Louis McLane (May 28, 1786 – October 7, 1857) was an American lawyer and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware, and Baltimore, Maryland.

McLane's father, was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, appointed by George Washington in 1797 to the lucrative federal position of Customs collector for the Port of Wilmington.

As a well-known and fervently loyal Federalist, he received the strong backing of James A. Bayard, enabling him to keep his appointment despite the election of a political opponent, Thomas Jefferson.

[2] Louis McLane attended private schools and served as a midshipman on the USS Philadelphia for one year before he turned 18.

Never tainted by the secessionist activities of the New England Federalists and adaptive enough to institute modern electioneering practices, they held the loyalty of the majority Anglican/Methodist downstate population against the seemingly more radical Presbyterians and Irish immigrants in New Castle County.

They remained the dominant political force in the state well into the 1820s, when the party finally disappeared, split between an allegiances to Andrew Jackson or to John Quincy Adams and the "American system" of Henry Clay and the Whigs.

During these sessions the Federalist Party was so small and weak that partisan divisions mattered much less than the personal relationships that developed among the members.

McLane quickly became a friend and admirer of William H. Crawford and Martin Van Buren, and at the same time became an opponent of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams.

These friendships were based more on personality than policy agreement, and were so important that McLane was one of Crawford's strongest proponents in the presidential election of 1824.

McLane moved to the U.S. Senate and served there from March 4, 1827, until his resignation in 1829, in expectation that President Jackson would appoint him to a federal office.

In October 1829, McLane reluctantly accepted an appointment as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom, which had been arranged by his friend Martin Van Buren, now U.S. Secretary of State.

Acclaimed for its Hamiltonian creativity, McLane had taken the initiative on the administration's agenda, and was acting very much in the role of a Prime Minister.

By shuffling his cabinet, Jackson hoped to keep the talented McLane in his service by removing from him the obligation to implement his planned permanent destruction of the Second Bank of the United States.

Jackson was impatient to resolve the issue and worked with McLane to develop a hard line policy, confronting the French.

McLane was furious with his old mentor for this intervention, and resigned his position, recognizing his apparent lack of authority in a direct area of responsibility.

Although he had some inherited wealth from his father, with 13 children McLane always needed to provide additional earned income in his own right.

In 1837 the western tracks went only as far as Harpers Ferry, Virginia and McLane's great accomplishment was seeing to the extension of the "main line" as far as Cumberland, Maryland.

The profits were not substantial, however, and McLane was consumed with financing rearrangements and negotiations with Pennsylvania and Virginia over possible routes west.

While he dreamed of something much greater, McLane took a leave of absence from the railroad in 1845 and 1846 to return to England as Minister Plenipotentiary, primarily for the purpose of coordinating negotiations over the Oregon boundary.

The basis of the settlement was easily established, but the hard line public position of Polk was shaken only by outbreak of the Mexican–American War.

McLane succeeded in keeping the British agreeable to the eventual settlement until the administration came to the same conclusion, even if he risked suggesting the president was posturing when he insisted on "54-40 or Fight."

The son of a Scots-Irish adventurer and politician from Delaware, McLane had married into the Eastern shore gentry of Maryland and ever longed for the idyllic plantation life seemingly promised.

Acquiring Milligan Hall from his wife's family gave him a beautiful seat on the Bohemia River that became his favorite home.

Further, with his adherence to the party of Andrew Jackson and resignation from the United States Senate in 1829, McLane effectively admitted his political career in Delaware was over.