Dallas

Dallas, GEORGE MIFFLIN, an American diplomatist and statesman, was born in Philadelphia, July 10, 1792. His father, A. J. Dallas (1759-1817), was a distinguished lawyer of West Indian birth and Scottish descent, who filled with credit the positions of secretary of the treasury and acting-secretary of war under President Madison. The younger Dallas graduated at Princeton College in 1810. In 1813 he was admitted to the bar, and soon after entered the diplomatic service. In 1831 he was sent to the United States senate by the Pennsylvania legislature. He was United States minister to Russia from 1837 to 1839, and in 1844 was elected vice-president of the United States. In 1846 his casting-vote as president of the senate repealed the protective tariff of 1842, though he had previously been considered a Protectionist. His course on this question aroused much indignation in Pennsylvania. He was sent to Great Britain as United States minister at St James's from 1856 to 1861. He died at Philadelphia, December 31, 1864. His principal published writings were posthumous; they include a very readable and entertaining Series of Letters from London (1869), and a Life of A. J. Dallas (1871). His life was marked by assiduous devotion to official duties, which left him little leisure to look after his own private interests, and he lived and died a poor man.