President Buchanan named fellow Dickinson College alumnus Philip Francis Thomas, class of 1830, as Secretary of the Treasury. Thomas, a former governor of Maryland, replaced the Georgian Howell Cobb, who had resigned and was now working for the secession of his state from the Union. His tenure in the Cabinet was short, however, and he resigned on January 14, 1860 after failing to bring in a bond issue to finance the public debt. (John Osborne)
Source Citation
Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861 (New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1887), 37.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
