GILPIN, HENRY DILWOOD ( 1801-60). An American lawyer. He was born in Lancaster, England, where his father, Joshua Gilpin. a Philadelphia manufacturer and author, was liv ing at the time. He was educated in England up to 1816, when he removed to America, and graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1819. He was admitted to the bar in 1822, and rapidly established himself in an extensive prac tice in Philadelphia. In 1832 he was appointed by Jackson to succeed Dallas as United States District Attorney for Pennsylvania, and served until 1837. At the same time he acted as one of the Government directors of the United States Bank, and actively seconded Jackson's radical efforts to destroy that institution. This activity reacted upon him toward the end of the Adminis tration, when the Senate refused to confirm his appointment as Governor of Michigan Territory. In 1837 he was appointed by Van Buren Solicitor of the United States Treasury, and in 1840 he was appointed Attorney-General of the United States, a position which he retained until the inauguration of President Harrison. He never
reentered public life, but spent his remaining years in travel and literary pursuits and in the practice of his profession, and for the next twenty years he was one of the best-known mem bers of the American bar. From 1826 to 1832 be edited the Atlantic Souvenir, the first Ameri can literary annual. He was a frequent con tributor to magazines and reviews. Besides legal reports, he edited The Papers of James Madison (3 vols., 1840), and Opinions of the Attorney General of the United States from the Beginning of the Government to 1841 (2 vols., 1841). He also published: Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (1826) ; a transla tion of Chaptal's Essay on Import Duties and Prohibitions (1841); and Life of Martin Van Buren (1844).