On October 13 an act was passed “providing for the resumption of specie payments by the banks and for the relief of debtors,” to go into immediate effect. The law had the desired result, the different branches of industry revived and the community saved from bankruptcy and ruin. He declined a renomination for a second term.
While serving in Congress, Pollock became intimately acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, who was then also a member, and they boarded at the same house.
This friendship was renewed after Lincoln became President, when he called Pollock to Washington to consult with him upon the grave questions confronting the country and to consult with him regarding certain men he was considering for his Cabinet. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed his Director of the Mint at Philadelphia, and it was through his efforts, while so serving, that the motto, “In God We Trust,” was placed upon our coins.
Governor Pollock died at Lock Haven April 19, 1890, and his body was interred in the cemetery at Milton.
John Binns, English Politician and Editor,
Died June 24, 1860
Editor John Binns died in Philadelphia June 24, 1860, at the advanced age of eighty-eight years, each one of which was one of prominence, either in England or America.
In 1854 he wrote the “Recollections of the Life of John Binns; Twenty-nine Years in Europe and Fifty-three in the United States.” In the introduction he says:
“Soon after my arrival in the United States, which was on the first day of September, 1801, I was urged by the late Dr. Joseph Priestley, his son Joseph, and Thomas Cooper, Esq., to write my life. They were among my earliest American acquaintances, and continued my zealous and faithful friends to their death. Some few American gentlemen who have subsequently, in Philadelphia, read the account of my arrest and examination before the Privy Council in London, and my trials for sedition and high treason in 1797 and 1798, have also urged me to publish my Recollections. Let these facts be received as an apology for this publication.”