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Oliver Ellsworth | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Portrait byRalph Earl, 1785 | |
| 3rdChief Justice of the United States | |
| In office March 8, 1796 – December 15, 1800 | |
| Nominated by | George Washington |
| Preceded by | John Rutledge |
| Succeeded by | John Marshall |
| United States Senator fromConnecticut | |
| In office March 4, 1789 – March 8, 1796 | |
| Preceded by | Seat established |
| Succeeded by | James Hillhouse |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1745-04-29)April 29, 1745 |
| Died | November 26, 1807(1807-11-26) (aged 62) Windsor, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Party | Federalist |
| Spouse | Abigail Wolcott |
| Children | 9, includingWilliam andHenry |
| Relatives | Henry W. Ellsworth (grandson) Delia Lyman Porter (great-granddaughter) |
| Education | Yale College College of New Jersey (AB) |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | .svg) United Colonies of North America |
| Branch/service |  Continental Army |
| Rank |  Lieutenant Colonel |
| Unit |  3rd Connecticut Regiment |
| Battles/wars | American Revolutionary War |
Oliver Ellsworth (April 29, 1745 – November 26, 1807) was aFounding Father of the United States,attorney,jurist,politician, anddiplomat. Ellsworth was a framer of theUnited States Constitution,United States senator fromConnecticut, and the thirdchief justice of the United States. Additionally, he received 11electoral votes in the1796 presidential election.
Born inWindsor, Connecticut, Ellsworth attended theCollege of New Jersey where he helped found theAmerican Whig–Cliosophic Society. In 1777, he became the state attorney forHartford County, Connecticut, and was selected as a delegate to theContinental Congress, serving during the remainder of theAmerican Revolutionary War. He served as a state judge during the 1780s and was selected as a delegate to the 1787Philadelphia Convention, which produced theUnited States Constitution. While at the convention, Ellsworth played a role in fashioning theConnecticut Compromise between the more populous states and the less populous states. He also served on theCommittee of Detail, which prepared the first draft of the Constitution, but he left the convention and did not sign the document.
His influence helped ensure that Connecticut ratified the Constitution, and he was elected as one of Connecticut's inaugural pair of senators, serving from 1789 to 1796. He was the chief author of theJudiciary Act of 1789, which shaped thefederal judiciary of the United States and established the Supreme Court's power to overturnstate supreme court decisions that were contrary to the United States Constitution. Ellsworth served as a key Senate ally toAlexander Hamilton and aligned with theFederalist Party. He led the Senate passage of Hamiltonian proposals such as theFunding Act of 1790 and theBank Bill of 1791. He also advocated in favor of theUnited States Bill of Rights and theJay Treaty.
In 1796, after the Senate rejected the nomination ofJohn Rutledge to serve as Chief Justice, PresidentGeorge Washington nominated Ellsworth to the position. Ellsworth was near-unanimously confirmed by the Senate, and served until 1800, when he resigned due to poor health. Few cases came before theEllsworth Court, and he is chiefly remembered for his discouragement of the previous practice ofseriatim opinion writing. He simultaneously served as an envoy toFrance from 1799 to 1800, signing theConvention of 1800 to settle the hostilities of theQuasi-War. He was succeeded as chief justice byJohn Marshall. He subsequently served on the Connecticut Governor's Council until his death in 1807.
Ellsworth was born inWindsor, Connecticut, to Capt. David and Jemima (née Leavitt) Ellsworth.[1]
Ellsworth's ancestors had lived in Windsor since the middle of the 17th century.[2] Josiah Ellsworth, Oliver's great-grandfather, was born in about 1629 inCambridgeshire, England. Josiah immigrated to Connecticut in 1646, although it is unclear if he did this on his own, he married a woman born inMassachusetts named Elizabeth Holcombe. Josiah's occupation is listed as "juror". He would pass away in 1689.[3] Ellsworth's maternal grandmother's maternal grandfather (his great-great-grandfather) wasLieutenant Daniel Pond. He was born in England in the 1620s or 1630s. He immigrated toDedham, Massachusetts in the early 1650s, where he worked as acarpenter and a long-time selectman to support his growing family. He was in amilitia, which is why he has the title of "Lieutenant". He died in 1697 or 1698.[4][5][6] Beyond this, Ellsworth's ancestry can also be traced to Edward Heath, a collarmaker who was born in 1525 inLittle Amwell, Hertfordshire, England (a settlement nearWare).[7]
Ellsworth enteredYale in 1762, but transferred to the College of New Jersey (laterPrinceton) at the end of his second year. Along with William Paterson and Luther Martin (both of whom served with him at the Constitutional Convention in 1787) he founded the "Well Meaning Club," which became the Cliosophic Society—now part of Whig-Clio, the nation's oldest college debating club.[8] He received hisA.B. degree in 1766,Phi Beta Kappa[9] after 2 years. Soon afterward, Ellsworth turned to the law. After four years of study, he wasadmitted to the bar in 1771 and later became a successful lawyer and politician.
