e
finally accepted the office of Secretary of State. Our relation with
England demanded prompt attention. The differences existing between the
two nations relative to the Northern boundary could not be disregarded,
and Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton brought about a treaty which was
equally honorable and advantageous to the countries. He was also able
later to contribute much toward the settlement of the Oregon boundary
question through private channels of influence, though holding no
official position at the time.

In 1847 he started on a tour of the Southern States, being well received
throughout; especially in Charleston, Columbia, Augusta and Savannah was
as well received, but his health failing him in the latter city, he was
obliged to abandon his project of making a tour of the whole South. He
became Secretary of State under Mr. Fillmore. This position he held at
his death which occurred at Marshfield, on the 24th day of October,
1852. Funeral orations were delivered throughout the country in great
numbers.

He was a man of commanding figure, large but well proportioned. His head
was of unusual size, his eyes deep-seated and lustrious, and had a voice
powerful yet pleasing; his action, while not remarkably graceful, was
easy and impressive. His social tastes were very strong and he possessed
marked conversational power. He lived in an age of great legislators and
it is needless to add that he was excelled in statesmanship by none.

Professor Ticknor, speaking in one of his letters of the intense
excitement with which he listened to Webster's Plymouth address, says:
"Three or four times I thought my temples would burst with the gush of
blood, for after all you must know I am aware it is no connected and
compact whole, but a collection of broken fragments, of burning
eloquence to which his manner gave ten fold force. When I came out I was
almost afraid to come near him. It seemed to me that he was like the
mount that might not be touched, and that burned with fire."

ANDREW JACKSON.

Of all the Presidents of the United States Andrew Jackson was, perhaps,
the most peculiar. He was of Scotch-Irish descent, his parents coming to
this country in 1765 from Ireland and settling in the northern part of
South Carolina on the Waxhaw Creek. They had been very poor in the old
country, his father tilling a small farm while the mother was a weaver
of linen. His father never owned land in America, and died soon after