the Constitution, which provided for the establishment of a uniform mode of electing representatives in Congress and electors of President and VicePresident throughout the United States, by the division of the several States into districts for those purposes. After much discussion, the proposition was laid on the table near the close of the session, not again to be revived. In the fifteenth Congress Mr. Tyler voted against the provision offered by Mr. Clay for a minister to the provinces of the Rio la Plata, holding that it would be a virtual acknowledgment by the United States of their independence. He also opposed all internal improvements by the General Government, and the recharter of the United States Bank, which he held to be unconstitutional. In the lengthy debate on the resolutions censuring General Jackson for his arbitrary course in the Seminole War, in the execution of the prisoners Arbuthnot and Ambrister, Mr. Tyler warmly participated, urging the adoption of the resolutions, but they were finally negatived. In the sixteenth Congress he opposed the prominent measures of a revision of the tariff for protection, and the Missouri Compromise, the latter upon the ground that it restricted the diffusion of slaves, which he held to be the surest means towards their ultimate emancipation. Mr. Tyler, by re-election, continued to serve in Congress until near the close of the term of 1821, when ill-health necessitated his resignation, and he retired to his farm, "Sherwood Forest," in Charles City County, possessing the respect of each of the great political parties. He did not long remain in private life. In 1823 he was again elected a member of the Virginia Legislature, and took the lead in all matters of public utility which occupied that body; many of the most beneficial of the internal improvements of the State being the result of his zealous and untiring labors. In 1825 he was elected by the Assembly Governor of Virginia, succeeding James Pleasants, December 1st. He was re-elected the following year by a unanimous vote, but being elected January 18, 1827, to succeed John Randolph in the United States Senate, he resigned the office of Governor on the 4th of March, and was succeeded by William Branch Giles. The claims of the soldiers of the Revolution had ever been warmly maintained by Mr. Tyler, and during his service in Congress he had strenuously resisted every effort to reduce the pittances which had been provided for them by the nation. In a communication to the General Assembly, whilst Governor, he insisted that the claims of the Revolutionary patriots of the Virginia State Line, which had with flagrant injustice, been discriminated against, should be pressed upon the attention of the General Government. He urges that: "The claims of our soldiers have ever been listened to with an attentive ear by the constituted authorities of this State, and would long since have been fulfilled to the very letter of promise but for the magnificent donation made by Virginia to the Federal Government of all her northern lands. It may be confidently asserted that in making that cession this Common

wealth never intended that the claims of any part of her hardy veterans should in any manner have remained unprovided for. The fact of the omis sion of all mention of her troops on State establishment in the compacts entered into by her with the Government of the United States must have been an omission resulting purely from accident. ***The fact is, that the Virginia troops on State establishment are as much entitled to the liberality of Congress as those who served on Continental establishment. Those of the State Line who were entitled to land bounty, enlisted for a period not less than three years, and were found fighting by the side of the Continental troops, from one extremity of the Confederacy to the other. Their services in the achievement of our independence equally entitle them to the nation's gratitude. Why, then, should not Congress interfere in their behalf? While we present to the National Government an occasion for the exercise of its liberality, we present also a claim sanctioned by every principle of justice; and we might reasonably indulge the anticipation that our application would be listened to with attention and crowned with success. Mr. Tyler also strenuously recommended to the Assembly the organization of a system for the general instruction of the masses of the people. The year 1826 was marked by an event which threw the whole American nation into mourning the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. That two of three only survivors of the signers of the Declaration of Independence should breathe their last upon the same day, and that day the anniversary of the promulgation of that grand instrument, was a coincidence the most remarkable. Mr. Jefferson died at "Monticello," just fifty years after the Declaration, at the very recurrent hour of the day, it is said, at which the immortal work of his hands was read in the Congress of the United States. On the receipt of the intelligence at Richmond, Governor Tyler was requested to deliver a commemorative address, and accordingly on the 11th instant, after scarce three days of preparation, pronounced at the Capitol square, in Richmond, a funeral oration, profoundly touching in its beauty and impressive eloquence. Mr. Tyler took his seat in the United States Senate in December, 1827. In that body he voted against the tariff bill of 1828, and was a firm supporter of General Jackson on his accession to the Presidency, but ever maintained an independence of action. He was frank in the avowal of his opinions, which were sometimes at variance with those of the President. Whilst thus efficiently representing Virginia in the Supreme Council of the nation, Mr. Tyler also rendered service in her important and illustriously composed Constitutional Convention of 1829-30. During the session of 1831-1832 he opposed the recharter of the United States Bank, maintaining, as on a previous occasion, that it was an unconstitutional measure. He also voted against the tariff bill of 1832; but in the course of a speech in the

