CASS, LEWIS

(October 9, 1782–June 17, 1866), was an American soldier, lawyer, politician and diplomat. After serving in the War of 1812, he became the Governor-General of the Territory of Michigan, where he made treaties with the Indians, organized townships and built roads. He was a U.S. Senator, 1845–48, 1849–57; Secretary of State under President James Buchanan, 1857–60; and the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1848. Lewis Cass stated:

Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.1827

In a letter dated from Washington, 1846, Lewis Cass wrote:

God, in His providence, has given us a Book of His revealed will to be with us at the commencement of our career in this life and at its termination; and to accompany us during all chances and changes of this trying and fitful progress, to control the passions, to enlighten the judgment, to guide the conscience, to teach us what we ought to do here, and what we shall be hereafter.1828

On December 14, 1852, Lewis Cass gave the obituary address for Daniel Webster in the U.S. Senate:

And beyond all this he died in the faith of the Christian—humble, but hopeful—adding another to the long list of eminent men who have searched the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and have found it to be the word and the will of God.1829

“How are the mighty fallen!” we may yet exclaim, when reft of our great and wisest; but they fall to rise again from death to life, when such quickening faith in the mercy of God and in the sacrifice of the Redeemer comes to shed upon them its happy influence this side of the grave and beyond it.1830