Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 35

Lincoln.--Habeas Corpus refused.--Democratic Party protests.-- Meeting in Albany.--Letter of Governor Seymour.--Ohio Democrats send a Committee to Was.h.i.+ngton.--Mr. Lincoln's Replies to Albany Meeting and to the Ohio Committee.--Effect of his Words upon the Country.--Army of the Potomac.--General Hooker's Defeat at Chancellorsville.--Gloom in the Country.--The President's Letters to General Hooker.--General Meade succeeds Hooker in Command of the Army.--Battle of Gettysburg.--Important Victory for the Union.

--Relief to the Country.--General Grant's Victory at Vicksburg.-- Fourth of July.--Notable Coincidence.--State Elections favorable to the Administration.--Meeting of Thirty-eighth Congress.--Schuyler Colfax elected Speaker.--Prominent New Members in Each Branch.--E.

D. Morgan, Alexander Ramsey, John Conness, Reverdy Johnson, Thomas A. Hendricks, Henry Winter Davis, Robert C. Schenck, James A.

Garfield, William B. Allison.--President's Message.--Thirteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution.--First proposed by James M. Ashley.

--John B. Henderson proposes Amendment which pa.s.ses the Senate.-- Debate in Both Branches.--Aid to the Pacific Railroads.--Lieutenant- General Grant.

At no time during the war was the depression among the people of the North so great as in the spring of 1863. When the Thirty- seventh Congress came to its close on the 3d of March, partisan feeling was so bitter that a contest of most dangerous character was foreshadowed in the Loyal States. The anti-slavery policy of the President was to be attacked as tending to a fatal division among the people; the conduct of the war was to be arraigned as impotent, and leading only to disaster. Circ.u.mstances favored an a.s.sault upon the Administration. The project of freeing the slaves had encountered many bitter prejudices among the ma.s.ses in the Loyal States, and reverses in the field had created a dread of impending conscriptions which would send additional thousands to be wasted in fruitless a.s.saults upon impregnable fortifications.

General Hooker had succeeded to the command of the Army of the Potomac, still sore under the cruel sacrifice of its brave men in the previous December. General Grant was besieging Vicksburg, which had been fortified with all the strength that military science could impart, and was defended by a very strong force under the command of J. C. Pemberton, a graduate of West Point, and a lieutenant- general in the Confederate army.

CRUSADE AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.

The opponents of the Administration intended to press the attack, to destroy the prestige of Mr. Lincoln, to bring hostilities in the field to an end, to force a compromise which should give humiliating guaranties for the protection of Slavery, to bring the South back in triumph, and to re-instate the Democratic party in the Presidential election of the ensuing year for a long and peaceful rule over a Union in which radicalism had been stamped out and Abolitionists placed under the ban. Such was the flattering prospect which opened to the view of the party that had so determinedly resisted and so completely defeated the Administration in the great States of the Union the preceding year. The new crusade against the President was begun by Mr. Vallandigham, who if not the ablest was the frankest and boldest member of his party. He took the stump soon after the adjournment of the Thirty-seventh Congress.

It was an unusual time of the year to begin a political contest; but the ends sought were extraordinary, and the means adopted might well be of the same character. On the first day of May Mr.

Vallandigham made a peculiarly offensive, mischievous, disloyal speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, which was published throughout the State and widely copied elsewhere. It was perfectly apparent that the bold agitator was to have many followers and imitators, and that in the rapidly developing sentiment which he represented, the Administration would have as bitter an enemy in the rear as it was encountering at the front. The case was therefore critical. Mr.

Lincoln saw plainly that the Administration was not equal to the task of subduing two rebellions. While confronting the power of a solid South he must continue to wield the power of a solid North.

After General Burnside had been relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac he was sent to command the Department of Ohio.

He established his headquarters at Cincinnati in April (1863). He undoubtedly had confidential instructions in regard to the mode of dealing with the rising tide of disloyalty which, beginning in Ohio, was sweeping over the West. The Mount-Vernon speech of Mr.

