(April 2, 1745\u2013September 15, 1815), was an attorney, jurist and politician. He was a signer of the Constitution of the United States. He was instrumental in leading his state of Delaware to be the first to ratify the United States Constitution, 1787. He was a U.S. Senator, 1789\u201393; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware, Captain in the Revolutionary War. He helped write the Constitution of the State of Delaware and was appointed by President John Adams as a U.S. Circuit Court Judge.<\/p>\n
Richard Bassett converted to Methodism during the Revolutionary War and became close personal friends with Francis Asbury, the circuit-riding preacher. Richard Bassett personally contributed half the cost of building the First Methodist Church in Dover.1297 He freed his slaves and then paid them as hired labor. On his way to the Methodist campmeetings, many times on his own plantation, he would ride joyfully with his former slaves, sharing the enthusiasm of their singing as they went.1298<\/p>\n
In 1776, Richard Bassett, along with Thomas McKean and George Read, participated in the writing of the Constitution of the State of Delaware, which stated:<\/p>\n
Article XXII.<\/i> Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust \u2026 shall \u2026 make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: \u201cI, _____, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration.\u201d1299<\/p>\n
In 1787, Major William Pierce of Georgia, the only delegate to the Constitutional Convention who recorded character sketches of each of the delegates, described Richard Bassett as:<\/p>\n
A religious enthusiast, lately turned Methodist, who serves his country because it is the will of the people that he should do so. He is a man of plain sense, and has modesty enough to hold his tongue. He is a gentlemanly man, and is in high estimation among Methodists.1300<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(April 2, 1745\u2013September 15, 1815), was an attorney, jurist and politician. He was a signer of the Constitution of the United States. He was instrumental in leading his state of Delaware to be the first to ratify the United States Constitution, 1787. He was a U.S. Senator, 1789\u201393; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of … Continue reading “BASSETT,
\nRICHARD”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}