POLK

the rights, and the interests of our coun- taining our entire military force and furtry. nishing it with supplies and munitions of war.

66

The most energetic and prompt measures and the immediate appearance in arms of a large and overpowering force are recommended to Congress as the most certain and efficient means of bringing the existing collision with Mexico to a speedy and successful termination.

Anticipating the possibility of a crisis like that which has arrived, instructions were given in August last, as a precautionary measure against invasion or threatened invasion, authorizing General Taylor, if the emergency required, to accept volunteers, not from Texas only, but from the States of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and In making these recommendations, I deem corresponding letters were addressed to it proper to declare that it is my anxious the respective governors of those States. desire not only to terminate hostilities These instructions were repeated, and in speedily, but to bring all matters in disJanuary last, soon after the incorporation pute between this government and Mexico of Texas into our Union of States," to an early and amicable adjustment; and General Taylor was further "authorized in this view I shall be prepared to renew by the President to make a requisition negotiations whenever Mexico shall be upon the executive of that State for such ready to receive propositions or to make of its militia force as may be needed to propositions of her own. repel invasion or to secure the country against apprehended invasion." On March 2 he was again reminded, "in the event of the approach of any considerable Mexican force, promptly and efficiently to use the authority with which he was clothed to call to him such auxiliary force as he might need." War actually existed, and our territory having been invaded, General Taylor, pursuant to authority Polk, LEONIDAS, military officer; born vested in him by my direction, has called in Raleigh, N. C., April 10, 1806; graduon the governor of Texas for four regi- ated at West Point in 1827; ordained in ments of State troops, two to be mounted the Protestant Episcopal Church; and was and two to serve on foot, and on the

governor of Louisiana for four regiments of infantry to be sent to him as soon as practicable.

In further vindication of our rights and defence of our territory, I invoke the prompt action of Congress to recognize the existence of the war, and to place at the disposition of the executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace. To this end I recommend that authority should be given to call into the public service a large body of volunteers to serve for not less than six or twelve months, unless sooner discharged. A volunteer force is beyond question more efficient than any other description of citizen soldiers, and it is not to be doubted that a number far beyond that required would readily rush to the field upon the call of their country. I further recommend that a liberal provision be made for sus

I transmit herewith a copy of the correspondence between our envoy to Mexico and the Mexican minister for foreign affairs, and so much of the correspondence between that envoy and the Secretary of State, and between the Secretary of War and the general in command on the Del Norte as is necessary to a full understanding of the subject.

spicuous as a soldier in the occupation Contract; A Treatise on Equity Jurisof Columbus, Ky., late in 1861. He com- prudence; and a Treatise on Riparian manded a division at the battle of Shiloh Rights. He died in San Francisco, Cal., (April, 1862), and was in the great bat- Feb. 15, 1885. tle at Stone River at the close of that year, when he was lieutenant-general. He led a corps at the battle of Chickamauga (September, 1863). For disobedience of orders in this battle he was relieved of command and placed under arrest. In the winter and spring of 1864 he was in temporary charge of the Department of the Mississippi. With Johnston when opposing Sherman's march on Atlanta, he was killed by a cannon-shot, June 14, 1864, on Pine Knob, not many miles from Marietta, Ga.

Pollard, EDWARD ALBERT, journalist; born in Nelson county, Va., Feb. 27, 1828; graduated at the University of Virginia in 1849; studied law in Baltimore, Md., and was editor of the Richmond Examiner in 1861-67. He was a stanch advocate of the Confederacy during the Civil War, but bitterly opposed Jefferson Davis's policy; was captured near the end of the war and held a prisoner for eight months. His publications include Letters of the Southern Spy in Washington and Elsewhere; Southern History of the War; Observations in the North; Eight Months in Prison and on Parole; The Lost Cause A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates; Lee and his Lieutenants; The Lost Cause Regained; Life of Jefferson Davis, with the Secret History of the Southern Confederacy; Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darky Homes of the South; and The Virginia Tourist. He died in Lynchburg, Va., Dec. 12, 1872.

