Ethan Allen Brown (1776–1852), attorney and public official, was born in Darien, Connecticut, and received a private classical education. He became a law clerk in Alexander Hamilton’s New York City office in 1797 and two years later was Hamilton’s assistant secretary during the latter’s tenure as United States inspector general. In 1801 Brown was admitted to practice law in the New York City Mayor’s Court. He purchased land in what became Rising Sun, Indiana, and established a law office in Cincinnati in 1804. Brown served as a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, 1810–18, and was elected to two consecutive terms as governor of Ohio beginning in the latter year. He resigned in 1822 to fill a vacant seat in the United States Senate. Brown chaired the Committee on Roads and Canals and strongly supported internal improvements. Immediately after his senate term ended in 1825, he spent five years as an Ohio canal commissioner. In 1830 President Andrew Jackson appointed Brown chargé d’affaires to Brazil. After he resigned this post in 1834, he was commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington, D.C., 1835–36. Brown thereafter moved to his Indiana farm. He represented Dearborn County for one term in the Indiana House of Representatives, 1841–43. Brown died in Indianapolis while serving as vice president of a Democratic state political convention (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; OHi: Brown Papers; Harold C. Syrett and others, eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton [1961–87], 23:11–2n, 24:302; New York Commercial Advertiser, 22 May 1801; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 4:107, 109, 427, 498, 500, 579 [25, 26 May 1830, 24 June 1834, 28, 29 Dec. 1835, 15 Dec. 1836]; Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Indiana [1841], 288; [1842], 3; Indianapolis Indiana State Sentinel, 26 Feb. 1852; gravestone inscription in Union Cemetery, Rising Sun).

The accompanying report, not found, was probably the Report of the Joint Committee of Both Houses of the General Assembly, on the Communication of the Auditor of State Upon the subject of the proceedings of the Bank of the United States, against the Officers of State, in the United States Circuit Court (Columbus, Ohio, 1820). Ohio began its controversy with the Second Bank of the United States in 1819, when state officials collected taxes from the bank’s Chillicothe branch. The United States Supreme Court eventually ruled this action unlawful in its 1824 decision of Osborn v. Bank of the United States (Marshall, Papers description begins Herbert A. Johnson, Charles T. Cullen, Charles F. Hobson, and others, eds., The Papers of John Marshall, 1974–2006, 12 vols. description ends , 10:36–82; Patricia L. Franz, “Ohio v. The Bank: An Historical Examination of Osborn v. The Bank of the United States,” Journal of Supreme Court History 24 [1999]: 112–37).

Two days previously Brown sent James Madison a similar letter and enclosure (Madison, Papers, Retirement Ser., 2:237).