Rufus Choate

Rufus Choate

Rufus Choate (born October 1, 1799 in Essex or Ipswich , Essex County , Massachusetts , † July 13, 1859 in Halifax , Nova Scotia , Canada ) was an American lawyer and politician of the National Republican Party and the Whig Party , the under represented the state of Massachusetts in both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

Life

Degree, lawyer and politician in Massachusetts

Choate came from a family that settled in Massachusetts as early as 1667. His grandfather, John Choate, served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1741 to 1761 . He himself was considered a child prodigy at an early age who, at the age of six, could recite longer texts from the Bible and the pilgrimage to the blessed eternity by heart. After attending school, he first studied at Dartmouth College , which he graduated from the top of his class in 1819, and then worked as a tutor from 1819 to 1820 . He then studied law at the Law School of Harvard University , before continuing his legal training between 1821 and 1822 in the office of the then US Attorney General William Wirt in Washington, DC .

After his license to practice law in Massachusetts, he became a lawyer in Peabody in 1823 and worked there until 1828. During this time he began his political career and was first like his grandfather a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1825 to 1826, before he was a member of the Massachusetts Senate in 1827 .

In 1828 he took up his work as a lawyer in Salem and soon achieved public attention through several important legal proceedings that he had taken over .

Congressman and US Senator

Choate statue by sculptor Daniel Chester French in Boston

In 1830 he was elected as a candidate of the National Republican Party to the US House of Representatives and represented in this after his re-election in 1832 from March 4, 1831 to June 30, 1834 the second congressional electoral district of Massachusetts. In his first election, he was able to prevail against the long-time constituency holder of the Federalist Party and former naval minister in the cabinets of US Presidents James Madison and James Monroe , Benjamin Williams Crowninshield . In particular, during his membership in the House of Representatives, he made a notable speech in defense of a protective tariff .

Before the end of his second legislative term in the 23rd US Congress , he resigned as a member of parliament on June 30, 1834 and became a lawyer in Boston . At that time he was already a major speaker throughout the states of New England and made speeches at numerous public events.

After several years he devoted himself to his legal practice, he returned in 1841 back into political life and was for the Whig Party, succeeding Daniel Webster , of the Foreign Minister in the cabinet of William Henry Harrison was appointed a member of the US Senate Massachusetts as Senator Class 1 . He belonged to the Senate from February 23, 1841 until the end of Webster's regular term of office on March 3, 1845.

Just a few weeks after his entry into the Senate, Choate gave one of his most notable speeches at the funeral service at Faneuil Hall in Boston for President William H. Harrison, who died on April 4, 1841. As a Senator, he devoted himself to topics such as protective tariffs, the Oregon Compromise , the Fiscal Bank Act and the annexation of Texas , against which he spoke out in a debate in March 1845.

Withdrawal from federal politics

In 1845 he renounced a renewed candidacy for the Senate, whereupon Daniel Webster was again Senator and then resumed his legal work. For several years he also largely withdrew from political life, but was a great supporter of Daniel Webster's policy, which he outlined in his famous Seventh of March Speech of March 7, 1850. On the other hand, however, Choate's efforts to support Webster's candidacy for the Whig Party in the United States presidential election in 1852 failed .

He was then in 1853 for some time a member of the Constituent Assembly of Massachusetts and was also Attorney General of the state between 1853 and 1854 . In 1854 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In the US presidential election in 1856 , unlike many Whig Party members, he refused to join the Republican Party and gave the Democratic Party presidential candidate James Buchanan , in whom he saw, unlike the Republican candidate John C. Frémont, the representative of a national party .

In July 1859 his health deteriorated, so that he intended a recreational trip to Europe . He could no longer take it, but died shortly before his embarkation on July 13, 1859 in Halifax.

Rufus Choate was honored with induction into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans .

literature

• Edward G. Parker, Reminiscences of Rufus Choate, the Great American Advocate . Mason Brothers, New York 1860
• Samuel Gillman Brown (Ed.): The Works of Rufus Choate: With A Memoir of His Life . 1862 (reprint 1972, 2 volumes)
• Joseph Neilson: Memories of Rufus Choate with Some Consideration of His Studies, Methods & Opinions & of His Style as a Speaker & Writer . 1884
• Claude M. Fuess: Rufus Choate: The Wizard of the Law . Minton, Balch & Company, New York 1928.
• Jean V. Matthews: Rufus Choate, the Law and Civic Virtue . Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1980
• Choate, Rufus . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 1 : Aaron - Crandall . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 609 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

Web links

• Rufus Choate in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Rufus Choate in the nndb (English)