He also held several diplomatic
posts in Europe (1865-70), culminating in Ambassador to Great Britain
(1897-98).
AGRICULTURE. James Wilson (1835-1920), Secretary (1897-1913) under
McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, was born in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was
Regent of Iowa State University, and in 1891 was elected to the chair
of Practical Agriculture in the College of Agriculture and Director of
the State Experiment Stations. He was wonderfully successful in the
expansion and administration of the "most useful public department in
the world."
LABOR. William Bauchop Wilson, born in Blantyre, near Glasgow,
Scotland, in 1862, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers of
America (1900-09); Member of Congress (1907-13), and Chairman of the
Committee on Labor in the sixty-second Congress, Secretary of Labor
(1913).
POSTMASTER-GENERAL. The first postal service in the Colonies was
organized by Andrew Hamilton, a native of Edinburgh, who obtained a
patent for a postal scheme from the British Crown in 1694. A memorial
stone on the southwest corner of the New York Post Office at
Thirty-third Street commemorates the fact. John Maclean (1785-1861),
Postmaster-General from 1823 to 1829, was later Associate Justice of
the United States Supreme Court of Ohio, and unsuccessful candidate
for the Republican nomination for President in 1856 and again in 1860.
He took part in the famous Dred Scott case, in which he dissented from
Taney, maintaining that slavery had its origin merely in power and was
against right.
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