If Gov. Josh Shapiro were to ascend to the vice presidency, he would be the first Jew and the first member of Generation X to hold the post. What he would not be is the first Pennsylvanian.
That superlative goes to George Mifflin Dallas, who served brief stints as Philadelphia mayor, U.S. attorney, U.S. senator and minister to Russia before being elected vice president in 1844. Like Shapiro, Dallas served as state attorney general under Gov. Wolf — George Wolf, that is, not Tom.
Before dropping into obscurity, Dallas was pivotal in advancing the agenda of his boss, one-termer James K. Polk. Dallas exercised his constitutional role of tie-breaker in the Senate 19 times, the fourth most in American history (current Vice President Kamala Harris has the most at 33).
Vice presidents didn’t play as large a role in governing then as they do today, said Zach Kinslow, the curator and education director at the President James K. Polk Home & Museum in Columbia, Tennessee. “But there were exceptions, and Dallas is one of those.”
Dallas successfully lobbied his boss to appoint Robert J. Walker as Treasury secretary, according to Polk scholar John Pinheiro. It was a Walker-backed tariff reduction bill that dragged Dallas into a political fight that cost him the job he wanted most: president.
Import tariffs were a contentious issue in mid-19th century America, and the Mason-Dixon Line divided supporters and opponents. Southerners, like Polk, favored low tariffs, while the industrial North wanted to keep tariffs high to protect manufacturers. Dallas personally sided with the latter, but when the Senate voted 27-27 to advance a bill lowering tariffs, he broke the tie in favor of his boss.
“James K. Polk would later say, of everything he did, that was the hardest thing he had to get through Congress,” Kinslow said. “And this is a guy that brought a whole war with Mexico and added 1.19 million square miles of land to the country.”
The lower tariffs were a major win for the South and the Polk administration, lowering prices for consumer goods and easing the United States’ strained relationship with the United Kingdom, according to Pinheiro. Dallas, however, emerged from the vote a loser. His support in Pennsylvania cratered, and he failed to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1848.
It was Pennsylvania’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention that had propelled Dallas to the ticket four years prior, according to Kinslow.
After a seven-year hiatus from politics, Dallas was named minister to the United Kingdom, where he served until the start of the Lincoln administration. Dallas’ retirement lasted three and a half years, and he died of a heart attack in his native Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve 1864. He was 72.
The 11th vice president’s imprint on America is little noticed. A 2014 study found fewer than 20% of Americans could even recall Polk as a president.
Dallas’ legacy, instead, is his name. Dallastown in York County is named for him, as are a smattering of towns and counties throughout the nation. Some believe Dallas, Texas, is named for him, though no direct evidence points to that.
And what about the 47th vice president, “Scranton Joe” Biden? He moved to Delaware 71 years ago, and his residence is listed as Wilmington, a handful of miles from the Pennsylvania border.
One hundred sixty years after Dallas’ death, another ambitious Southeastern Pennsylvania man is a contender for the Democratic vice presidential nomination, and while Josh Shapiro is seen as being able to put the commonwealth within Democrats’ reach, the home state of a candidate doesn’t always translate to electoral success. Polk lost his home state of Tennessee in the 1844 election.
“But he did win Pennsylvania,” Pinheiro said, “which was Dallas’ home state.”