He was born at Centre, Perry County, Pennsylvania, on the 9th of January, 1828. Spending his youth on his father’s farm, he became a tanner’s apprentice at fifteen, and remained at this trade for three years. His schooling was very limited, and his mental equipment was almost wholly the rich endowment nature had given him and the attainments which his extraordinary intellectual force brought in after-years. At nineteen he became the editor of the Juniata _Sentinel_, and his natural ability and vigorous pen soon gave him a recognized position and a distinct influence. Before he was twenty-one he served as a conferee for Andrew G. Curtin in his Congressional candidacy, and laid the foundations of his long and intimate friendship with the great War Governor. Speedily called to the editorship of a more important paper at Chambersburg, his impress broadened, and in 1853, at the age of twenty-five, he was nominated by the Whigs for Auditor-General, the youngest man ever named by any party in Pennsylvania for a State office. Four years later he was elected to the Legislature, serving in the House and then in the Senate for several years. His career in that body was brilliant and distinctive. He was independent, fearless, and aggressive, a ready and trenchant debater, and he displayed political and parliamentary abilities of the highest order. In the Republican National Convention of 1860 he played a prominent part. He and Curtin were potential in leading the Pennsylvania break from Cameron to Lincoln, and in promoting the nomination of the latter. With that success he accepted the chairmanship of the State Committee, and made a dashing and energetic campaign, which resulted in the October State victory that assured and portended the election of Lincoln. This relation to the contest and subsequent service with Governor Curtin, in directing Pennsylvania’s part in the war, placed him on an intimate footing with the President, and during those dramatic and trying years he was a commanding figure in the State. Later he settled in Philadelphia in the practice of the law; became one of the leading spirits in the Republican revolt of 1872 which led to the Greeley movement; returned to the Legislature, where, free from party shackles, he waged unsparing war against jobbery and wrong, and where his forensic talent, his bold attacks, and rare powers of invective and sarcasm made him at once respected and feared. Finally, he found what was to prove his higher and truer place, and entered upon what was to be his main life-work in the establishment of the Philadelphia _Times_, where he has had an ample and conspicuous arena for the editorial genius which has ranked him among the foremost journalists of the country. Here, for twenty-five years, with ripened experience and mellowed spirit, but with unabated passion for political movements, Colonel McClure has been both the actor and the critic in the great and constantly changing drama of public events. Standing