COMPLICATED STATESMAN, HENRY WHITE BALDWIN

westmohney
Apr 23, 2025
9 min read

In 1838, a court official reported the consensus opinion of his peers: Baldwin's "mind is out of order ... I have heard no less than five persons ... say he is crazy." ~ David Garrow

Henry's early life

In our last post, we wrote about our cousin Abraham Baldwin (6C7X), one of the signers of the U.S. Constitution. Abraham's brother Henry White Baldwin (6C7X), born in New Haven, CT in 1780, was younger by 26 years. Henry most probably took some inspiration for his own public career from his brother, though the two were of much differing personalities.

Following the family tradition, Henry graduated from Yale College in 1797 and from the Litchfield School of Law in 1798. Litchfield, founded in 1784, was the first law school in America. Below is the school shown in a postcard:

After graduation, Henry moved to Pennsylvania where he "read law in Philadelphia under Alexander Dallas, later the U.S. Treasury Secretary. . .He’d study late into the night puffing incessantly on small black Spanish cigars."

Shortly after the move to Pennsylvania, Henry threw his hat into the public service ring and at age 20, he served as Deputy State Attorney General of Allegheny County. That title has since been changed to District Attorney.

We learn more about Henry's early career from the New England Historical Society's article "Crazy Henry Baldwin, the mentally ill Supreme Court Justice:"

He launched his legal practice on horseback, traveling the western Pennsylvania circuit courts with a coterie of like-minded young lawyers. They stayed at country taverns, where Henry played practical jokes on his friends. They did not reciprocate. He then settled in Pittsburgh, married and made a fortune investing in turnpikes, land and iron furnaces while practicing law. In 1802, he married his third cousin, Mariana Norton. She died about a year later, after giving birth to his only child, Henry Baldwin, Jr. (7C6X).

After Mariana's death, Henry did marry again, but before that happy event, it seems he got into a little scape over a woman. From the New England Historical Society:

But before his second marriage, he had nearly gotten killed in a duel over a young lady. The duel took place on a lot in Pittsburgh. Baldwin and Isaac Meeson agreed to fight until one was incapacitated or dead. Meeson’s ball struck a silver dollar in Baldwin’s vest pocket, and he fell, thinking he was done for. But he was just bleeding, and they reloaded their pistols. Then Judge James Riddle rode up with a posse and stopped the fun.

In contrast to his brother Abraham, it seems that Henry ran with a rather rough crowd. Ca. 1800, he and two of his lawyer friends began a newspaper, the Tree of Liberty, in support of the Democrat-Republican party. Henry's partner, Tarleton Bates, "ended up getting killed in a duel after assaulting a rival newspaper editor with a whip."

The Democratic-Republican Party, also the party of choice for brother Abraham, had been founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early 1790s. The Democrat Republicans "championed liberalism, republicanism, individual liberty, equal rights, decentralization, free markets, free trade, and agrarianism." Individual liberty and equal rights for the Democrat-Republican party did not, however, extend to the African Americans living in the United States. Henry, like his brother from Georgia, had a complicated relationship with slavery. In addition to his newspaper work, he also served as president of the Pittsburgh Colonization Society, which favored sending freed slaves back to Africa.

Henry's law career included much public service. He served on the boards of the Pittsburgh Permanent Library Company and the Harmony Seminary for Young Ladies. He was also a grand master of the Masonic Lodge, a turnpike commissioner and a member of the Pittsburgh Public Safety Committee during the War of 1812.

in defense of Andrew Jackson

According to an article on Henry's relationship with Andrew Jackson by Robert D. Ilisevich, "By 1816 he enjoyed wealth, prestige, and the accolade "the Pride of Pittsburgh." Such was his fame that year that he was asked to run for Congress and found himself supported by both the Republican and Federalist parties. He was overwhelmingly elected to the United States House of Representatives.

While Henry was elected mainly "on a platform aimed at promoting the interests of the manufacturers," Ilisevich maintains that "[n]othing Baldwin did in his first term attracted as much attention back home as his spirited defense of Andrew Jackson's conduct in the Seminole War."

