ness, but with a strict adherence to the principles of the Constitution. He insisted that the master should prove his right to the slave before a respectable judge and jury, and contended that the citizens of the free States would not fail to award him his rights, and, however repugnant to their feelings, the people would submit quietly to the decision. He concluded by challenging Southern Senators to produce a single instance in which a Northern jury had failed to give the owner of a slave a fair verdict; and the challenge remained unanswered.

Some time after Senator Dayton's argument on this question of trial by jury, in his speech in March, Daniel Webster exhibited an amendment to the Fugitive-Slave Law, proposing to substitute a trial before a jury for the examination before a Commissioner; which amendment, he said, had been prepared carefully, with the aid of eminent lawyers and high judicial authority. In his speech in June, Mr. Dayton declared the amendment obviated the several difficulties he had pointed out, and fully endorsed all the principles for which he had contended. He was willing to stand on it. The offer, however, was never accepted by Mr. Webster, that distinguished Senator having entered Mr. Fillmore's Cabinet while the discussion of the Compromise measures was still occupying the Chamber, and without having moved the amendment. Nor was it moved afterward by any of the

advocates of the Compromise.

On the question whether the Constitution carries slavery with it into the Territories, Mr. Dayton maintained that slavery exists only by municipal law, and that the Constitution could not carry it where it did not previously exist. He also declared that the sentiment of the North was settled unalterably in opposition to the extension of slavery. He held that new States and Territories "should not be sacrificed to the selfish interests of a few old States." "We are laying," said he, "the foundation of empires: let us not subject them to the dead weight of that institution which, as any one can see by comparing the slave States with the free, has retarded their progress and paralyzed their energies."

As to the proposed establishment of Territorial Governments in New Mexico and Utah, he doubted whether the measure was not premature. He was especially doubtful as to Utah, and

thought the Mormons little qualified for a Territorial Government. He was inflexibly opposed to a concession of territory to the demands of Texas. In the whole of the discussion, his constant argument was a reference to the Constitution. That, he declared, was his compromise, and he was willing that all questions should be settled in strict accordance with its principles. His last speech on these questions—that of the 11th of Juneat once provoked the opposition and extorted the commendation of the advocates of the Compromise measures. "They made," writes a correspondent, "many efforts to meet his arguments and to dispute the pregnant and pointed facts he adduced from the history of the country, but they met with little success.'

In the next session-the short one-nothing occurred worthy to be noticed here. His term expired on the 4th of March. The Democratic party then having a majority in the New Jersey Legislature, Judge Dayton returned home, and devoted himself to the practice of the law, in which he is actively engaged.

In June, 1856, he was nominated for the Vice-Presidency by the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia, by 529 out of 560 votes. He did not know that this nomination was thought of, until he was advised that it had been made. In February, 1857, he was appointed Attorney-General of New Jersey, which office he now holds.

In November, 1858, the Opposition party in New Jersey having elected a majority of the members of the Legislature, and the term of the Hon. William Wright as United States Senator being about to expire, the public mind was turned at once to Judge Dayton as the proper person to succeed him; but, before the Legislature met, he publicly declined the appointment.

In the State elections of 1858 and 1859, the two parties in New Jersey which had supported Messrs. Frémant and Fillmore in 1856 acted together as the Opposition party. The great mass of these two parties have always entertained those doctrines as to the impolicy of the extension of slavery and the constitutional right and duty of Congress to restrain it, which were adopted at the formation of the Government, and had been adhered to until recently. The people of New Jersey knew Mr. Dayton's entire devotion to these as well as all other long-established constitutional doctrines. Separated in 1856 by differences as to men,