Vallandigham would inevitably lead to similar demonstrations elsewhere, and General Burnside determined to deal with its author.

On Monday evening the 4th of May he sent a detachment of soldiers to Mr. Vallandigham's residence in Dayton, arrested him, carried him to Cincinnati, and tried him by a military commission of which a distinguished officer, General Robert B. Potter, was president.

Mr. Vallandigham resisted the whole proceeding as a violation of his rights as a citizen of the United States, and entered a protest declaring that he was arrested without due process of law and without warrant from any judicial officer, that he was not in either the land or naval forces of the United States nor in the militia in actual service, and therefore was not triable by a court-martial or military commission, but was subject only, by the express terms of the Const.i.tution, to be tried on an indictment or presentment of a grand jury. Of the offense charged against him there was no doubt, and scarcely a denial; and the commission, brus.h.i.+ng aside his pleas, convicted him, and sentenced him to be placed in close confinement, during the continuance of the war, in some fortress of the United States--the fortress to be designated by the commanding officer of the department. General Burnside approved the proceeding, and designated Fort Warren in the harbor of Boston as the place of Mr. Vallandigham's detention.

THE ARREST OF VALLANDIGHAM.

The President, with that sagacity which was intuitive and unfailing in all matters of moment, disapproved the sentence, and commuted it to one sending Mr. Vallandigham beyond our military lines to his friends of the Southern Confederacy. The estimable and venerable Judge Leavett of the United-States District Court was applied to for a writ of _habeas corpus_, but he refused to issue it. The judge declared that the power of the President undoubtedly implies the right to arrest persons who by their mischievous acts of disloyalty impede or hinder the military operations of the government.

The Democratic party throughout the Union took up the case with intemperate and ill-tempered zeal. Meetings were held in various places to denounce it, and to demand the right of Vallandigham to return from the rebel lines within which he had been sent. Governor Seymour of New York in a public letter denounced the arrest as "an act which had brought dishonor upon our country, and is full of danger to our persons and our homes. If this proceeding is approved by the government and sanctioned by the people it is not merely a step towards revolution, it is revolution; it will not only lead to military despotism, it establishes military despotism. In this respect it must be accepted, or in this respect it must be rejected.

If it is upheld our liberties are overthrown." Waxing still bolder Governor Seymour said "the people of this country now wait with the deepest anxiety the decision of the Administration upon these acts. Having given it a generous support in the conduct of the war, we now pause to see what kind of government it is for which we are asked to pour out our blood and our treasure. The action of the Administration will determine, in the minds of more than one-half of the people of the Loyal States, whether this war is waged to put down rebellion in the South or to destroy free inst.i.tutions at the North."

The evil effect upon the public opinion of the North of such language from a man of Governor Seymour's high personal character and commanding influence with his party can hardly be exaggerated. It came at a time when the Administration was sorely pressed and when it could not stand an exasperating division in the North. The governor's letter was publicly read at a large meeting of the Democratic party in Albany, presided over by Erastus Corning, and called to consider the act of the Administration. A long series of resolutions denouncing Vallandigham's arrest were adopted and forwarded to the President. But Mr. Lincoln rose to the occasion as if inspired, and his letter of June 12 to the Albany Committee turned the popular tide powerfully in favor of the Administration.

One of the points presented made a deep impression upon the understanding and profoundly stirred the hearts of the people.

"Mr. Vallandigham was not arrested," said the President, "because he was damaging the political prospects of the Administration or the personal interests of the commanding general, but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of this Nation depends. . . . If Mr. Vallandigham was not damaging the military power of the country, then his arrest was made on mistake of facts, which I would be glad to correct on reasonable, satisfactory evidence. I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering, to be in favor of suppressing the Rebellion by military force--by armies. Long experience has shown that armies cannot be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and the law and the Const.i.tution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting father or brother or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert.

I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and to save the boy is not only const.i.tutional, but is withal a great mercy."

