Oliver Ellsworth - Legacy

Legacy

It is entirely a matter of speculation, but Ellsworth's conciliatory negotiations with Napoleon might have contributed to Napoleon's sudden choice three years later to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15 million.

In retrospect, Ellsworth's role in helping to establish the United States as a viable sovereign nation was important but could be easily overlooked. A good part of the reason for this was that he did not distinguish himself as an orator but worked as much as possible behind the scenes. He was said to have been dominant in his eloquence at the January, 1788, Connecticut Ratifying Convention, but later as the de facto Senate majority leader he seems to have kept his arguments relatively short and to the point. His written prose could on occasion be tortuous, as best illustrated by the operative sentence in Section 25 of the Judiciary Act (the first of only two sentences). Over three hundred words long, this sentence is almost impossible to decipher as an explanation how state courts were answerable to federal authority. But perhaps this opacity was intentional, since the expansion of federal power specified by Section 25 was mostly overlooked in debate both in the Senate and House of Representatives despite having been the most important and potentially controversial portion of the Judiciary Act.

That Ellsworth promoted the federal government as a unified confederacy without the limitations imposed by the Articles of Confederation enhanced his popularity during the first several decades of America's history, especially in the South preceding the Civil War. In 1847, thirteen years before the Civil War, John Calhoun praised Ellsworth as the first of three Founding Fathers (including Sherman and Paterson) who gave the United States "the best government instead of the worst and most intolerable on the earth." However, rapid industrialization and the centralization of our national government since the Civil War have led to the almost complete neglect of Ellsworth's pivotal contribution at the inception of our government. Few today know much of anything about him. The one full-length biography by William Garrott Brown, published in 1905 and reprinted in 1970, is excellent but difficult to obtain.

Ellsworth's twin sons followed their father into public service. William Wolcott Ellsworth married a daughter of lexicographer Noah Webster and became Governor of the State of Connecticut, a United States Congressman and a justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. His twin brother, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, served as mayor of Hartford, then was appointed the first commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office. He later became president of Aetna Life Insurance Company. Henry Leavitt Ellsworth was instrumental in the creation of the U.S. Agriculture Department, and he was appointed by President Andrew Jackson to oversee the so-called Trail of Tears, the transfer of Cherokee Indians from Georgia to the Oklahoma Territory that cost approximately 4,000 lives. He was a friend and backer of inventors Samuel Colt and Samuel F.B. Morse, and his daughter Annie Ellsworth proposed the first message transmitted by Morse over the telegraph, "What hath God wrought?" Henry Leavitt Ellsworth was a major benefactor to Yale College, his alma mater.

Even if Ellsworth was viewed as "a valuable acquisition to the Court," and "a great loss to the Senate," he resigned after just four years due to his "constant, and at times excruciating pains," sufferings made worse by his Europe travels, as special envoy to France.

In 1800, Ellsworth, Maine was named in his honor.

John F. Kennedy authored the Encyclopædia Britannica's article on Ellsworth. This was Kennedy's only contribution to the Encyclopedia.