US Senator. He represented Rhode Island in the US Senate from 1817 until his death in office. A 1788 graduate of what is now Brown University, he was admitted to the bar in 1791 and set up law practice in Providence. He was Attorney General of Rhode Island from 1797 to 1814, served four terms in the State House of Representatives (1813 to 1816, the last three as Speaker), and was appointed Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court in 1816. He resigned from the latter upon election to the US Senate. During his time on Capitol Hill he was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. An early abolitionist, Burrill objected to slavery on religious and moral rather than political grounds, citing the Biblical fate of Babylon as a warning against its continued practice. In a powerful 1819 oration he urged that the Missouri Territory be brought into the Union as a free state, but the proposed bill was defeated in the Senate. He died of tuberculosis the following year and did not witness the results of the Missouri Compromise (1820), in which the balance of national power was temporarily maintained by the admission of Maine as a free state in exchange for Missouri's admission as pro-slavery. Burrill was the great-grandfather of US Senator and Rhode Island Governor Theodore Francis Green.
US Senator. He represented Rhode Island in the US Senate from 1817 until his death in office. A 1788 graduate of what is now Brown University, he was admitted to the bar in 1791 and set up law practice in Providence. He was Attorney General of Rhode Island from 1797 to 1814, served four terms in the State House of Representatives (1813 to 1816, the last three as Speaker), and was appointed Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court in 1816. He resigned from the latter upon election to the US Senate. During his time on Capitol Hill he was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. An early abolitionist, Burrill objected to slavery on religious and moral rather than political grounds, citing the Biblical fate of Babylon as a warning against its continued practice. In a powerful 1819 oration he urged that the Missouri Territory be brought into the Union as a free state, but the proposed bill was defeated in the Senate. He died of tuberculosis the following year and did not witness the results of the Missouri Compromise (1820), in which the balance of national power was temporarily maintained by the admission of Maine as a free state in exchange for Missouri's admission as pro-slavery. Burrill was the great-grandfather of US Senator and Rhode Island Governor Theodore Francis Green.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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