Jared Ingersoll Jr. (October 24, 1749 – October 31, 1822) was an American Founding Father, lawyer, and statesman from

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. He was a delegate to the

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and a signer of the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...

. He served as

DeWitt Clinton DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769February 11, 1828) was an American politician and Naturalism (philosophy), naturalist. He served as a United States Senate, United States senator, as the mayor of New York City, and as the sixth governor of New York. ...

's running mate in the 1812 election, but Clinton and Ingersoll were defeated by

James Madison James Madison (June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed as the ...

and

Elbridge Gerry Elbridge Gerry ( ; July 17, 1744 – November 23, 1814) was an American Founding Father, merchant, politician, and diplomat who served as the fifth vice president of the United States under President James Madison from 1813 until his death i ...

. Born in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is List ...

, Ingersoll established a legal career in Philadelphia after graduating from

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

. The son of British colonial official Jared Ingersoll Sr., Ingersoll lived in Europe from 1773 to 1776 to avoid the growing political conflict between

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and the

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America. The Thirteen C ...

. In 1778, having committed himself to the cause of American independence, Ingersoll returned to Philadelphia and won election to the Continental Congress. Ingersoll became convinced of the need for a stronger national government than what was provided by the

Articles of Confederation The Articles of Confederation, officially the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement and early body of law in the Thirteen Colonies, which served as the nation's first Constitution, frame of government during the Ameri ...

, and he was a delegate to the 1787

Philadelphia Convention The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia from May 25 to September 17, 1787. While the convention was initially intended to revise the league of states and devise the first system of federal government under the Articles of Conf ...

. Though he was initially seeking amendments for the Articles of Confederation, he eventually came to support the new Constitution that was produced by the convention. He served as the Pennsylvania Attorney General from 1791 to 1800 and from 1811 to 1816. He also served as the

United States Attorney United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States' chief federal ...

for Pennsylvania and as the city solicitor for Philadelphia. He argued the cases of '' Chisholm v. Georgia'' and '' Hylton v. United States'', two of the first cases to appear before the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

. Ingersoll affiliated with the

Federalist Party The Federalist Party was a conservativeMultiple sources: * * * * * * * * and nationalist American political party and the first political party in the United States. It dominated the national government under Alexander Hamilton from 17 ...

and was deeply disturbed by

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...

's victory in the 1800 presidential election. In 1812, the

Democratic-Republican Party The Democratic-Republican Party (also referred to by historians as the Republican Party or the Jeffersonian Republican Party), was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early 1790s. It championed li ...

split between President Madison and Clinton. The Federalists decided to support a ticket of Clinton and Ingersoll in hopes of defeating the incumbent president. Madison prevailed in the election, winning Ingersoll's crucial home state of Pennsylvania.

Life and career

Jared Ingersoll was a supporter of the Revolutionary cause. His training as a lawyer convinced him that the problems of the newly independent states were caused by the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation. He became an early and ardent proponent of constitutional reform, although, like a number of his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention, he believed this reform could be achieved by a simple revision of the Articles. Only after weeks of debate did he come to see that a new document was necessary. His major contribution to the cause of constitutional government came not during the convention but later during a lengthy and distinguished legal career when he helped define many of the principles enunciated at Philadelphia.

Early life

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Ingersoll was the son of Jared Ingersoll Sr., a prominent British official whose strong Loyalist sentiments would lead to his being

tarred and feathered Tarring and feathering is a form of public torture where a victim is stripped naked, or stripped to the waist, while wood tar (sometimes hot) is either poured or painted onto the person. The victim then either has feathers thrown on them or is ...

by radical Patriots. The Ingersoll family was of English descent. In 1765, the year the Stamp Act was imposed on the colonies in America, the British Crown appointed the elder Jared Ingersoll as Stamp Master, the colonial agent in London, for the colony of Connecticut. As the next few months passed and animosity over the Stamp Act grew, Ingersoll became the most hated man in the colony. Between August 21 and 29, 1765, the

Sons of Liberty The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized, clandestine, sometimes violent, political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. It p ...

hung his effigy in various parts of the colony. He wrote an account of Isaac Barre's speech made during the Parliamentary debate on the Stamp Act to Connecticut Governor Thomas Fitch. He would later be involved in a controversial role as the agent who enforced the resulting Stamp Act in Connecticut. The younger Ingersoll completed Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven in 1762, graduated from Yale College in 1766, studied law in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1773. Although by training and inclination a Patriot sympathizer, the young Ingersoll shied away from the cause at the outset because of a strong sense of personal loyalty to his distinguished father. On his father's advice, he sought to escape the growing political controversy at home by retiring to London to continue his study of the law at the

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court entitled to Call to the bar, call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple (with whi ...

