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istration, and the return of the democratic party to power, in the advent of the newly-elected president. A bill was passed erecting a new territorial government out of the northern part of Oregon, to be called the territory of Washington; to the general appropriation bill an amendment was added, authorizing the president to employ engineers to make explorations, in order to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad, and appropriating one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the expenses of the survey. A great variety of private bills, and many acts of local interest, were passed; but most of the measures of general public importance which were proposed at this session failed of success. On the 20th of December, 1852, William R. King, on account of ill health, resigned as president pro tem. of the senate, and David R. Atchison, of Missouri, was elected in his place.

The administration of President Fillmore, which may be regarded as a continuation of that of General Taylor, closed on the 4th of March, 1853. It was in some respects different in its character from that of General Taylor, inasmuch as Mr. Fillmore reorganized his cabinet, composed of men of somewhat different views from their predecessors, and his appointments to office were free from some of the influences which had surrounded Taylor and his cabinet. The adoption of the compromise measures of 1850, and their sanction by Mr. Fillmore and his cabinet on a plan varying from that proposed by General Taylor, had the effect to alienate the feelings of many of the whigs of the north toward the administration of Mr. Fillmore. Although the measures of domestic and foreign policy recommended by him were approved, there was nothing in the character or disposition of Mr. Fillmore to excite enthusiasm in his behalf, and the northern whigs generally were displeased with the attempts to place him in nomination for re-election, when public opinion in the whig states had been attracted toward General Scott, as an available presidential candidate, in consequence of his brilliant campaigns in Mexico, and his previous military services. The coldness shown by the president and some of his friends toward Kossuth, and other distinguished European exiles, had the effect to alienate the citizens of foreign birth from the whig party, and to accelerate their defeat.

Placed in the minority with regard to its influence in Congress, the administration of Mr. Fillmore was necessarily negative in its character, with the exception of the passage of the compromise measures relative to slavery, and the boundaries on the Mexican frontier and between Texas and the adjacent territories, and the partial restoration of a system of improvement of harbors and rivers, bills for which had been vetoed by democratic presidents. But the intentions and actions of Mr. Fillmore were regarded as honest and statesmanlike, by men of both the leading parties; and during his administration of the government, the country advanced in prosperity and strength, and he retired to private life honored and respected by his countrymen.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

OF

FRANKLIN PÍERCE.

DURING the period of the war beween the United States and Great Britain, which was declared in 1812 and terminated in 1815, there were in existence, engaged in various occupations and far distant from each other, ten Americans, who were afterward elevated to the presidency of the republic. It is curious to take a retrospective view of the positions in life then occupied by these individuals, of whom, perhaps, only the first two could, at that time, have entertained any reasonable hopes or expectations of reaching the high station to which they were afterward called. James Monroe was then at the head of the department of state at Washington; John Quincy Adams was minister-plenipotentiary to the imperial court of Russia at St. Petersburgh; Jackson a planter of Tennessee, but soon called into the military service of the United States; Van Buren, a resident of Columbia county, New York, had just entered public life as a state senator; Harrison, governor of the territory of Indiana, and a distinguished commander in the army of the northwest: Tyler, a lawyer of Virginia, and member of the legislature of that state; Polk engaged in his studies in Tennessee, and afterward at the university of North Carolina; Taylor, a young officer in the army, actively engaged in the public service in the western wilderness; Fillmore, a youth, at school in western New York; and lastly, Pierce, still younger in years, commencing an academical education in New Hampshire.

FRANKLIN PIERCE, the fourteenth president of the United States-on whose accession to that high office, only three of his predecessors survived (viz., Van Buren, Tyler, and Fillmore)—was born at Hillsborough, in the county of the same name, and state of New Hampshire, on the 23d of November, 1804. At that time, the county of Hillsborough was a much more extensive territory than subsequently, when parts of other counties were made up from it, and might reckon among its sons many men memorable in the annals of the country, among whom may be named

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