BULL, WILLIAM, M. D., was the first white person born in South Carolina, and is supposed to be the first American who obtained a degree in medicine. He was a pupil of the great Boerhaave, and acquired some literary and professional distinction. In 1734, he defended and published, at the University of Leyden, his inaugural thesis De Colica Pictorum. After returning from Europe to his native state, he was successively a member of the Council, speaker of the House of Representatives, and lieutenantgovernor. When the British troops removed from South Carolina in 1782, he accompanied them to England, and died in London, in 1791, in the eighty-second year of his age.

BOONE, DANIEL, one of the earliest settlers in Kentucky, was born in Virginia, and was from infancy addicted to hunting in the woods. He set out on an expedition to explore the region of Kentucky, in May, 1769, with five companions. After meeting with a variety of adventures, Boone was left with his brother, the only white men in the wilderness. They passed the winter in a cabin, and, in the summer of 1770, traversed the country to the Cumberland River. In September, 1773, Boone commenced his removal to Kentucky, with his own and five other families. He was joined by forty men, who put themselves under his direction; but, being attacked by the Indians, the whole party returned to the settlements on Clinch River. Boone was afterwards employed, by a company of North Carolina, to buy, from the Indians, lands on the south side of the Kentucky River. In April, 1775, he built a fort at Saltspring, where Boonesborough is now situated. Here he sustained several sieges from the Indians, and was once taken prisoner by them, while hunting, with a number of his men. In 1782, the depredations of the savages increased to an alarming extent, and Boone, with other militia officers, collected one hundred and seventy-six men, and went in pursuit of a large body, who had marched beyond the Blue Licks, forty miles from Lexington. From that time till 1793, he resided alternately in Kentucky and Virginia. In that year, having received a grant of two thousand acres of land from the Spanish authorities, he removed to Upper Louisiana, with his children and

followers, who were presented with eight hundred acres each. He settled with them at Charette, on the Missouri River, where he followed his usual course of life, hunting and trapping bears, till September, 1822, when he died in the eighty-fifth year of his age. He expired while on his knees, taking aim at some object, and was found in that position, with his gun resting on the trunk of a tree.

BOUDINOT, ELIAS, a descendant of one of the Huguenots, was born in Philadelphia, in 1740. He received a liberal education, and entered into the practice of the law in New Jersey, where he soon rose to considerable eminence. In 1777, he was chosen a member of Congress, and, in 1782, was elected president of that body. On the return of peace, he resumed his profession, but, in 1789, was elected to a seat in the House of Representatives of the United States, which he continued to occupy for six years. He was then appointed, by Washington, director of the national mint, in which office he remained for about twelve years. Resigning this office, he retired to private life, and resided from that time in Burlington, New Jersey. Here he passed his time in literary pursuits, liberal hospitality, and in discharging all the duties of an expansive and ever-active benevolence. Being possessed of an ample fortune, he made munificent donations to various charitable and theological institutions, and was one of the earliest and most efficient friends of the American Bible Society. Of this institution he was the first president, and it was particularly the object of his princely bounty. He died in October, 1821.

BALDWIN, ABRAHAM, eminent as a statesman, and president of the University of Georgia, was graduated at Yale College, in 1772. He was a member of the Convention which formed the constitution of the United States, in 1787, and held a seat successively in both houses of Congress. He died at Washington, in 1807.

BARLOW, JOEL, an American poet and diplomatist, was born in Reading, in Connecticut, about the year 1755. His father died while he was yet a lad at school, and left him little more than sufficient to defray the expenses of a liberal education. He was first placed at Dartmouth College, Hew Hampshire, then in its infancy, and, after a

