HENRY WILLIAM ELLSWORTH

Background

Henry William Ellsworth was a grandson of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, and a son of Henry Leavitt Ellsworth and his wife, Nancy Allen Goodrich. Born at Windsor, Connecticut, where his father was practising law.

Education

He received his early education at the Ellington School at Windsor and at Hartford, Conn. In 1830 he proceeded to Yale, where he graduated in 1834, subsequently studying for a short time in the law school there.

Career

In 1836 he went to Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, in which neighborhood his father had acquired large tracts of land from the government. Opening a law office in Lafayette, the younger Ellsworth also became a member of the firm of Curtiss & Ellsworth, general land agents, specializing in Wabash and Aiaumee Valley lands, and, on his father’s removal to Washington, D. C. , to become commissioner of patents, assumed charge of the latter’s extensive Western interests. In 1838 he published Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana, with Hints on its Agricultural Advantages, etc. , embodying much information obtained from his father’s papers, and this work, combined with his influential Eastern connections, helped to stimulate active interest in northwestern lands on the part of both speculators and bona fide settlers. He also wrote The American Swine Breeder, a institution for Princeton at the end of his sophomore year. Tradition has perpetuated many stories to account for his leaving Yale, some of which would indicate that his departure was not altogether voluntary; the one sure bit of information concerning it is found in President Clap’s journal (July 27, 1764), “Oliver Ellsworth and Waightstill Avery, at the desire of their respective parents, were dismissed from being members of this college” (Brown, post, p. 16). Whatever the cause of the episode, it apparently produced no permanent ill-feeling. All of Ellsworth’s sons who grew up were graduated from Yale, he himself was afterwards a fellow of the corporation, and in 1790 the college conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. —as did Princeton and Dartmouth in 1797. After two years at Princeton, Oliver, now a B. A. , returned home and took up the study of theology with the Rev. John Smalley of New Britain. This study did not long continue, however, for within a year he turned to law. For the next four years he studied that subject, doing some teaching in the interval, and being admitted to the bar in 1771. Legal business came to him so slowly at first that he found it necessary to support himself by farming and even wood-chopping, financial aid from his father apparently having ceased when he definitely gave up fitting himself for the ministry. Too poor to keep a horse, on days when the court was sitting he was forced to walk from his farm to Hartford and back, a round trip of twenty miles. During the first three years of his practise the returns from his profession, by his own admission, amounted to only three pounds Connecticut currency per annum (Henry Flanders, The Lives and Times of the Chief Justices, 1858, 2 ser. , p. 62). In 1775, after having already represented Windsor in the General Assembly, he removed to Hartford. From this time his rise at the bar was exceptionally rapid. Noah Webster, who in 1779 came to Ellsworth’s office to study law, said that he then had usually from one thousand to fifteen hundred cases on his list, and that there was hardly a case tried in which Ellsworth did not represent one side or the other. This large practise, coupled with the general success of his advocacy, brought him recognition as one of the leaders of the Connecticut bar, and enabled him to lay the foundation of what, by shrewd and careful management, became a large fortune. His position made it inevitable that he should be connected with the courts of his state in ways other than merely as a lawyer. He was appointed state’s attorney for Hartford County in 1777, and three years later became a member of the Governor’s Council. In 1784 this Council was constituted a supreme court of errors of which Ellsworth, by virtue of his office, became one of the judges. Shortly thereafter he was made a judge of the superior court, in which position he continued to serve for the next four years, his resignation from the Council and the office of state’s attorney taking place in 1785. It is indicative of the high regard in which he continued to hold the judicial offices of his native state, that after his return from France, he should have been willing again to accept a place on the Governor’s Council, and that in the last year of his life, after having already been chief justice of the United States, he should have consented to act as the first chief justice of the new state supreme court of appeals—a consent which ill health forced him to withdraw before he had ever actually entered upon the duties of the office. Ellsworth was connected with the revolutionary activities of his state almost from the beginning. Shortly after the outbreak of open hostilities in Massachusetts, Connecticut had instituted her Committee of the Pay Table, a commission of five to supervise the expenditures rendered necessary by the state’s war measures. Ellsw'orth was one of the five. Early in 1776 he was sent to General Washington at Cambridge to seek repayment of the money Connecticut had advanced to her men in the Continental Army; later in the same year he was intrusted with a similar mission to General Schuyler in an attempt to recover other moneys which the state had paid to troops employed in Canada. In 1779 he was chosen a member of the important Council