Senate, he enunciated the principles of concession upon which, and at his instance, Mr. Clay, in 1833, predicated his famous compromise act. Mr. Tyler in a speech of much eloquence avowed his sympathy with the nullification movement in South Carolina, in 1832, and in consequence of the proclamation of President Jackson, withdrew his support from him. When the movement was made in the Virginia Assembly, in 1832, for the emancipation of slaves, William H. Brodnax, John Randolph "of Roanoke," John Marshall, Philip A. Bolling, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, James McDowell, and William H. Roane, being among its prominent supporters, Mr. Tyler, then a member of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, drew with his own hands, and inserted in the code prepared for the District, but which was not acted on, a bill providing for the abolition of slavery in the District, thus anticipating by eighteen years a similar provision inserted in the Compromise of 1850. In 1833 he was re-elected to the Senate for six years, and opposed the removal of the Government deposits from the United States Bank. His independent course separated him from the President's friends in Virginia, who subsequently supported Mr. Van Buren.

In 1836 the Legislature of Virginia instructed its Senators, Mr. Tyler and Benjamin Watkins Leigh, to vote for expunging from the journals of the Senate the resolution of Mr. Clay censuring the President for his assumption of unjustifiable authority in removing the bank deposits. As Mr. Tyler approved of the resolution, and believed the proposition to expunge to be in violation of the Constitution, he could not conscientiously obey instructions, and, true to his avowed principles, he resigned his seat February 10th, and was succeeded by William Cabell Rives. His colleague, Mr. Leigh, however, refused to obey the will of the Legislature, and held his seat; and though locally lauded and complimented, with Mr. Tyler, by the Whigs of Richmond (his residence), with a public dinner, yet his course, in the sequel, was proved to be an injudicious one, as weighed in the scale of his public interests, for, notwithstanding his pure character and great intellect, his error was irredeemable. He was henceforth barred from political preferment. In the spring of 1838 Mr. Tyler was elected by the Whigs of James City County to the Virginia Assembly, and in 1839 he was elected a member of the Whig Convention that met at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to nominate a candidate for President of the United States. He was chosen Vice-President of the Convention, and warmly supported Mr. Clay for the nomination. The choice of the Convention, however, was General William H. Harrison for President, with Mr. Tyler for VicePresident, and in 1840 they were both elected, and were inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1841; but the former dying April 4th, after an administration of only one month, Mr. Tyler, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, became President of the United States.

He retained the Cabinet appointed by his predecessor, and proceeded to check, so far as he could consistently with the previous commitments of Harrison, the removal of the supporters of Van Buren's administration. In the canvass of 1840 no decision had been made relative to a fiscal agent for the receipt and disbursement of the public moneys. The issue of a bank was repeatedly pressed as a desideratum by prominent Whigs and the newspaper organs of their party. President Tyler, in his first message, while reserving to himself in express terms the power to veto any measure which would contravene the Constitution, recommended the repeal of the sub-treasury law, and the substitution of a new fiscal agent. He had always denied the power in Congress of national incorporation operating per se over the Union. In private conversations with Clay and other prominent Whigs, before the meeting of Congress, he had urged a scheme which would not involve his Constitutional objections. This they rejected, and Mr. Clay again proposed, essentially, instead, the re-establishment of the old United States Bank. The President vetoed the bill, as he did another, in alleged accordance with his suggestion for a fiscal agent, which was offered for his approval. The sub-treasury law in the meantime had been repealed; great excitement prevailed, and all of Mr. Tyler's Cabinet, with the exception of Daniel Webster, resigned, and a simultaneous assault was made upon him by the press and orators of the Whig party throughout the country. He, however, remained firm, and immediately filled his Cabinet with eminent State's rights Whigs and Conservatives.

