Lewis Cass

Lewis Cass
14th United States Secretary of War
In office August 1, 1831 – October 5, 1836
Preceded by	John Henry Eaton
Succeeded by	Joel Roberts Poinsett
22nd United States Secretary of State
In office March 6, 1857 – December 14, 1860
Preceded by	William L. Marcy
Succeeded by	Jeremiah S. Black
Born	October 9, 1782 Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
Died	June 17 1866 (aged 83) Detroit, Michigan, USA
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Eliza Spencer Cass
Profession	Lawyer, Politician
Signature

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 of the United States in 1848. His political agenda can be described as having endorsed a Jeffersonian political philosophy. Some of the principles reflecting the motivations behind his political actions include: the belief in individual liberty, popular sovereignty, equality of rights and opportunities for all citizens, and a strictly construed and balanced constitutional government of limited powers.

Early life

Lewis Cass ,the oldest of six children, was born in Exeter, New Hampshire on October 9, 1782. Here he attended Phillips Exeter Academy. His parents were Jonathan and Mary Gilman Cass. In 1806 he became a member of the Ohio House committee that was in charge of leading the investigation of the Burr conspiracy. Three years later, in 1809, he was selected to become a defense counselor in the trial for Ohio Supreme Court Justice George Tod.

During the War of 1812, he served as brigadier general fighting at the battle of the Thames. 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 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 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.

President Buchanan and his Cabinet
From left to right: Jacob Thompson, Lewis Cass, John B. Floyd, James Buchanan, Howell Cobb, Isaac Toucey, Joseph Holt and Jeremiah S. Black, (c. 1859)

Political career

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 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. 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.

Cass/Butler campaign poster

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.

American Indian Policy

In 1948 the Detroit Historical Society of Michigan reinstated their lecture series and named it in honor of Lewis Cass who was Governor of the Michigan Territory and one of the founders of the Detroit Historical Society Guild. The purpose of these lectures was to present a discussion on an aspect of Michigan’s history. Cass and his policies on American Indians were thought to be the appropriate subject for 1948. The lecture was presented by Francis Paul Prucha and was titled Lewis Cass and American Indian Policy. Prucha focused his discussion on how Cass successfully prevented the complete collapse of American Indian relations with the United States and described him as an "enlightened man of his times, and there was in him a strong, sincere, and persistent streak of humanitarianism."

The following quote from Lewis Cass himself from his Considerations on the Present State of the Indians and their Removal to the West of the Mississppi demonstrates the concerns he held towards the conservation of the American Indian population amidst all the factors that contributed to their decline:

As we shall attempt eventually to prove, that the only means of preserving the Indians from that utter extinction which threatens them, is to remove them from the sphere of influence, we are desirous of showing, that no change has occurred, or probably can occur, in the principles of practice of our intercourse with them, by which the progress of their declension can be arrested, so long as they occupy their present situation.

Conclusion

He died in 1866 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

A statue of Cass is one of the two that was 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.)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

1. Cass, Lewis. 1975. Considerations on the Present State of the Indians and their Removal to the West of the Mississippi. Arno Press.

2. Klunder, Willard Carl. 1996. ‘’Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation’’. The Kent State University Press. 3. Prucha, Francis Paul. 1967. Lewis Cass and American Indian Policy. Wayne State University Press.

External links

• Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army

Preceded by: William Hull	Territoral 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: Edward Livingston	U.S. Minister to France October 4, 1836 – November 12, 1842	Succeeded by: William R. King
Preceded by: Augustus S. Porter	United States Senator (Class 1) from Michigan March 4, 1845 – May 29, 1848	Succeeded by: Thomas Fitzgerald
Preceded by: James K. Polk	Democratic Party presidential candidate 1848 (lost)	Succeeded by: Franklin Pierce
Preceded by: Thomas Fitzgerald	United States Senator (Class 1) from Michigan January 20, 1849 – March 3, 1857	Succeeded by: Zachariah Chandler
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 March 6, 1857 – December 14, 1860	Succeeded by: Jeremiah S. Black

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