very short residence there, removed to Yale College, New Haven. From this institution he received a degree in 1778, when he first came before the public in his poetical character, by reciting an original poem, which was soon after published. On leaving college, he was successively a chaplain in the revolutionary army, an editor, a bookseller, a lawyer, and a merchant. He next visited England, and published, in London, the first part of Advice to the Privileged Orders; and, in the succeeding year, a poem called the Conspiracy of Kings. In the latter part of 1792, he was appointed one of the deputies from the London Constitutional Society to present an address to the National Convention of France. Information of the notice which the British government had taken of this mission, led him to think that it would be unsafe to return to England; and he continued to reside in Paris for about three years. It was about this time that he composed his most popular poem, entitled Hasty Pudding. He was subsequently appointed consul for the United States at Algiers, with powers to negotiate a peace with the dey, and to redeem all American citizens held in slavery on the coast of Barbary. After discharging these duties, he returned to Paris, and, again engaging in trade, amassed a considerable fortune. In 1805, he returned to his native country, and fixed his residence at Washington, where he displayed a liberal hospitality, and lived on terms of intimacy with most of our distinguished statesmen. He now devoted himself to the publication of the Columbiad, which was based upon a poem written while he was in the army, and published soon after the close of the war, under the title of the Vision of Columbus. This was issued in a style of elegance which few works, either American or European, have ever equalled. In 1811, he was appointed minister to France, and, in October of the following year, was invited to a conference with the emperor Napoleon at Wilna. He immediately set off on this mission, travelling day and night; but, sinking under the fatigue, and want of food and sleep to which he was obliged to submit, he fell into a state of debility and torpor from which he never recovered. He died in December, 1812, at Zarnawica, a village in Poland, near Cracow.

BOWDOIN, JAMES, a governor of Massachusetts, was born at Boston, in the year 1727, and was graduated at Harvard College, in 1745. He took an early stand against the encroachments of the British government upon the provincial rights, and, in 1774, was elected a delegate to the first Congress. The state of his health prevented his attendance, and his place was afterwards filled by Mr. Hancock. In 1778, he was chosen president of the convention which formed the constitution of Massachusetts, and, in 1785, was chosen governor of that state. He was a member of the Massachusetts convention assembled to deliberate on the adoption of the constitution of the United States, and exerted himself in its favor. He was the first president of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, established at Boston in 1780, and was admitted a member of several foreign societies of distinction. He died at Boston, in 1790.

BIDDLE, NICHOLAS, an American naval officer, was born in Philadelphia, in 1750. He entered the British fleet in 1770, having previously served several years as a seaman on board merchant ships. On the commencement of hostilities between the colonies and the mother country, he returned to Philadelphia, and received from Congress the captaincy of the Andrew Doria, a brig of fourteen guns, employed in the expedition against New Providence. Towards the close of 1776, he received command of the Randolph, a new frigate of thirty-two guns, with which he soon captured a Jamaica fleet of four sail, richly laden. This prize he carried into Charleston, and was soon after furnished by the government of that town with four additional vessels, to attack several British cruisers, at that time harassing the commerce of the vicinity. He fell in with the royal line of battle ship Yarmouth, of sixty-four guns, on the 7th of March, 1778, and, after an action of twenty minutes, perished, with all his crew except four, by the blowing up of the ship.

BRADDOCK, EDWARD, major-general of the British army, and commander of the detachment engaged in the expedition against the French on the River Ohio, in 1755, arrived in Virginia in February of that year, and in the spring marched against Fort Du Quesne. On his march

thither, he fell into an ambuscade of the Indians, by which he lost nearly one half of his troops, and received himself a mortal wound.

BAYARD, JAMES A., an eminent American lawyer and politician, was born in Philadelphia, in 1767, and educated at Princeton College. In the year 1784, he engaged in the study of the law, and, on admission to the bar, settled in the state of Delaware, where he soon acquired practice and consideration. He was elected to a seat in Congress towards the close of the administration of Mr. Adams, and first particularly distinguished himself in conducting the impeachment of senator Blount. In 1804, he was elected to the Senate of the United States by the legislature of Delaware, and remained for several years a conspicuous member of that assembly. In 1813, he was appointed, by President Madison, one of the ministers to conclude a treaty of peace with Great Britain, and assisted in the successful negotiations at Ghent, in the following year. He then received the appointment of minister to the court of St. Petersburg; but an alarming illness induced him to return immediately to the United States. He died soon after his

arrival home, in July, 1815.

BARNEY, JOSHUA, a distinguished naval commander in the service of the United States, was born at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1759. He went to sea at a very early age; and, when the war commenced between Great Britain and the colonies, Barney offered his services to the latter, and obtained the situation of master's mate in the sloop of war Hornet. During the war, he was several times taken prisoner by the enemy, and displayed, on numerous occasions, great valor and enterprise. In 1795, he received the commission of captain in the French service, but in 1800, resigned his command, and returned to America. In 1812, when war was declared against Great Britain, he offered his services to the general government, and was appointed to the command of the flotilla for the defence of the Chesapeake. While in this situation, during the summer of 1814, he kept up an active warfare with the enemy; and in the latter part of July, he was severely wounded in a land engagement near Bladensburg. In the following year, he was sent on a mission to