George Cabot was an American merchant, seaman, and politician from Massachusetts.
48 Facts About George Cabot
2.
George Cabot represented Massachusetts in the US Senate and was the presiding officer of the infamous Hartford Convention.
3.
George Cabot inherited 600 pounds and rather than become a charge on his father's estate, dropped out to go to sea, where he became a cabin boy on the ship of his brother-in-law Joseph Lee.
4.
George Cabot ships served as privateer vessels, raiding British merchants to support the revolutionary cause and turning a profit in the process.
5.
Some time after the Revolution, George Cabot's business took him to New York City, where he was acquainted with Alexander Hamilton, who became a lifelong friend and political ally.
6.
In 1777, George Cabot was elected as Beverly town fire-ward and director and president of the Bridge Company, tasked with constructing the Essex Bridge, which first connected Beverly with Salem across the Danvers River.
7.
In 1777, the town of Beverly voted to reject the proposed Massachusetts Constitution, and George Cabot was a member of a committee selected to draft objections.
8.
George Cabot opposed the proposed system of weighted representation and price controls, but was unsuccessful.
9.
In 1788, George Cabot was a delegate to the Massachusetts convention to ratify the new United States Constitution, which he strongly supported.
10.
In 1789, President George Washington breakfasted with Cabot at the latter's Beverly home when he was in town inspecting the country's first cotton mill and the new Essex Bridge.
11.
George Cabot became a founding member of the new Federalist Party, led by Hamilton and Vice President John Adams.
12.
George Cabot himself stood out as an ardent Francophobe, and by extension, an Anglophile.
13.
George Cabot remained a leader in matters of commerce and finance and helped pass a bill laying the groundwork for a national Navy.
14.
Amid rising United States tensions with Great Britain, George Cabot joined Senators Rufus King, Oliver Ellsworth, and Caleb Strong in calling for the appointment of Hamilton as special minister to negotiate a treaty with Britain.
15.
George Cabot waited until his friend Benjamin Goodhue was elected as his successor, then promptly sent his resignation to the Massachusetts General Court.
16.
George Cabot himself was opposed to the appointment of such a commission, believing that the time for negotiation with France had passed.
17.
George Cabot firmly believed that any continued diplomacy with France would only encourage Jacobinism in the United States.
18.
George Cabot became involved in the debate over the organization of a provisional army.
19.
George Cabot sided with Washington, Hamilton, and other leading Federalists in objecting to Knox's elevation; President Adams gave in, but the entire affair created divisions within the Federalists.
20.
George Cabot remained strictly opposed to any negotiation with France without first advances toward reconciliation by the French.
21.
George Cabot defended John Marshall, a Federalist opponent of the Acts, to the shock of George Cabot's friend Fisher Ames.
22.
George Cabot played no part in Hamilton's plot to elect Aaron Burr over Thomas Jefferson in the 1801 contingent election, though he still passively opposed Jefferson's administration.
23.
George Cabot tended to his Brookline farm for a time, but grew tired of the work and leased his estate to a tenant.
24.
George Cabot remained President of the US Bank of Boston, and occasionally entertained friends who were in Boston on business.
25.
George Cabot opposed Jefferson's acquisition of the Louisiana Territory and his removals of Federalist appointees and judges, but resisted Timothy Pickering's calls for dissolution of the Union.
26.
In 1805, George Cabot made his only public pronouncement during the Jefferson administration.
27.
George Cabot reluctantly led a committee of Boston merchants opposed to British policy of seizing American ships in commerce with France.
28.
George Cabot published and distributed a letter on behalf of Timothy Pickering, now representing Massachusetts in the Senate and the most prominent Federalist in public life.
29.
George Cabot feared that Pickering's approach could revitalize accusations the Federalists were a "British faction" and wrote to him urging caution.
30.
When Pickering persisted, George Cabot suppressed several anti-Jeffersonian diatribes from the Senator.
31.
George Cabot withdrew further after the death of his eldest son, Charles, in 1811.
32.
George Cabot opposed the War of 1812 from the outset as unjust and wicked and publicly determined to refrain from aiding its prosecution in any way.
33.
George Cabot was elected as a delegate to the Hartford Convention, organized in 1814 by Federalist politicians of New England who were unhappy with the conduct of the War of 1812, in particular the conscription of state militias into national service.
34.
On his journey to Hartford, George Cabot was joined by Dr James Jackson.
35.
George Cabot chaired the secretive meeting and later certified the official proceedings and platform of the convention, which called for constitutional reforms but stopped short of calling for secession.
36.
George Cabot made no further public appearances and no longer maintained his correspondence with public figures, save a brief discussion with Pickering weighing the merits of free trade.
37.
George Cabot remained president of the Boston Marine Insurance Company, which kept him in touch with his merchant colleagues.
38.
George Cabot was an active member of Boston society and devoted much of his time to his wife, daughter Elizabeth, and son Henry who lived nearby with his family.
39.
George Cabot steadfastly refused to have his portrait painted during his lifetime; most depictions of him are posthumous.
40.
George Cabot was raised as a member of the Congregational Church of New England but later in life became a Unitarian.
41.
George Cabot was averse to public speaking but considered an excellent conversationalist in private.
42.
Historian George Bancroft credited Cabot with encouraging him to study abroad at the University of Gottingen, where he was among the first Americans awarded a Ph.
43.
George Cabot was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1788.
44.
In 1795, Cabot was briefly the guardian of Georges Washington de La Fayette, son of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fled France to live in the United States in exile.
45.
In 1803, to permit his daughter Elizabeth to enter society, George Cabot sold his Brookline estate and moved to Boston, where he spent the rest of his life.
46.
In 1821, George Cabot suffered his first case of kidney stones and suffered from them for the remaining two years of his life.
47.
George Cabot died in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 18,1823, and was buried the Granary Burying Ground.
48.
George Cabot was later reinterred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.