Cyclopædia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States

PICKERING

PICKERING, Timothy, was born at Salem, Mass., July 17, 1745, and died there, Jan. 29, 1829. He was graduated at Harvard in 1763, was admitted to the bar, entered the revolutionary army, and became adjutant general and quarter-master general. (See also ORDINANCE OF 1787.) Under the administrations of Washington and John Adams he was successively postmaster general, secretary of war, and secretary of state. (See ADMINISTRATIONS, I.

—III.) After a brief retirement to a farm in Pennsylvania, he returned to Massachusetts in 1802, and served as United States senator (federalist) 1803-11, and congressman 1813-17. He then retired permanently from politics.

—From 1798 until his death. Pickering's political life was a perennial conflict with the Adams family. He had been dismissed from John Adams' cabinet for endeavoring to force the president into the Hamilton policy. (See ADAMS, JOHN; X Y Z MISSION.) As senator, he and his colleague, John Quincy Adams, quarreled over the latter's support of the embargo. Thereafter he was engaged in frequent newspaper and pamphlet wars with both of his old opponents. The particulars may be found in the "Correspondence between John Adams and William Cunningham," published in 1823, and Pickering's "Observations" upon it, in 1824. Pickering is the New England federalist most strongly suspected of favoring secession in 1805-9. (See SECESSION, I.)

—See Upham and Pickering's Life of Pickering; North American Review, July, 1874; 9 John Adams' Works, 55. A personal description of Pickering is in 1 Schouler's United States, 191, 302.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.