James A. Bayard (politician, born 1767)

{{see also |Bayard family}}

File:Coat of Arms of Samuel Bayard.svg

Bayard was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Dr. James Asheton Bayard and Ann Hodge. The Bayards descended from a sister of Dutch Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant and came to Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, Maryland in 1698. Bayard was also of French Huguenot and English ancestry as well.{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RL4UAAAAYAAJ&dq=James+Asheton+Bayard+ancestry+england&pg=PA79 | title=American Ancestry: Embracing lineages from the whole of the United States. 1888[-1898. Ed. By Frank Munsell | date=1888 | publisher=J. Munsell's sons }} Upon the premature death of his parents, the younger James went to live with his uncle, Colonel John Bubenheim Bayard, in Philadelphia. He graduated from Princeton College in 1784, studied law under General Joseph Reed and Jared Ingersoll, was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1787, and began a practice in Wilmington, Delaware. Bayard married February 11, 1795, Ann or Nancy Bassett, the daughter of wealthy Delaware lawyer and U.S. Senator Richard Bassett. They had six children, Richard, Caroline, James Jr., Edward, Mary, and Henry M. and lived on the southwest corner of 3rd and French Street in Wilmington, where they owned slaves.{{Citation|title=Congress slaveowners|date=2022-01-19|url=https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-congress-slaveowners|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=2022-01-25}}

Bayard was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1796, and served there for three terms, from March 4, 1797, until March 3, 1803. While in the U.S. House, "he was distinguished as an orator and constitutional lawyer and became a leader of the party in the house." He especially distinguished himself as one of the impeachment managers appointed in 1798 in the impeachment proceedings against William Blount, a U.S. Senator from Tennessee. Blount was accused of inciting the Creeks and Cherokees to help the British take New Orleans from the Spanish. While the U.S. House impeached him, under Bayard's leadership, the United States Senate dropped the charges in 1799 on the grounds that no further action could be taken beyond his dismissal. This set an important precedent for the future with regard to the limitations on actions which could be taken by U.S. Congress against its members and former members.

Bayard also played an important part in the U.S. presidential election of 1800. With the vote tied in the Electoral College, it was a group of Federalists led by Bayard who broke the deadlock by agreeing to allow the election of Thomas Jefferson by the House of Representatives.{{cite web|title=Today in History – February 17|url=https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/february-17|publisher=Library of Congress|access-date=June 5, 2017}} When it seemed the Federalists were about to vote for Aaron Burr, Bayard is believed to have followed the advice of Alexander Hamilton and persuaded his Federalist colleagues to abstain from voting. It was also believed he struck a deal with the incoming Jefferson, to refrain from the wholesale removal of Federalists from appointed positions. The young Bayard enlisted Representative Samuel Smith (Maryland politician) to negotiate with Jefferson on Federalist control of the Philadelphia and Wilmington custom offices.Ackerman, Bruce (2005). THe Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 106. {{ISBN|0674018664}}. Borden, Morton (1954). The Federalism of James A. Bayard. pp. 91–93. Jefferson subsequently permitted the Federalist officeholders to retain their posts.

Just before John Adams left office as U.S. president he used the provisions of the Judiciary Act of 1801 to make many "midnight" judicial appointments. Among those was Bayard's father-in-law, Richard Bassett. Resigning as Governor of Delaware, Bassett accepted an appointment as a federal judge but soon was out of work when Jefferson had the act repealed. Bayard himself declined an appointment as Minister to France offered by President John Adams in 1801.

So effective was Bayard in opposing Jefferson's administration that an all-out effort was made by the Democratic-Republicans to defeat him in his attempt at a fourth term in 1802. Caesar Augustus Rodney, nephew of the Revolutionary President of Delaware Caesar Rodney, defeated Bayard by 15 votes. However, two years later, in 1804, the result was reversed with Bayard besting Rodney. In the best Delaware tradition, the two remained friends throughout their electoral rivalry.

Although re-elected to the U.S. House in 1804, Bayard never returned there, because before the term began, on November 13, 1804, he was elected by the Delaware General Assembly as U.S. Senator, filling the vacancy caused by the resignation of William H. Wells. He began a term of his own the following March 1805, was reelected six years later in 1810, and served in the Senate until his resignation on March 3, 1813.

By his admission, it mattered little who represented Delaware, given the smallness of the state; if the two senators and one representative happened to be all Federalists, all the better, since the party was in a considerable minority by the decade of the 1800s. Like most of his party, Bayard opposed "Mr. Madison's War" as the War of 1812 was sometimes scornfully called, but like the Democratic-Republicans, he was outraged at the British actions on the high seas and recognized the need for action. As the possibility of war became more likely, he urged caution, thinking of the lack of preparedness of the army and navy and especially of the vulnerability of coastal Delaware. On June 17, 1812, he was one of 13 senators to vote against declaring war on Britain. However, once the war began he and all Delaware Federalists wholeheartedly supported the war effort, avoiding the suspicion of treason earned by Federalists in New England.

