Dawson pos.sesses a tine library on American history -- the result of many years of historical inquiry, and undoubtedly one of the most valuable collections, for practical purposes, in the country. Not only on the special subjects of which he has written, but in the general field of American history, Mr. Dawson's searching and retentive inti^llect Inis stored up a mass of most valuable information, in the use of which he is skilled by long practice to such an extent as to niake him one of the most formidable of controversialists.

In religious opinion he is a resolute and uncompromising Calvinistic Baptist; and in politics an oldfashioned "States-lights Democrat." He voted for Polk for President in 1844, and attached himself to that wing of the Democratic party known as the " Barnburners," which, in 1848, assisted in forming the Free Soil |>arty. During the Presidential canvass of that year, he was a member of the New York City committee of that party, and in 1849 was on the "general committee" of the city -- what was known as "the old men's committee" -- of which S. J. Tilden, B. F. Butler, ex-Attorney-General of the United States, Wilson G. Hunt, (Jeorgc H. Purser, Jlark S{)encer, Anthony J. Bleecker, John Van Buren, David Dudley Field, Lucius Robinson, Nelson J. Waterbury and other well-known politicians were members. He adhered to the Free Soil [)arty and its successor, the Republican party, till the War of Secession, to the last-named, however, not as a " Republican," but as "a Democrat opposed to the administration." Since the close of the War he has been, as he maintains he had been before the War, a Democrat and a rigid opponent of centralized power both in State and Federal government.