Polygamy. See MORMONS.

Pomeroy, SAMUEL CLARKE, legislator; born in Southampton, Mass., Jan. 3, 1816; educated at Amherst; elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1852; led a colony to Kansas in 1852, locating in Lawrence, but afterwards removed to Atchison. He was a member of the Free-State convention which met in Lawrence, Kan., in 1859, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1861 and 1867, but failed of re-election in 1873 on account of charges of bribery, which were afterwards examined by a committee of the State legislature, which found them not sustained. Mr. Pomeroy was nominated for VicePresident of the United States on the American ticket in 1880.

Pomeroy, SETH, military officer; born in Northampton, Mass., May 20, 1706; became a gunsmith; was a captain in the provincial army of Massachusetts in 1744; and was at the capture of Louisburg in 1745. In 1775 he took command of Colonel Williams's regiment, after his death, in the battle of Lake George. In 1774-75 he was a delegate to the Provincial Congress, and was chosen a brigadier-general of militia in February, 1775, but fought as a private soldier at the battle of Bunker (Breed's) Hill. On his appointment as senior brigadier-general of the Continental army, some difficulty arose about rank, when he resigned and retired to his farm; but when, late in 1776. New Jersey was invaded by the British, he again took the field, and at the head of militia marched to the Hudson River, at Peekskill, where he died, Feb. 19, 1777.

Ponce, a department, district, and city on the south coast of the island of Porto Rico. The city is regularly built-the central part almost exclusively of brick houses and the suburbs of wood. It is the residence of the military commander and the seat of an official chamber of commerce. There is an appellate criminal court, besides other courts; two churches

Pomeroy, JOHN NORTON, lawyer; born in Rochester, N. Y., April 12, 1828; graduated at Hamilton College in 1847; admitted to the bar in 1851; became Professor of Law in the New York University in 1864-69; practised in Rochester in 1869-78; and was Professor of Law in the University of California in 1878-85. He was the author of An Introduction to Municipal Law; An Introduction to the one Protestant, said to be the only one Constitutional Law of the United States: in the Spanish West Indies-two hosRemedies and Remedial Rights according pitals besides the military hospitals, a to the Reformed American Procedure; A home of refuge for the old and poor, a Treatise on the Specific Performance of perfectly equipped fire department, a bank,

and searched for the wonderful spring but leaving one of his vessels to continue among the Bahama Islands, drinking and it, he returned to Porto Rico a wiser and bathing in the waters of every fountain an older man, but bearing the honor of that fell in his way. But he experienced no change, saw no magnificent trees with golden fruit plucked by beautiful maidens, and, disappointed but not disheartened, he sailed towards the northwest until westerly winds came laden with the perfumes of sweet flowers. Then he landed, and in the imperial magnolia-trees, laden with fragrant blossoms, he thought he beheld the introduction to the paradise he was seeking. It was on the morning of Easter Sunday when he landed on the site of the present St. Augustine, in Florida, and he took possession of the country in the name of the Spanish monarch. Because of its

discovering an important portion of the continent of America. In 1514 Ponce returned to Spain and received permission from Ferdinand to colonize the "Island of Florida," and was appointed its governor; but he did not proceed to take possession until 1521, having in the mean time conducted an unsuccessful expedition against the Caribs. On going to Florida with two ships and many followers, he met the determined hostilities of the natives, and after a sharp conflict he was driven back to his ships mortally wounded, and died in Cuba in July, 1521. Upon his tomb was placed this inscription: "In this Sepulchre rest the Bones of a Man who was Leon by Name and still more by Nature."

Poncet, JOSEPH ANTHONY. See JESUIT MISSIONS.

Pond, GEORGE EDWARD, journalist; born in Boston, Mass., March 11, 1837; graduated at Harvard College in 1858; served in the National army in 1862-63; was associate editor of the Army and Navy Journal in 1864-68; afterwards was on the staff of the New York Times till 1870; editor of the Philadelphia Record in 187077; and next became connected with the New York Sun. He is the author of The Shenandoah Valley in 1864; and Driftwood Essays in the Galaxy Magazine.

