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Michael Toth - Founding Federalist: The Life of Oliver Ellsworth

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In Founding Federalist, Michael C. Toth provides an in-depth look at the life and work of Oliver Ellsworth, a largely forgotten but eminently important Founding Father.
The American Founding was the work of visionaries and revolutionaries. But amid the celebrated luminaries, the historic transformations, the heroic acts, and unforgettable discourses were practical politicians, the consensus builders who made the system work. Oliver EllsworthFramer, senator, chief justice, diplomatwas such a leader.
Founding Federalist brings to life a figure whose contributions shape American political life even today. Vividly capturing the pivotal debates at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, Toth shows how Ellsworth was a vital force in shaping the Constitution as a Federalist document, one that did not extinguish the role of the states even as it recognized the need for national institutions. The author illuminates what Ellsworth and other Founders understood to be the meaning of the new constitutional ordera topic highly relevant to twenty-first-century debates about the role of government. Toth, an attorney, also brilliantly analyzes Ellsworths most important legislative achievement: the creation of the U.S. federal court system.
With this insightful new biography, Michael Toth has reclaimed a figure who made crucial contributions to a lasting creation: a federal republic.

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Michael Toth
Founding Federalist: The Life of Oliver Ellsworth

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LIVES OF THE FOUNDERS EDITED BY JOSIAH BUNTING III ALSO IN SERIES - photo 1
LIVES OF THE FOUNDERS
EDITED BY JOSIAH BUNTING III ALSO IN SERIES FORGOTTEN FOUNDER DRUNKEN - photo 2
EDITED BY JOSIAH BUNTING III
Picture 3
ALSO IN SERIES:
FORGOTTEN FOUNDER, DRUNKEN PROPHET: THE LIFE OF LUTHER MARTIN
Bill Kauffman
AN INCAUTIOUS MAN: THE LIFE OF GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
Melanie Randolph Miller
RISE AND FIGHT AGAIN: THE LIFE OF NATHANAEL GREENE
Spencer C. Tucker
AMERICAN CICERO: THE LIFE OF CHARLES CARROLL
Bradley J. Birzer
FOUNDING FEDERALIST
Founding Federalist The Life of Oliver Ellsworth - image 4
THE LIFE OF OLIVER ELLSWORTH
Founding Federalist The Life of Oliver Ellsworth - image 5
Michael C. Toth
Founding Federalist The Life of Oliver Ellsworth - image 6
W ILMINGTON , D ELAWARE
To Dad, in memory
Founding Federalist The Life of Oliver Ellsworth - image 7
CONTENTS
Founding Federalist The Life of Oliver Ellsworth - image 8
Authors Note:
Unless the original usage is easily recognizable, the spelling and punctuation of all quotations has been modernized.
PREFACE
Founding Federalist The Life of Oliver Ellsworth - image 9
OLIVER ELLSWORTH PARTICIPATED IN THE FRAMING, RATIFICATION, and implementation of the early American government, yet this founder has been very much forgotten. He is obscure, in part, because he was neither a partisan firebrand nor the leader of a powerful faction. He was a moderate, a conciliator, a man of principle who often sought compromise. Nevertheless, as a forger of consensus he played a significant role in creating our union. His clout was not lost upon his peers. Aaron Burr commented ruefully that the influence of his Connecticut colleague over his fellow senators was so great that if Ellsworth had happened to spell the name of the Deity with two ds, it would have taken the Senate three weeks to expunge the superfluous letter. Indeed, few men of the founding generation mustered the intellectual courage to go toe-to-toe with James Madison in debate. At the Constitutional Convention, with the future plan of the U.S. government hanging in the balance, Ellsworth did just that. And he won.
Prior to the Constitutional Convention, Ellsworth was, in the phrase of the historians of the era, one of the young men of the Revolution. Before turning thirty-five, Ellsworth was already a veteran of the Connecticut government as well as the Continental Congress. Returning to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, Ellsworth emerged as a crucial actor in the camp that successfully argued for measured constitutional change. Following the Convention, supporters of the Constitution within Connecticut enlisted Ellsworth to present the case for the new plan of government to his states ratification delegates. Connecticut ratified by a lopsided margin.
Throughout the 1790s, Ellsworths involvement in all three branches of the federal government marked the apex of his political influence. During his service in the first Senate, Ellsworth drafted the historic legislation that created Americas judicial system. In 1796, he became the chief justice of the United States. Only two men had held the post before Ellsworth. Four years later, John Adams turned to Ellsworth to carry out the most decisive action of Adamss presidency. He dispatched Ellsworth to France on a peace mission that many in Adamss own administration bitterly opposed.
While Ellsworth often managed to find compromise between competing political camps, unanimity was rarely the natural state of affairs in the early republic. In historian Thomas P. Slaughters assessment,
conflict was at the heart of the Revolution, and conflict among Americans was at least as important a part of the story as cooperation against a common enemy. In the aftermath of the violent international struggle that virtually ended in 1781, conflict remained the body and soul of American politics through the
Against the backdrop of the genuine strife that characterized early American politics, Ellsworths success in fashioning lasting political compromises, such as the Judiciary Act of 1789 (under which todays federal court system retains the same basic structure that Ellsworth designed for it two centuries ago), is all the more impressive.
This book is not a study of religious faith among the Founding Fathers. But it does raise one point about religions role in the early American government. Whether most of the Founding Fathers were Christians or deists, Ellsworth was a devout Calvinist. His theological formation, moreover, was the source of his political pragmatism. For modern readers, Ellsworths political pragmatism presents the following paradox. How was it that Ellsworth, who viewed politics largely through the lens of theology, was able to assert the moderate view while his more secular-minded colleagues frequently opted for more contentious policy agendas? Today, religion, often viewed as divisive, is considered an impediment to political compromise. Things were different at the founding. Amid the early debates over the role of the federal government, the future of slavery, and the conduct of foreign policy, to cite a few examples, it was Ellsworths Calvinist faith that steered himand often his colleagues with himtoward a lasting consensus.
Modern audiences may be accustomed to the marginalizing effect of theological beliefs on contemporary political leaders. Yet if holding deep-seated theological views makes a politician today unable to garner widespread support, Ellsworths theological formation had much the opposite effect. Far from hampering his ability to shape the answers to the questions that vexed early American politicians, Ellsworths theological convictions were often the very reason why he proved to be politically influential. His form of Calvinism provided a profound reason to seek broad compromises that protected the nation from external threats and internal strife. Gods will, his particular creed told him, was to preserve Americas harmony.
Beyond motivating his political pragmatism, Ellsworths religious convictions also contributed to his enthusiasm for federalism. For some of Americas founders, the division of power between the state and national governments was dangerously inefficient. For Ellsworth, by contrast, federalism was quasi-sacred. In his home state, towns formed independent political units, which, in turn, elected representatives to serve in Connecticuts General Assembly. Moreover, many of Connecticuts towns were originally organized around churches. Not only, then, was Connecticuts government a federal one, but its federalism had religious roots. None of this was lost upon Ellsworth, who, after three decades of service to the federal government, returned happily to his home in Windsor, where he would devote the final years of his life to, among other things, compiling a regular newspaper column on the latest agricultural techniques.
What follows, in short, is a study of a religious pragmatist, a devoted Federalist, who was responsible for making possible the lofty designs of better-known founders. Ellsworths legacy, as we shall see, if not his name, endures.
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