George M. Dallas

George M. Dallas

George Mifflin Dallas (born July 10, 1792 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , †  December 31, 1864 ibid) was an American politician ( Democratic Party ) and from 1845 to 1849 Vice President of the United States under President James K. Polk .

Life

George M. Dallas, who came from an old Scottish family, studied law at Princeton University , where he graduated in 1810. From 1813 he worked as the private secretary of the finance minister Albert Gallatin . In 1814 he went to New York , where he worked as a lawyer. Between 1815 and 1817 he was employed as a solicitor at the Bank of the United States .

Dallas returned to Philadelphia in 1817 and was appointed Deputy Attorney General on the state government; he also campaigned for the election of Andrew Jackson as US President. From October 21, 1828 to April 15, 1829 he held the office of mayor of Philadelphia; subsequently he acted in the successor of Charles Jared Ingersoll until 1831 as a federal attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. After the resignation of US Senator Isaac D. Barnard , he won the by-election for his mandate and was a member of Congress from December 13, 1831 to March 4, 1833 ; he decided not to run again. In his home state he was then Attorney General until 1835 . During the years 1836 to 1839 he served as the United States Ambassador to Russia , where he succeeded John Randolph Clay .

In the 1844 election , Dallas was elected Vice President of the United States alongside James K. Polk . He held this office from March 4, 1845 to March 4, 1849. For the presidential election in 1848 aimed Polk and Dallas no reelection. After the defeat of the Democrats in this election, he stayed away for a while from politics and was working as a lawyer again until it President Franklin Pierce in 1856, succeeding James Buchanan for United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom appointed, where he tried to improve relations between the two states. On May 16, 1861 he returned to America and spoke out in the Civil War for the preservation of the Union. He died shortly before the end of the war on December 31, 1864 in his hometown of Philadelphia.

The city of Dallas , Texas, and other places, including four counties , in the United States were named after him. George M. Dallas was the uncle of the famous physicist Alexander Dallas Bache , the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin . His father, Alexander J. Dallas , had been Treasury Secretary under President James Madison ; who in turn was the great-great-great-uncle of Claiborne Pell , US Senator for Rhode Island .

literature

• Jules Witcover: The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D. C. 2014, ISBN 978-1-5883-4471-7 , pp. 104-113 (= 11. George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania ).
• John M. Belohlavek: George Mifflin Dallas. Jacksonian Patrician. Penn State University, University Park 1977, ISBN 0-271-00510-6 (English)

Web links

Commons : George M. Dallas  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

• George M. Dallas in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• George M. Dallas in the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (English)

• George M. Dallas in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Remarks

1. ↑ Charles Curry Aiken, Joseph Nathan Kane: The American Counties: Origins of County Names, Dates of Creation, Area, and Population Data, 1950-2010 . 6th edition. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-8762-6 , p. 78 .