Pontiac, Ottawa chief; born on the Ottawa River in 1720; became an early ally of the French. With a body of Ottawas he defended the French tradingpost of Detroit against more northerly tribes, and it is supposed he led the Ottawas who assisted the French in defeating Braddock on the Monongahela. In 1760, after the conquest of Canada, Major Rogers was sent to take possession of the Western posts. Pontiac feigned friendship for the. English for a while, but in 1763 he was the leader in a conspiracy of many tribes to drive the English from the Ohio country back beyond the Alleghany Mountains.

wealth of flowers, or because of the holy day when he first saw the land (Pascua de Flores), he gave the name of Florida to the great island (as he supposed) he had discovered. There he sought the fountain of youth in vain Sailing along the coast southward, he discovered and The French had won the affection and named the Tortugas (Turtle) islands. At respect of the Indian tribes with whom another group he found a single inhabi- they came in contact, by their kindness, tant-a wrinkled old Indian woman-not sociability, and religious influence; and one of the beautiful maidens he expected when the English, formidable enemies of to find. Abandoning the search himself, the red men, supplanted the French in

PONTIAC.

PONTIAC

to him in a vision, saying, "I am the Lord of life; it is I who made all men; I wake for their safety. Therefore I give you warning, that if you suffer the Englishmen to dwell in your midst, their diseases and their poisons shall destroy you utterly, and you shall die." The chief preached a crusade against the English among the Western tribes, and so prepared the way for Pontiac to easily form his conspiracy.

After the capture of Fort Duquesne, settlers from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia went over the mountains into the Ohio region in large numbers. They were not kindly disposed towards the Indians, and French traders fanned the embers of hostility between the races. The Delawares and Shawnees, who had lately emigrated from Pennsylvania, and were on the banks of the Muskingum, Scioto, and Miami, nursed hatred of the English and stirred up the Western tribes against the white people. Pontiac took the lead in a widespread conspiracy, and organized a confederacy for the purpose of driving the English back beyond the Althe alleged possession of the vast domain leghanies. The confederacy was composed acquired by the treaty of Paris, expelled of the Ottawas, Miamis, Wyandottes, the Roman Catholic priests, and haughtily Delawares, Shawnees, Ontagamies, Chipassumed to be absolute lords of the Ind- pewas, Pottawattomies, Mississagas, Foxes, ians' country, the latter were exasperated, and Winnebagoes. These had been allies and resolved to stand firmly in the way of of the French. The Senecas, the most English pretensions. "Since the French westerly of the Six Nations, joined the must go, no other nation should take their confederacy, but the other tribes of the place." The conspiracy known as Pontiac's IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY (q. v.) were kept began with the lower nations. The quiet by Sir William Johnson. It was Senecas, of the Six Nations, the Dela- arranged for a simultaneous attack to be wares and Shawnees, had for some time made along the whole frontier of Pennurged the Northwestern Indians to take sylvania and Virginia. The conspiracy up arms against the English. They said: was unsuspected until it was ripe and "The English mean to make slaves of us, the first blow was struck, in June, 1763. by occupying so many posts in our coun- English traders scattered through the try." The British had erected log forts frontier regions were plundered and slain. here and there in the Western wilderness. At almost the same instant they attacked "We had better attempt something now all of the English outposts taken from to recover our liberty, than to wait till the French, and made themselves masters they are better established," said the na- of nine of them, massacring or dispersing tions, and their persuasions had begun the garrisons. Forts Pitt, Niagara, and to stir up the patriotism of the North- Detroit were saved. Colonel Bouquet western barbarians, when an Abenake saved Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg); Niagara prophet from eastern New Jersey appear- was not attacked; and Detroit, after a ed among them. He was a chief, and had long siege by Pontiac in person, was refirst satisfied his own people that the lieved by Colonel Bradstreet in 1764. The Great Spirit had given him wisdom to Indians were speedily subdued, but proclaim war against the new invaders. Pontiac remained hostile until his death He said the great Manitou had appeared in Cahokia, Ill., in 1769. He was an able