Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/79

Rh on 13 June, 1810, commander on 5 March, 1817, and captain on 24 April. 1828. He served under Rodgers on board the " President " in 1812, and afterward under Chauncey on Lake Ontario, and was with Porter in his cruise for the extermina- tion of pirates in the West Indies. — Another son, George Mifflin, statesman, b. in Philadelphia, Pa., 10 July, 1792; d. there. 31 Dec, 1864, was graduated with first-class honors at Princeton in 1810, and then studied law in his father's olfice, being admitted to the bar in 1813. The same year he received the appointment of private secretary to Albert Gallatin, and accompanied that gentleman on his mission to Russia, to negotiate a treaty of peace with England. On his return to this coun- try, in the following year, he assisted his father for some months in his duties as secretary of the treasury, and then began the practice of law in New York city, and was solicitor of the U. S. bank. In 1817 he was appointed deputy attorney-general for Philadelphia county. Taking an active part in politics, and supporting the candidacy of Gen. Jackson for the presidency in 1824 and 1828, Mr. Dallas was in 1829 elected mayor, and, on the elevation of Gen. Jackson to the presidency, in 1829 was appointed U. S. attorney for that district. He retained this office till 1831, when he was elected to the U. S. senate in the place of Isaac D. Barnard, who had resigned. He took a prominent part in the debates of that body until the expiration of his term, in 1833, when he declined a re-election, re- turned to the prac- tice of the law, and filled the office of attorney-general of Pennsylvania from 1833 till 1835. In 1837PresidentVan Buren appointed him minister to Russia, which post he retained till Oc- tober, 1839, when he was recalled, at his own request, and again resumed legal prac- tice. George M. Dallas and James Buchanan were for many years rival leaders of the democratic party in Pennsylvania, and aspirants for the presi- dency of the United States. In May, 1844, the democratic convention at Baltimore nominated him for vice-president of the United States on the ticket with James K. Polk for president. The democratic candidates were elected by an electoral vote of 170 out of 275. The questions of the time were the tarifE and the annexation of Texas. Mr. Polk's election caused the admission of Texas to the Union just before the close of Mr. Tyler's term of office, but the subject of the tariff was left for the new administration. The appointment of his rival, Buchanan, as secretary of state, left Mr. Dallas without influence on the policy of the ad- ministration ; but the tie in the senate on the free- trade tariff of 1846, and its adoption by his casting vote, gave him prominence. A bill that levied duties on imports for the purpose of revenue only, abandoning the protective policy, was passed by the house of representatives in 1846, but when it reached the senate that body was evenly divided, so that the decision rested with the vice-president.

In giving his vote i\Ir. Dallas said that, though the bill was defective, he believed that proof had been furnished that a majority of the people desired a change, to a great extent, in principle, if not fundamentally ; but in giving the casting vote for a low tariff he violated pledges made to the pro- tectionists of Pennsylvania that had secured the vote of the state for his party in the presidential election. His term expired in 1849. In 1856 Mr. Dallas succeeded Mr. Buchanan as minister to Great Britain, and continued in that post from 4 Feb., 1856, until the appointment by President Lincoln of Charles F. Adams, who relieved him on 16 May, 1861. At the very beginning of his diplomatic service in England he was called to act upon the Central American question, and the request made by the LTnited States to the British government that Sir John Crampton, the British minister to the United States, should be re- called. Both these delicate questions were man- aged by Mr. Dallas in a conciliatory spirit, but without any sacrifice of national dignity, and both were settled amicably. At the close of his diplo- matic career Mr. Dallas returned to private life and took no further part in public affairs except to express condemnation of secession. Many of his speeches were published, among them " An Essay on the Expediency of erecting any Monument to Washington except that involved in the Preserva- tion of the Union" (1811); "A Vindication of President Monroe for authorizing Gen. Jackson to pursue the Hostile Indians into Florida" (1819); " Speech in the Senate on Nullification and the Tariff" (1831); "Eulogy on Andrew Jackson" (1845) ; " Speech on giving his Casting Vote on the Tariff of 1846" (1846); "Vindication of the Vice- President's Casting Vote in a Series of Letters" (1846) ; " Speech to the Citizens of Pittsburg on the War, Slavery, and the Tariff " (1847) ; " Speech to the Citizens of Philadelphia on the Necessity of maintaining the Union, the Constitution, and the Compromise" (1850). A "Series of Letters from London," written while he was minister there, in 1856-'60, was edited and published by his daugh- ter Julia (Philadelphia, 1869).— The third son of Alexander James was a lawyer and judge in Pitts- burg, Pa.— The son of George M., Pliilij) Nicklin, b. in 1825 ; d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 8 March, 1866, was a lawyer practising in Philadelphia, and, while his father held the English mission, was secretary of legation in London.— Robert Cliarles, author, a brother of Alexander James, b. in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1754; d. in Normandy, France, in 1824, was educated under Mr. Elphinston, studied law in the Temple, returned to Jamaica at the age of twenty-one, married in England three years later, and returned to Jamaica to fill a lucrative post, but gave it up on account of his wife's health, and resided in France until the French revolution. He then came to the United States, but was not pleased with the country, and consequently re- turned to England, where he followed a literary career. He was a friend and counsellor of Lord Byron, the poet, whose uncle, Capt. Byron, mar- ried his sister. Among his publications were "Poems," "Lucrecia, a Tragedy, and Moral Es- says " (London, 1797) ; " Aubrey," a novel (1804) ; " Memoirs of Marie Antoinette," from the French of Joseph Weber (1805) ; and many more transla- tions and original tracts in defence of royalty in France, and in condemnation of the Revolution ; " The Moiiands, Tales illustrative of the Simple and the Surprising" (1805). In the year of his death he published " Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron from 1808 to the End of 1814."— His