Background
Lewis Cass was born in 1782 in Exeter, New Hampshire, just after the end of the American Revolutionary War.
military officer politician statesman
Lewis Cass was born in 1782 in Exeter, New Hampshire, just after the end of the American Revolutionary War.
Lewis Cass studied at Phillips Exeter Academy. He promoted universal education and the establishment of libraries, built roads, and speeded the work of surveying tracts for settlers; as Indian commissioner, he conducted expeditions to the northwestern area of the territory, studied Native American languages, and supported scholarly work on Native American culture.
During the War of 1812 Lewis Cass served under General William Hull, whose surrender at Detroit he strongly condemned, and under General W. H. Harrison, and rose from the rank of colonel of volunteers to be major-general of Ohio militia and finally to be a brigadier-general in the regular United States army.
During the eighteen years in which he held this post he rendered valuable services to the territory and to the nation; he extinguished the Indian title to large tracts of land, instituted surveys, constructed roads, and explored the lakes and sources of the Mississippi river.
It fell to him, therefore, to direct the conduct of the Black Hawk and Seminole wars.
In this same year the Webster-Ashburton treaty between Great Britain and the United States was concluded.
In 1842 he resigned and sought the Democratic nomination for president but lost to James K. Polk.
Elected to the Senate in 1845, Cass urged war against Britain, if necessary, to obtain all of Oregon.
He supported the "popular sovereignty" doctrine of Stephen Douglas.
But the sectional conflict now dominated the American scene.
As the west became more radically opposed to slavery after the troubles in Kansas, Cass was soon out of sympathy with his section, and when the Republicans secured control of the legislature in 1857 they refused to return him to the Senate.
Had Cass retired from public life at the age of 60, his place in American history would be higher than it is as a consequence of his support of, and affiliation with, some of the weakest and most disastrous administrations in American history.
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Lewis Cass was married to Elizabeth Spencer.