Samuel Miles: Presidential elector
Samuel Miles is noted in many sources as the first “faithless” presidential elector. Although he had run as a Federalist, he voted for Thomas Jefferson instead of John Adams. A famous angry letter to the editor, written in the American Gazette in 1796, records one outraged Federalist voter’s sentiments:
Do I chuse Samuel Miles to determine for me whether John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall be President? No! I chuse him to act, not to think!
A little more background is warranted. Samuel Miles was an officer in the Revolutionary War who had previously fought in the French and Indian Wars. After the Revolutionary War, he lived in Philadelphia; he was appointed a Court of Appeals judge in 1783 and elected to the city’s Council of Censors in 1787.
Following his election to the Council of Censors, he was charged (almost certainly falsely) with fraud and perjury by John Nicholson, then Controller-General of Pennsylvania. The courts settled decisively in favor of Miles, who then went on to say that Nicholson had made the accusation in order to cover up his own misdeeds.
Miles threatened to resign from office if Nicholson wasn’t removed; when the Assembly tabled the motion and didn’t continue working on it the next day, Miles followed through and resigned immediately.