of Safety which, with the governor, was in practical control of all military measures. As early as 1777 the General Assembly had appointed him one of the delegates to represent the state in the Continental Congress; chosen annually, he continued to serve in that capacity for six years, declining a further appointment in 1783. Long before he had even started for Philadelphia, Congress had made him one of a committee of five to investigate the failure of the Rhode Island expedition. The day after he took his seat in Congress (October 8, 1778) he was named a member of the committee on marine affairs. Hardly more than two weeks later he was appointed to the committee on appeals, which listened to appeals brought from the Admiralty courts of the various states, and which “was always composed of the ablest lawyers in the House” (Van Santvoord, post, p. 202). Ellsworth became a member of the committee just in time to sit upon the hearing of the appeal in the noted case of Gideon Olmstead and the British sloop Active. Details of his activity in the Congress are obscure. In a general way we know that he was a hard worker, able and conscientious, and that he continued to serve on one committee or another as long as his term lasted. Thus in 1780 he was on the committee appointed to consider the best method of carrying out Washington s plan of supplying the army by requisitions of specific articles laid on the different states. With Hamilton and Madison for colleagues he served on two committees, one of which was concerned with the matter of neutrality agreements, and the other of which was so broad in its scope that its work practically amounted to a consideration of a permanent system of administration. Towards the end of his last term, when the unpaid and mutinous soldiers surrounded the building in which the Congress was sitting, he served with Hamilton and Peters on the committee sent by that body to urge upon the executive council of Pennsylvania the calling out of the state militia. When Connecticut finally decided to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, and William S. Johnson were selected to represent the state. The part played by this delegation as a whole in the business of the Convention, especially in the matter of the so-called “Connecticut compromise, ” is clear enough ; the exact influence and importance of the individual members is not so clear. By one writer or another each of the three delegates has been given the credit for having brought about the compromise. Ellsworth’s motion that “the rule of suffrage in the 2nd branch be the same with that established by the articles of confederation” (Farrand, post, I, 468), undoubtedly started the discussion that preceded the compromise, and during the debate he seems to have borne the brunt of the attack of the large-state men ; but the accuracy of the statement that “to the resulute efforts and persevering energy of Oliver Ellsworth, more than to any other man in the Convention, is the country indebted for the final compromise of the Constitution which gave to each state an equality of representation in the Senate” (Van Santvoord, post, pp. 226-27), may well be questioned. Though it is extremely difficult to gauge the influence of Ellsworth or of any other one man in the Convention, he unquestionably took an active part. His amendment to substitute the words “United States” for the word “national” in a certain resolution then under consideration (G. Hunt and J. B. Scott, The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, 1920, 131-32) seems to have fixed the title which was thereafter used in the Convention to designate the govern- ment. He objected to the payment of representatives out of the federal treasury and proposed payment by the states. He favored the three-fifths ratio in counting slaves as a basis of both taxation and representation; strangely enough, also, he stood out against the abolition of the foreign slave-trade. He was one of the committee of five, of which Rutledge was the chairman, which prepared for the Convention the first official draft of a constitution. His work for the new Constitution did not end at Philadelphia. In the convention which met at Hartford in January 1788 to consider its acceptance or rejection by Connecticut, he spared no effort in explaining it and urging its adoption. His “Letters of a Landholder, ” printed in the Connecticut Courant and the American Mercury (November 1787- March 1788) and widely circulated, were written with the same object of ratification in view. Chosen by Connecticut as one of its first two senators under the Constitution, he represented his state in the United States Senate for a period of seven years, resigning from that body in the spring of 1796 after he had been appointed chief justice. It was in the Senate that the capabilities of Ellsworth appeared to their best advantage. For the work of organization and of practical detail made necessary by the newness of the government, he seems to have been peculiarly fitted. There can be no question as to the predominant position he enjoyed in the Senate; meager as the details are, they are sufficient to show him as an outstanding figure. A hundred years later the memory of his prestige was still alive in Senate traditions—“If we may trust the traditions that have come down from the time of the Administrations of Washington and Adams, when the Senate sat with closed doors, none of them [Webster, Clay, Calhoun] ever acquired the authority wielded by the profound sagacity of Ellsworth” (G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 1903, vol. II, p. 45). Among other things he reported the first set of Senate rules and considered