Lewis Cass, Michigan's most accomplished governor

In 1813 President James Madison appointed Lewis Cass governor of the Michigan Territory, a post he would hold for 18 years. At the time he was a prominent Ohio lawyer who had distinguished himself in the War of 1812. This portrait of Cass still hangs in the House chamber of the Michigan Legislature.

In 1827 the United States signed treaties with several native American tribes, with Lewis Cass representing the U.S. as a commissioner. This scene commemorates the treaty signing with the Chippewas at Butte des Morts, Wisconsin, showing Cass and Col. Thomas L. McKenney arriving by boat. The scene was painted on the spot by J.O. Lewis, a Philadelphia artist known for his portraits of Native Americans.

A stone marker in Sault Ste. Marie was erected in 1920. The plaque reads: "On this spot on June 15, 1820, General Lewis Cass ... lowered and removed the last British flag to fly over United States soil, and by forceful words and acts, alone in the presence of a large band of hostile Chippewa Indians, established the sovereignty of the United States government over the Northwest Territory."

Lewis Cass lived in this home in Detroit during the time he was governor of the Michigan Territory. When he arrived in 1814, the War of 1812 had taken a harsh toll in Detroit and people were starving. He obtained financial aid from Washington, explored the Northwest Territory, and persuaded easterners to move to Michigan in a push for statehood.

The engraving 'Residence of Gen. Lewis Cass' shows a stately farmhouse on Fort Street, just west of Detroit's city limits, where Cass and his wife hosted visiting dignitaries. Cass served 18 years as governor, but just as the territory was about to become a state, he was called to Washington for a new challenge.

In 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. This portrait was painted by American artist Daniel Huntington.

President Andrew Jackson served two terms from 1829 to 1837. He appointed Lewis Cass as secretary of war based on his national reputation for handling Indian affairs, although Cass was not his first choice. Jackson considered him indecisive. The clever Cass wrote a history of the Battle of New Orleans that made Andrew Jackson a national hero, and changed his attitude.

Lewis Cass was serving as U.S. Secretary of War when this circa 1833 engraving by T.B. Welch was made from a drawing by J.B. Longacre.

When Jackson's presidency was ending, he named Cass Minister to France. Cass and his family moved to Paris, where he became great friends with King Louis Philippe of France, seen here in an 1839 portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

Edgar Allan Poe was not only a writer and poet but an editor and fan of Cass's published articles, which had a national following. Poe called Cass "one of the finest belle-lettres scholars of America." Cass published a book, "France: its King, Court and Government," while serving as Minister to France.

Cass came home from France as a presidential contender for 1844, but he lost the Democratic party nomination to dark horse James K. Polk, who went on to win the presidential election. Cass was now 60, but the Michigan Legislature quickly appointed him as a U.S. Senator, replacing Augustus S. Porter, whose term had expired.

This hand-colored lithograph of Cass was published by Nathaniel Currier, of Currier & Ives fame, circa 1846.

In 1846, the U.S. was negotiating the purchase of California and the Southwest from Mexico. Rep. David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, above, attached an amendment to the appropriations bill that would outlaw slavery in those territories. Cass strongly opposed the Wilmot proviso, saying it would divide the nation. That position turned many voters in the North against Lewis Cass.

James Polk declared he would not run for a second term in 1848, and Cass was considered a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Slavery was the issue of the day, and Cass' moderate views were opposed by Whig candidate Zachary Taylor, a slave holder, and by the new anti-slavery Free Soil Party, whose candidate was Martin Van Buren.

A campaign banner for the 1848 presidential election shows Democratic candidate Lewis Cass and his running mate, William O. Butler, a hero of the Mexican American War. It was called the nastiest campaign of the 19th century. They lost to Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.

This rare pewter-framed black and white lithograph is a campaign piece from 1848. Cass was called "General Cass" throughout his life, a rank he was bestowed at the end of the War of 1812. During the war, he was a colonel for the Ohio Territory, and opposed Gen. William Hull's surrender of the fort at Detroit.

Well-known poet Walt Whitman was also an editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, a Democratic Party newspaper. When Cass was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president, Whitman wrote a point by point editorial critical of Cass. He considered Cass a docile "doughface" who let Southerners push him around. Whitman was fired for the editorial.

This caricature of presidential candidate Cass -- dubbed "General Gas" by his detractors -- depicts him as a war machine. The suggestion is that his quest for territorial expansion would lead the country again into war, just as the Mexican War had ended.

Zachary Taylor was a famous general from the Mexican American War in 1846. He ran for president as a Whig in 1848, beating Democrat Lewis Cass and Free Soiler candidate Martin Van Buren. Taylor died in office after only one year. Cass served as a U.S. senator during Taylor's presidency.

An 1848 print shows Cass during his presidential campaign. His view on slavery is reflected in this campaign speech: "We may well regret the existence of slavery in the southern States and wish they had been saved from its introduction. But there it is, and not by the act of the present generation: and we must deal with it as a great practical question, involving the most momentous consequences."

Cass served in the U.S. Senate from 1845 to 1857. He promoted the idea of popular sovereignty, believing the new territories should decide for themselves whether to be slave states or free states. The wood engraving was published in the Illustrated London News in 1856.

Sen. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts was a schoolmate of Lewis Cass in New Hampshire. Webster, like Cass, was a moderate opposing the annexation of Texas for fear it would inflame the conflict of slave versus free state. Webster gave a speech in 1850, characterizing himself "not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American."

In Congress in 1856, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner gave a lengthy and lurid speech on the "Crime Against Kansas," laced with sexual imagery of slave owners and their slave mistresses. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Sumner with a cane so severely it made Sumner a permanent invalid. Cass was appointed to investigate the attack. He declared it a personal confrontation and dismissed any charges.

A circa 1855 photo shows a stern, serious Lewis Cass, wearing an ill-fitting wig. "I'm tired of it all," he wrote. "I am tired of this everlasting harping upon slavery and hazarding the freest and happiest government on the face of the globe."

Lewis Cass served as secretary of state for President James Buchanan. Although they had known each other for many years, Buchanan did not care for Cass but selected him as a middle-of-the-road choice who would offend the fewest, either North or South.

President James Buchanan's Cabinet, from left: Jacob Thompson, Lewis Cass, John B. Floyd, Buchanan, Howell Cobb, Isaac Toucey, Joseph Holt and Jeremiah S. Black. Cass served from 1857 to 1860, then resigned in protest of Buchanan's failure to protect federal interests in the South and failure to mobilize the federal military to put down threats of secession in Southern states.

This formal portrait of Cass was taken by renowned photographer Mathew Brady, circa 1857. The print is in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Interestingly, this same portrait is found in the Library of Congress archives, but with a much younger looking face, and a "Brady NY" signature.

During the Civil War, the aging Cass was was a political and financial supporter of the Union Army, giving rousing speeches to assemblages including this one, location unknown.

Cass spent his remaining years in Detroit and on Mackinac Island. He lived to hear of the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee in 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse. About a year later, on June 16, 1866, he died at age 84. President Andrew Johnson proclaimed a day of national mourning. He was buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

In 1864, Congress invited each state to contribute two statues of prominent citizens for permanent display in what would be called Statuary Hall at the Capitol. Michigan sent this full-length statue of Cass, created by Daniel Chester French in 1889, and one of former U.S. Sen. Zachariah Chandler,which was removed in 2011 in favor of President Gerald Ford.