Elected to the Louisiana Senate in 1855, [Richard] Taylor was first a Whig, then a Know-Nothing, and finally a Democrat, veering cautiously toward a strong anti-Republican yet reluctant proslavery position. His nationalistic, Whiggish conservatism, was laced with disdain for abolitionists but also made him distrustful of demagogic fire-eaters' demands for disunion. Both of these volatile expressions of sectional conflict, Taylor believed, masked America's deeper sickness of rampant democracy, which he considered irreversible and ultimately tragic.

The son of a Carlisle minister, Thomas Orwig prepared at the Dickinson College Grammar School for two years before entering the College in 1855 as a member of the class of 1859.  Although Orwig left Dickinson after his sophomore year when his family moved to New Berlin, Pennsylvania, while at the College he was a member of the Belles Lettres Literary Society.

Orwig received his bachelor of arts degree from Lewisburg in 1862 and then joined the Union army soon after, rising to the rank of sergeant.  He died later that year in a naval hospital in Washington, D.C.

Parker, Thomas Sheerer – Born in Perry county, Pa., April 2, 1840; p., Joseph and Mary (Sheerer) Parker; prep., Dickinson grammar school; entered 1856; A. B., 1859; A. M., 1862; lawyer; Sigma Chi; B. L. society. Address, Pittsburg, Pa.

McLANE, Robert Milligan,  (son of Louis McLane), a Representative from Maryland; born in Wilmington, Del., June 23, 1815; attended private schools in Wilmington, St.