Political Career
In 1773 Chase was elected to the Colonial House of Delegates. In 1774 he joined the Committee of Correspondence for Baltimore and was elected to the revolutionary Annapolis Convention. In 1776 he attended the state's Constitutional Convention for Anne Arundel County. Under the new constitution he was elected to the House of Deputies.
Chase's adopted father, Rev. Chase, died in 1779 and after that Jeremiah moved fully to Annapolis. That same year he was named a member of Maryland's Executive Council, which functioned as the upper house of the legislature, and he would serve there until 1788. Chase was also Mayor of Annapolis in 1783 and 1784. Those same years he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, which held sessions for those years in Annapolis.
In 1788 Chase was a delegate to the Maryland convention called to ratify the United States Constitution. He was among those opposed to its adoption, believing that a Bill of Rights should be included. When the Bill of Rights was formally adopted by Congress in 1789, Chase generally became a supporter of the Federalist Party.
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