than 13 million printed pages.

Assassinated for Role in Treaty of New Echota

The work continued until Boudinot's assassination on June 22, 1839, on the same day that his relatives John Ridge and Major Ridge were killed; only Stand Watie escaped the plot. Three men lured Boudinot from the home he was building at Park Hill. They wanted him to go with them to the home of Dr. Worcester for medicine. He was killed as they approached the mission. No one was ever brought to justice for his murder (or for the deaths of the Ridges), but it was assumed that the responsibility lay with Ross sympathizers, although not Ross personally. Boudinot is buried in the Worcester Mission Cemetery at Old Park Hill, near Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation since 1839. The site is approximately 300 yards north of the spot where he died, and the cemetery is the only remaining part of the mission. At Boudinot's death, his wife took all six children east to escape the violence in the Cherokee Nation. They were placed with relatives of Harriet Gold Boudinot. The best known of the children was Elias Cornelius Boudinot. He studied engineering and then law, became active in politics, and was eventually elected to the Confederate Congress.

Books

Biographical Dictionary of Indians of the Americas, second edition, American Indian Publishers, 1991.

Cherokee Cavaliers: Forty Years of Cherokee History as Told in the Correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot Family, edited by Edward Everett Dale and Gaston Litton, University of Oklahoma Press, 1939.

Dictionary of American Biography, edited by John A. Garraty, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951.

Dockstader, Frederick J., Great North American Indians, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977.

Gabriel, Ralph Henry, Elias Boudinot, Cherokee & His America, University of Oklahoma Press, 1941.

Native North American Almanac, edited by Duane Champagne, Gale Research, 1994.

Starr, Emmet, Old Cherokee Families: Old Families and Their Genealogy, University of Oklahoma Foundation, 1972.

Schwarze, Edmund, History of the Moravian Missions among the Southern Indian Tribes, Moravian Historical Society, 1923.

Waldman, Carl, Who Was Who in Native American History, Facts on File, 1990.

Wardell, Morris L., A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 1838-1907, University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.

Wilkins, Thurmond, Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and of the Decimation of a People, Macmillan, 1970.

Woodward, Grace Steele, The Cherokees, University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

Periodicals

Chronicles of Oklahoma, 11:3, September 1933; 12:1, March 1934; 31:2, summer 1953; 46:4, winter 1968-1969; 48:2, summer 1970; 51:4, winter 1973; 53:3, fall 1975; 55:3, fall 1987.

The first lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court was New Jersey patriot Elias Boudinot. A good friend of President George Washington's, Boudinot was a prominent public official who strongly supported the American Revolution. Boudinot held several key positions in the Continental Congress and signed the 1783 peace treaty with England after the United States' victory in the War of Independence. After the war he aligned himself with Federalists John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Like them, Boudinot supported a strong, centralized national government and distrusted many of the principles of participatory democracy.

Born May 2, 1740, in Philadelphia, Boudinot studied law and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1760. By 1770 he had risen to the prestigious level of serjeant at law. Although Boudinot began his career as a political conservative, he eventually supported the colonies' efforts to break away from English domination. He joined the Revolutionary party after the U.S. War of Independence erupted and served as deputy of New Jersey's provincial assembly.

Boudinot was a representative to the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1784. He was president of the Congress from 1782 to 1784 and was named secretary of foreign affairs. He became commissary general of prisoners in 1777 and donated a large sum of his own money to help improve prison conditions. In 1787 Boudinot played a key role in obtaining New Jersey's ratification of the new U.S. Constitution.

In 1789 Boudinot became a member of the House of Representatives from New Jersey, holding office during the first three sessions of Congress. Once the U.S. Supreme Court was officially established, Boudinot became the first lawyer admitted to practice before it, on February 5, 1790. He also served as a trustee of Princeton University and was director of the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia from 1795 to 1805.

In the later years of his life, Boudinot's interests turned from politics to evangelical theology. Founder and president of the American Bible Association, Boudinot proposed a universal acceptance of religion as a cure for society's ills.

