Samuel Chase
Born: April 17, 1741
Died: June 19, 1811
Colony/State: Maryland
Occupation / Public Role: Lawyer, legislator, delegate to the Continental Congress, judge, Supreme Court justice
Contribution to the Founding Era: Delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, leading Maryland Patriot, and later Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He remains the only U.S. Supreme Court justice ever impeached, and he was acquitted by the Senate.
Samuel Chase was born in Somerset County, Maryland, near present-day Princess Anne. He studied law in Annapolis, was admitted to the bar in 1761, and quickly entered public life. He served in the Maryland General Assembly from 1764 to 1784, building a reputation as an outspoken and forceful Patriot leader.
Before independence, Chase became one of Maryland’s strongest voices against British policy. He served in the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second Continental Congress from 1775 to 1778. In 1776, he also went on a special mission to Canada with Benjamin Franklin and Charles Carroll in an attempt to persuade Canadians to join the American cause. He signed the Declaration of Independence as one of Maryland’s four signers.
Chase’s public life did not end with the Revolution. After the war, he served in judicial office in Maryland, including as a judge of the Baltimore criminal court and then as chief judge of the Maryland General Court. In 1796, President George Washington appointed him as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
He later became one of the most controversial justices in American history. Chase was a strong Federalist, and his open partisanship led the House of Representatives to impeach him in 1804. The Senate tried him in 1805 and acquitted him on all counts, allowing him to remain on the Court until his death. Historians often see that acquittal as an important moment for judicial independence in the early republic.
Samuel Chase died in 1811. He is one of the more memorable Maryland signers because he was not just a Revolutionary politician with a famous signature. He was a sharp-tongued Patriot, a signer, a national judge, and a man whose career collided head-on with one of the biggest early tests of the American constitutional system. He did not exactly tiptoe through history. He stomped through it.
Related Links
- Signers of the Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of Independence
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