biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1796–1876)
|
| biography:
| Lawyer and public official, born in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. He studied at St John's College (1811), was admitted to the bar (1816), and became a nationally prominent authority on constitutional law. He sat in the US Senate (Whig, Maryland, 1845–9) and was briefly attorney general. He successfully argued in the Dred Scott case (1857) that as a slave Scott could not be a citizen and therefore had no legal standing. A pro-Union Democrat during the Civil War, he returned to the Senate in 1863–7. He defended Mary Surratt and others against charges of complicity in the assassination of Lincoln and worked to save President Johnson from impeachment. As US ambassador to Britain (1868–9), he negotiated several important agreements. |
|
|