Boudinot died in New Jersey on October 24, 1821, at age eighty-one.

For other people with the same name, see Elias Boudinot (disambiguation).

Elias Boudinot
President of the Continental Congress
In office November 4, 1782 – November 2, 1783
Preceded by	John Hanson
Succeeded by	Thomas Mifflin
Born	May 2, 1740(1740-05-02) Philadelphia, Philadelphia
Died	October 24, 1821 (aged 81)
Signature

Elias Boudinot (May 2, 1740 – October 24, 1821) was a lawyer and statesman from Elizabeth, New Jersey who was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a U.S. Congressman for New Jersey. He also served as President of the Continental Congress from 1782 to 1783 and Director of the United States Mint from 1795 until 1805.

Contents 1 Personal history 2 Political career 3 Later public service 4 Legacy 5 Quotes 6 References 7 External links 8 Further reading

Personal history

Boudinot was born in Philadelphia on May 2, 1740. His father, Elias Boudinot III, was a silversmith and a neighbor and friend of Benjamin Franklin. His mother, Mary Catherine Williams, was from the British West Indies and Boudinot's maternal grandfather was from Wales.[1] His paternal grandfather, Elie (sometimes called Elias) Boudinot, was the son of Jean Boudinot and Marie Suire of Marans, Aunis, France, a Huguenot (French Protestant) family who fled to New York about 1687 to avoid the religious persecutions of King Louis XIV. Mary Catherine Williams and Elias Boudinot Sr. were married on Aug 8,1729 and, over the next twenty years, had nine children. The first, John, was born in the British West Indies-Antigua. Of the others, only the younger Elias and his siblings Annis, Mary, and Elisha reached adulthood.

After studying and being tutored at home, Elias Boudinot went to Princeton, New Jersey to read the law with another attorney. His mentor was Richard Stockton, who later signed the Declaration of Independence, and was married to Elias's sister Annis Boudinot Stockton. In 1760, he was admitted to the bar, and began his practice in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He owned land adjacent to the road from Elizabethtown to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.

Then, on April 21, 1762, he married Richard's sister, Hannah Stockton (1736-1808). Elias and Hannah had two children, Maria Boudinot, who died at age two, and Susan Vergereau Boudinot. Susan married William Bradford who became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under George Washington. After Bradford's death in 1795, Susan came back to make her home with her father and edit his papers, which are a light into the events of the Revolutionary era. Elias's brother, Elisha, became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.

In 1805, Elias moved his family to a new home in Burlington, New Jersey and lived there the rest of his life. In his later years, he invested and speculated in land. He owned large tracts in Ohio including most of Green Township in what is now the western suburbs of Cincinnati. On his death, he willed 13,000 acres (53 km²) to the city of Philadelphia for parks and city needs.

He was buried in Saint Mary's Episcopal Churchyard in Burlington.^[1]

Political career

Boudinot became a prominent lawyer and his practice prospered, As the revolution drew near, he aligned with the Whigs, and was elected to the New Jersey provincial assembly in 1775. In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, he was active in promoting enlistment and several times loaned money to field commanders for supplies. Elias also became one of the focal points for rebel spies, who were sent to Staten Island and Long Island to observe and report on movements of specific British garrisons and regiments. To this day, much of what he organized remains a "secret" worth discovery and telling.

On May 5, 1777, General George Washington asked for him to be made commissary general for prisoners. Congress through the board of war concurred. Boudinot was made a colonel in the Continental Army for this task. He held this job until other responsibilities force him to resign in July of 1778. The commissary was responsible not just for enemy prisoners, but for supplying American prisoners held by the British.

In November 1777, the New Jersey legislature named Boudinot as one of their delegates to the Second Continental Congress. His duties as Commissary prevented his attendance, so in May 1778 he submitted his resignation, and by early July he was replaced and able to attend his first meeting on July 7, 1778. He maintained his concerns for the welfare of prisoners of war throughout his term as a delegate. His first term ended that year.