a plan for printing the journals ; he reported back from conference the first twelve amendments to the Constitution which Congress submitted to the states ; he framed the measure which admitted North Carolina, and devised the non-intercourse act that forced Rhode Island into the Union ; he reported a bill for the government of the territory of the United States south of the Ohio ; he drew up the first bill regulating the consular service ; he was on the committees to which were referred Hamilton’s plans for funding the national debt and for the incorporation of a bank of the United States, both of which he vigorously seconded. Undoubtedly his :13 most important single piece of work was done in connection with his chairmanship of the committee appointed to bring in a bill organizing the federal judiciary. “That the Judiciary Bill which came from this Committee was, to a large extent, drafted by Ellsworth is now widly established” (Warren, post, p. 59). Sections 10 to 23 of the original draft bill arc in his handwriting; Maclay of Pennsylvania, himself one of the committee, records that “this vile bill is a child of his, and he defends it with the care of a parent” (E. S. Maclay, The Journal of William Maclay, 1890, pp. 91-92) ; Madison also, in two different letters, assigns it to Ellsworth (Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, vol. IV, 1865, pp. 220- 21, 428). All in all, his work in the Senate made him, as John Adams later said, “the firmest pillar of his [Washington’s] whole administration” (C. Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. X, 1856, p. 112). Ellsworth was commissioned chief justice of the United States (Mar. 4, 1796) after the Senate had refused to confirm the previous appointment of Rutledge, and after Cushing, the senior associate judge, had declined the honor. For about three years and a half he was actively engaged in the duties of his office, which at that time included the arduous task of riding the federal circuits. His short term of office, coupled with the fact that he was immediately followed by the great Marshall, has been advanced by some of his biographers as the reason for his failure to take a higher rank among the chief justices. The real reason would seem to lie elsewhere. Our available sources of information unite in presenting him as a great lawyer; but neither his reported opinions nor the weight of other evidence justify us in calling him a great judge. His decisions, neither many nor long as they have come down to us, are marked by strong common sense, but hardly by great legal learning. He himself seems to have been conscious of his lack of this latter quality, as also of the inadequacy of his previous training and preparation for his new position, and “he accordingly took a severe course of study and reading” (Brown, post, p. 242). He was primarily the advocate rather than the jurist, a champion of the cause he happened to be supporting. This characteristic, which undoubtedly contributed much to his success at the bar, and which showed to very great advantage in his work in the Congress, in the Convention, and in the Senate, could hardly be brought to bear in purely judicial business. The last notable public service that Ellsworth performed was as commissioner to France in 1799-1800. The mission began inauspiciously, and resulted in no more than partial success. There was decided opposition to it at home because of the harsh treatment which France had recently accorded Pinckney and his associates. Ellsworth, even if he did not share the popular resentment, at least manifested no enthusiasm towards President Adams’s new attempt to come to an understanding with France. Reluctantly, and merely “from the necessity of preventing a greater evil, ” he accepted his commission (February 1799) ; yet he dreaded the mission and did what he could to postpone it. Consequently it was not until Nov. 3 that he and his colleague William R. Davie [q. v. ] left Newport on the frigate United States, to join William Vans Murray in France. After a boisterous passage of more than three weeks they put into Lisbon, rested there a fortnight, and then again set sail, only to be driven off their course by storms and obliged to land near Corunna in Spain. Thence they proceeded overland to Paris, which they did not reach until March 2, 1800. The hardships suffered by Ellsworth during these four months permanently affected his health (Geo. Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, 1846, II, 434). It wras thought by some of his friends in America that his mind also had been impaired by his physical breakdown, and that this was the reason why no better terms were secured in the French convention (Ibid. , pp. 460, 461, 463). After protracted negotiations with Napoleon which lasted into October, the American ministers were obliged to accept an agreement which conformed to neither their earlier hopes nor their instructions. Ellsworth himself was far from satisfied with it, though he regarded it as sufficient in that it kept the United States out of a not improbable war with France (Ibid. , p. 463). When Davie and Oliver Ellsworth, Jr. , who had been his father’s secretary at Paris, and who now bore the latter’s resignation of his office of chief justice, left England for America toward the end of October, Ellsworth himself was unable to accompany them. Through the winter he remained in England, traveling by easy stages from place to place, and making an ineffectual effort to regain his health. He left England in March, landed at Boston, where he rested for a few days, and then proceeded to his home in Windsor and, as far as national affairs were concerned, into retirement.

