Rufus Choate
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| Rufus Choate | |
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| In office March 4, 1831 – June 30, 1834 |
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| Preceded by | Benjamin W. Crowninshield |
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| Succeeded by | Stephen C. Phillips |
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| In office February 23, 1841 – March 3, 1845 |
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| Preceded by | Daniel Webster |
| Succeeded by | Daniel Webster |
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| Born | October 1, 1799 Ipswich, Massachusetts |
| Died | July 13, 1859 Halifax, Nova Scotia |
| Political party | Whig |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College Harvard University |
| Profession | Law |
Rufus Choate (October 1, 1799 – July 13, 1859), American lawyer and orator, was born at Ipswich, Massachusetts, the descendant of a family which settled in Massachusetts in 1643;[1] brother of physician George Choate, and uncle to George C. S. Choate and Joseph Hodges Choate. Rufus Choate's birthplace, Choate House, remains virtually unchanged to this day.
As a child he was precocious; at six he is said to have been able to repeat large parts of the Bible and of Pilgrim's Progress from memory. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at Dartmouth College in 1819, was a tutor therein 1819–1820, spent a year in the law school of Harvard University, and studied for a like period at Washington, in the office of William Wirt, then Attorney General of the United States.
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[edit] Career
He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1823 and practiced at what was later South Danvers (now Peabody) for five years, during which time he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1825–1826) and in the Massachusetts Senate (1827).
In 1828 he moved to Salem, where his successful conduct of several important lawsuits brought him prominently into public notice. In 1830 he was elected to Congress as a Whig from Salem, defeating the Jacksonian candidate for re-election, Benjamin Crowninshield, a former United States Secretary of the Navy, and in 1832 he was re-elected. His career in Congress was marked by a speech in defence of a protective tariff.
In 1834, before the completion of his second term, he resigned and established himself in the practice of law in Boston. Already his reputation as a speaker had spread beyond New England, and he was much sought after as an orator for public occasions. For several years he devoted himself unremittingly to his profession, but in 1841 succeeded fellow Dartmouth graduate Daniel Webster in the United States Senate. Shortly afterwards he delivered one of his most eloquent addresses at the memorial services for President Harrison at Faneuil Hall, in Boston.
In the Senate he spoke on the tariff, the Oregon boundary, in favor of the Fiscal Bank Act, and in opposition to the annexation of Texas. On Webster's re-election to the Senate in 1845, Choate resumed his law practice. He later served a short term as attorney-general of Massachusetts in 1853–1854. In 1846, Choate convinced a jury that the accused, Albert Tirrell, did not cut the throat of his lover and a prostitute, Mrs. Bickford, or, if he did so, he did it while sleepwalking, under the 'insanity of sleep'.[2] His successful use of sleepwalking as a defense against murder charges was the first time in American legal history this defense was successful in a murder prosecution.[3] He was a faithful supporter of Webster's policy as declared in the latter's Seventh of March Speech of 1850 and labored to secure for him the presidential nomination at the Whig national convention in 1852. In 1853, he was a member of the state constitutional convention.
In 1856, he refused to follow most of his former Whig associates into the Republican Party and gave his support to Democrat James Buchanan, whom he considered the representative of a national instead of a sectional party. In July 1859 failing health led him to seek rest in a trip to Europe, but he died on July 13, 1859 at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he had been put ashore when it was seen that he probably could not last the voyage across the Atlantic.
Choate, besides being one of the ablest of American lawyers, was one of the most scholarly of American public men, and his numerous orations and addresses were remarkable for their pure style, their grace and elegance of form, and their wealth of classical allusion.
[edit] Works
- Works — edited, with a memoir, by SG Brown) were published in 2 volumes at Boston in 1862
- Memoir — published in 1870
- EG Parker's Reminiscences of Rufus Choate (New York, 1860)
- EP Whipple's Some Recollections of Rufus Choate (New York, 1879)
- Albany Law Review of 1877–1878)
- The Political Writings of Rufus Choate,' (2003)
[edit] References
- ^ Jameson, Ephraim Orcutt. The Choates in America. 1643–1896. John Choate and His Descendants. Chebacco, Ipswich, Mass. Boston: A. Mudge & Son, printers, 1896.
- ^ Maria Bickford. Brown University Law Library. Retrieved on 2007-11-22.
- ^ Kappman (ed), Edward W. (1994). Great American Trials. Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 101–104. ISBN 0-8103-9134-1.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. This article incorporates facts obtained from the public domain Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
[edit] External links
- Rufus Choate at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- The Works of Rufus Choate: With a Memoir of His Life, by Samuel Gilman Brown
- Reminiscences of Rufus Choate. By Edward Parker, published 1860.
- Memories of Rufus Choate by Joseph Neilson, published 1884.
| Preceded by Benjamin Crowninshield |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 2nd congressional district 1831-1834 |
Succeeded by Stephen C. Phillips |
| Preceded by Daniel Webster |
United States Senator (Class 1) from Massachusetts 1841-1845 Served alongside: Isaac C. Bates |
Succeeded by Daniel Webster |
| Preceded by John H. Clifford |
Attorney General of Massachusetts 1853-1854 |
Succeeded by John H. Clifford |
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