rare social gifts. In the fall of 1825, he was elected to Congress, where he remained the next fourteen years, during five sessions occupying the responsible and honorable position of Speaker of the House, the duties of which he performed with a dignity and dispassionateness which won for him the warmest encomiums from all parties. In 1839, he was chosen Governor of Tennessee. Again a candidate in 1841, and also in 1843, he was both times defeated,-a result due to one of those periodical revolutions in politics which seem inseparable from republican forms of government, rather than to Mr. Polk's lack of personal popularity.

As the avowed friend of the annexation of Texas, Mr. Polk, in 1844, was nominated by the Democrats for the Presidency. Though he had for his opponent no less a person than the great and popular orator and statesman, Henry Clay, he received one hundred and seventy out of two hundred and seventy-five votes in the electoral college. He was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1845. Three days previously, his predecessor, John Tyler, had signed the joint resolutions of Congress favoring the annexation of Texas to the United States. Consequently, at the very beginning of his Administration, Mr. Polk found the country involved in disputes with Mexico, which, on the formal annexation of Texas, in December, 1845, threatened to result in hostilities between

the two countries. General Zachary Taylor was sent with a small army to occupy the territory stretching from the Neuces to the Rio Grande, which latter stream Texas claimed as her western boundary. Mexico, on the other hand, declaring that Texas had never extended further west than the Neuces, dispatched a force to watch Taylor. A slight collision, in April, 1846, was followed, a few days later, by the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, in which General Taylor was victorious. When the tidings of these battles reached Washington, the President, on May 11th, sent a special message to Congress, declaring "that war existed by the act of Mexico," and asking for men and money to carry it on. Congress promptly voted ten million dollars, and authorized the President to call out fifty thousand volunteers. Hostilities were prosecuted vigorously. An American army, under General Scott, finally fought its way to the capture of the City of Mexico. On the 2d of February, 1848, the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo was signed, and ratified by the Senate on the 10th of March following, by which New Mexico and Upper California, comprising a territory of more than half a million square miles, were added to the United States. In return, the United States agreed to pay Mexico fifteen million of dollars, and to assume the debts due by Mexico to citizens of the United States, amounting to three and a half millions more.

Besides Texas, two other States were admitted into the Union during Mr. Polk's Administration. These were Iowa and Wisconsin-the former in 1846 and the latter in 1848.

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When the war with Mexico first broke out, negotiations were pending between England and the United States, in regard to Oregon, which we had long deemed a portion of our own territory. Fifty-four forty [54° 40′] or fight!" had been one of the Democratic battle-cries during the canvass which resulted in Mr. Polk's election, and he, in his inaugural, had maintained that our title to Oregon was unquestionable. England, however, still urged her claim to the whole country. After considerable negotiation, the President finally, as an amicable compromise, offered the boundary of the parallel of 49°, giving Vancouver's Island to Great Britain. His offer was accepted, and war perhaps avoided. Another important measure of Mr. Polk's Administration was a modification of the tariff, in 1846, by which its former protective features were much lessened.

On his nomination, in 1844, Mr. Polk had pledged himself to the one-term principle. Consequently he was not a candidate for re-election in 1848. Having witnessed the inauguration of his successor, General Taylor, he returned to his home near Nashville. "He was then," says Abbott, but fifty-four years of age. He had ever been strictly temperate in his habits, and his health was

good. With an ample fortune, a choice library, a cultivated mind, and domestic ties of the dearest nature, it seemed as though long years of tranquillity and happiness were before him." But it was not so to be. On his way home he felt premonitory symptoms of cholera, and when he reached there his system was much weakened. · Though at first able to work a little in superintending the fitting up of his grounds, he was soon compelled to take to his bed. He never rose from it again. Though finally the disease was checked, he had not strength left to bring on the necessary reaction. "He died without a struggle, simply ceasing to breathe, as when deep and quiet sleep falls upon a weary man," on the 15th of June, 1849, a little more than three months after his retirement from the Presidency. His remains lie in the spacious lawn of his former home, where his widow still lives (1884).

T

ZACHARY TAYLOR,

WELFTH President of the United States, was born in Orange County, Virginia, November 24th, 1784. His father, Colonel Richard Taylor, was a noted Revolutionary officer. His mother, as is usually the case with the mothers of men who have risen to distinction, was a woman of great force of character. Whilst he