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Oliver Ellsworth Biography

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ELLSWORTH, Oliver (1745-1807) An American statesman and jurist, born at Windsor, Conn., where his family had been settled since 1665. He studied at Yale and at Princeton, where he graduated in 1766. He studied theology for a year, but gave it up for law. Admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1771, he represented the town of Windsor in the General Assembly of Connecticut from 1773 to 1775 and was soon afterward chosen a member of the Pay Table, a commission having control of expenditure for military purposes during the Revolution. He became State's attorney in 1777 and was a member of the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1783 and was a member of the Council of the Governor of Connecticut (1780-85) and a judge of the State Superior Court (1785-89). In 1787, with Roger Sherman and William Samuel Johnson, he was chosen to represent his State in the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, where he distinguished himself by his activity and sound judgment. At the time when disagreement seemed certain on the question of representation, he, with Roger Sherman, proposed what became the basis of the national legislative system. This measure, known as the Connecticut Compromise, provided that the Federal legislature consist of two houses-the upper equally representative of the States, the lower composed of delegations proportioned according to population. On the organization of the national government, in 1789, he was elected one of the first United States Senators from Connecticut and served in that capacity until 1796. In the Senate he was looked upon as leader of the Administration party and as the personal  spokesman of President Washington. Ellsworth's greatest and most lasting –service to the United States government was in connection with the establishment of the Federal judiciary. As chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, he drew up the bill which organized the entire system of Federal courts practically as they exist to-day. As leader of the Federalists in the Senate, he suggested to President Washington the plan of sending John Jay to England in 1794 to negotiate a new treaty with Great Britain; and it was Ellsworth's influence, in the face of violent opposition, that brought about the Senate's approval of the treaty after it had been drawn up. In 1796, by President Washington's appointment, he became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving until 1799, when President John Adams sent him, with William R. Davie (1756-1820) and William Vans Murray (1726-1803), as commissioner to adjust the numerous disputes between the United States and France. The negotiations, carried on almost entirely by Ellsworth, terminated with the signing of a treaty whereby France conceded a recognition of the rights of neutral vessels, promised the. return to citizens of the United States of all ships captured by France, and provided for freedom of commerce between the two countries. After a year in England, during which time, because of failing health, he resigned the chief justiceship (1800), he returned to America. From 1803 until his death he was a member of the Governor's Council in Connecticut, and on the reorganization of the Connecticut judiciary, early in 1807, was appointed Chief Justice of that State, but died before entering upon his duties. Consult W. G. Brown's Oliver Ellsworth (New York, 1905) and an excellent brief résumé in F. G. Cook's "Oliver Ellsworth and the Federation," Atlantic Monthly, vol. lxxxix, pp. 524-537 (April, 1902).