their general agreement as to those principles has since drawn them together under the name of the Opposition party; and that party, in the campaigns of 1858 and 1859, called on Mr. Dayton, with great unanimity, for his efficient and influential aid. With the generosity and patriotism of his nature, he responded promptly to the call; and his most zealous efforts were exerted often in special support of candidates who had voted and worked against him and for Mr. Fillmore in 1856. He knew their patriotism and general correctness of principles, and no personal feeling rose in his breast to prevent him, in the slightest degree, from laboring for their election with all his energy and eloquence. His example in thus ignoring the past had its influence upon many of his friends, some of whom remembered with chagrin, if not with bitterness, the division of 1856,—a division which gave the Electoral vote of the State to Mr. Buchanan. During these campaigns he insisted upon the propriety of discussing national questions as a means of properly indoctrinating the public mind and cementing the parts of the Opposition more firmly together. He repeatedly urged upon large assemblies his well-known views as to the protection of American labor and the non-extension of slavery. On these great issues, he said, all branches of the Opposition in New Jersey-Republicans, Americans, and Old-Line Whigs-concurred in sentiment and stood on the same platform. As a means of doing justice to all and bringing all parts of the country to a common view on these great questions, he advocated the Homestead Bill of the last Congress, which offered, he said, only a fair equivalent to the Western emigrant for the great sacrifices he endured while opening and settling our new territories. This bill was, in effect, but another mode of giving protection and encouragement to American labor: the laboring man, wherever and however employed, was entitled to the protection of the Government, and all were entitled to it equally and alike.

On various occasions Judge Dayton has delivered literary addresses with much credit to himself. One of these was before the Literary Societies of Princeton College at the annual commencement. That college some years ago signified their appreciation of his acquirements and learning by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws.

DANIEL S. DICKINSON,

OF NEW YORK.

THIS distinguished statesman was born in Goshen, Litchfield County, in the State of Connecticut, September 11, 1800. His father was a plain farmer, a man of integrity and intelligence, proud of the soil from which he sprung and which he cultivated. A Jeffersonian by conviction and sympathy, he gloried in the personal independence of a farmer's life, and through the early political excitements and changes of the country was a firm and disinterested supporter of the author of the Declaration of Independence. When Jefferson's ideas of Democratic Republicanism were held by little more than a corporal's guard" in the town where the elder Dickinson lived, he was not afraid nor ashamed to be the corporal.

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Such being the character of the father, we are prepared to learn that the political examples before young Daniel Stevens Dickinson were of a healthy and a strengthening nature. Not being born in the midst of wealth, his childhood was not luxurious nor surrounded by many advantages. In 1806, his father removed to the beautiful Valley of the Chenango, New York, and settled in what is now called the town of Guilford. Here the boy went to the common school betimes, and became inured to the hardy duties of a struggling farmer's son. For a time he also worked at a mechanical trade, but, feeling the promptings of a higher destiny, improved the slender advantages presented by the common schools of those days by devoting his leisure to reading and developing himself in the pursuit of sundry branches of literature and science. Having an eager and a quick intellect, he rapidly accumulated knowledge, and in time became possessed of a very respectable and useful stock of accomplishments.

Choosing the law for a profession, he applied himself in that direction, being employed, at the same time, teaching in the

common and select schools of the neighborhood. In 1826, Mr. Dickinson was admitted to the bar, and soon became distinguished throughout the Chenango Valley for the readiness and point of his manner; his literary resources, as well as a rich vein of humor, standing his clients in good need before the justices of the peace. Of course, his business increased. In December, 1831, he removed to the thriving village of Binghamton, where he has ever since resided. Politics had early attracted his disquisitious and illustrative powers, and he made himself felt not less effectively and successfully as a Democratic politician than as a ready lawyer. On his removal to Binghamton, his talents gave him almost at once a high position in the little world of politics and law of which the village was the centre. Thus he worked his way steadily upward to an undisputed professional elevation, and enjoyed a comfortable practice at the highest tribunals.

In 1836, Mr. Dickinson was elected to the State Senate of New York for four years. During his service here, he was prominent in the discussions growing out of the topics of that eventful period. The General-Banking Law, the Small-Bill Law, the Bank-Suspension Law, and the exciting financial measures resulting from the overthrow of the United States Bank and the establishment of the Independent Treasury, as well as questions touching internal improvements-the construction of the Erie Railroad, the extension of the Erie Canal, and other measures having to some extent national as well as local importancewere before the New York Senate, and brought Mr. Dickinson prominently forward. The State Senate was then the highest judicial body in the State; and frequent demand was made upon him for opinions relative to grave legal questions brought before that body as a court for the correction of errors.

So ably did he fill the term of his Senatorial office that, at its close, the Democratic party nominated him for LieutenantGovernor on the same ticket with the veteran William C. Bouck. He shared, however, in the general defeat of his party. It was the time of the "Hard-Cider" campaign, when log-cabins and coon-skins were political Meccas, and General Harrison the Mohammed of them all. It was a time of unusual excitement, when the Whig party captivated the