Lewis Cass (9 October 1782-17 June 1866) was US Secretary of State from 6 March 1857 to 14 December 1860, succeeding William Marcy and preceding Jeremiah Black, and the Democratic Party presidential candidate in the 1848 election. Cass, the Senator from Michigan (D) from 1845 to 1848 (succeeding Augustus Porter and preceding Thomas Fitzgerald) and from 1849 to 1857 (succeeding Fitzgerald and preceding Zachariah Chandler), was a strong advocate for "states' rights" in the years before the American Civil War.
Biography[]
A portrait of Cass
Lewis Cass was born in Exeter, New Hampshire on 9 October 1782, and the family moved to Marietta, Ohio in 1800. Cass became an attorney, and he was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1806 after becoming a member of the Freemasons. In 1813, he became a Brigadier-General of the US Army during the War of 1812, fighting at the Battle of the Thames in October. From 1813 to 1831, he served as Governor of Michigan, and he became involved in Democratic Party politics under President Andrew Jackson. In 1831, he succeeded John Eaton as Secretary of War, and Joel Poinsett succeeded him in 1836. In 1844, James K. Polk defeated him in the Democratic presidential primaries, and he was instead elected to the US Senate in 1845. In 1848, he resigned from the Senate to run for President of the United States, but US Whig Party candidate and Mexican-American War hero Zachary Taylor defeated him with 163 electoral votes to Cass' 127. From 1849 to 1857, he returned to the Senate, and he became Secretary of State under President James Buchanan. Cass was forced to denounce the filibusters Hiram Paulding and William Walker, and he failed to purchase more land from Mexico. In 1860, he resigned to protest President Buchanan's failure to protect federal interests in the American South and to mobilize the federal military. He died in 1866 at the age of 83.