The Impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase
Justice Samuel Chase was not the first person to be impeached by Congress, but he was the first (and only) Supreme Court Justice impeached. Having served on the Supreme Court since 1796, in the early spring of 1804 the House of Representatives voted to impeach him. He was not, as he argued before the Senate, being impeached for any crimes or misdemeanors but instead for purely political purposes. While this characterization of that impeachment is accurate, the circumstances behind it were much more nuanced.
Chase was fiercely Federalist and had a personality that might have been Trumpian in its style. Also similar to Trump, where the latter was once a Democrat and changed to the Republican Party, Samuel Chase began as an Anti-Federalist and against ratification of the Constitution for the United States of America. He strongly believed in the Independence and sovereignty of the states. It was after the Bloody Revolution in France that he changed his mind and became a Federalist.
To understand the impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase it is important to understand the ideological battles and animosities between the Federalist’s and the Anti-Federalist’s. Just as the political divide is today in the United States, so too was it in the very beginning. The struggle between the Federalist’s and the Anti-Federalist’s easily demonstrates that from the get-go the people and the states united under one government could not agree on the proper way to govern. Better organized than the Anti-Federalist’s, the Federalist’s, as history shows, prevailed.
The Anti-Federalist’s favored the limited government described by the Articles of Confederation (AOC) ceding more control to the local governments. It is not for nothing that the full name of that previous constitution was The Articles of Confederation in Perpetual Union. Apparently the State’s had some doubts about that ‘perpetual union.’ The decision to do away with the AOC was divisive enough, but the Federalists and their vision of federalism just looked like dangerous expansion of power for the national government.
The Anti-Federalist’s, and probably presciently so, didn’t think a republic could work beyond the state level. Looking at the state of affairs with State’s today it is arguable that a republic has a difficult enough time functioning on a state level. They also thought that notions of a strong national government making stronger security for the states was backwards thinking. The Anti-Federalist’s saw it the other way around, that the confederation of states made for a stronger security of liberty, rights and of the nation.
Where the Anti-Federalist’s did prevail was with the inclusion of a Bill of Rights within the Constitution. Their struggle with the Federalist’s is evident throughout the Constitution. The struggle to ensure the new constitution would have more limits on the national government can be seen in various clauses and, of course, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Of course, history is often told by the victors and might explain the current denial and denigration of the Ninth.
The failure to limit this new national government plagued the United States nearly from the beginning. George Washington’s reigning in of the Whiskey Rebellion was the shot across the bow. On a positive note, Washington was the only President under our Constitution to never have belonged to any political party. The next President, John Adams belonged to the Federalist Party. Adams and his Federalist Party devised and implemented the infamous and further encroachment of federal power with the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Opposing the Federalist Party was Democratic-Republican Party more affectionately know as the Jeffersonian Republican Party. Thomas Jefferson stood at the head of his party opposing the incumbent John Adams for the upcoming presidential election of 1800. That election also highlights an interesting similarity between the rise of Trump and the rise of Jefferson. Both arguably populists and both involved in some of the nastiest elections this country has ever seen.
Besides the 1800 presidential election being particularly nasty, incumbent John Adams and his Federalist party had noticeably endeavored to expand federal power by near simultaneously levying a tax on property and the not very popular Alien and Sedition Acts. The property tax was to pay for Adams expanded army. The expanding army was, in large part due to fears of an encroaching unrest from Europe. The Alien and Sedition Acts were, ironically bridges too far.
Resistance towards both the tax and the Alien and Sedition Acts began to boil. In Philadelphia, at that time the capital of the United States, the more rural areas mounted a hearty resistance under the leadership of John Fries. Fries was ultimately arrested and tried for treason. Others too were brought to trial. Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Bache Franklin was arrested and tried under the acts, as was a man named Thomas Cooper.
Like Fries, Cooper was just one more member of the “growing public criticism of the Adam’s administration.” (Trials of the Sedition Acts). Unlike Fries, he kept his criticisms narrowed down to published criticisms. Cooper had published a handbill that, among other things, accused the Adam’s administration of abolishing, with the Alien Act, trial by jury, imposing a standing army and permanent navy and interfering with the decisions of federal judges. Adams responded by telling his Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, that Cooper was guilty of sedition.
