Lewis Cass

For more information on Lewis Cass, visit Britannica.com.

As governor of Michigan Territory, Lewis Cass (1782-1866) contributed importantly to the development of the Old Northwest. Twice a presidential nominee, he served as secretary of war, minister to France, and secretary of state.

Lewis Cass was born on Oct. 2, 1782, in New Hampshire, the eldest child of a Revolutionary War veteran, Maj. Jonathan Cass, and Mary Gilman Cass. He studied at Phillips Exeter Academy. In 1800 the family moved to the Ohio frontier, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1803. In 1806 he married Elizabeth Spencer and was elected to the legislature in Ohio. In 1807 he became U.S. marshal for Ohio.

In the War of 1812 Cass advanced from colonel of militia to brigadier general and fought with distinction at the Battle of the Thames. In 1813 he was appointed governor of Michigan Territory. He made a fortune by buying land in Detroit and later selling it in city lots. He promoted universal education and the establishment of libraries, built roads, and speeded the work of surveying tracts for settlers; as Indian commissioner, he conducted expeditions to the northwestern area of the territory, studied Native American languages, and supported scholarly work on Native American culture. He had sympathy for the Native Americans, but he persuaded them to cede their lands; as President Andrew Jackson's secretary of war (1831-1836), he vigorously supported the forced removal of the Cherokee from their agricultural lands.

Appointed minister to France in 1836, Cass used his influence against British efforts to stop the international slave trade. In 1842 he resigned and sought the Democratic nomination for president but lost to James K. Polk. Elected to the Senate in 1845, Cass urged war against Britain, if necessary, to obtain all of Oregon. He defended Polk's aggression against Mexico and advocated the acquisition of Cuba.

With Southern support Cass was the Democratic nominee for president in 1848, but in a rather close election he lost to the Whig general Zachary Taylor. Cass was again in the Senate (1849-1856) and again, at the age of 70, a candidate for president in 1852; but the Democrats nominated a nonentity, Franklin Pierce.

Cass supported the Compromise of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Law, which denied a jury trial to any African American claimed by a slave owner. He supported the "popular sovereignty" doctrine of Stephen Douglas. In 1856 the Republican legislature in Michigan removed him from the Senate.

President James Buchanan made the aged Cass his secretary of state, and in this position Cass remained an expansionist and continued to oppose British policies. But the sectional conflict now dominated the American scene. Cass lost Southern friends by referring, in Michigan, to slavery as "a great social and political evil"; and he finally broke with Buchanan and his Southern advisers and resigned his office in 1860. He supported the Union during the Civil War. He died on June 16, 1866.

Had Cass retired from public life at the age of 60, his place in American history would be higher than it is as a consequence of his support of, and affiliation with, some of the weakest and most disastrous administrations in American history.

Further Reading

The standard biography of Cass is Frank B. Woodford, Lewis Cass: The Last Jeffersonian (1950). The subtitle is misleading, the style journalistic, and the interpretation nationalistic, but Woodford provides the basic information. Andrew C. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (1891), in the "American Statesmen" series, is still useful. The interpretation is generally logical and persuasive, although McLaughlin is sometimes harshly censorious of Cass and others.

Additional Sources

Burns, Virginia, Lewis Cass, frontier soldier, Bath, Mich.: Enterprise Press, 1980.

Klunder, Willard Carl, Lewis Cass and the politics of moderation, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1996.

McLaughlin, Andrew Cunningham, Lewis Cass, New York: Chelsea House, 1980.

Quotes:

"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."

Lewis Cass
2nd Governor of Michigan Territory
In office October 29, 1813 – August 6, 1831
Preceded by	William Hull
Succeeded by	George Bryan Porter
14th United States Secretary of War
In office August 1, 1831 – October 5, 1836
President	Andrew Jackson
Preceded by	John Henry Eaton
Succeeded by	Joel Roberts Poinsett
United States Ambassador to France
In office October 4, 1836 – November 12, 1842
President	Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler
Preceded by	Edward Livingston
Succeeded by	William R. King
United States Senator from Michigan
In office March 4, 1845 – May 29, 1848 March 4, 1849 – March 3, 1857
Preceded by	Augustus S. Porter (1845) Thomas Fitzgerald (1849)
Succeeded by	Thomas Fitzgerald (1848) Zachariah Chandler (1857)
President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office December 4, 1854 – December 4, 1854
Preceded by	David R. Atchison
Succeeded by	Jesse D. Bright
22nd United States Secretary of State
In office March 6, 1857 – December 14, 1860
President	James Buchanan
Preceded by	William L. Marcy
Succeeded by	Jeremiah S. Black
Born	October 9, 1782(1782-10-09) Exeter, New Hampshire U.S.
Died	June 17, 1866 (aged 83) Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Eliza Spencer Cass
Profession	Politician, Lawyer
Signature
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1813-1814
Rank	Brigadier General
Battles/wars	War of 1812

Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782 – June 17, 1866) was an American military officer and politician. During his long political career, Cass served as a governor of the Michigan Territory, an American ambassador, and a U.S. Senator representing Michigan. He was the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in 1848.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Territorial governor 3 Later political career 4 Commemoration 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References

Early life

Cass was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he attended Phillips Exeter Academy. His parents were Major Jonathan Cass and Molly Gilman. In 1800 he moved with his family to Marietta, Ohio. On May 26, 1806, he married the former Elizabeth Spencer.^[2]

Territorial governor

During the War of 1812, Cass served as a brigadier general and participated in the Battle of the Thames. As a reward for his service, he was appointed Governor of the Michigan Territory by President James Madison on October 29, 1813, and served until 1831. He was frequently absent, and several territorial secretaries often served as acting governor in his place.

