MERCER COUNTY, situated on the west boundary of Pennsylvania. Area, 850 square miles. Face of the country, uneven ; soil, productive. Seat of justice, Mercer. Pop. in 1810, 8,277; in 1820, 11,681; in 1830, 19,731; in 1840, 32,873 ; in 1850, 33,172.

DANIEL, Junius, soldier, was born in Halifax county, N.C., June 27, 1828. His father, John Rivers Jones Daniel, was attorney-general of North Carolina (1834-41), a member of congress (1841-51), and a cousin of J.J. Daniel, a justice of the supreme court. Junius was graduated at West Point after having experienced severe injuries in artillery practice in 1851. He was sent to Kentucky, but left there in 1852, and spent the next four years in forts Albuquerque, Fillmore, and Stanton, and in Indian fighting. Here he was an ardent student of the art of war.

When Lincoln called for troops to crush the South, the State of Louisiana offered Daniel a commission in the service of that State. He, however, preferred to serve with the troops of North Carolina and hastened home. Arriving in Halifax, he tendered his services to Governor Ellis, and was immediately accepted. He was shortly afterwards elected Colonel of the Fourth Regiment, but later of the Fourteenth, which he accepted and remained the commanding officer until the period of enlistment expired.

[Campbel] joined a [Supreme] Court led by the 73-year-old chief justice Roger B. Taney. Campbell undertook a strict constructionist philosophy of judicial review during his years on the Court and became known as a dissenter...In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) he voted in conference against hearing the case but was outvoted. Once the case was argued, he sided with the majority led by Chief Justice Taney in overturning the Missouri Compromise, declaring that blacks could not be citizens of the United States and that slaves were property protected by the Constitution.