Six primary documents span sixty-five years of public service — from the Continental Congress to the Supreme Court to the Senate impeachment trial. The episode presents them in order. No editorial verdict. The record speaks.
Samuel Chase was born on April 17, 1741 in Somerset County, Maryland. He read law, was admitted to the bar in 1761, and entered Maryland politics in the 1760s as a member of the colonial assembly. He opposed the Stamp Act, helped found the Anne Arundel County Sons of Liberty, and was elected to the First and Second Continental Congresses.
In June 1776 the question before the Continental Congress was independence. Maryland's instructions to its delegates did not yet permit a vote for it. Chase rode back to Maryland, addressed the state convention, and helped shift the delegation's position. Maryland authorized independence. Chase returned to Philadelphia. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration. On August 2, 1776, Samuel Chase signed it. His signature is on the document at the National Archives.
John Adams, writing to Chase on July 1, 1776 — three days before the vote — recorded his awareness of the stakes: Maryland's position mattered. The letter is at Founders Online.
We are in the very midst of a Revolution, the most compleat, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the History of Nations. A few important Subjects remain to be decided.
After the Revolution, Chase served in the Maryland legislature and on the Maryland Court of Appeals. He opposed ratification of the Constitution at the Maryland convention in 1788 — he wanted a bill of rights — but supported it once the First Congress committed to amendments. He continued in Maryland judicial service through the early 1790s.
On January 26, 1796, President George Washington nominated Samuel Chase to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Senate confirmed him the following day, January 27, 1796. Chase took his seat on the Court. He was fifty-four years old.
In the early republic, Supreme Court Justices also served as circuit court judges, riding out to hear cases across their assigned regions. Chase was outspoken on the bench — openly Federalist, sharply critical of the Jeffersonian Republicans who had taken control of Congress in 1801. He made no effort to separate his judicial role from his political convictions.
In May 1803, while sitting as a circuit judge in Baltimore, Chase delivered a charge to the grand jury that attacked the Republicans directly. He condemned the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, criticized recent changes to Maryland's constitution, and warned that the country was moving toward what he called "mobocracy." The charge was political. It was delivered from the bench. It was reported in the press. Jefferson read it. He wrote to House member Joseph Nicholson asking whether Chase's conduct warranted inquiry. The inquiry began.
On March 12, 1804, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Samuel Chase. The vote was 73 to 32. The eight articles of impeachment charged Chase with misconduct across several trials — refusing to dismiss biased jurors, limiting defense witnesses in politically sensitive cases, and delivering a partisan political charge to a grand jury from the bench. The proceedings are recorded in the Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 8th Congress, 1st Session.
On December 5, 1804, the House passed a resolution directing its managers to carry the articles of impeachment to the Senate. The physical resolution — signed, folded, and delivered — is held in the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives. The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center holds the document.
I am a friend to the Constitutional independence of the Judiciary, but opposed to giving that department an oppressive and overwhelming power, destructive to the liberties of the people. I regret extremely that it has become our duty to accuse a man so eminent for talents and learning . . . of high crimes and misdemeanors.
The Senate began preparations for the trial on November 30, 1804 — the third impeachment trial in the Senate's brief history. On January 4, 1805, Chase appeared before the Senate to answer the charges. He asked for a one-month postponement to prepare a defense. The Senate agreed. The trial began in earnest on February 4, 1805.
Chase's defense team included several of the country's most prominent attorneys. Chase filed a written answer to the articles of impeachment — the document is in the National Archives. In it, he declared that he was not guilty of any crime or misdemeanor and that he was being tried for his political convictions rather than for any indictable offense. His position was that a federal judge could not be impeached for errors in judgment or intemperate behavior — only for conduct amounting to an actual crime.
That your respondent is not guilty of any crime or misdemeanor whatever, as charged in the said articles, or either of them; that the matters charged are not impeachable offences; and that as to the matter of opinion, your respondent had a right to express his sentiments thereon, conscientiously believing them to be correct.
On March 1, 1805, the Senate voted on each of the eight articles. None secured the two-thirds majority required for conviction. On the article that came closest — Article III, concerning his conduct in a sedition trial — the vote was 18 to 16 in favor of conviction. Eighteen was not two-thirds of thirty-four. On several articles, Jeffersonian Republicans joined the nine Federalists to vote not guilty. Chase was acquitted on all counts. He returned to the Supreme Court and served until his death on June 19, 1811.
The acquittal established a precedent that has held: a federal judge cannot be removed through impeachment for decisions made on the bench, for legal errors, or for expressing opinions — however intemperate — outside the bounds of an indictable offense. The boundary between the judiciary and Congress drawn in 1805 has never been crossed in the same way since.