The first Seminole War began in 1817 over the U.S. government's attempts to "recapture runaway Black slaves living among Seminole bands." From Illisevich's article "Henry Baldwin and Andrew Jackson: A Political Relationship in Trust:

Raiding parties had been pillaging American settlements in Georgia before fleeing back to their Florida strongholds. Their withdrawal did not stop Jackson from crossing the border, destroying property, punishing the perpetrators and executing two British subjects. Such actions created both an embarrassment for President James Monroe and an ominous international crisis. Some officials expressed outrage and demanded that Jackson be pun- ished, perhaps even court-martialed and drummed out of the service.

Baldwin disagreed. Unlike his colleagues who were caught up in a wave of hysteria, thereby allowing emotion to skew their judgment of the general, Baldwin calmly confined his extended remarks to the legal aspects of the incident. By so doing, he shielded Jackson with formidable arguments that highlighted the simple and underlying question: Were any laws broken?

He assessed Jackson's heroics to be proper and not in violation of the Constitution, for that document was never intended to protect renegades. Jackson had neither a legal nor moral obligation to extend to those "savages, runaway slaves or white incendiaries" the humane rules of modern warfare. Their brutal crimes exceeded the bounds of civilized conduct. The fate of war had placed them in the general's hands; therefore, he had full control over their destinies. Finally, the "miscreants" he ordered hanged "were not our citizens, not bound by our laws, not entitled to our protection."

Thanks in great part to Henry's legal opinion, Jackson got off scot free. That was the beginning of a friendship that Illesivich professes "had its ups and downs, each man hoping to elicit something from the other, with expectations often falling short."

Henry's ups and mostly downs

Henry was a complicated fellow. From the article "Crazy Henry Baldwin, the mentally ill Supreme Court Justice" we learn that:

Even as he climbed to the commanding heights of politics and finance in western Pennsylvania, he showed hints of problems to come. He was also a quarrelsome prankster who, when angered, grew vindictive and profane.

In 1822, Henry suddenly resigned from Congress "because of a severe, but unspecified, illness." He was able to return to his business activities in Pittsburg and was well enough to champion Jackson when he ran for president in 1828. Illisevich maintains that "Coming from a man of Baldwin's stature, this hearty endorsement could not be taken lightly." Pennsylvania went whole-heartedly for Jackson and he was elected as the seventh president of the United States.

For Henry's unfailing support for Jackson, he expected to be hugely rewarded. He wasn't the only one. The Pittsburgh Statesman "went as far as calling his journey a big step toward laying the cornerstone of the new cabinet." Jackson, however, had other ideas. From Ilisevich's article:

Generally recognized as a major force in Jackson's sweep of Pennsylvania, Baldwin stood on the threshold of fulfilling his greatest political triumph: becoming a part of Jackson's administration. . .(instead) Jackson offered Baldwin three foreign missions, all of which he refused.

Baldwin sulked and raved. Whenever he became angry, he grew vindictive and profane, inclined to hurl invectives without subsequent apologies. One observer reported seeing the disgruntled office seeker vent his anger in "very unmeasured language."

Understandably upset and angry, Henry felt "disheartened, prostrated, and betrayed." He wrote to his friend Stephen Simpson that "it was his misfortune to have been a friend of President Andrew Jackson" and that he was "regarded of as much consequence as a candle-snuffer at a court-house. . .a mere passing post, against which every puppy of the party raises his leg."

Ilisevich expounds on Henry's fall from grace:

Baldwin's bitterness toward Jackson and the "blacklegs" who surrounded him had been festering for many months following his rejection for a cabinet post, an appointment he had expected to receive after Jackson's election in 1828 and which he insisted the general had wanted to give him.

Until this point, Baldwin's legal and political careers had been nothing less than spectacular. A complicated person, he possessed a keen, analytical mind, but his nonconformity and unpredictability handicapped him in the public roles he was to play.

