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John McLean Biography

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McLEAN John (1785-1861). An American political leader and jurist, born in Morris Co., N. J. His father removed in 1789 to Virginia, then to Kentucky (1790), and finally settled in Warren Co., Ohio (1797). Young McLean began the study of law in Cincinnati in 1803 and was admitted to the bar in 1807. In 1812 he was elected to the National Congress as a Democrat and served until 1816, when he resigned upon being elected State Supreme Court judge. This position he held until his appointment in 1822 as Commissioner of the Land Office. In 1823 he was appointed Postmaster-General. He was continued in office by President John Quincy Adams and worked such great improvement that Congress increased the salary of the office. He disagreed with President Jackson on the question of patronage and resigned from the cabinet, though offered both War and Navy departments. President Jackson, however, appointed him to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1829. He wrote a dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case declaring that slavery exists by force and “is limited to the range of the laws under which it is sanctioned." In 1848 he was a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Free Soil party and in 1856 received 196 votes at the Republican convention. He published Reports of the United States Circuit Courts (1829, 1840-56) and Eulogy on James Monroe (1831).