her productions were "Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States," published in 1826; the "Black Book," published in 1828, and continued in 1829; and her "Southern Tour," the second series of the "Black Book," which appeared in 1830-31; "The Tennesseans," a novel, and "Letters from Alabama" on various subjects, in 1830.

Mrs. Royall's career was a rough one, and she seemed to live for the purpose of revenging her misfortunes upon others. She was a native of Virginia, and at an early age was stolen by the Indians, with whom she remained about fifteen years. Shortly after her release she married a Captain Royall, and removed to Alabama, where she learned to read and write, subsequently taking up her residence in Washington. Dying at an advanced age in 1854, she was present during the administrations of John Quincy Adams, General Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler, James K. Polk, Taylor and FillHer newspapers were badly printed and badly written, and her squibs and stories more remarkable for bitterness than for wit. She was a woman of great industry and astonishing memory; but at last she seemed to tire of a vocation which grew more and more unprofitable with better times and milder

more.

manners.

There is no better evidence of the sure and permanent improvement of the public press than the difference between the lady writers of the present day and these two memorable examples. Correspondence, and even editorship, has risen to a profession among educated women in the United States; and with the exception of a few, who do not find the circulation of scandal or of socialistic doctrines in any sense a profitable pastime, most of them are generously and substantially rewarded. No Fanny Wright frightens the proprieties in the States; no Annie Royall terrifies the statesmen in the Capitol.

The female correspondents of to-day are welcomed and hon ored in every circle. They write generally from a conscien

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tious love of their vocation, and they are popular because their style is more spirituelle than the rough rhetoric of the trained Bohemians. Avoiding all scandal and preserving the delicacy of the sex, they present a contrast to the startling theories of Fanny Wright and the rude vituperation of Annie Royall. Their energy and perseverance are making journalism and correspondence a permanent vocation for their sisters; and as the press grows in influence it will need all sorts of auxiliaries, and none will give it more of the variety, which is the spice of life, than the sparkle, the wit, the grace, and the impulse of intellectual womanhood.

[July 16, 1871.]

XXVIII.

THE Democratic National Convention which met at Baltimore on the 27th of May, 1844, was one of the most exciting political conventions I ever attended. I was there as a reporter of my newspaper, the Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal, and had a seat near the president, Andrew Stevenson, of Virginia, father of the present Senator in Congress from Kentucky, and witnessed the struggle of the two-thirds rule introduced into the convention by Hon. Robert J. Walker for the purpose of defeating Martin Van Buren, who was a candidate for the Presidential nomination of his party. The Hon. Benjamin F. Butler-not the present intellectual giant of that name, Representative from the Fifth Massachusetts district, but General Jackson's Attorney-General from December 27, 1831, to June 24, 1834, after the retirement of Roger B. Taney, who was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

was Van Buren's champion. Butler was at that time a man of about fifty years of age, with a handsome, intellectual face,

of large reputation as orator and jurist; but he was no match for the little Mississippian. That was the first time I had ever seen Robert J. Walker. I had read his speeches while he was a Senator in Congress, and knew a good deal of his history; but I was not prepared to see so small and insignificant-looking a person, nor yet for the marvelous power which he exercised in the convention, and the effect produced by his speech in reply to the Van Buren leader. He had not spoken twenty minutes before it was evident, from the cheers of the convention, that the doom of the Kinderhook statesman was sealed. James K. Polk received the nomination, which would have been conferred upon Pennsylvania, in the person of James Buchanan, if the latter had not timidly withdrawn his name from the list of candidates, in the belief that the party was united upon Van Buren. It is true there were many elements in Pennsylvania opposed to Buchanan; but he had strength enough to unite the South, and as no man could then be made President without the consolidated vote of that section, all domestic opposition would have been baffled.