Because of that support, he was the only Federalist appointed as one of the peace commissioners who eventually negotiated the Treaty of Ghent. Resigning his Senate seat, he went to Europe and played a major role in the negotiations that ended the War of 1812 when the treaty was signed in December 1814. John Quincy Adams, head of the American negotiating team, praised Bayard:

Of the five members of the American mission, the Chevalier [Bayard] has the most perfect control of his temper, the most deliberate coolness; and it is the more meritorious because it is real self-command. His feelings are as quick and his spirits as high as those of any one among us, but he certainly has them more under government.Henry Adams, The History of the United States of America 1801-1817, [https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/73741/pg73741-images.html#Page_51 p.51], (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921) (retrieved June 2, 2024).

Bayard was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in July 1815.[http://www.americanantiquarian.org/memberlistb American Antiquarian Society Members Directory] His disposition on membership is unknown, as no known correspondence confirms or denies his interest, and his death was only a few weeks after his election, and a few days after his return from Europe.

After spending several months in Europe, Bayard returned home in the summer of 1815. During the trip, he developed an inflamed throat and became critically ill. He lived only five days after his return and died at Wilmington. He was originally buried on Bohemia Manor, in Cecil County, Maryland. In 1842 his remains were removed, along with those of his father-in-law, Richard Bassett, and reburied in the Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery in Wilmington. Bayard was the father of two U.S. Senators, Richard H. Bayard and James A. Bayard Jr., grandfather of another, Thomas F. Bayard Sr. and great-grandfather of another, Thomas F. Bayard Jr.

He was sometimes known as The Chevalier, the Goliath of his Party, and High Priest of the Constitution.

Elections were held on the first Tuesday of October. U.S. Representatives took office on March 4 and have a two-year term. The General Assembly chose the U.S. Senators for six years which also began on March 4. In this case, he was initially completing the existing term, the vacancy caused by the resignation of William H. Wells.

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book |last = Hoffecker |first = Carol E |year = 2004 |title = Democracy in Delaware |publisher = Cedar Tree Books |location = Wilmington, DE |isbn = 1-892142-23-6}}
• {{cite book |last = Martin |first = Roger A. |year = 1995 |title = Memoirs of the Senate |publisher = Roger A. Martin |location = Newark, DE }}
• {{cite book |last = Martin |first = Roger A. |year = 2003 |title = Delawareans in Congress |publisher = Roger A. Martin |location = Middletown, DE |isbn = 0-924117-26-5}}
• {{cite book |last = Munroe |first = John A. |year = 2004 |title = The Philadelawareans |publisher = University of Delaware Press |location = Newark |isbn = 0-87413-872-8}}
• {{cite book |last = Munroe |first = John A. |year = 1954 |title = Federalist Delaware 1775-1815 |publisher = Rutgers University |location = New Brunswick, NJ}}
• {{cite book |author=Munroe, John A. |title=History of Delaware |publisher=University of Delaware Press |year=1993 |isbn=0-87413-493-5}}

• [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000249 Biographical Directory of the United States Congress ]
• [http://www.russpickett.com/history/sentbio.htm#bayard1 Delaware's Members of Congress]
• {{Find a Grave|7503341}}
• [http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/bay-bazzle.html#R9M0IOYEF The Political Graveyard]
• {{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Bayard, James Asheton|year=1900 |short=x |notaref=x}}

• Delaware Historical Society; [https://web.archive.org/web/19961231010053/http://hsd.org/ website]; 505 North Market Street, Wilmington, Delaware 19801; (302) 655–7161
• University of Delaware; [http://www.lib.udel.edu/ Library website]; 181 South College Avenue, Newark, Delaware 19717; (302) 831–2965

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Category:1767 births

Category:1815 deaths

Category:American duellists

James A., I

Category:18th-century American Episcopalians

Category:19th-century American Episcopalians

Category:Burials at Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery

Category:Politicians from Wilmington, Delaware

Category:Lawyers from Wilmington, Delaware

Category:Princeton University alumni

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Category:Federalist Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Delaware

Category:Politicians from Philadelphia

Category:19th-century American lawyers

Category:United States senators who owned slaves

Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives who owned slaves

Category:19th-century United States senators

Category:19th-century members of the United States House of Representatives

Category:18th-century members of the United States House of Representatives