OLIVER ELLSWORTH

'Oliver Ellsworth' (April 29 1745 – November 26 1807), an American lawyer and politician, was a revolutionary against British rule, a drafter of the United States Constitution, and third Chief Justice of the United States. He is also widely recognized for having first coined the phrase 'United States.'

Contents

Youth and family life

Service during the Revolutionary War

Work on the United States Constitution

Achievements as a legislator

The Ellsworth Court and later life

See also

External links

Youth and family life

Oliver Ellsworth was born in Windsor, Connecticut, to Capt. David and Jemima Leavitt Ellsworth. He entered Yale in 1762, but transferred to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) at the end of his second year. He continued to study theology and received his A.B. degree after 2 years. Soon afterward, however, Ellsworth turned to the law. After four years of study, he was admitted to the bar in 1771 and later became a successful lawyer. In 1772, Ellsworth married Abigail Wolcott the daughter of Abigail Abbot and William Wolcott and grand daughter of Abiah Hawley and William Wolcott of East Windsor, Connecticut. They had nine children including the twins William Walcott Ellsworth, who later became governor of Connecticut, and Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, who later became the first director of the Bureau of Patents, the mayor of Hartford and the president of Aetna Life Insurance.

Service during the Revolutionary War

From a slow start Ellsworth built up a prosperous law practice. In 1777, he became Connecticut's state attorney for Hartford County. That same year, he was chosen as one of Connecticut's representatives in the Continental Congress. He served on various committees during six annual terms until 1783. Ellsworth was also active in his state's efforts during the Revolution. As a member of the Committee of the Pay Table, he was one of the five men who supervised Connecticut's war expenditures. 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.

Work on the United States Constitution

When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787, Ellsworth once again represented Connecticut and took an active part in the proceedings. During debate on the Great Compromise, often described as the Connecticut Compromise, Ellsworth, along with fellow Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, proposed a bicameral arrangement whereby members of the Senate would be elected by state legislatures as indicated in Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution. His version of the compromise was adopted by the Convention, but it was much later revised by Amendment XVII to substitute a popular vote similar to what was used for the House of Representatives.
Ellsworth favored the three-fifths compromise on the enumeration of slaves and opposed the abolition of the foreign slave trade. He spoke at least once before the Convention in full support of slavery, probably to help secure the support of Georgia and the Carolinas that was needed to gain the acceptance of the Connecticut Compromise and thus the avoidance of a complete breakdown in the Convention.
Ellsworth also left his mark by proposing an amendment to change the word "national" to "United States" in a resolution. Thereafter, "United States" was the title used in the convention to designate the government. The complete name, "the United States of America," was the responsibility of Gouverneur Morris when he made the final editorial changes in the Constitution.
Along with Wilson, Rutledge, Randolph, and Gorham, Ellsworth served on the Committee of Detail that prepared the first draft of the Constitution based on resolutions already passed by the Convention. All other deliberations of the Convention were interrupted from July 26 to August 6, 1787, while the Committee of Detail completed its task. The two drafts that have survived additional to the preliminary text of the Constitution submitted to the Convention were in the handwriting of Wilson and/or Randolph. However, Ellsworth's role in its compilation would be indicated by his 53 contributions to the Convention as a whole from August 6 to 23, when he departed from the Convention for business reasons. As tabulated by Madison in his Records, only Madison and Gouverneur Morris spoke up more than Ellsworth during these sixteen days.
Though Ellsworth left the Convention near the end of August and did not sign the final document, he wrote the ''Letters of a Landholder'' to promote its ratification. He also played a dominant role in Connecticut's 1788 ratification convention, during which he also spoke of the benefits of judicial review as a guarantee of federal sovereignty. It would seem more than a coincidence that he and Wilson, both of whom served as members of the Committee of Detail, emphasized the importance of judicial review at their ratifying conventions just a year preceding its implementation with the 1789 Judiciary Act.

Achievements as a legislator

Ellsworth served as one of Connecticut's first two senators in the new federal government between 1789 and 1796. During this period he played a dominant role in Senate proceedings equivalent to that of a Senate Majority Leaders in later decades. His first project was the Judiciary Act, described as Senate Bill No. 1, which supplemented Article III in the Constitution by establishing a hierarchical arrangement among state and federal courts. Ellsworth himself probably wrote Section 25, the most important component of the Judiciary Act. This gives the Federal Supreme Court the power to veto state supreme court decisions supportive of state laws at odds with the U.S. Constitution. In effect, this power of judicial review took the place of the power of Congressional Review that Madison had unsuccessfully proposed four times at the Convention to guarantee federal sovereignty. Finally the primary authority of the national government was 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 the Bill of Rights already promoted by Madison in the House of Representatives. Combined, the Bill of Rights and Judiciary Act gave the Constitution the "teeth" that had been missing in the Articles of Confederation. Judicial Review guaranteed the federal government's final authority, whereas the Bill of Rights guaranteed the rights of states and citizens as protected by this authority. Ellsworth's other achievements in Congress included framing the measure that admitted North Carolina to the Union, devising the non-intercourse act that forced Rhode Island to join, drawing up the bill to regulate the consular service, and serving on the committee that obtained the full passage of Alexander Hamilton's plan for funding the national debt and for incorporating the First Bank of the United States.

The Ellsworth Court and later life

In the spring of 1796, Ellsworth was appointed Chief Justice of the United States, but his contribution was brief and deservedly overshadowed by the accomplishments of his successor, John Marshall. Ellsworth resigned as Chief Justice to lead a delegation to France between 1799 and 1800 in order to settle differences with Napoleon'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, and Ellsworth came down with a severe illness resulting from his travel across the Atlantic. As a result, he retired from national public life upon his return to America in early 1801. He was nevertheless able to serve again on the Connecticut Governor's Council until he died in Windsor in 1807. He is buried in the cemetery of the First Church of Windsor.
In retrospect, Ellsworth's role in helping to establish the United States as a viable nation was important but could be easily overlooked. That he promoted the federal government as a confederacy without the limitations imposed by the Articles of Confederation enhanced his popularity during the first several decades of our nation's history, especially in the South preceding the Civil War. However, rapid industrialization and the centralization of our national government since the Civil War have led to the almost complete neglect of his pivotal early contribution. Few today know much of anything about him. The one full-length biography by William Garrott Brown, published in 1905 and reprinted in 1970, is excellent but difficult to obtain.
Ellsworth's twin sons followed their father in public service. Henry Leavitt Ellsworth became mayor of Hartford, then the first commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, and later served as president of Aetna Life Insurance Company. He was also appointed by President Jackson to supervise the so-called Trail of Tears, the transfer of Cherokee Indians from Georgia to the Oklahoma Territory that cost approximately 4,000 lives. His twin brother, William Wolcott Ellsworth, who married a daughter of Noah Webster of dictionary fame, became Governor of the state of Connecticut.

See also

★ United States Supreme Court cases during the Ellsworth Court

External links

★ National Archives biography

★ Oliver Ellsworth Homestead

★ Princeton Companion: Oliver Ellsworth

★ Oyez: Oliver Ellsworth

★ Ellsworth's Biography at U.S. Congress website