In 1772, Ellsworth married Abigail Wolcott, the daughter of Abigail Abbot and William Wolcott,nephew of Connecticut colonial governorRoger Wolcott,[10] and granddaughter of Abiah Hawley and William Wolcott ofEast Windsor, Connecticut.
They had nine children including the twin brothersWilliam Wolcott Ellsworth andHenry Leavitt Ellsworth. William marriedNoah Webster's daughter, served in Congress and was elected Governor of Connecticut. Henry became the first Commissioner of theUnited States Patent Office, the mayor of Hartford, president ofAetna Life Insurance and a major benefactor ofYale College. Henry was also instrumental in the creation of theU.S. Agriculture Department and oversaw theforced relocation of Cherokee Indians from Georgia to theOklahoma Territory. He was a friend and backer of inventorsSamuel Colt andSamuel F.B. Morse, and his daughter Annie Ellsworth proposed the first message transmitted by Morse over thetelegraph, "What hath God wrought?"[citation needed]
Commissioned as acaptain of the3rd Connecticut Regiment of theConnecticutmilitia in 1773, Ellsworth was promoted toLieutenant Colonel in 1774 and led three regiments of light cavalry supporting theContinental Army inNew York during the summer of 1776.[11][12][13][14]
Ellsworth built up a prosperous law practice and in 1777 he became Connecticut's state attorney forHartford County. That same year, he was chosen as one of Connecticut's representatives in theContinental Congress. He served 1777–80 and 1781–83 on various committees, including the Marine Committee, the Board of Treasury, and the Committee of Appeals. Ellsworth was also active in his state's efforts during theRevolution, having served as a member of the Committee of the Pay Table that supervised Connecticut's war expenditures. In 1777 he joined the Committee of Appeals, which can be described as a forerunner of the Federal Supreme Court.[15] While serving on it, he participated in the Olmstead case that brought state and federal authority into conflict. In 1779, he assumed greater duties as a member of the Council of Safety, which, with the governor, controlled all military measures for the state. His first judicial service was on theSupreme Court of Errors when it was established in 1785, but he soon shifted to the Connecticut Superior Court and spent four years on its bench.
Ellsworth participated in the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia as a delegate from Connecticut along withRoger Sherman andWilliam Samuel Johnson. More than half of the 55 delegates were lawyers, eight of whom, including both Ellsworth and Sherman, had previous experience as judges conversant with legal discourse.
Ellsworth took an active part in the proceedings beginning on June 20, when he proposed the use of "the United States" to identify the government under the authority of the Constitution. The words "United States" had already been used in theDeclaration of Independence andArticles of Confederation as well asThomas Paine'sThe American Crisis. It was Ellsworth's proposal to retain the earlier wording to sustain the emphasis on a federation rather than a single national entity. Three weeks earlier, on May 30, 1787,Edmund Randolph ofVirginia had moved to create a "national government" consisting of a supreme legislative, an executive, and a judiciary. Ellsworth accepted Randolph's notion of a threefold division but moved to strike the phrase "national government." Since then, the "United States" has been the official title used in the convention to designate the government. The complete name, "the United States of America," had already been featured by Paine, and its inclusion in the Constitution was the work ofGouverneur Morris when he made the final editorial changes in the Constitution.
Ellsworth played a major role in the adoption of theConnecticut Compromise. The convention was deadlocked over the question of representation in Congress, with the large states wanting proportional representation and the small states demanding equal representation for each state. During the debate, he joined his fellow Connecticut delegateRoger Sherman in proposing thebicameral Congress in which two members of theSenate would be elected by eachstate legislature, while membership in theHouse of Representatives would beapportioned among the states based on its share of the whole population of the states. The compromise was adopted by the Convention on July 16, 1787.
