RUSH, RICHARD (178o-1859), American statesman and diplomat, son of Dr. Benjamin Rush, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Aug. 29, 1780. He graduated at Princeton in 1797, and was admitted to the bar in 1800. He was attorney-general of Pennsyl vania in 1811 ; controller of the Treasury of the United States, 1811-14; attorney-general in the cabinet of President James Madison, 1814-17; acting secretary of State from March to Sept., 1817; minister to Great Britain, 1817-25; secretary of the Treas ury in the cabinet of President J. Q. Adams, 1825-29; and candi date for vice-president on the Adams ticket in 1828. In 1818, while minister to Great Britain, he, in association with Albert Gallatin, concluded with British plenipotentiaries the important treaty which determined the boundary line between the United States and Canada from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky mountains and provided for the joint occupation of Oregon for ten years. He also conducted the negotiations with Canning in 1823 relating to the South American policy of the Holy Alliance.
He followed the Adams-Clay faction of the Democratic-Repub lican Party in the split of 1825-28, but returned to the Demo cratic Party about 1834 on the bank issue. In 1835 he and Ben
jamin C. Howard, of Baltimore, Md., were sent by President Jack son to prevent an outbreak of hostilities in the Ohio-Michigan boundary dispute. In 1836-38 Rush was commissioner to receive the Smithson legacy (see SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION), and in 1847-49 he was minister to France. He died in Philadelphia on July 30, 1859.
He published A Narrative of a Residence at the Court of London from 1817 to 1825 (2 vols. 1833-45; all editions after the 1st ed. of the 1st. vol. are entitled Memoranda of a Residence, etc.) ; W ashington in Domestic Life (1857), compiled from letters written by Washington to his private secretary in 1790-98 ; and Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic and Miscellaneous (186o) ; and while attorney-general he suggested the plan for the compilation, Laws of the Nation (5. vols., 1815), ed. by John B. Colvin.