Lewis Cass
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Lewis Cass |
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Campaign poster for 12th United States Presidential campaign, 1848. |
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A marble statue of Lewis Cass which resides in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the US Capitol. |
Lewis Cass (
October 9,
1782 –
June 17,
1866) was an
American military officer and
politician. He was the nominee of the
Democratic Party for
president in
1848.
He was born in
Exeter, New Hampshire where he attended
Phillips Exeter Academy and
Dartmouth College. During the
War of 1812, he served as brigadier general. As a reward for his service in the war, 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
1820 he led an expedition to the northern part of the territory, in the northern
Great Lakes 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
Britain. 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.
On
August 1,
1831, he resigned as governor of the Michigan Territory to take the post of
Secretary of War under President
Andrew Jackson, serving until
1836. Cass was a central figure in formulating and implementing the
Indian Removal policy of the Jackson administration. From
1836 to
1842, he was
ambassador to
France.
Cass represented the
State of Michigan in the
United States Senate from
1845 to
1848. In 1848 he resigned from the Senate to run for president. 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. 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.
From
1857 to
1860 Cass served as
Secretary of State under President
James Buchanan. He resigned on
December 13,
1860, reportedly disgusted by Buchanan's failure to pursue a stronger policy that might have averted the threatened secession of southern states.
See: Origins of the American Civil War.
He died in 1866, and is buried in
Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.
There are many places named after Cass, see
List of places named for Lewis Cass.
A statue of Cass is one of the two that was submitted by the
State of Michigan to The
National Statuary Hall Collection in the
U.S. Capitol in
Washington, D.C. It resides in the National Statuary Hall room. (The other statue is of
Zachariah Chandler, which rests in the Hall of Columns.)
