CASS, LEWIS American general and statesman, was born at Exeter, N.H., on Oct. 9, 1782. He was educated at Phillips Exeter academy, joined his father at Marietta, Ohio, about 1799, studied law there in the office of Return Jonathan Meigs (1765-1825), and was admitted to the bar at the age of twenty. Four years later he became a member of the Ohio legislature. Dur ing the War of 1812 he served under Gen. William Hull, whose sur render at Detroit he strongly condemned, and under Gen. W. H. Harrison, and rose from the rank of colonel of volunteers to be major-general of Ohio militia and finally to be a brigadier-general in the regular United States army. In 1813 he was appointed gov ernor of the territory of Michigan, the area of which was much larger than that of the present State. This position gave him the chief control of Indian affairs for the territory, which was then occupied almost entirely by natives, there being only 6,000 white settlers. During the 18 years in which he held this post he ren dered valuable services to the territory and to the nation. His rela tions with the British authorities in Canada after the War of 1812 were at times very trying, as these officials persisted in searching American vessels on the Great Lakes and in arousing the hostility of the Indians of the territory against the American Government. To those experiences was largely due the antipathy for Great Britain manifested by him in his later career. He was secretary of war in President Jackson's cabinet in 1831-36, and it fell to him, therefore, to direct the conduct of the Black Hawk and Seminole wars.
In 1836 Gen. Cass was appointed minister to France, and became very popular with the French government and people. In 1842, when the Quintuple Treaty was negotiated by representatives of England, France, Prussia, Russia and Austria for the suppres sion of the slave trade by the exercise of the right of search, Cass attacked it in a pamphlet which was probably instrumental in pre venting the ratification of the treaty by France. In this same year the Webster-Ashburton treaty between Great Britain and the United States was concluded, and, as England did not thereby relinquish her claim of the right to search American vessels, Cass felt himself in an awkward position, and resigned his post. His attitude on this question made him very popular in America. From 1845 to 1848 and from 1849 to 1857 he was a member of the U.S. Senate, and in 1846 was a leader of those demanding the "re-annex ation" of all the Oregon country south of S4° 4o' or "war with Eng land," and was one of the 14 who voted against the ratification of the compromise with England at the 49th parallel. He loyally sup ported Polk's administration during the Mexican War, opposed the Wilmot Proviso, and advocated the Compromise Measures of 185o and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of In 1848 be received the Democratic nomination for the presi dency, but owing to the defection of the so-called "Barnburners" (see FREE-SOIL PARTY) he did not receive the united support of his party, and was defeated by the Whig candidate, Zachary Tay lor. On account of his eminently conservative attitude on all ques tions concerning slavery, General Cass has been accused of pander ing to the southern Democrats in order to further his political aspirations. His ideas of popular sovereignty, however, were not inconsistent with the vigorous Democratic spirit of the west, of which he was a typical representative, and it is not clear that he believed that the application of this principle would result in the extension of slavery. As the west became more radically opposed to slavery after the troubles in Kansas, Cass was soon out of sym pathy with his section, and when the Republicans secured control of the legislature in 1857 they refused to return him to the Senate. President Buchanan soon afterward made him secretary of state, and in this position he at last had the satisfaction of obtaining from the British government an acknowledgment of the correct ness of the American attitude with regard to the right of search. In Dec. 1860 he retired from the cabinet when the president refused to take a firmer attitude against secession and he remained in retirement until his death at Detroit, Mich., on June 17, 1866. He wrote for the North American and the American Quarterly Reviews, and published Inquiries Concerning the History, Tradi tions and Languages of Indians Living Within the United States (1823), and France: Its King, Court and Government (184o). See W . T. Young, Life and Public Services of General Lewis Cass (Detroit, 185 2) ; W. L. G. Smith, Life and Times of Lewis Cass (1856) . The best biography is by A. G. McLaughlin, Lewis Cass (revised edition, Boston, 1899) in the "American Statesmen" series. See also General Lewis Cass, 1782-1866, Cass Canfield, compiler (1916) ; Benjamin Freeman Comfort, Lewis Cass and the Indian Treaties (1923) ; and John Spencer Bassett, "Lewis Cass on Nomina tion of Andrew Jackson," American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, n.s. vol. xxxiii., pp. (1924).