Alexander J. Dallas, who was Madison's Secretary of the Treasury, and sister of George M. Dallas, Vice-President of the United States in Polk's administration.
Dallas Bache, as he was usually called by his intimates, was placed in a classical school at an early age, and proved to be a remarkably bright pupil. The year he was fifteen years old he was appointed a cadet in the Military Academy at West Point. He maintained a high stand in scholarship from the beginning to the end of his course, and graduated in 1825 at the head of his class, although its youngest member. This was no small achievement in a class from which four cadets were assigned to the engineer corps, when only one or two members attained this honor in most classes. Moreover, he went through the whole four years without receiving a demerit mark—equally remarkable in view of the rigid discipline of the academy, and the only instance on record. Students are none too prone to admire one of their fellows who is noted only for studious habits and correct deportment, but young Bache had besides the personal qualities that win esteem. Prof. Joseph Henry, in his memoir read before the National Academy of Sciences, relates of cadet Bache that "his superiority in scholarship was freely acknowledged by every member of his class, while his unassuming manner, friendly demeanor, and fidelity to duty secured him the affection as well as the respect of not only his fellow-pupils, but also of the officers of the institution. It is also remembered that his classmates, with instinctive deference to his scrupulous sense of propriety, forbore to solicit his participation in any amusement which in the slightest degree conflicted with the rules of the academy. So far from this, they commended his course, and took pride to themselves, as members of his class, in his reputation for high standing and exemplary conduct. His roommate—older by several years than he was, and by no means noted for regularity or studious habits—constituted himself, as it were, his guardian, and sedulously excluded all visitors or other interruptions to study during the prescribed hours. For this self-imposed service, gravely rendered as essential to the honor of the class, he was accustomed jocularly to claim immunity for his own delinquencies or shortcomings."
All of young Bache's predispositions for good were stimulated and sustained by the judicious care of his mother, not only while he was a child at home, but also by means of a ready pen during the whole of his residence at West Point. It should not be inferred that the young man attained perfection in his conduct. "When a child he is said to have been quick-tempered, and at later periods of his life, when suddenly provoked beyond his habitual power of endurance, he sometimes gave way to manifestations of temper which might have surprised those who only knew