On the contentious issue of whether slaves would be counted as part of the population in determining representation of the states in Congress or would instead be considered property and so not be counted, Ellsworth voted for the eventualThree-Fifths Compromise. Later, stressing that he had no slaves, Ellsworth spoke twice before the convention, on August 21 and 22, in favor of slavery being abolished.[16] He also played an important role in keeping the concept ofjudicial review out of the Constitution.
Along withJames Wilson,John Rutledge,Edmund Randolph, andNathaniel Gorham, Ellsworth served on theCommittee of Detail, which prepared the first draft of the Constitution, based on resolutions that had already been passed by the convention. The Convention deliberations were interrupted from July 26 to August 6, 1787, while the committee completed its task.
Though Ellsworth left the Convention near the end of August and did not sign the complete final document, he wrote theLetters of a Landholder to promote its ratification. He also played a dominant role in Connecticut's 1788 ratification convention, when he emphasized that judicial review guaranteed federal sovereignty. It seems more than a coincidence that both he and Wilson served as members of the Committee of Detail without mentioning judicial review in the initial draft of the Constitution but then stressed its central importance at their ratifying conventions just a year preceding its inclusion by Ellsworth in theJudiciary Act of 1789.[citation needed]
Along with William Samuel Johnson, Ellsworth served as one of Connecticut's first two United States senators in the new federal government. He identified with the emergingFederalist Party and played a dominant role in Senate proceedings equivalent to that ofSenate Majority Leaders in later decades. According toJohn Adams, he was "the firmest pillar of[Washington's] whole administration in the Senate." [Brown, 231]Aaron Burr complained that if Ellsworth had misspelled the name of the Deity with two D's, "it would have taken the Senate three weeks to expunge the superfluous letter." SenatorWilliam Maclay, aRepublican Senator from Pennsylvania, offered a more hostile assessment: "He will absolutely say anything, nor can I believe he has a particle of principle in his composition," and "I can in truth pronounce him one of the most candid men I ever knew possessing such abilities." [Brown, 224–225] What seems to have bothered McClay the most was Ellsworth's emphasis on private negotiations and tacit agreement rather than public debate. Significantly, there was no official record of Senate proceedings for the first five years of its existence, nor was there any provision to accommodate spectators. The arrangement was essentially the same as for the 1787 Convention, in contrast to the open sessions of theHouse of Representatives.
Ellsworth's first project was theJudiciary Act, described as Senate Bill No. 1, which effectively supplementedArticle III in the Constitution by establishing a hierarchical arrangement amongstate andfederal courts. Years later Madison stated, "It may be taken for certain that the bill organizing the judicial department originated in his [Ellsworth's] draft, and that it was not materially changed in its passage into law."[Brown, 185] Ellsworth himself probably wrote Section 25, the most important component of the Judiciary Act. This gave theFederal Supreme Court the power to vetostate supreme court decisions supportive of state laws in conflict with the U.S. Constitution. All state and local laws accepted by state supreme courts could be appealed to the federal Supreme Court, which was given the authority, if it chose, to deny them for being unconstitutional. State and local laws rejected by state supreme courts could not be appealed in this manner; only the laws accepted by these courts could be appealed. This seemingly modest specification provided the federal government with its only effective authority over state government at the time. In effect, judicial review supplanted Congressional Review, which Madison had unsuccessfully proposed four times at the convention to guarantee federal sovereignty. Granting the federal government this much authority was apparently rejected because its potential misuse could later be used to reject the Constitution atState Ratifying Conventions. Upon the completion of these conventions the previous year, Ellsworth was in the position to render the sovereignty of the federal government defensible, but through judicial review instead of congressional review.
Once the Judiciary Act was adopted by the Senate, Ellsworth sponsored the Senate's acceptance of theBill of Rights promoted by Madison in the House of Representatives. Significantly, Madison sponsored the Judiciary Act in the House at the same time. Combined, the Judiciary Act and Bill of Rights gave the Constitution the "teeth" that had been missing in the Articles of Confederation. Judicial Review guaranteed the federal government's sovereignty, whereas the Bill of Rights guaranteed the protection of states and citizens from the misuse of this sovereignty by the federal government. The Judiciary Act and Bill of Rights thus counterbalanced each other, each guaranteeing respite from the excesses of the other. However, with the passage of theFourteenth Amendment in 1865, seventy-five years later, the Bill of Rights could be brought to bear at all levels of government as interpreted by the judiciary with final appeal to the Supreme Court. Needless to say, this had not been the original intention of either Madison or Ellsworth.
