Richard Rush

Richard Rush (1780-1859), American lawyer and statesman, son of Benjamin Rush, born in Philadelphia, and educated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). He was admitted to the bar in 1780. He became attorney general of Pennsylvania in 1811 and attorney general of the U.S. in the cabinet of President James Monroe in 1814. In 1817 Rush, as acting secretary of state, negotiated the Rush-Bagot Convention with the British statesman Charles Bagot; by the terms of the pact, Britain and the United States agreed to limit their naval forces on the Great Lakes. In the following year, as U.S. minister to Britain, Rush and the American statesman Albert Gallatin concluded with British negotiators the treaty that determined the boundary between Canada and the U.S. In 1828 he ran unsuccessfully for vice president on the Federalist ticket with President John Quincy Adams. He was U.S. minister to France from 1847 to 1849.