Achievements

• Ellsworth was a poet and frequent contributor to The Knickerbocker magazine. His best known poems include "Lines to an Absent Wife" and "The Cholera King". He was also an author of historical and other works, including 1838's "Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana"

Works

More photos

• book

  • Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana, with Hints on Its Agricultural Advantages; Plan of a Dwelling, Estimates of Cultivation, and Notices of Labor-Saving Machines

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The American Swine Breeder

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Illustrated Lectures And Lessons On The Philosophy, Physiology, Psychology, Pedagogy, And Child Study, Training And Practice Of The Theory And Art Of ... Normal And Commercial Schools And Colleges...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Politics

Among other things he reported the first set of Senate rules and considered a plan for printing the journals ; he reported back from conference the first twelve amendments to the Constitution which Congress submitted to the states ; he framed the measure which admitted North Carolina, and devised the non-intercourse act that forced Rhode Island into the Union ; he reported a bill for the government of the territory of the United States south of the Ohio ; he drew up the first bill regulating the consular service ; he was on the committees to which were referred Hamilton’s plans for funding the national debt and for the incorporation of a bank of the United States, both of which he vigorously seconded.

Membership

Connecticut bar

member of the Governor’s Council

Ellsworth was connected with the revolutionary activities of his state almost from the beginning. Shortly after the outbreak of open hostilities in Massachusetts, Connecticut had instituted her Committee of the Pay Table, a commission of five to supervise the expenditures rendered necessary by the state’s war measures. Ellsw'orth was one of the five.

In 1779 he was chosen a member of the important Council of Safety which, with the governor, was in practical control of all military measures. As early as 1777 the General Assembly had appointed him one of the delegates to represent the state in the Continental Congress ; chosen annually, he continued to serve in that capacity for six years, declining a further appointment in 1783. Long before he had even started for Philadelphia, Congress had made him one of a committee of five to investigate the failure of the Rhode Island expedition. The day after he took his seat in Congress (Oct. 8, 1778) he was named a member of the committee on marine affairs. Hardly more than two weeks later he was appointed to the committee on appeals, which listened to appeals brought from the Admiralty courts of the various states, and which “was always composed of the ablest lawyers in the House” (Van Santvoord, post, p. 202). Ellsworth became a member of the committee just in time to sit upon the hearing of the appeal in the noted case of Gideon Olmstead and the British sloop Active.

He was one of the committee of five, of which Rutledge was the chairman, which prepared for the Convention the first official draft of a constitution.

Personality

In a general way we know that he was a hard worker, able and conscientious, and that he continued to serve on one committee or another as long as his term lasted. Timothy Dwight describes Ellsworth as “tall, dignified, and commanding” (Travels; in New- England and New York, vol. I, 1821, p. 302). “He was particular as to his personal appearance, and never hurried at his toilet”.

Connections

He married Abigail Wolcott of East Windsor.

Father:

Henry Leavitt Ellsworth

Mother:

Nancy Allen Goodrich

Wife:

Abigail Wolcott

Grandfather:

Oliver Ellsworth

colleague:

William R. Davie