School (1773–1776) and to tour extensively through Europe. He spent more than eighteen months in Paris, where he formed an acquaintance with

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

American Revolution

Shortly after the colonies declared their independence, Ingersoll renounced his family's views, made his personal commitment to the cause of independence, and returned home. In 1778 he arrived in Philadelphia as a confirmed Patriot. With the help of influential friends he quickly established a flourishing law practice, and shortly after he entered the fray as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1780–81). In 1781 Ingersoll married Elizabeth Pettit and in that same year was elected a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

. Always a supporter of strong central authority in political affairs, he became a leading agitator for reforming the national government in the postwar years, preaching the need for change to his friends in Congress and to the legal community. At the convention, Ingersoll was counted among those who favored revision of the existing

, but in the end he joined with the majority and supported a plan for a new federal government. Despite his national reputation as an attorney, Ingersoll seldom participated in the Convention debates, although he attended all sessions.

Career after the Constitutional Convention

Once the new national government was created, Ingersoll returned to the law. Except for a few excursions into politics—he was a member of Philadelphia's Common Council (1789), and, as a stalwart Federalist who considered the election of

in 1800 a "great subversion," he ran unsuccessfully for vice president on the Federalist ticket in 1812—his public career centered on legal affairs. He served as attorney general of Pennsylvania (1790–1799 and 1811–1817), as Philadelphia's city solicitor (1798–1801), and as U.S. district attorney for Pennsylvania (1800–01). For a brief period (1821–22), he sat as presiding judge of the Philadelphia district court. Ingersoll's major contribution to the cause of constitutional government came not during the convention but later during a lengthy and distinguished legal career, when he helped define many of the principles enunciated at Philadelphia. He made his contributions to the Constitutional process through several Supreme Court cases that defined various basic points in Constitutional law during the beginning of the new republic. In one definitive case he represented

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

in '' Chisholm v. Georgia'' (1793), a landmark case in

states' rights In United States, American politics of the United States, political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments of the United States, state governments rather than the federal government of the United States, ...

. Here the court decided against him, ruling that a state may be sued in federal court by a citizen of another state. This reversal of the notion of state sovereignty was later rescinded by the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. In representing Hylton in '' Hylton v. US'' (1796), Ingersoll was also involved in the first legal challenge to the constitutionality of an act of Congress. In this case, the Supreme Court upheld the government's right to impose a tax on carriages. Ingersoll also served as counsel in various cases that helped clarify constitutional issues concerning the jurisdiction of federal courts and U.S. relations with other sovereign nations, including defending Senator William Blount of Tennessee against

impeachment Impeachment is a process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements. In Eur ...

Death and legacy

Jared Ingersoll died in Philadelphia at age 73; interment was in the Old Pine Street Church Cemetery, Fourth and Pine Streets. Ingersoll was survived by three sons. Two of the sons, Charles Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Reed Ingersoll served as members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Ingersoll Street in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is the List of municipalities in Wisconsin by population, second-most populous city in the state, with a population of 269,840 at the 2020 Uni ...

, and

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost cons ...

SS ''Jared Ingersoll'' are named after him.

References

* ''America and its peoples: a mosaic in the making''. James Kirby Martin ... t al.– 5th ed. * ''This article incorporates text fro
Soldier-Statesmen of the Constitution
written by Robert K. Wright Jr. and Morris J. MacGregor Jr. Center of Military History United States Army Washington, D.C., 1987. released in the Public Domain.''

External links

* , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Ingersoll, Jared 1749 births 1822 deaths American Presbyterians American people of English descent Burials at Old Pine Street Church Continental Congressmen from Pennsylvania Hopkins School alumni Ingersoll family Members of the Middle Temple Politicians from New Haven, Connecticut Pennsylvania attorneys general Philadelphia City Council members Pennsylvania Federalists Pennsylvania lawyers Pennsylvania state court judges Signers of the United States Constitution United States attorneys for the District of Pennsylvania 1812 United States vice-presidential candidates Yale University alumni Lawyers from New Haven, Connecticut Founding Fathers of the United States Members of the American Philosophical Society