George Thatcher (sometimes spelled Thacher; April 12, 1754 – April 6, 1824) was an American lawyer, jurist, and statesman from the Maine district of Massachusetts. He was a delegate for Massachusetts to the Continental Congress in 1787 and 1788. He was an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1801 to 1824.
In 1788 North Carolina passed a law allowing the capture and sale of any former slave who had been freed without court approval. Many freed African Americans fled the state to avoid being captured and sold back into slavery. Rev Absalom Jones drafted a petition on behalf of four freed slaves, the first group of African Americans to petition the U.S. Congress. The petition related to the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, which Thatcher was one of seven representatives to vote against,[3] and asked Congress to adopt “some remedy for an evil of such magnitude.”[4]
The petition was presented on January 30, 1797, by U.S. RepresentativeJohn Swanwick of Pennsylvania.[5] Although Representative Thatcher argued that the petition should be accepted and referred to the Committee on the Fugitive Law, the House of Representatives declined to accept the petition by a vote of was 50 to 33.[4] In March 1798 Rep. Thatcher renewed debate on the issue of the "rights of man".[6]
Later career
Thatcher accepted an appointment to a Massachusetts state court in 1792 and served until 1800 when he was appointed to the state's Supreme Judicial Court. During the organization of Maine's statehood in 1819, he was a member of the convention that created the new state's constitution. When statehood was achieved in 1820, he moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts. He resigned from the court in January 1824, and retired to Biddeford, Maine.[7]
Thatcher, an ardent Unitarian, helped to sponsor the creation of Bowdoin College so that Maine would have its own institution of higher education. For the college's first dozen years, he served as a regent.
Thatcher was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814,[8] and served on its board of councilors from 1815 to 1819.[9]
Thatcher died at his home, and is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery at Biddeford.[1]
^White, Deborah Gray (2013). Freedom On My Mind: A History of African Americans. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's.
^Hammond, John Craig. “‘That Species of Property Already Exists’: Natchez, Mississippi, 1795–1800.” Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early American West, University of Virginia Press, 2007, pp. 13–29. JSTOR website Retrieved 12 June 2023.
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