JAMES CAMPBELL.—Born September 1, 1813, in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; admitted to the bar in 1834, at the age of twenty-one years; in 1841, at the age of twenty-eight, he was appointed Judge of the Common Pleas Court for the city and county of Philadelphia, which position he occupied for the term of nine years; in 1851, when the Constitution of the State was changed, making the judiciary elective, he was nominated by a State convention of his party as a candidate for the Supreme Court of the State, but was defeated after a warmly-contested and somewhat peculiar contest, securing, however, 176,000 votes; in January, 1852, he was appointed Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, which he resigned to assume the duties of postmaster-general: he was appointed to that office on the 8th of March, 1853. There was no particular feature in the postal department to render this gentleman’s name in its connection popular during his term of office. It is somewhat curious, however, that the administrations of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan—_both peculiarly political_—should have furnished to the Southern Confederacy more prominent men who were engaged with them in office than did all the other administrations combined. Is this accident, design, or the effect of their political education under their reign? AARON VAIL BROWN.—Appointed postmaster-general under James Buchanan’s administration in 1857; was born August 15, 1795, in Brunswick county, Virginia; graduated at the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill, in 1814; studied law and soon commenced practice in Nashville, Tennessee; he was partner in the law business of the late President Polk; served in almost all the sessions of the legislature of Tennessee between 1821 and 1832; he was a member of the House of Representatives from 1839 to 1845, and was in that year elected Governor of Tennessee. In his first report as postmaster-general, made December 1, 1857, he very modestly stated that, “entering on the administration of the Post-Office Department,” he “ventured on no new theories, nor attempted any innovations on the well-tried system established and practised upon” by his predecessors. It was during his administration that the route from New York to New Orleans was considerably improved and transportation facilitated;[41] also the mail-service on the Mississippi River below the Ohio was materially changed and improved. The overland mail-service to California by the Southern route by contract became an agitating subject, and under proposals approved by an act of Congress, March 3, 1857, various bids were made by parties for carrying the mail. The contract was made on the 16th of September, 1857, with certain parties, at a cost of $600,000 per annum. (_See Report for the year 1857._) JOSEPH HOLT succeeded Aaron Vail Brown, who died March, 1858, in alluding to which Mr. Holt uses the following language:— “POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT, December 3, 1859.