Everything about John Mclean totally explained
John McLean (
March 11,
1785 –
April 4,
1861) was an
American jurist and politician who served in the
United States Congress, as
U.S. Postmaster General, and as a justice on the
Ohio and
U.S. Supreme Courts, and was a frequent candidate for the Whig and Republican nominations for President.
McLean was born in
Morris County, New Jersey, the son of Fergus McLean and Sophia Blackford. After living in a succession of frontier towns,
Morgantown, Virginia;
Nicholasville, Kentucky; and
Maysville, Kentucky; in
1797 his family settled in
Ridgeville,
Warren County, Ohio. His brother
William was also a successful Ohio politician. His brother
Finis McLean was a United States Representative from Kentucky.
He studied law and was admitted to the bar in
1807. That same year he founded
The Western Star, a weekly newspaper at
Lebanon, the Warren County seat, where he practiced law. He was elected to the
U.S. House for the
Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Congresses, serving from
March 4,
1813, until he resigned in
1816 to take a seat on the
Ohio Supreme Court which he'd been elected to
February 17,
1816, replacing
William W. Irwin.
He resigned his judgeship in
1822 to take President
James Monroe's appointment to be Commissioner of the
General Land Office, serving until 1823, when Monroe appointed him
United States Postmaster General. McLean served in that post from
December 9,
1823, to
March 7,
1829, under Monroe and
John Quincy Adams, presiding over a massive expansion of the
Post Office into the new western states and territories and the elevation of the Postmaster Generalship to a cabinet office. While Postmaster General, he supported
Andrew Jackson, who offered him the posts of
Secretary of War and
Secretary of the Navy, but he declined both and was instead appointed to the Supreme Court.
Known as "The Politician on the Supreme Court," he associated himself with every party on the political spectrum, moving from a Jackson Democrat, to the Anti-Jackson Democrats, the Anti-masonic Party, the
Whigs, the
Free Soilers, and finally the
Republicans. President
John Tyler again offered the post of
Secretary of War, but he declined. Because of his fierce anti-slavery positions, he was considered by the new Republican party as a candidate in
1856. Despite his efforts, the nomination went to
John C. Frémont. In
1860, he tried again, winning twelve votes on the first ballot at the Republican convention in Chicago;
Abraham Lincoln ultimately was nominated.
In
Dred Scott v. Sandford, his fierce dissenting views are believed to have forced the hand of Chief Justice
Roger Brooke Taney into a harsher and more polarizing opinion than he originally planned. He also wrote the Court's opinion denying there was a
common-law copyright in American law in
Wheaton v. Peters.
He died in
Cincinnati, Ohio, and was buried in
Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati. Prior to his death, McLean had been the last surviving member of the Monroe and Adams Cabinets. His son,
Nathaniel C. McLean, was a
Union general in the
American Civil War. His daughter Evelyn McLean married
Joseph Pannell Taylor brother of U.S.President
Zachary Taylor.
During the Civil War, Camp John McLean, a
Union Army training camp in Cincinnati, was named in his honor.
Further Information
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