J. H. Powell – författare

This volume deals with a man whose life was intimately connected with a most significant formative period in American civilization. Son of the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Rush, Richard Rush was not such a dynamic personality, but in his earnest, gracious way he left almost as deep an imprint on many phases of national life.Educated as a lawyer, his first public: post was Attorney-General of Pennsylvania. This was followed in 1811 by appointment as Comptroller of the United States Treasury, and in 1814 as Attorney-General of the United States. He was Secretary of State in 1817, consummating the Rush-Bagot Convention de­militarizing the boundary between America and Canada. For eight years, 1817-1825, he was Minister to England, negotiating the Commercial Convention of 1818, conducting the initial conversations which led to the Monroe Doctrine, and working tirelessly for Anglo-American accord. He returned to the United States in 1825 to be Adams'' Secretary of the Treasury and unsuccessful candidate for Vice-President in 1828. He was a leading advocate of internal improvements and prominent as an Anti-Mason, but split with his party over the Bank issue. In 1836 Jackson sent him to England to secure the estate of James Smithson, from which grew the Smithsonian Institution. His last office was that of Minister to France in 1847, completing a career of exceptional variety and service, which is described in this biography for the first time.In addition to his official activities, Rush was a prolific writer, chiefly of political pamphlets, but he also edited the first authentic collection of the federal statues and published the two volumes of "Memoranda" of his diplomatic missions. His life necessarily touched many of the great men of his day, and throughout this record of Richard Rush the background and personalities of an important historical period are clearly traced for the reader.

United States Government publications are books collectors have not sought, bibliographers have not analyzed, historians have rarely considered. But publication is a necessary part of law-making and law-enforcing, and as the historian J. H. Powell traces national printing through its first forty years (until the British fired the capital in 1814) these dry-as-dust public documents become vivid, exciting elements in the lively story of how a new nation was built.In this volume collectors will find many "firsts" in public documents, bibliographers will discover unknown chapters in the history of printing in America, and historians will be challenged by the new points of view government publications suggest for interpreting national history.Lecture I describes the printing of the Continental Congress before Independence, 1774-1176. Lecture II deals with official publications during the Revolution, 1776-1787, the printing history of the Federal Convention of 1787, and public issues of the new government during its sojourn in New York and Philadelphia, 1789-1800. Lecture III describes publication problems in the new capital, Washington City, the printing contracts and contractors, the complex process of drafting and emitting the laws for a free people to know and understand. Books—even statutes, reports, debates, such books as a government makes—are bits of human history, each with a story of its own. As Dr. Powell makes clear in these lectures, which bring to light one of the largest, most important, but most neglected subjects in American Studies, the charm of any book comes partly from the men behind it, in this case men new to American history but bound to become familiar as the field opened up by these lectures is more thoroughly explored: Adolphus Washington Greely, the Polar explorer; Samuel A. Otis, the elegant Secretary of the Senate; Roger Chew Weightman, the boy printer in Washington; Clerk Beckley of the House whom the playing fields of Eton had prepared for Jeffersonian party battles; and the printers, the politicians, the civil and military servants of the government as it grew from small beginnings to what Hamilton finally described as—"majestic, efficient, and operative of great things."