reëlected. Several of the sessions were held at Yorktown, Va., and Bartlett traveled all the way thither and back on horseback, attended only by a single servant. On the route were extensive forests which were the lurking place of robbers, and they were obliged to exercise much caution and foresight in order to escape these marauders. In 1778, after the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British, Congress met in that city again. In a letter to a friend Dr. Bartlett describes the ravages which had been made by the enemy: "Congress," he says, "was obliged to hold its sessions in the college hall, the state house having been left by the enemy in a condition which could scarcely be described. Many of the finest houses were converted into stables; parlor floors were cut through, and the dung shoveled through into the cellars. Through the country, north of the city for many miles, the hand of destruction had marked its way. Houses had been consumed, fences carried off, gardens and orchards destroyed. Even the great roads were scarcely to be discovered amidst the confusion and desolation which prevailed."
After Dr. Bartlett's retirement from congress he spent the remainder of his life in New Hampshire, filling up the measure of his usefulness in a zealous devotion to the interests of the state. Affairs were in a bad condition at home. Writing to Samuel Livermore, who had succeeded him as a delegate in congress, the doctor gives a deplorable account of the difficulties and sufferings of the people in New Hampshire. The money of the country had become much depreciated, and provisions were scarce and high. Indian corn was sold at as much as ten dollars a bushel. Other things were in the same proportion. The soldiers of the army could hardly subsist on their pay, and the officers, at times, found it difficult to keep them together.
In the year 1779 Dr. Bartlett was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1782 he became associate justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature, and from June to November, 1790, he was chief justice. He was a member of the state convention of 1788, and by his zeal was accessory to the ratification of our present constitution. In 1789 he was elected a senator to congress, but owing to the infirmities of age, which rendered it unpleasant for him to leave home to go any distance, he declined the office. The following year, however, he was elected president of the state, and was three times reëlected, though he had such rivals as Pickering and Sullivan. In 1793 he was elected first governor of the state under the new constitution. All these offices he filled with ability and fidelity, and he would have been the candidate of the Federal party for the chief magistracy another term but for his infirm health, which forced him to decline further honors. He expressed the determination to close his public career in the following letter to the legislature of the state, dated January, 1794:
"Gentlemen of the legislature;—After having served the public for a number of years, to the best of my abilities, in the various offices to which I have had the honor to be appointed, I think it proper, before your adjournment, to signify to you, and through you to my fellow-citizens at large, that I now find myself so far advanced in age that it will be expedient for me, at the close of the session, to retire from the cares and fatigues of public business to the repose of a private life, with a grateful sense of the repeated marks of trust and confidence that my fellow-citizens have reposed in me, and with my best wishes for the future peace and prosperity of the state."
Gov. Bartlett was sixty-five years old at this time, but he was older in care and broken health than in years. He had been a hard worker upward of fifty years, thirty of which had been spent in the service of his state and country. His labors had been arduous, his cares and responsibilities great. Few men of our state possessed the abilities that he did, and his duties had been corre-
