402 RICHARD HENRY DANA. 



lican campaigns of 185G and 1860, he rendered valuable services to his 

 State and to the country. From 1861 to 1866 Mr. Dana was the 

 United States attorney for Massachusetts, resigning the office when 

 it implicated him in the policy of Andrew Johnson, the acting Presi- 

 dent. In 1867-8 he gave a course of lectures in the Lowell Institute, 

 and served in the Legislature of Massachusetts. His able discussion 

 of the Usury law led to its repeal, and is reprinted and read ■ now 

 when most speeches are forgotten. In 1868 he entered the lists 

 against General Butler as a candidate for Congress from the Essex 

 district. Had he succeeded, his character, scholarship, and forensic 

 eloquence would have raised him above the level of party to that of 

 statesmanship. His failure is most to be regretted as leading to the 

 coalition in the Senate in 1876 which resulted in his rejection when he 

 was nominated by President Grant as Minister to the Court of St. 

 James. The country could ill afford to lose a name which would 

 have united with those of Everett, Motley, and Lowell in giving 

 dignity to its representation iu England. 



The Civil War, and the settlement which followed it, raised questions 

 of law with which Mr. Dana was well fitted to grapple. He drew up 

 the Prize Act of 1864, and iu connection with Mr. Evarts he argued 

 prize cases before the United States Supreme Court, vindicating the 

 rights of the Government in time of war in dealing not only with the 

 belligerents, but also with loyal citizens. In 1867-8 he appeared 

 before this court in the proceedings again Jefferson Davis. In 1866 

 he edited a new edition of " Wheaton's Elements of International Law," 

 with additions and annotations of his own. Of his long controversy 

 with a former editor of the book it is only necessary to say that it 

 distracted the mind and wasted the time of Mr. Dana. His health 

 had become the subject of anxiety to his friends, and in 1879 he went 

 abroad, never to return, except for a brief visit after the death of his 

 father. Mr. Dana had now come to be recognized as the highest 

 American authority on international law. His notes on the history 

 of the neutrality laws of the United States had been translated into 

 French for the use of the arbitrators at Geneva, and were quoted by 

 the counsel and in the final decision as authoritative. Mr. Wheaton 

 had been dead many years, and his work was becoming scarce and 

 antiquated. The time was opportune for preparing an independent 

 treatise on the law of nations. Mr. Dana was well equipped for the 

 task, and he might feel a laudable ambition to build upon the founda- 

 tions partly laid by his grandfather. With this crowning work of his 

 life projected, but hardly begun, but when his improving health gave 



