Outerbridge Horsey

Outerbridge Horsey III (March 5, 1777 – June 9, 1842) was an American lawyer and politician who emerged as one of Delaware’s leading Federalists in the early national period. A member of the Federalist Party, he served in the Delaware General Assembly, was the 4th Attorney General of Delaware from 1806 to 1810, and represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1810 to 1821. His congressional service spanned the era of the War of 1812 and the contentious debates over internal improvements and the extension of slavery, during which he played a visible role in shaping policy and representing the interests of his constituents.

Horsey was born in Stepney Parish, Somerset County, Maryland, on March 5, 1777. He was the son of William Horsey of Rewastico (1745–1786), a planter and merchant who served as a member for Somerset County in the Ninth Maryland Convention of 1776, which framed Maryland’s first state constitution, and who also sat as a justice of Somerset County, and Eleanor (“Nellie”) Wailes, daughter of George Wailes. Growing up in a family engaged in both agriculture and public affairs, Horsey was exposed early to the political and legal culture of the new republic. After spending part of his youth in Georgetown, Delaware, he moved to Wilmington, where he read law under James A. Bayard, a prominent Federalist leader who became his lifelong political mentor. A frequent supporter of education, Horsey early in his career urged the establishment of a library in Georgetown and was later appointed a trustee of the College of Wilmington, reflecting his interest in civic and intellectual development.

Horsey’s legal training under Bayard led to his admission to the Delaware bar in December 1807, after which he began a law practice in Wilmington. Even before his formal admission to the bar, he had entered public life. One source believes he served as a delegate in Delaware’s legislature in 1800–1802, although this may refer to his father if they shared the same name. What is firmly established is that, while practicing law, he represented Sussex County in the Delaware State House of Representatives from the 1801 session through the 1803 session. Elections in Delaware were held on the first Tuesday of October, and members of the State House took office on the first Tuesday of January for one-year terms. In this framework, Horsey quickly gained a reputation as an articulate Federalist legislator. In 1806 he was appointed the 4th Attorney General of Delaware, a position he held until 1810, further consolidating his standing in state politics and law.

In his personal life, Horsey married Elizabeth Digges Lee, daughter of former Maryland governor Thomas Sim Lee (1745–1819). Through this marriage he became connected to one of Maryland’s leading Catholic and political families. The couple had at least two sons who survived to adulthood: Thomas Sim Lee Horsey (1816–1834), who died unmarried, and Outerbridge Horsey IV (1819–1902), an attorney who at an early age chose to devote himself to the manufacture of whiskey and established a distillery at the Needwood estate, which he inherited from his father. Of Outerbridge IV’s four sons who survived to adulthood, only one married and had children, Outerbridge Horsey V (1875–1931), who left the family estate to study at Georgetown and later at New York Law School. He settled in New York City and established a respectable legal practice, becoming a member of the firm Nicoll, Anable, Fuller & Sullivan until its dissolution in 1924, and thereafter a member of the firm Jackson, Fuller, Nash & Brophy until his death in 1931. Outerbridge Horsey III’s great-grandson, also named Outerbridge Horsey (1910–1983), became a career U.S. diplomat and lived in the District of Columbia, a tradition continued by his son of the same name.

Horsey’s ownership of enslaved people formed a significant and evolving aspect of his life. Over the course of his lifetime he owned more than thirty-six slaves. As he grew older, he freed some of them, and his actions have attracted scholarly attention as an example of gradual manumission in the early nineteenth century. Seven months after his marriage, on November 11, 1812, he manumitted fourteen enslaved people, including four whom his wife, Elizabeth Lee Horsey, had purchased from her father in 1806. This pattern of slaveholding and selective manumission has been examined in detail by historians as part of the broader context of slavery, law, and politics in the Mid-Atlantic states.

Horsey entered national politics when the Delaware General Assembly, which chose U.S. senators under the constitutional practice of the time, elected him to the United States Senate in 1810 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Samuel White. U.S. senators took office on March 4 for six-year terms, and in this case Horsey initially completed White’s unexpired term. He was formally seated on January 12, 1810, and was reelected in 1814, serving continuously until March 3, 1821. As a member of the Federalist Party representing Delaware, Horsey contributed to the legislative process during two terms in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a formative period in American history. In the Senate he initially opposed the War of 1812, reflecting Federalist skepticism about the conflict, but once war was declared he supported it vigorously. He became a member of the Committee of Safety and was actively involved in preparing the defenses of Fort Union and Wilmington, demonstrating a strong commitment to national defense despite partisan differences over the war’s origins.

During and after the War of 1812, Horsey also engaged with major questions of economic development and federal power. In March 1814 he presented a petition from the citizens of Delaware seeking repeal of the Embargo Act of 1807; although he succeeded in having a committee appointed to consider the question, the effort ultimately failed. Following the war, as the need for internal improvements became more widely recognized, Horsey played a role in reviving earlier plans for a national system of transportation. On his motion in January 1816, the Senate finally passed a resolution to print and distribute copies of Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin’s 1808 “Report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals.” That report, originally requested by the Senate in 1807 and transmitted in 1808, had been sidelined by the embargo, revenue losses, and wartime exigencies. Its renewed circulation helped shape the debate over internal improvements and contributed to the ideas later embodied in the Bonus Bill of 1817. During the 16th Congress, Horsey served as chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, giving him influence over legislation affecting the federal capital.

Horsey’s stance on slavery extension ultimately placed him at odds with many of his constituents and with the Delaware General Assembly. Several years after the War of 1812, the General Assembly adopted a resolution instructing Delaware’s congressmen to vote against any extension of slavery. Horsey, however, did not believe that Congress had the constitutional authority to prohibit slavery in Missouri or elsewhere in the Louisiana Purchase territory. He therefore supported the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state while restricting slavery north of a designated latitude in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase. Aware of the unpopularity of his position in Delaware, he chose not to seek reelection when his Senate term ended in 1821, effectively concluding his national legislative career.

In later life, Horsey divided his time between Delaware and Maryland, managing family and landed interests. Upon the death of his father-in-law, Thomas Sim Lee, his wife inherited several hundred acres of the 945-acre Needwood tract near Petersville and Burkittsville in Frederick County, Maryland. There, Horsey built an attractive but modest two-story brick Federal-style dwelling known as “Horsey Needwood,” where he spent his declining years. He also owned the Zachariah Ferris House in Wilmington, which was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The main house at Needwood Farms, operated by his brother-in-law Thomas S. Lee, who sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War, still stands and is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, although the Horsey Distillery established by his son did not survive the conflict. His son Outerbridge Horsey IV, a Democrat, represented Frederick County at the 1867 Maryland state constitutional convention and added a more grand Victorian-style addition to the Needwood house during his prosperous years.

Outerbridge Horsey III died at Horsey Needwood in Frederick County, Maryland, on June 9, 1842. He was buried in St. John’s Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. His life and career, spanning state and national service, legal practice, slaveholding and manumission, and engagement with issues of war, internal improvements, and slavery expansion, have continued to draw the interest of historians and are documented in a variety of state and national historical collections, including the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, the Delaware Historical Society, and the University of Delaware Library.