Background
Peter Force son of William and Sarah Ferguson Force, was born near Passaic Falls, New Jersey.
Peter Force son of William and Sarah Ferguson Force, was born near Passaic Falls, New Jersey.
His boyhood was spent largely in New York, and in New York City he learned the printer’s trade.
During the War of 1812 he served in the army, entering as a private and coming out a lieutenant. In 1815 he moved to Washington, D. C. , with his employer, to work on government-printing contracts. The Washington printers of his day were almost inevitably drawn into politics; Force was no exception to this rule.
In 1822 he was elected to the city council, and later to the board of aldermen, serving for a time as president of each of these bodies.
In 1848 he again became a candidate for the same office, but this time he was badly beaten, standing lowest of the three candidates.
In 1823 he established a semi-weekly newspaper, the National Journal, devoted to the candidacy of John Quincy Adams. In 1824, the campaign year, the paper became a daily, and continued as such until 1831. Although a Whig, Force seems to have taken his politics decently, as he did everything else, and to have avoided the bitter partisanship of some of his contemporaries. In this respect his political career was typical of his whole life. His relations with his associates were always pleasant. On various occasions he was accorded honors, perhaps not important in themselves, but suggestive of the esteem in which he was held.
When he was only twenty-two years old, for example, he was chosen president of the New York Typographical Society. Later, in Washington, he became president of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, and a member of the board of managers of the Washington National Monument Society.
In 1820, and for the eight years following, he printed a register of the public offices; from 1820 to 1836, with the exception of a three-year interval when he was immersed in politics, he published the National Calendar, later National Calendar and Annals of the United States, an annual of historical and statistical information. Then he collected and published four volumes entitled: Tracts and Other Papers, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America (Washington, 1836 - 1846).
These are reprints of rare pamphlets bearing on the early history of the colonies. His father, a soldier in the Revolution, seems to have inspired in him a lively interest in the history of that movement.
As a result, the son devoted the greater part of his middle and later years to the collection of historical materials dealing with the colonial period and the Revolution. In this connection Force brought out his greatest work, the monumental volumes known as the American Archives.
A supporter of John Quincy Adams in the campaign of 1824, he naturally became a Whig when the new party was formed in 1836 he was elected mayor of Washington, on the Whig ticket. Two years later he was reelected, without opposition.
Force is best known, however, not as a politician or newspaper man, but as a collector and editor, first of statistical, then of historical material.
He became president of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, and a member of the board of managers of the Washington National Monument Society.
Never a jovial man, but on the contrary rather quiet and reserved, he was possessed of a pleasing geniality that attracted people to him.