Samuel Chase

Effective a speaker, influential a writer,

Samuel Chase of Maryland was formidable a fighter.

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.
Samuel Chase

Religion is of general and public concern, and on its support depend, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people.
Samuel Chase
 

        Samuel Chase was an Episcopalian as identified by the 1995 Information Please Almanac.  Ian Dorion, "Table of the Religious Affiliations of American Founders," 1997.   "His father was a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church [i.e., the Episcopal Church, the American province of the Anglican Communion], and possessing an excellent education himself, he imparted such instruction to his son in the study of the classics, and in the common branches of an English education..."   B. J. Lossing, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, George F. Cooledge & Brother: New York (1848) [reprinted in Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, WallBuilder Press: Aledo, Texas (1995)], page 146.

        Samuel's political career began in 1774 as a delegate from Maryland to Congress, a station which he occupied for several years.  Though Maryland was reticent to favor independence, Chase immediately started to campaign in its favor by assembled county meetings and persuasive reasoning.  Successful in his influence, he was happy to ride 150 miles in two days from Annapolis to Philadelphia and vote with the majority in giving an "aye" for signing the Declaration of Independence.      

        In 1791, Chase was appointed chief justice of the general court of Maryland.  In 1796 he was appointed by President Washington an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.  He was firm and controversial in carrying out his duties.

     "I will do my duty, whatever be the consequences to myself or my family."  

      When he demanded all parties of a case were to meet on a particular day, he was told that he would be passing judgment on the Sabbath.  He replied, "No better day can be named, on which to execute the laws of the country.  I will meet you here, and from this seat of justice I will go to the house of God."

        A few years later, articles of impeachment were filed against him.  His trial would serve as an important test case in seeing if a judge could be impeached simply for having a thorny personality and a killbuck demeanor in expressing unpopular opinions.  As it turns out, Chase was acquitted; and he filled the office until his death.

       "Judge Chase was a man of great benevolence of feeling and in all his walks, he exemplified the beauties of Christianity, of which he was a sincere professor.  At the time of his death he was a communicant at St. Paul's church in Baltimore, the parish of which, when he was a child, his father had pastoral charge."   B. J. Lossing, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, George F. Cooledge & Brother: New York (1848) [reprinted in Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, WallBuilder Press: Aledo, Texas (1995)], page 149-150.

  

    "Samuel Chase ....  is today remembered chiefly as having been the only Supreme Court justice ever to have been impeached.  He is usually dismissed by most American historians as nothing but a rabid partisan. He was, study of Chase's opinions reveals, one of the most important political and legal theorists at work in the early republic, and there is still much that can be learned from his work."  http://www.answers.com/topic/samuel-chase

Above picture is a faithful photographic reproduction of an original two-dimensional work of art. The original image comprising the work of art itself is in the public domain.  Its copyright has expired.
Robert Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (1990).   Rev. Charles A. Goodrich Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence. New York: William Reed & Co., 1856. Pages 338-346.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28