| 1 | Name: | Arthur St. Clair | |
| Year Elected: | 1780 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 3/23/1737 | ||
| Death Date: | 8/31/1818 | ||
Arthur St. Clair (23 March 1737–31 August 1818) was a public officeholder, soldier, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1780. He was born in Scotland and likely studied at the University of Edinburgh before apprenticing a physician in 1756. The next year, he gave up his medical studies and by 1760 St. Clair was a lieutenant. In 1762, however, he married into wealth and resigned his commission, settling in Pennsylvania’s Ligonier Valley. He held minor public offices there before 1775 when he served as secretary to an embassy from the Continental Congress, then, returning to military service, he raised a regiment and became a colonel. He protected an American retreat in Canada (1776), fought in Trenton (1776), and Princeton (1777), and earned the rank of Major General. He controversially withdrew from a siege at Fort Ticonderoga, was subsequently suspended by Congress, and only served as an aide-de-camp under General George Washington for the rest of the war. Now in peacetime, St. Clair took up the federalist mantle and plotted in the Newburgh Conspiracy of 1783, using threat of military recourse to promote a stronger federal government. He served on Pennsylvania's Council of Censors (1783), became a delegate to Congress (1785), and then served as its President (1787), overseeing the passing of the Northwest Ordinance and reluctantly becoming governor of the new territory. St. Clair’s time as governor was marked by persistent mishandling of treaties and subsequent conflicts with Native tribes and a fruitless effort to push his Federalist policies onto a territory clamoring for self-governance and statehood. In 1801, President John Adams and the Senate reappointed him for a three-year term in the Senate. During this time, he fought to delay statehood of the Northwestern territory despite popular support, leading President Thomas Jefferson to dismiss him in 1802. Politically and financially in ruin, he lost his property not long after and retired to a log house in Chestnut Ridge, Pennsylvania. He died following a carriage accident. (ANB) | |||