George M. Dallas

George Dallas was born on Tuesday, 10 July 1792, to Alexander James Dallas and Arabella Maria Smith Dallas (born in Devon, England) in Philadelphia.[2] His father, born in Kingston, Jamaica, to Dr. Robert Dallas and educated in Edinburgh, was the Secretary of the Treasury under United States President James Madison, and was also briefly the Secretary of War.[2] Dr Dallas left Jamaica in 1764, having mortgaged his estate, Dallas Castle, and put it in a trust. This property included 900 acres and 91 slaves.[3][4] George Dallas was given his middle name after Thomas Mifflin, another politician who was good friends with his father.[5]

Dallas was the second of six children,[2] another of whom, Alexander, would become the commander of Pensacola Navy Yard. During Dallas's childhood, the family lived in a mansion on Fourth Street, with a second home in the countryside, situated on the Schuylkill River. He was educated privately at Quaker-run preparatory schools, before studying at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), from which he graduated with highest honors in 1810.[5] While at College, he participated in several activities, including the American Whig–Cliosophic Society.[6] Afterwards, he studied law in his father's office, and he was admitted to the bar in 1813.[2]

Portrait by Thomas Sully, 1810

As a new graduate, Dallas had little enthusiasm for legal practice; he wanted to fight in the War of 1812, a plan that he dropped due to his father's objection.[2] Just after this, Dallas accepted an offer to be the private secretary of Albert Gallatin, and he went to Russia with Gallatin who was sent there to try to secure its aid in peace negotiations between Great Britain and the United States.[2] Dallas enjoyed the opportunities offered to him by being in Russia, but after six months there he was ordered to go to London to determine whether the War of 1812 could be resolved diplomatically.[2] In August 1814, he arrived in Washington, D.C., and delivered a preliminary draft of Britain's peace terms.[2] There, he was appointed by James Madison to become the remitter of the treasury, which is considered a "convenient arrangement" because Dallas's father was serving at the time as that department's secretary.[2] Since the job did not entail a large workload, Dallas found time to develop his grasp of politics, his major vocational interest.[2] He later became the counsel to the Second Bank of the United States.[2] In 1817, Dallas's father died, ending Dallas's plan for a family law practice, and he stopped working for the Second Bank of the United States and became the deputy attorney general of Philadelphia, a position he held until 1820.[2]

After the War of 1812 ended, Pennsylvania's political climate was chaotic, with two factions in that state's Democratic party vying for control.[2] One, the Philadelphia-based "Family party", was led by Dallas, and it espoused the beliefs that the Constitution of the United States was supreme, that an energetic national government should exist that would implement protective tariffs, a powerful central banking system, and undertake internal improvements to the country in order to facilitate national commerce.[2] The other faction was called the "Amalgamators", headed by the future President James Buchanan.[2]

Voters elected Dallas mayor of Philadelphia as the candidate of the Family party, after the party had gained control of the city councils.[2] However, he quickly grew bored of that post, and became the United States attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania in 1829, a position his father had held from 1801 to 1814, and continued in that role until 1831.[2] In December of that year, he won a five-man, eleven-ballot contest in the state legislature, that enabled him to become the Senator from Pennsylvania in order to complete the unexpired term[2] of the previous senator who had resigned.[7]

Dallas served less than fifteen months—from 13 December 1831 to 3 March 1833. He was chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs. Dallas declined to seek re-election, in part due to a fight over the Second Bank of the United States, and in part because his wife did not want to leave Philadelphia for Washington.[8]

Polk/Dallas campaign poster

Dallas resumed the practice of law, was attorney general of Pennsylvania from 1833 to 1835, was initiated to the Scottish Rite Freemasonry at the Franklin Lodge #134, Pennsylvania,[9][10] and served as the Grand Master of Freemasons in Pennsylvania in 1835.[11] He was appointed by President Martin Van Buren as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia from 1837 to 1839, when he was recalled at his own request. Dallas was offered the role of Attorney General, but declined, and resumed his legal practice.[8] In the lead-up to the 1844 presidential election, Dallas worked to help Van Buren win the Democratic nomination over Dallas's fellow Pennsylvanian, James Buchanan.[8]

At the May 1844 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, James K. Polk and Silas Wright were nominated as the Democratic ticket. However, Wright declined the nomination, and the delegates chose Dallas as his replacement. Dallas, who was not at the convention, was awakened at his home by convention delegates who had traveled to Philadelphia to tell him the news. Dallas somewhat reluctantly accepted the nomination. The Democratic candidates won the popular vote by a margin of 1.5%, and won the election with an electoral vote of 170 out of 275.[8]

In 1856, Franklin Pierce appointed Dallas minister to Great Britain, and he served in that post from February 4, 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 United States to the British government that Sir John Crampton, the British minister to the United States, should be recalled. Dallas managed these delicate questions in a conciliatory spirit, but without any sacrifice of national dignity, and both were settled amicably. At the close of his diplomatic career Dallas returned to private life and took no further part in public affairs except to express condemnation of secession.[8]

Dallas's gravestone, churchyard of St. Peter's Episcopal Church (Philadelphia)

Dallas County, Iowa[13] and one of its cities, Dallas Center, Iowa,[14] were named after the Vice President. In addition, Dallas County, Arkansas, Dallas County, Missouri,[15] and Dallas County, Texas[16] were named in his honor.

Other U.S. cities and towns named in Dallas's honor include Dallas, Georgia (the county seat of Paulding County, Georgia),[17] Dallas, North Carolina (the former county seat of Gaston County, North Carolina),[18] Dallas, Oregon (the county seat of Polk County, Oregon)[19] and Dallastown, Pennsylvania[20] It is debated whether the city of Dallas, Texas, is named after the Vice President—see History of Dallas, Texas (1839–1855) for more information.

• Ambacher, Bruce (1975). "George M. Dallas and the Bank War". Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 42 (2): 116–135. JSTOR 27772269.
• Ambacher, Bruce (1973). "George M. Dallas, Cuba, and the Election of 1856". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 97 (3): 318–332. JSTOR 20090763.
• Ambacher, Bruce Irwin (1971). George M. Dallas: Leader of the "Family" Party. Temple University.
• Belohlavek, John M. (1972). "Dallas, the Democracy, and the Bank War of 1832". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 96 (3): 377–390. JSTOR 20090654.
• Belohlavek, John M. (1974). "The Democracy in a Dilemma: George M. Dallas, Pennsylvania, and the Election of 1844". Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. 41 (4): 390–411. JSTOR 27772234.
• Belohlavek, John (2010). "George Mifflin Dallas". In L.Edward Purcell (ed.). Vice Presidents: A Biographical Dictionary. Infobase Publishing. pp. 108–118. ISBN 9781438130712.
• "George Mifflin Dallas." Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928–1936.
• Hatfield, Mark O. George Mifflin Dallas. Vice-Presidents of the United States, 1789–1983. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1979.
• "George Mifflin Dallas, 11th Vice President (1845–1849)". United States Senate. Retrieved 2009-02-03.

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about George M. Dallas.

• "George Mifflin Dallas". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• George Mifflin Dallas at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• A Series of Letters Written from London by George M. Dallas
• Manuscript Diaries of George M. Dallas at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
• "Barnard, Isaac Dutton, (1791–1834)". United States Congress.