In 1781, Boudinot returned to the Congress, and this term lasted through 1783. In 1783, he signed the Treaty of Paris. In November 1782 he was elected the President of the Continental Congress for a one year term. The President of Congress was a mostly ceremonial position with no real authority, but the office did require him to handle a good deal of correspondence and sign official documents.^[2]

When the United States government was formed in 1789, New Jersey sent Boudinot to the House of Representatives. He was elected to the second and third congresses as well, where he generally supported the administration, but refused to join the growing forces that led to formal political parties. In 1794, he declined to serve another term, and left Congress in early 1795. In October of 1795, President Washington appointed him the Director of the United States Mint, a position he held until his retirement in 1805. After many turbulent decades in law and politics, he was to recall the metallurgic skill learned in his father's silversmithy. He was scrupulous in his accounting, as reported to Congress, and left the US Mint in excellent order for the future.

Later public service

In addition to political office Elias supported many civic, religious, and educational causes during his life. He is intimately connected with Princeton University. In Revolutionary times, Princeton was the College of New Jersey, and Boudinot served as one of its trustees for nearly half a century, from 1772 until 1821. When the Continental Congress was forced to leave Philadelphia in 1783 while he was its president, he moved the meetings to Princeton where they met in the University's Nassau Hall.

A devout Presbyterian, Boudinot supported missions and missionary work. He even wrote "The Age of Revelation" in response to Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason". To that end, he was one of the founders of the American Bible Society, and served as its President after 1816. He argued for the rights of black and Indian citizens, and sponsored students to the Board School for Indians in Connecticut. One of these, a young Cherokee named Gallegina Watie, stayed with him while traveling to the school. The two so impressed each other that Gallegina asked for and was given permission to use his name, and was afterward known as Elias Boudinot.

Legacy

• Elias Boudinot Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey is named after him.

• Princeton University Library has a collection of his papers and many family possessions and portraits.

• Boudinot Street in Philadelphia, located between C and D Streets.

Quotes

• “Be religiously careful in our choice of all public officers... and judge of the tree by its fruits.”
• "Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow."

References

1. ^ St. Mary's Churchyard at The Political Graveyard. Accessed August 21, 2007.
2. ^ Rick K. Wilson, Congressional Dynamics: Structure, Coordination, and Choice in the First American Congress, 1774–1789 (Stanford University Press, 1994), 76–80.

External links

• Elias Boudinot at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-5-18
• Elias Boudinot at The Political Graveyard
• Elias Boudinot at Find a Grave Retrieved on 2009-5-18

Further reading

• J. J. Boudinot; The Life, Public Services, Addresses and Letters of Elias Boudinot; New York, 1896.
• George Boyd; Elias Boudinot: Patriot and Statesman, 1740-1821; Westwood, Connecticut, 1969, Greenwood Publishing, ISBN 0-8371-1345-8.
• Joseph Lee Boyle; Their Distress is Almost Intolerable: The Elias Boudinot Letterbook, 1777-1778; 2002, Heritage Books (paperback), ISBN 0-7884-2210-3.

Political offices
Preceded by John Hanson	President of the Continental Congress November 4, 1782 – November 2, 1783	Succeeded by Thomas Mifflin
Government offices
Preceded by Henry William de Saussure	3rd Director of the United States Mint 1795-1805	Succeeded by Robert Patterson

v • d • e Presidents of the Continental Congress First Continental Congress Peyton Randolph · Henry Middleton Second Continental Congress Peyton Randolph · John Hancock · Henry Laurens · John Jay · Samuel Huntington Confederation Congress Samuel Huntington · Thomas McKean · John Hanson · Elias Boudinot · Thomas Mifflin · Richard Henry Lee · John Hancock1 · David Ramsay · Nathaniel Gorham · Nathaniel Gorham · Arthur St. Clair · Cyrus Griffin Italics indicate acting presidents    1 Did not serve

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