Ellsworth was the principal supporter in the Senate ofHamilton'seconomic program, having served on at least four committees dealing with budgetary issues. These issues included the passage of Hamilton's plan for funding the national debt, the incorporation of theFirst Bank of the United States, and the bargain whereby state debts were assumed in return for locating the capital to the south (today theDistrict of Columbia). Ellsworth's other achievements included framing the measure that admitted North Carolina to the Union, devising the non-intercourse act that forced Rhode Island to join the union, and drawing up the bill to regulate the consular service. He also played a major role in convincingPresident Washington to sendJohn Jay to England to negotiate the1794 Jay Treaty that prevented warfare with England, settled debts between the two nations, and gave American settlers better access to the Midwest.
On March 3, 1796, Ellsworth was nominated by PresidentGeorge Washington to beChief Justice of the United States, the seat having been vacated byJohn Jay. (Jay's replacement,John Rutledge, had been rejected by the Senate the previous December, and Washington's next nominee,William Cushing, had declined the office in February.). He quickly was confirmed by theUnited States Senate (21–1), and took the prescribedjudicial oath on March 8, 1796.[17][18]
No major cases came before the Supreme Court during Ellsworth's brief tenure as chief justice. However, four cases the Court issued rulings on were of lasting importance in American jurisprudence:Hylton v. United States (1796) implicitly addressed the Supreme Court's power ofjudicial review in upholding a federal carriage tax;Hollingsworth v. Virginia (1798) affirmed that the president had no official role in theconstitutional amendment process;Calder v. Bull (1798) held that the Constitution'sEx post facto clause applied only to criminal, not civil, cases; andNew York v. Connecticut (1799) which was the first use by the Court of itsoriginal jurisdiction underArticle III of the United States Constitution to hearcontroversies between two states.
Ellsworth's chief legacy as Chief Justice is his discouragement of the previous practice ofseriatim opinion writing, in which each Justice wrote a separate opinion in the case and delivered that opinion from the bench. Ellsworth instead encouraged the consensus of the Court to be represented in a single written opinion, a practice which continues to the present day.[19]
Ellsworth received 11electoral college votes from three states in the1796 presidential election. Those votes came at the expense ofThomas Pinckney, who as a result, lost thevice presidency toThomas Jefferson.[20]
Ellsworth is perhaps most notable for administering theoath of office toJohn Adams during hispresidential inauguration on March 4, 1797.[21]
President Adams appointed Ellsworth United States Envoy Extraordinary to the Court ofFrance in 1799, and tasked with settling differences withNapoleon's government regarding restrictions on U.S. shipping that might otherwise have led to military conflict between the two nations. The agreement accepted by Ellsworth provoked indignation among Americans for being too generous to Napoleon. Moreover, Ellsworth came down with a severe illness resulting from his travel across the Atlantic, prompting him to resign from the Court in late 1800, while still in Europe. He resigned after just four years due to his "constant, and at times excruciating pains," sufferings made worse by his Europe travels, asspecial envoy to France.[22]
Though he retired from national public life upon his return to America in early 1801, he did remain somewhat active in state politics.[23][24] He later served once more on the Connecticut Governor's Council, which he was on until his death.[25] He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1803.[26]
Ellsworth died at his home in Windsor on November 26, 1807, at the age of 62. He is buried at thePalisado Cemetery, behind theFirst Church of Windsor.[27]
Although the cause and manner of his death is largely unspecified, it is believed that his trips crossing theAtlantic Ocean damaged his health and that he never fully recovered, ultimately leading to his death in 1807.[28]
In 1847,John Calhoun praised Ellsworth as the first of three Founding Fathers (withRoger Sherman andWilliam Paterson) who gave the United States "the best government instead of the worst and most intolerable on the earth."[29]
In 1800,Ellsworth, Maine, was named in his honor.[30]
John F. Kennedy authored theEncyclopædia Britannica's article on Ellsworth. This was Kennedy's only contribution to the Encyclopedia.[31][32]
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| Preceded by New seat | U.S. senator (Class 1) from Connecticut 1789–1796 Served alongside:William Johnson,Roger Sherman,Stephen Mitchell,Jonathan Trumbull | Succeeded by |
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| Preceded by | Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1796–1800 | Succeeded by |
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