Dallas, George Mifflin (1792-1864), eleventh vice president of the United States (1845-1849), was a graduate of Princeton in the Class of 1810. His father was a prosperous lawyer and man of affairs in Philadelphia who served as Madison's Secretary of the Treasury 1814-1816. The younger Dallas entered public life three years after he left Princeton as secretary to the chairman of the commission that negotiated the treaty ending the War of 1812. He was mayor of Philadelphia, United States senator, and Minister to Russia prior to his election as vice president; later he was Minister to Great Britain. His biographer called him ``conservative and cosmopolitan, precise and dignified . . . the gentleman in politics.'' Princeton conferred an honorary LL.D. on him in 1857, about the same time the citizens of a thriving community in northeast Texas named their newly incorporated town for him.
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton
University Press (1978).
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