fifteen, and a second lieutenant at sixteen. After the war, he served
as aide-de-camp on the staff of General Brown, living at Fortress
Monroe and at Washington, until feeble health led to his resignation
in 1828. Then he began the practice of law at Cooperstown. In 1830,
when Governor Throop made him adjutant-general, he removed to Albany.
He was now twenty-six years old, an accomplished writer, a vigorous
speaker, and as prompt and bold in his decisions as in 1861, when he
struck the high, clear-ringing note for the Union in his order to
shoot the first man who attempted to haul down the American flag. He
was not afraid of any enterprise; he was not abashed by the stoutest
opposition; he was not even depressed by failure. When the call came,
he leaped up to sudden political action, and very soon was installed
as a member of the Regency.

Dix had one great advantage over most of his contemporaries in
political life--he was able to write editorials for the _Argus_. It
took a keen pen to find an open way to its columns. Croswell needed
assistance in these days of financial quakings and threatened party
divisions, but he would accept it only from a master. Until this time,
Wright and Marcy had aided him. Their love for variety of subject,
characteristic, perhaps, of the gifted writer, presented widely
differing themes, flavoured with humour and satire, making the paper
attractive if not spectacular. To this work Dix, who had already
published a _Sketch of the Resources of the City of New York_, now
brought the freshness of a strong personality and the training of a
scholar and linguist. He had come into public life under the influence
of Calhoun, for whom the army expressed a decided preference in 1828;
but he never accepted the South Carolinian's theory of nullification.
Dix had inherited loyalty from his father, an officer in the United
States army, and he was quick to strike for his country when South
Carolina raised the standard of rebellion in 1861.

There was something particularly attractive about John A. Dix in these
earlier years. He had endured hardships and encountered dangers, but
he had never known poverty; and after his marriage he no longer
depended upon the law or upon office for life's necessities. Educated
at Phillips Exeter Academy, at the College of Montreal, and at St.
Mary's College in Baltimore, he learned to be vigorous without
egotism, positive without arrogance, and a man of literary tastes
wi