r.
His arguments were persuasive, the tones of his voice were melodious,
and he insinuated himself and his cause into the hearts of his
audience, rather than carried them by storm. Devoted to the South
and its peculiar institution, he was welcomed in the State of
Mississippi, and soon took a prominent position at the bar of its
higher courts.

William Rufus King, of Alabama, who was elected President _pro
tempore_ of the Senate while Colonel Johnson was Vice-President,
was a prim, spare bachelor, known among his friends as "Miss Nancy
King." When a young man he had accompanied the Minister to Russia,
William Pinkney, to St. Petersburg, as Secretary of the Legation
of the United States. Residing there for two years, he acquired
the formal manners of the Court of the Emperor Alexander, with a
diplomatic craftiness which he always retained. He was a courteous
presiding officer, as was thus oddly exemplified while he occupied
the chair. The two Senators from the State of Arkansas pronounced
the name of their State differently. Mr. King punctiliously observed
the difference, invariably recognizing one as "the gentleman from
Ar-kan-sas," and the other as "the gentleman from Ark-an-sas."

Mr. Van Buren was much exercised by a difficulty in the Pennsylvania
Legislature, which the State militia was called out to quell, and
which it was thought might result in a demand for the intervention
of United States troops. Thaddeus Stevens, then an ardent Whig,
was a leader in the attempt to force eleven illegally elected
members into the House at the point of the bayonet, the troops
having their muskets loaded with buckshot. When the enterprise
collapsed, Stevens jumped from a back window of the Capitol and
ran off to Gettysburg, where he remained without claiming his seat
for about a month, when he came in and offered to take the oath,
but the House resolved, with great solemnity, that the seat was
vacant, although others who had been out nearly as long were admitted
without hesitation.

A prominent young Virginia lawyer, named William Smith, who practiced
at Culpepper Court-House, became interested in a mail-route between
Washington City and Milledgeville, Georgia, and he grew to be an
extensive contractor. Many of his mail-routes were but little more
than bridle-paths, over which the mails were carried on horseback.
With an eye to the main chance, and with a laudable desire to extend
the mail facilities of Virginia, Mr.