The New International Encyclopædia/Dallas, Alexander James

DALLAS, Alexander James (1759-1817). An American politician. He was born in the island of Jamaica, was educated at Edinburgh and at Westminster, and in 1783 removed from Jamaica to Philadelphia. In 1785 he was admitted to the bar, and soon became prominent both as a lawyer and a politician. He was Secretary of the Treasury in President Madison's Cabinet from 1814 to 1816, and it was on his recommendation that in 1816 Congress passed an act to incorporate a new United States bank. From 1815 to 1816 he discharged the duties of the War as well as of the Treasury Department. He published Reports of Cases Ruled and Adjudged by the Courts of the United States and of Pennsylvania Before and Since the Revolution (4 vols., 1790-1807); Address to the Society of Constitutional Republicans (1805); and Exposition of the Causes and Character of the War of 1812-15.