The wound inflicted on the Van Buren faction rankled until it came to a head, in 1848, in the organization which made him a third candidate and defeated Lewis Cass. Polk was elect

ed, chiefly through the influence of Silas Wright, who consented to resign his place as a Senator in Congress, and to run for Governor of New York-a concession and a sacrifice which satisfied the Van Burenites, and postponed their outbreak upon the Southern Democracy for four years.

No personage in politics ever led a more active life than Robert J. Walker. Born at Northumberland, in the State of Pennsylvania, in 1801, he entered the University in Philadelphia, and graduated in 1819; studied law, was admitted to practice in 1821, and became chairman of the Democratic committee when only twenty-two years of age. He was one of the earliest supporters of General Jackson for the Presidency, and ef

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fectually aided to bring about the action of the Harrisburg Convention, which nominated the hero of New Orleans for that office in 1824. In the spring of 1826 he removed to Mississippi, and practiced his profession without taking any political office until ten years later, when he was chosen a Senator in Congress, and served until 1845, when he was called to the Treasury Department by President Polk. He excelled as a writer for the newspapers, and as a popular orator; was capable of prodigious mental toil; had unequaled memory, rare enthusiasm, and intense convictions. Large reading, polished manners, singu1ar generosity, and simplicity of character completed the qualities of a successful leader. His arguments in the Senate were masterpieces. He there brought to the discussion of every question all his peculiar powers. Without considering his freetrade ideas, which are still the subject of animated controversy, it is simple justice to state that he contributed immensely to many important reforms in the public service. He was the advocate of a liberal land policy, the champion of public improvements, the antagonist of religious intolerance, the fearless enemy of nullification, and he will perhaps be better remembered for the part he acted when he reluctantly accepted the position of Governor of Kansas in 1857. Sent there by an Administration which betrayed the solemn pledge upon which alone it was elected, he was believed by the pro-slavery men to be in hearty sympathy with their plans; but sustained by his independent secretary, Hon. Frederick P. Stanton (still living in Washington, where he was born, and deservedly prospering in the practice of his profession of the law), he soon discovered that he could not second that betrayal without the loss of his own honor. He revolted from the unblushing frauds sought to be perpetrated in the endeavor to force slavery into Kansas. But what Reeder and Geary had done under Pierce in the same position, he did under Buchanan, with even more courage and effect. At that time my paper, The Press, was in the throes

of its first great conflict with the pro-slavery Democracy. Holding Buchanan steadily to the pledge of justice to Kansas, day after day I waited for the report of Robert J. Walker with inexpressible solicitude, and when finally it came in a telegraphic dispatch, which he sent me from the town of York, Pennsylvania, while on his way to Washington to protest against the conspiracy to which Mr. Buchanan had surrendered, I felt that our battle was won. Walker's repudiation of the frauds in Kansas, which he was solemnly enjoined to assist, in a private letter written to him by President Buchanan, followed by his manly resignation of an office which he could no longer hold, thrilled the people of the whole country, and, in the election which ensued, aided to demolish the Democracy in nearly all the free States. It revolutionized Berks County by electing the venerable John Schwartz, in 1858, by nineteen votes, notwithstanding the Democratic majority of 6004 two years before, defeating Buchanan's favorite, J. Glancy Jones, now a citizen of the State of Delaware, patiently preparing to step into the Senate. whenever the people of that little Commonwealth are ready to employ him. It gave us a Republican Representative in William E. Lehman, in the first Pennsylvania district. It gave us a Republican in the Montgomery district, and it left but four Administration Congressmen from Pennsylvania. It swept New Jersey. It destroyed the Democratic prestige in New York, and almost changed the aspect of the National House of Representatives. It confessedly paved the way to the freedom. of Kansas and to the complete annihilation of the whole proslavery plot.

Of course, a statesman bold and brave enough to take issue with an Administration determined upon such a wrong could not expect to escape the persecutions of the South, and so, after Abraham Lincoln was elected, Robert J. Walker was found among the firmest supporters of the policy of his Administration. The same [efferson Davis who had apologized for the