his conduct of the trial. Political career Verplanck was elected as a member of the New York State Assembly in 1820–21, 1822 and 1823. He was elected as a Jacksonian to the 19th, 20th, and as a Democrat to the 21st and 22nd United States Congresses, holding office from March 4, 1825, to March 3, 1833. He was Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means (22nd Congress). While there one of his leading acts was to secure the extension of the period of copyrights. In 1833, when President Andrew Jackson began his quest to suppress the Second Bank of the United States, Verplanck left the Democrats. In April 1834, at the first popular election for Mayor of New York City, Verplanck was the candidate of the emerging Whig Party but was narrowly defeated (sources range from 181 to 213 votes) by Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence. Afterwards Verplanck kept his own counsel in politics and supported William Henry Harrison (Whig), James K. Polk (Dem.), Zachary Taylor (Whig) and James Buchanan (Dem.) for President, remaining a Democrat thereafter. Verplanck was a member of the New York State Senate (1st D.) from 1838 to 1841, sitting in the 61st, 62nd, 63rd and 64th New York State Legislatures. He was appointed as the President of the Board of Commissioners of Immigration, serving from 1846 until his death in 1870. He was a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1867-68. Writing career In his literary life, Verplanck was a contributor to the North American Review, perhaps best known for his denunciation of Knickerbocker's History of New York, by Washington Irving. In 1819, he wrote verse satires against Dewitt Clinton; these were generally known as The Bucktail Bards. On the request of Harper Brothers, he edited a set of Shakespeare. Through his writing, he was considered part of the so-called "Knickerbocker group", which included Irving, William Cullen Bryant, James Kirke Paulding, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Joseph Rodman Drake, Robert Charles Sands, Lydia Maria Child, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. Personal life On October 2, 1811, he married Mary Elizabeth Fenno, a daughter of Mary Curtis and John Fenno (1751–1798), a Federalist Party editor and publisher of Gazette of the United States. One of her sisters married Josiah Ogden Hoffman (1766–1837), the New York Attorney General, and another married John Rodman (1775–1847), the New York County District Attorney. Together, Verplanck and Mary Eliza had two sons: