SILAS DURKEE. 343 



made Commissionei to China, and in that capacity negotiated the first 

 Treaty between the United States and the " Celestial Empire." Soon 

 after his return home, and when he had again become a Representative 

 in the State Legislature, the war with Mexico gave him an opportu- 

 nity to gratify his early disposition for military service. He raised a 

 regiment of volunteers, mainly at his own expense, and conducted it as 

 colonel to the Rio Grande, where he was commissioned a Brigadier- 

 General. In 1850, he was Mayor of Newburyport, then recently in- 

 corporated as a City. In 1852, he was appointed one of the Associate 

 Judges of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ; and, after a single 

 year of faithful service in that office, he was taken into the Cabinet of 

 President Pierce, as Attorney- General of the United States, and held 

 that distinguished office for four years. The printed volume of his 

 official opinions during that term bears signal testimony to his ability, 

 research, and untiring labor. In 1866, he was appointed one of three 

 commissioners to revise and codify the laws of the United States. 

 Meantime, during the five previous years, he had spent much of his 

 time at Washington, and had rendered important aid to more than one 

 of the Departments in the difficult questions arising out of the Civil 

 "War. His last conspicuous service was at Geneva, as one of the coun- 

 sel of the United States at the great International Arbitration of " the 

 Alabama Claims," where he displayed his accomplishments as a linguist 

 by making his argument in the French language. Few Americans 

 have exhibited greater versatility, or greater ability, in so striking a 

 variety of pursuits and services. As a scholar, as a lawyer, as a 

 statesman, as a diplomatist, he has left a mark on our State and Na- 

 tional records which cannot be obliterated. As a speaker, a thinker, 

 and a writer, too, he has secured for himself no common place among 

 the literary men of his period. He was elected Fellow of this Acad- 

 emy Nov. 12, 1823. 



SILAS DURKEE, M.D. 



Silas Ddrkee, M.D., was born in Hanover, N. H., Nov. 22, 

 1798, and died in Boston July 17, 1878, in his eightieth year. He 

 graduated in Arts at Dartmouth College, in 1822, and in Medicine in 

 •1826. He practised his profession in Portsmouth till 1841, when he 

 removed to Boston, where he became a prominent practitioner, and 

 accumulated quite a property for a medical man. He was a frequent 

 contributor to professional journals; and published two octavo volumes 

 on dermatology and allied diseases. These works, one of which 



