The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Speaker at the canal’s grand opening, 1843
On the record
Named in this record as the speaker at the Swinney homestead celebration of through navigation on the Wabash & Erie Canal, 4 July 1843 — Toledo to Lafayette by way of Fort Wayne.
Lewis Cass was born 9 October 1782 at Exeter, New Hampshire, came to Ohio in 1801, and was admitted to the bar in 1802. He served as a United States marshal for Ohio and fought in the War of 1812, rising to brigadier general. As governor of Michigan Territory for eighteen years (1813–1831) he negotiated twenty-two treaties with Native nations and led the 1820 expedition with Henry Rowe Schoolcraft toward the headwaters of the Mississippi. He was Secretary of War under Andrew Jackson (1831–1836), minister to France (1836–1842), and a United States senator from Michigan. The Democratic Party nominated him for president in 1848 on the doctrine his December 1847 Nicholson letter had named "popular sovereignty"; he lost to Zachary Taylor. As Buchanan's Secretary of State (1857–1860) he resigned in December 1860 when the president refused to reinforce Fort Sumter. He died at Detroit on 17 June 1866. His Fort Wayne appearance stands as the record gives it: principal speaker at the celebration of the canal's through navigation, at the Swinney homestead, on 4 July 1843.
Find them on this page
- § 02 — the Story of Fort Wayne section
From the timeline in § 02; Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), "Lewis Cass"; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.