Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782 - June 17, 1866) was an American military officer and politician. During his long political career, Cass served as a governor of the Michigan Territory, an American ambassador, a U.S. Senator representing Michigan, and co-founder as well as first Masonic Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Michigan. He was the losing nominee of the Democratic Party for president in 1848. Cass was nationally famous as a leading spokesman for the controversial Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, which would have allowed voters in the territories to determine whether to make slavery legal instead of having Congress decide.


== Early life ==
Cass was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he attended Phillips Exeter Academy. His parents were Major Jonathan Cass and Molly Gilman. In 1800 he moved with his family to Marietta, Ohio. On May 26, 1806, he married Elizabeth Spencer. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice of the Freemasons in what is now American Union Lodge No.1 at Marietta on December 5, 1803. His Fellowcraft degree came on April 2, and his Master Mason degree on May 7, 1804. On June 24, 1805, he was admitted as Charter member of Lodge of Amity 105 (now No.5), Zanesville. He served as the first Worshipful Master of Lodge of Amity in 1806. Cass was one of the founders of the Grand Lodge of Ohio, representing Lodge of Amity at the first meeting on January 4, 1808. He was elected Deputy Grand Master on January 5, 1809, and Grand Master on January 3, 1810, January 8, 1811, and January 8, 1812. He later would co-found the Grand Lodge of Michigan, being elected as its first Grand Master on July 21, 1826. He would serve as Grand Master of Michigan again in 1844. In 1807, he became the US Marshal for Ohio. When the War of 1812 began, he took command of the 3rd Ohio Volunteer Regiment. Promoted to brigadier general in March 1813, he took part in the Battle of the Thames.


== Territorial governor ==
As a reward for his military service, Cass was appointed Governor of the Michigan Territory by President James Madison on October 29, 1813, serving until 1831. However, he was frequently absent, and several territorial secretaries often acted as governor in his place.
In 1817, Cass was one of the two commissioners (along with Duncan McArthur) who negotiated the Treaty of Fort Meigs, which was signed September 29 with several Native American tribes. That same year, Cass was named to serve as Secretary of War under President James Monroe, but he declined the honor.
In 1820, he led an expedition to the northwestern part of the Michigan Territory, in the Great Lakes region in today's northern Minnesota. Its purpose was to map the region and locate the source of the Mississippi River. The source of the river was then unknown, which resulted in an undefined border between the United States and British North America. The Cass expedition erroneously identified Cass Lake as the Mississippi's source, and it was not until 1832 that the correct source was identified as nearby Lake Itasca by Henry Schoolcraft, who had been the Cass expedition's geologist.


== Later political career ==
On August 1, 1831, Cass resigned as governor of the Michigan Territory to take the post of Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, a position he would hold until 1836. Cass was a central figure in formulating and implementing the Indian removal policy of the Jackson administration. Next, Cass was appointed minister to France, a post he retained until 1842.
In the 1844 Democratic convention Cass stood as a candidate for the presidential nomination, losing on the 9th ballot to dark horse candidate James K. Polk, who went on to win the presidential election.

Cass represented Michigan in the United States Senate from 1845 to 1848. He served as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the 30th Congress. In 1848, he resigned from the Senate to run for president. William Orlando Butler was his running mate. Cass was a leading supporter of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which held that the people who lived in a territory should decide whether to permit slavery there. His nomination caused a split in the Democratic party, leading many antislavery Democrats to join the Free Soil Party. He also supported the annexation of Texas.
After losing the election to Zachary Taylor, he returned to the Senate, serving from 1849 to 1857. He was the first non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate to lose an election.
From 1857 to 1860, Cass served as Secretary of State under President James Buchanan. He was sympathetic to American filibusterers and was instrumental in having Commodore Hiram Paulding removed from command for his landing of Marines in Nicaragua and compelling the removal of William Walker to the United States. Cass resigned on December 13, 1860, because of Buchanan's failure to protect federal interests in the South and failure to mobilize the federal military, actions that might have averted the threatened secession of Southern states.
Cass died in 1866 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan.
His daughter, Isabella Cass, was married to Theodorus Marinus Roest van Limburg (1806-1887), Dutch ambassador in the USA (1856-1868) and Foreign Minister (1868-1870).
His great-great grandson Cass Ballenger was a U.S. Representative from North Carolina.
Michigan-based attorney, activist and singer-songwriter Jen Cass is Lewis Cass' great-great-great-grandniece.


== Commemoration ==

A statue of Cass is one of the two that were submitted by Michigan to the National Statuary Hall collection in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. It stands in the National Statuary Hall room. (The other statue is of President Gerald Ford, the only U.S. president to come from Michigan.)
The Liberty ship S.S. Lewis Cass
The Lewis Cass Legacy Society, which supports The Michigan Masonic Charitable Foundation, was named for his support of Michigan Freemasonry.


== Publications ==
Cass, Lewis (1840). France, its King, Court and Government. New York: Wiley and Putnam. 


== See also ==
List of places named for Lewis Cass
Origins of the American Civil War


== References ==


== Further reading ==
Lewis Cass at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Klunder, Willard Carl. "Lewis Cass, Stephen Douglas, and Popular Sovereignty: The Demise of Democratic Party Unity," in Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era ed by Daniel J. McDonough and Kenneth W. Noe, (2006) pp. 129-53
Silbey, Joel H. Party Over Section: The Rough and Ready Presidential Election of 1848 (2009), 205 pp.
Bell, William Gardner (1992). "Lewis Cass". Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army. United States Army Center of Military History. CMH pub 70-12. 
Elmwood Cemetery Biography
Cleland, Charles E. "Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans". University of Michigan Press (1992).


== External links ==
Lewis Cass papers, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.
Lewis Cass at Find a Grave