The most important acts of the long session (two hundred and sixty-nine days) of 1841-1842 were a new tariff law with incidental protection, an act establishing a uniform bankrupt law, and an apportionment of representatives according to the census of 1840. The momentous treaty with Great Britain, settling the northeastern boundary of the United States, was ratified at Washington on the 28th of August, 1842. The provision in its eighth article concerning the African squadron for the protection of American commerce, and the prevention of the slave trade on the coast of Africa, was the suggestion of Mr. Tyler. In May, 1843, the President appointed Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, a commissioner to the Chinese government. On the 12th of April, 1844, a treaty was concluded at Washington, providing for the annexation of Texas to the United States, but on the 8th of June it was rejected by the Senate. On the 25th of January, 1845, a joint resolution for annexing Texas was adopted in the House of Representatives by a vote of 120 to 98; and the same was adopted in the Senate, on the 1st of March, by a vote of 27 to 25, and the same day it was approved by the President. Thus, two days before the expiration of his term of office, Mr. Tyler had the satisfaction of witnessing the consummation of an act which he had long earnestly desired and persistently striven for.

The terms proposed were ratified on the 4th of July following by a Constitutional Convention assembled at Austin, Texas, and that State became one of our great Union. Upon the expiration of his Presidential term Mr. Tyler returned to private life, upon his farm in Virginia.

In the Democratic Convention which assembled at Baltimore, Maryland, on the 13th of May, 1844, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President, Mr. Tyler was the first choice of a large following for the Presidency, and it was thought that his friends held the balance of power in several States. Mr. Van Buren, also a candidate, was so objectionable to many of the Democratic party that it was urged that, between him and the candidate of the Whig party, they would prefer Mr. Clay. The friends of Mr. Tyler, to secure the defeat of Mr. Van Buren, and the nomination of a candidate in sympathy with the policy and measures of the administration of Mr. Tyler, notably the annexation of Texas, resolved upon the two-thirds rule, and under its application, Mr. Van Buren was discarded, and Mr. Tyler withdrawing, James K. Polk was nominated, and subsequently elected as the successor of Mr. Tyler.

During the long period of relief from the strife and anxieties of political life, which was now enjoyed by Mr. Tyler in the blessings of a competence and of domestic bliss, there was an episode not the least creditable in his honorable career, and highly characteristic in its marked exemplification of his sense of duty as a citizen. In 1847 he was designated by the justices of Charles City County for an essential but humbly named duty, and to which, in common with other citizens, he was liable. It was at the instance, it was said, of those who wished to inflict a mortification by conferring, in derision, upon an ex-President of the United States the humble position of an overseer of the public road. Mr. Tyler promptly accepted the appointment, and was no less decided in the execution of the trust-the emphatic meed, without dissenting voice, accorded, being that "he was the best overseer of the roads that Charles City ever had."

Mr. Tyler was twice most happily married; first, March 29, 1813, to Letitia, the third daughter of Robert Christian, of "Cedar Grove," New Kent County, long a member of the Virginia Assembly, and a member of a family which has for quite two hundred years been

The late curiously erudite Dr. J. R. Christian, of Holly Springs, Miss., traced the origin of the Christian family to Scotland, where, prior to the 16th century, the name was rendered MacChristian. They were established in Wigtonshire, Scotland, until the year 1422, after which they figure in Man, only a few miles distant. The name is historic. John Christian, of Undrigg Castle, married Isabella, daughter of Henry Lord Percy, the famous Earl of Northumberland. William MacChristian, of Albdale and Milntown, parish of St. Frisity, was