● ● ●  thought to give an inside slant on Jackson’s policies. In 1836 Hill resigned from the United States Senate to become governor of the state.

That same year was the beginning of a severe economic depression which was to last for some four years and greatly exacerbate political passions during the Van Buren administration. This was also the year that Albert Baker, because of ill health, came back from the Pierces to spend most of the summer with his family. Like so many other young men feeling the financial pinch, he decided at that time to go west. A college friend, James W. Grimes, who had established himself in the booming town of Burlington in the Iowa district of what was then Wisconsin Territory, urged him to come out and join him there.⁹⁷

At the last moment Albert’s plans were changed and he went instead to Boston, where he spent the winter of 1836–37 reading law in the firm of Richard Fletcher. During this time he lived with the family of General John McNeil (whose wife was Franklin Pierce’s sister) and tutored young Benjamin McNeil to earn his keep. In a letter to George Sullivan Baker in October he announced that he and General McNeil would go out to Wisconsin in spring or early summer when navigation opened up, and then in a burst of typical Baker high spirits he wrote:

In April, 1837, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar, but at the same time his health broke down; he was sent to the hospital, barely escaped with his life, and returned for convalescence to Sanbornton, where he wrote George moodily that he would probably spend the rest of his life hoeing potatoes. The three or four months he actually spent there were Mary’s intellectual gain, but by September he was  ● ● ●