These were hard times for Baldwin. He remembered well what he had to go through—"the gibes, the taunts and sneers as well as the open triumphs of the Clay and Calhoun men metamorphosed into patent Jacksonites."

Supreme Court years

Finally, in early 1830, Jackson threw Henry a bone. On January 5, he nominated him to replace Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington. The Senate confirmed the nomination on January 6. While many thought Henry a good fit for the Supreme Court, others "believed Baldwin's depraved character did not fit the office." Henry did not prove the nay-sayers wrong. According to Ilisevich:

Enjoying power and prestige, the Marshall Court at this time had an aura of wonderment. The unanimity for which it was noted, however, came to an end with Baldwin's presence. His approach was often nihilistic, his manner defiant. His run-ins with the court reporter, Richard Peters, became legendary. When Justice Joseph Story spoke of a revolutionary spirit on the bench, no doubt he had Baldwin in mind. So unhappy was the newest member with what he regarded as the Court's wrongful course and usurpation of power that he considered folding his tent and going home, but Jackson talked him out of it. During the 1831 term he dissented so often and his behavior became so unconventional that there was talk of his mind becoming unhinged. Insanity was not ruled out. Jackson now realized how independent and unreliable Baldwin really was.

While Henry claimed to "abhor slavery," his record on the Court didn't reflect that opinion. In Johnson v. Tompkins, he instructed the jury to "respect the legal status of slavery." He was the sole dissenter in the United States vs. Amistad case in which the Court ruled that the kidnapped Africans who were on board the schooner, La Amistad should go free. And, in Groves v. Slaughter, Henry "emphatically expressed his opinion that, as a matter of constitutional law, slaves are property, not persons."

Note: It is a coincidental fact that Henry's (and our) distant cousin Roger Sherman Baldwin (5C7X) was one of the attorneys for the Amistad Africans. We'll have Roger's story in a future post.

After only two years on the Court, Henry's fragile mental health began to catch up with him. From the New England Historical Society article "Crazy Henry Baldwin, the Mentally Ill Supreme Court Justice," we learn just how bad it was:

December of 1832 reports from Philadelphia recounted how "the Honorable Judge Baldwin was seized today with a 'fit of derangement." Less than two weeks later Daniel Webster alerted a friend to "the breaking out of Judge Baldwin's insanity," and another correspondent observed more pithily that "Judge Baldwin is out of his wits." Baldwin was hospitalized for what was called "incurable lunacy" and missed the entire 1833 term of Court. Baldwin's colleague Joseph Story informed Circuit Judge Joseph Hopkinson in May 1833 that "I am sure he cannot be sane. And, indeed, the only charitable view, which I can take of any of his conduct, is, that he is partially deranged at all times."

Henry did have friends, however who blamed his mental problems on "declining health, financial reverses, and an overindulgence in hard work and Spanish cigars." One of his these friends just happened to be Chief Justice John Marshall. In spite of their political differences, Henry admired Marshall, writing that "no commentator ever followed the text more faithfully, or ever made a commentary more accordant with its strict intention and language." Henry was evidently the only associate justice who was "at Marshall's bedside when the old Chief Justice died in 1835."

Though he stayed on the bench, Henry's condition seemingly only got worse. From an article by David Garrow for the University of Chicago Law Review:

In 1838, a court official reported the consensus opinion of his peers: Baldwin's "mind is out of order ... I have heard no less than five persons ... say he is crazy." Apparently, no attempts were made to remove Baldwin from his post.

In the early 1840s, when he turned 60, Henry obviously anticipated leaving the bench and his hometown of Philadelphia behind. In late 1843, he completed what was to be his retirement home in Meadville, PA.

Alas, it was not to be. Henry died in April of 1844, only a few months after the completion of his house. His wife leased the house and grounds to the Meadville Female Seminary for a period of three years. It was later sold to the Reynolds family. Today the house, known as the Baldwin-Reynolds house, serves as a museum. Henry is credited with the design of the building.

For whatever reason, In spite of Henry's very apparent eccentricities, he had been allowed to soldier on with no attempts ever to remove him from his position. He remained on the Court until his death at age 64.