SAMUEL CHASE

Princess Anne, Maryland
April 17, 1741−June 19, 1811
Committees and Chicanery

There was nothing in Samuel Chase’s early life to suggest that he was destined to play a leading role in the American Revolution or its aftermath. He was homeschooled by his father, an Episcopalian clergyman, earned a law degree, and practiced law for several years. Chase engaged in activities as a member of the Sons of Liberty that might earn him a label of “terrorist” today. Nevertheless, he was elected to the Continental Congress, where he served on twenty-one committees in 1777 and thirty in 1778, convinced his fellow Marylanders to vote for independence, signed the Declaration of Independence, fell afoul of Alexander Hamilton when he tried to make a few dollars, became a Supreme Court justice, and was impeached. He was a sometimes controversial, but always well-meaning, patriot whose penchant for acting rashly at times separated him from most of his contemporaries.

An Innocuous Beginning

Chase got an early start in politics as a member of the Maryland General Assembly, where he served from 1764−1784.

Chase, an ardent proponent of independence as a young man, was not shy about letting people know where he stood on the issue. He did more than talk about his patriotism; he acted on it.

REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

One of the proposed laws Chase supported in the Maryland General Assembly would have regulated the salaries of the colony’s clergy. He believed the law would serve the people’s best interests—even though it would have cut his Episcopal clergyman father’s salary in half.

Chase was an active member of the Sons of Liberty, a group of American patriots who banded together in 1766 to protect the colonists from a growing number of onerous British laws. After the passage of the Stamp Act, he led a group of Sons in a raid on the Annapolis, Maryland, public offices, where they destroyed the tax stamps and burned the king’s tax agent in effigy. He was twenty-four years old at the time.

Not surprisingly, Chase was not a popular young man among town officials in Annapolis. They preferred that he take his tendency for rebellion and insurrection elsewhere. In a classic “be careful what you wish for” case, he did. The leaders of the movement for independence wanted men like Chase on their side. In 1774, Chase and four other Maryland patriots were appointed delegates to the First Continental Congress.

Quotations to Live (and Die) By!

“[SAMUEL CHASE IS A] BUSY, RESTLESS INCENDIARY, A RINGLEADER OF MOBS, A FOUL-MOUTHED AND INFLAMING SON OF DISCORD AND FACTION, A COMMON DISTURBER OF THE PUBLIC TRANQUILITY, AND A PROMOTER OF THE LAWLESS EXCESSES OF THE MULTITUDE.”

—ANNAPOLIS TOWN OFFICIALS

Cut to the Chase

Chase performed so well at the First Continental Congress that Maryland offered him the chance to return to the Second Continental Congress in 1775. When it came time to form a committee at that Congress, Chase was usually available. Due to his popularity and indefatigable nature, he remained a member of Congress until 1778.

When the members of the Second Continental Congress gathered to sign the Declaration of Independence, Chase was among them. It was a proud day for him, but signing the document did not curb his relentless pursuit of liberty or fairness for soldiers and citizens.

Amidst all his hard work Chase hit a bump in the road. In 1778, he and a group of individuals capitalized on some insider trading information. They cornered the market on flour in anticipation of making a huge sale to the French fleet coming to the aid of the United States. Alexander Hamilton exposed the scheme and wrote about it in New York newspapers under the pseudonym Publius. The affair did not attract a lot of attention, but Maryland left Chase out of its congressional delegation for the next two years, possibly in retribution for his involvement in the grain affair. He was reappointed in 1784, but stayed inactive in congressional proceedings after his return.

FEDERAL FACTS

One of Chase’s early 1776 assignments was to work on a committee with Benjamin Franklin and fellow Marylander Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who used the “Carrollton” to distinguish himself from his father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis. Their assignment was to win the hearts and minds of Canadians. The trio visited Canada in an effort to convince the residents to side with the colonies in their attempt to separate from Britain. There was an ongoing—but unrelated—attempt by patriot militant forces to oust the British troops from Canada. That ended in June 1776, when British troops drove the Americans back to Fort Ticonderoga. In the end, the American army and the committee failed miserably.

In 1786, Chase moved to Baltimore, where he became chief judge of the criminal court and later chief judge of the General Court of Maryland. Those assignments paved the way for his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court by President George Washington on January 26, 1796.

Chase served on the Supreme Court for fifteen years and became the first—and only—Supreme Court justice ever impeached. The impeachment happened when President Thomas Jefferson “suggested” to the House of Representatives in 1803 that it impeach Chase, ostensibly because he did not give John Fries, a defendant in a treason case, a fair trial. The real reason may have been Jefferson’s desire to get rid of Chase because he did not agree with Jefferson’s political views. The impeachment proceedings in 1805 became a politically motivated circus. Congress failed to get the two-thirds majority it needed to convict Chase.

FEDERAL FACTS

The Americans named a committee in January 1777 to investigate British atrocities at New York and New Jersey in late 1776, e.g., when they implemented martial law in Queens, New York, and their troops raped, robbed, and cheated the inhabitants. Chase was named as a member. In addition to participating in the investigation, he vigorously advocated for higher pay for the soldiers fighting the war, even if it required wage and price controls throughout the colonies to raise the money.

REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

Chase campaigned against the U.S. Constitution for two reasons. He believed that the federal government’s ability to tax citizens and regulate commerce would inhibit the states’ rights to do the same, and he did not see any protection in the Constitution for individuals’ rights. Chase saw the proposed Constitution as a reversion to British rule—which he had spent a good part of his life fighting to throw off.

The impeachment and severe attacks of gout had an adverse effect on Chase. He lost some of his fire after 1805, but it had burned brightly up until that point—enough to fuel the flame of liberty for the crucial years during the struggle for American independence. Chase had gone from incendiary to being impugned and impeached in his lifetime, but he exemplified the resiliency of the men and women who established American independence.