William Maclay (politician, 1737)

William Maclay

William Maclay (born July 20, 1737 in New Garden , Province of Pennsylvania ; died April 16, 1804 in Harrisburg , Pennsylvania ) was a British- American lawyer and politician . He was a member of the first United States Congress (1789–91) as one of the two Senators of the State of Pennsylvania .

Life

Maclay, son of Irish immigrants, served in the British Army in the French and Indian War and took part in the expedition against the French Fort Duquesne as a lieutenant in 1758 . After his military service he studied law and was licensed as a lawyer in 1760. In the War of Independence he served on the staff of the Continental Army . After the war ended, he was repeatedly elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the 1780s .

In 1789 he was elected with 66-1 votes alongside Robert Morris to one of the two Senators of Pennsylvania in the first United States Congress in New York. Since Pennsylvania was also the first state to appoint its senators, Maclay is also the first senator in US history. The question of which of the two should become “ first class senator ” or “third class”, i.e. who would have to stand for re-election after two or six years in office, was decided by lottery. The worse lot fell on Maclay, who also lost his seat in the 1791 election. Maclay was initially known as a federalist , but became increasingly skeptical of the legitimacy of George Washington's government over the course of the two years in the Senate and was ultimately one of its toughest critics; in particular, he made an enemy of John Adams , whom he accused of wanting to form a court party . After the end of his career in national politics he was re-elected to the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania in 1795, 1796, 1797 and 1803 as a member of the Dauphin County , now as a representative of the Democratic-Republican Party ; In 1796 he was one of his state's electors in the presidential election .

Of some importance for the study of history, Maclays are first in 1880 in excerpts, then in 1988 fully published diaries, which he kept during his time as senator. They provide information about the political customs in the first months and years of the young republic, which had to work out and consolidate its rules of procedure, competencies and protocols from scratch.

The historian Charles A. Beard sees Maclay as the archetype of the later Jeffersonian Republicans .

literature

Heber G. Gearart: The Life of William Maclay . In: Proceedings of the Northumberland County Historical Society 2, 1930, pp. 46-73.
Edgar S. Maclay (Ed.): Journal of William Maclay, United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789-1791. D. Appleton & Company, New York 1890. ( digitized version )
Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit (Eds.): The Diary of William Maclay and other Notes on Senate Debates Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1988. ISBN 0-801-83535-6 , (= The Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789-1791 , Volume 9).

Web links

Wikisource: The Encyclopedia Americana (1920) - Maclay, William - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b John P. Diggins: John Adams . (= The American Presidents Series . Ed. By Arthur M. Schlesinger , Sean Wilentz . The 2nd President ). Times Books, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8050-6937-2 , p. 47.

personal data
SURNAME	Maclay, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British-American lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH	July 20, 1737
PLACE OF BIRTH	New Garden , Province of Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH	April 16, 1804
Place of death	Harrisburg , Pennsylvania

[JD-1] A ^b John P. Diggins: John Adams . (= The American Presidents Series . Ed. By Arthur M. Schlesinger , Sean Wilentz . The 2nd President ). Times Books, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8050-6937-2 , p. 47.