Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

FIFTY YEARS IN A PRINTING OFFICE. 373
When he entered this office, but one President of the
United States had deceased. The progress of the Republic was then looked upon and still aided by the counsels of
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Monroe was then the favorite President, whom no party opposed. In various positions were then scattered through
the land the " coming men." John Quincy Adams, Andrew
Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William H. Harrison, John
Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore,
Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln and
Andrew Johnson have all since that day been elevated to
the Presidency, and twelve of the sixteen have also departed this life in the period he has been chronicler of
public events.
In the fifty years, the population of our country has extended from 9 to 36 millions. The 1,500,000 slaves of 1818
bad increased to 4,000,000 and then, a joyful event not
anticipated in our day, were all made freemen.
In 1818, there were only twenty States in the Union.
Since then Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas,
Michigan, Florida, Iowa, Texas, Wisconsin, California, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, Nebraska, Oregon, and West
Virginia, have been admitted; and the territories of
Arizona, Dakota, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah,
Washington and Wyoming will soon be presenting their
claims to become States. But not again will the claim be
made as heretofore, that no free State shall be admitted
without a slave State being received as an offset. He wellrecollects that Maine could not be received to the sister.
hood, without Missouri as an offset. And so the admission
battle has raged for half a century.
He might go into the public history of times past, and
bring up matters relating to the twelve Presidential elections which have been the subject of newspaper record,speak of the party spirit which in 1824 brought forward