Samuel Chase

Samuel Chase was born in 1741 in Somerset County, Maryland, the son of an Anglican clergyman. He read law in Annapolis and was admitted to the bar, building a legal practice that was accompanied from early in his career by a talent for controversy and a combative personality that made him enemies as readily as it won him admirers. He entered Maryland politics in the 1760s and quickly became one of the most aggressive voices for colonial rights, mobilizing popular opposition to British taxation measures with an energy that more genteel political figures found alarming but that proved highly effective in moving public opinion.

Chase's role in bringing Maryland to independence was arguably decisive. Maryland's delegation to the Continental Congress included powerful figures who were deeply reluctant to break with Britain, and through much of 1776 Maryland held back from committing to independence. Chase conducted an intensive campaign to shift opinion within the state, traveling to western Maryland to organize support among backcountry residents who were less tied to British commercial networks than the Chesapeake merchant-planter elite, and working the political networks of his colony with characteristic intensity. When Maryland finally authorized its delegates to vote for independence, Chase was among those who signed the Declaration in August 1776. His contribution to overcoming his state's resistance was recognized by contemporaries as crucial.

After the Revolution, Chase's career took him to the federal bench, where President Washington appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1796. He proved to be a justice of genuine intellectual power but also of fierce partisan energy, and his openly political behavior from the bench — most notably his conduct of treason and sedition trials in a manner that opponents considered biased against Republicans — made him the target of an impeachment effort in 1804. The Senate acquitted him, establishing an important precedent that judicial decisions alone could not constitute impeachable offenses. Chase died in 1811, leaving behind a legal legacy that encompassed both his role as a Declaration signer and his complex, combative tenure as a Supreme Court justice.