In 1817, he was one of two commissioners (along with Duncan McArthur) who negotiated the Treaty of Fort Meigs, which was signed September 29 of that year with several Native American tribes.^[2]

In 1820, he led an expedition to the northern part of the territory, in the northern Great Lakes region in present-day northern Minnesota, in order to map the region and discover the source of the Mississippi River. The source of the river had been unknown until then, resulting in an undefined border between the United States and British North America. The expedition erroneously identified Cass Lake as the source of the river. The source of the river was correctly identified in 1832 by Henry Schoolcraft, who had been Cass's expedition geologist, as nearby Lake Itasca.

Later political career

On August 1, 1831, Cass resigned as governor of the Michigan Territory to take the post of Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, a position he would hold until 1836. Cass was a central figure in formulating and implementing the Indian removal policy of the Jackson administration. Next, Cass was appointed ambassador to France, a post he retained until 1842.

Cass represented Michigan in the United States Senate from 1845 to 1848. He served as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the 30th Congress. In 1848, he resigned from the Senate to run for President. William Orlando Butler was his running mate.^[3] Cass was a leading supporter of the Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, which held that the people who lived in a territory should decide whether or not to permit slavery there.^[4] His nomination caused a split in the Democratic party, leading many antislavery Democrats to join the Free Soil Party. He also supported the annexation of Texas.

After losing the election to Zachary Taylor, he returned to the Senate, serving from 1849 to 1857. He was the first non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate to lose an election.

From 1857 to 1860, Cass served as Secretary of State under President James Buchanan.^[2] He was sympathetic to American filibusterers and was instrumental in having Commodore Hiram Paulding removed from command for his landing of Marines in Nicaragua and compelling the removal of William Walker to the United States.^[5] Cass resigned on December 13, 1860, because of Buchanan's failure to protect federal interests in the South and failure to mobilize the federal military, actions that might have averted the threatened secession of Southern states.^[6]

Cass died in 1866 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan.

His Great-Great Grandson Cass Ballenger was a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.

Michigan-based attorney, activist and singer-songwriter Jen Cass is Lewis Cass' great-great-great-grandniece.

Commemoration

• A statue of Cass is one of the two that were submitted by Michigan to the National Statuary Hall collection in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. It stands in the National Statuary Hall room. (The other statue is of Zachariah Chandler, which is in the Hall of Columns. The Chandler statue will eventually be replaced by a statue of President Gerald Ford.)
• The Liberty ship S.S. Lewis Cass
• Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan is named after Cass.
• Cass County, Texas was named for him, as Cass supported Texas' annexation into the United States.

See also

• List of places named for Lewis Cass
• Origins of the American Civil War

Notes

1. ^ Cass, Lewis, 1782-1866
2. ^ ^{a b c} Heidler, David S., and Heidler, Jeanne T. (eds.) (2004). Encyclopedia of the War of 1812, pp. 83-84. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591143624.
3. ^ Kleber, John E. (ed.) (1992). The Kentucky Encyclopedia, p. 146. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813117720, ISBN 9780813117720.
4. ^ Klunder, Willard Carl (1996). Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation, pp. 266-67. Kent State University Press. ISBN 0873385365, ISBN 9780873385367.
5. ^ Collier, Ellen C. (1993) "Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798 - 1993" CRS Issue Brief Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington DC
6. ^ Cass's resignation statement, quoted in McLaughlin, Andrew Cunningham (1899) Lewis Cass Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, pp. 345-346, OCLC 4377268, (standard library edition, first edition was published in 1891)

References

• Lewis Cass at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army
• Elmwood Cemetery Biography

Political offices
Preceded by William Hull	Territorial Governor of Michigan 1813 – 1831	Succeeded by George Bryan Porter
Preceded by John Henry Eaton	United States Secretary of War August 1, 1831 – October 5, 1836	Succeeded by Joel Roberts Poinsett
Preceded by David Rice Atchison	President pro tempore of the United States Senate December 4, 1854	Succeeded by Jesse D. Bright
Preceded by William L. Marcy	United States Secretary of State Served Under: James Buchanan March 6, 1857 – December 14, 1860	Succeeded by Jeremiah S. Black
Ohio House of Representatives
New district	Representative from Washington, Gallia, Muskingum, and Athens Counties 1806–1807 Served alongside: Levi Barber, William H. Puthoff	Succeeded by John P. R. Bureau John Matthews James Palmer
United States Senate
Preceded by Augustus S. Porter	Senator from Michigan (Class 1) March 4, 1845 – May 29, 1848 Served alongside: William Woodbridge and Alpheus Felch	Succeeded by Thomas Fitzgerald
Preceded by Thomas Fitzgerald	Senator from Michigan (Class 1) January 20, 1849 – March 3, 1857 Served alongside: Alpheus Felch and Charles E. Stuart	Succeeded by Zachariah Chandler
Party political offices
Preceded by James K. Polk	Democratic Party presidential candidate 1848	Succeeded by Franklin Pierce
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Edward Livingston	United States Minister to France October 4, 1836 – November 12, 1842	Succeeded by William R. King

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v • d • e Cabinet of President James Buchanan (1857-1861) Vice President John C. Breckinridge (1857-1861) Secretary of State Lewis Cass (1857-1860) • Jeremiah S. Black (1860-1861) Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb (1857-1860) • Philip F. Thomas (1860-1861) • John A. Dix (1861) Secretary of War John B. Floyd (1857-1860) • Joseph Holt (1860-1861) Attorney General Jeremiah S. Black (1857-1860) • Edwin M. Stanton (1860-1861) Postmaster General Aaron V. Brown (1857-1859) • Joseph Holt (1859-1860) • Horatio King (1861) Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey (1857-1861) Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson (1857-1861)

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