Benjamin Alden Bidlack

Benjamin Alden Bidlack
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 11th district
In office March 4, 1843 – March 3, 1845
Preceded by	James Gerry
Succeeded by	Owen D. Leib
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 15th district
In office March 4, 1841 – March 3, 1843
Preceded by	David Petrikin
Succeeded by	Henry Nes
Personal details
Born	September 8, 1804 Paris, New York
Died	February 6, 1849 (aged 44)
Political party	Democratic

Benjamin Alden Bidlack (September 8, 1804 – February 6, 1849) was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Benjamin Alden Bidlack was born in Paris, New York. He moved to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended the public schools. He graduated from the Wilkes-Barre Academy, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1825 and commenced practice in Wilkes-Barre. He was elected district attorney of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in 1825. He moved to Milford, Pennsylvania, in 1830, and served as Pike County treasurer in 1834. He returned to Wilkes-Barre, and was elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1835 and 1836. He was editor of the Republican Farmer and the Democratic Journal in Wilkes-Barre.

Bidlack was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Congresses. He was appointed Chargé d'Affaires to Colombia on May 14, 1845. He successfully negotiated a “treaty of peace, amity, and navigation” with Colombia and secured for the United States the right to build a canal or railroad across the Isthmus of Panama. He died in Bogotá, Colombia in 1849, aged 44. He was interred in the English Cemetery.

He is known because he signed The Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty (also known as the Bidlack Treaty and Treaty of New Granada); a treaty signed between New Granada (today Colombia and Panama) and the United States, on December 12, 1846.^[1] U.S. minister Benjamin Alden Bidlack negotiated the pact with New Granada's commissioner Manuel María Mallarino.

References

1. Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame, November 14, 1996. "Towards 1999 : Highlights of an Historical Review (US-Panama Relations) in the context of an Electoral and Democratic Evolution" by Eduardo Valdés E.

Sources

• Benjamin Alden Bidlack at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• The Political Graveyard