The Federalists had eyed Cooper suspiciously because he had recently immigrated from Britain and had reportedly done so to avoid legal persecution in that country over his support for the French Revolution. In April of 1800, a grand jury returned an indictment, pointing to Cooper’s handbill as evidence, that he had endeavored to drag the President into “contempt and disrepute and to excite against him the hatred of the good people of the United States.” Cooper, acting as his own counsel, challenged the Sedition Act itself and in defense of the accusations of libel he presented numerous public documents to give evidence that his own claims were true.
For his part Justice Chase, presiding along with District Judge Richard Peters, confounded Cooper’s defense often. Cooper’s own handbill being used against him on the libel charge led Cooper to subpoena President John Adams to testify. Cooper had published the handbill to defend himself against charges made by an anonymous Federalist writer that his criticisms were merely due to he being bitter over failing to obtain an appointment from Adams in his administration. In his handbill, Cooper had admitted that he had indeed sought an appointment by Adams but it was in the “infancy of political mistake.”
Now a defendant against libel, he argued that the only way that anonymous writer could have known about the solicitation for appointment in Adams administration was if Adams himself leaked that information, thereby having a hand in the creation of the handbill. Justice Chase (and perhaps rightfully so) rejected this argument and declined to allow the subpoena of the president to stand. In his instructions to the jury (perhaps wrongfully so), Chase defended the Sedition Act in question and said of Cooper’s defense that it was “the boldest attempt I have known to poison the minds of the people.”
After less than an hour of deliberations, the jury found Thomas Cooper guilty. At his sentencing hearing, Chase implied that Cooper was a paid writer for the Jeffersonian republican party. Cooper denied this but was sentenced by Chase to six months imprisonment and a $400 fine. It was observing cases such as this that led to the Republican-Democrats growing mistrust of the judiciary.
During the aforementioned Fries retrial, Samuel Chase once again presided and so restricted the defense of Fries the defendants own attorneys quit. Chase also presided over the highly contentious trial of James Callender. The questionable judicial actions of Chase during these trials, combined with he using a grand jury charge to denounce the Republican led effort to repeal the Judiciary Act led Thomas Jefferson to suggest Congress consider impeaching the justice.
“On 11 April 1741, the Reverend Chase lost his wife and gained a son. Matilda Chase died in childbirth, her husband’s medical training being of no avail. She left a strong little boy named Samuel, to fight his way through an uncompromising world.”
Haw, James, Beirne Francis F. and Rosamond R., and R. Samuel Jett Stormy Patriot: the Life of Samuel Chase Baltimore, Maryland Historical Society, 1980, pg. 3
Samuel homeschooled by his father Rector Thomas Chase.
“Though not college trained, the boys received a fair equivalent at home. Samuel and Jeremiah Townley Chase had parallel careers as attorneys, legislators, and judges; their success was testimony to Parson Chase’s effectiveness as a teacher.”
ibid, p. 7
Little known about Chase’s boyhood, except that his mother died in childbirth, he was raised and homeschooled by his father Rector Thomas Chase and they resided in St. Paul’s Parish of Baltimore County. In 1759, Chase, at the age of eighteen moved to Annapolis. Here he joined the law firm of Holland and Hall as an apprentice where he would ultimately gain acceptance in the Bar. It was also in Annopolis that he would meet Ann (Nancy) Baldwin.
Chase and Baldwin were married in 1762, living on the edge of poverty until Samuel could build up his own law practice. Being a young lawyer meant he was often the one to take debtors in default. These were the kind of cases that most lawyers shunned. Chase, however, worked diligently to gain postponements and stays of executions that could allow his clients to pull themselves up from their bootstraps and repay their debts. This meant that oftentimes Samuel was working pro bono or discounted fees.
By February of 1764, Samuel and Ann gave birth to their first child, a girl. Now a father obligated to provide for his family, he too had to pull himself up from his bootstraps.
The first time Congress impeached someone was January, 24th 1799. Senator William Blount was one of the signers of the Constitution for the United States of America, becoming one of the first of two Senators chosen by the state legislature of Tennesee in 1796, but nearly a year later then President John Adams alerted Congress to a conspiracy that involved Blount. He was ultimately not impeached as the Senate determined they had no jurisdiction to impeach and so the first impeachment was a bust. The next impeachment was of
Alien and Sedition Acts Wikipedia
Samuel Chase Alien and Sedition Acts Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
1800 United States Presidential Election Wikipedia
The Ninth Amendment Means What it Say’s Randy Barnett Nov, 2006