Abraham Baldwin

Abraham Baldwin

Abraham Baldwin (born November 23, 1754 in Guilford , Connecticut Colony , † March 4, 1807 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States . He represented the then British colony Province of Georgia in the Continental Congress and was a member of the House of Representatives and the Senate after the adoption of the United States Constitution .

Life

Abraham Baldwin was the son of a blacksmith who had twelve children with two wives. In addition to Abraham, two other of his siblings gained a certain prominence: his younger brother Henry became Associate Justice at the Supreme Court , his sister Ruth married the poet and statesman Joel Barlow .

After attending the local village school , Baldwin began studying at Yale University in nearby New Haven , which he graduated in 1772. Three years later he took over a religious office and duties as a tutor at the same university . In 1779 Baldwin became a chaplain in the Continental Army . Two years later, he turned down an offer for a professorship at Yale. Instead, he began studying law after the War of Independence and was admitted to the bar in 1783.

Despite declining the professorship, Georgia Governor Lyman Hall persuaded him to accept an offer to develop a curriculum for the state's school and college education, a task he accepted because he believed in education was the key to developing border states like Georgia. Baldwin was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives and developed a concept of education that also included land provided by the state to establish the University of Georgia at Athens , the first state-sponsored university in the United States. The university was founded on January 27, 1785, and Baldwin became the institution's first president during the planning phase. In 1801 the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences , the university's first college, opened its doors. At that time, Josiah Meigs Baldwin succeeded as president of the university.

The university was architecturally modeled on Yale University, the original alma mater of Abraham Baldwin.

Continental Congress

As a result, Baldwin practiced as a lawyer in Georgia. In 1785 he was sent to the Continental Congress. Two years later his father died; Baldwin took over his debts and took care of the education of his half-siblings. In the same year he attended the Philadelphia Convention . He was then elected to the US Congress , in which he served 18 years: ten years in the House of Representatives (1789-1799), eight in the Senate (1799-1807). During this period he became a bitter adversary of Alexander Hamilton and his politics and - unlike most other New England- born MPs - an ally of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic Republican Party . Abraham Baldwin was a staunch advocate of slavery .

Death and inheritance

Baldwin died in 1807 after a brief illness at the age of 53. Since he was a member of the Senate at the time, he was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington. According to him, these are Baldwin County in Alabama and the Baldwin County in Georgia and the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) in south Georgia named.

According to Baldwin's records, which went public in 1987, George Washington had once privately confided in him that he did not believe the United States Constitution would last more than 20 years.

Web links

• Abraham Baldwin in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Abraham Baldwin (English)