No other man in our history has so fully possessed the power of presenting an argument in concrete form, overthrowing all the logic of a.s.sailants, and touching the chords of public feeling with a tenderness which becomes an irresistible force.

The Democrats of Ohio took up the arrest of Vallandigham with especial earnestness, and were guilty of the unspeakable folly of nominating him as their candidate for governor. They appointed an imposing committee--one from each Congressional district of the State--to communicate with the President in regard to the sentence of banishment. They arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton about the last of June, and addressed a long communication to Mr. Lincoln, demanding the release and return of Mr. Vallandigham. They argued the case with ability. No less than eleven of the committee were or had been members of Congress, with George H. Pendleton at their head. Mr.

Lincoln's reply under date of June 29 to their communication was as felicitous, as conclusive, as his reply to the Albany Committee.

He expressed his willingness in answer to their request, to release Mr. Vallandigham without asking pledge, promise, or retraction from him, and with only one simple condition. That condition was that "the gentlemen of the committee themselves, representing as they do the character and power of the Ohio Democracy, will subscribe to three propositions: _First_, That there is now a rebellion in the United States, the object and tendency of which are to destroy the National Union, and that in your opinion an army and navy are const.i.tutional means for suppressing that rebellion. _Second_, That no one of you will do any thing which in his own judgment will tend to hinder the increase or favor the decrease or lessen the efficiency of the army and navy while engaged in the effort to suppress that rebellion. And _Third_, That each of you will in his sphere do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress the Rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided for and supported."

Mr. Lincoln sent duplicates of these three conditions to the committee, one of which was to be returned to him indorsed with their names as evidence of their agreement thereto, the publication of which indors.e.m.e.nt should be of itself a revocation of the order in relation to Mr. Vallandigham. If the Ohio gentlemen subscribed to these conditions as essential and obligatory, they thereby justified the arrest of Vallandigham for resisting each and every one of them. If they would not subscribe to them they placed themselves before the people of Ohio in an att.i.tude of hostility to the vigorous and successful conduct of the war, on which the fate of the Union depended. The committee made a very lame rejoinder to the President. He had in truth placed them in a dilemma, from which they could not extricate themselves, and they naturally fell under popular condemnation. Mr. Lincoln's. .h.i.t had indeed been so palpable that its victims were laughed at by the public, and their party was foredoomed by their course to political annihilation in the coming election.

THE BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE.

While these interesting events were in progress the military exigency was engaging the attention of the people with an interest almost painfully intense. There was an urgent demand for an early movement by the Army of the Potomac. Mr. Lincoln realized that prompt success was imperatively required. The repet.i.tion of the disasters of 1862 might fatally affect our financial credit, and end with the humiliation of an intervention by European Powers. General Hooker was impressed by Mr. Lincoln with the absolute necessity of an early and energetic movement of the Army of the Potomac. On the 2d and 3d of May he fought the battle of Chancellorsville. He had as large a force as the Union army mustered on a single battle- field during the war,--not less perhaps than one hundred and twenty thousand men. He made a lamentable failure. Without bringing more than one-third of his troops into action he allowed himself to be driven across the Rappahannock by Lee, who, on the 7th of May, issued a highly congratulatory and boastful order detailing his victory.

In the issuing of orders General Hooker was one day in advance of Lee. He tendered to the soldiers his "congratulations on the achievements of the past seven days," and a.s.sured them that "if all has not been accomplished that was expected, the reasons are well known to the army." He further declared that "in withdrawing from the south bank of the Rappahannock before delivering a general battle to our adversaries, the army has given renewed evidence of its confidence in itself and its fidelity to the principles it represents. Profoundly loyal and conscious of its strength," the General continued, "the Army of the Potomac will give or decline battle whenever its interest or its honor may demand." The General thought "the events of the past week may swell with pride the heart of every officer and soldier in the army. By your celerity and secrecy of movement our advance was undisputed; and on our withdrawal, not a rebel ventured to follow." The questionable character of these compliments exposed General Hooker to ridicule, and increased the public sense of his unfitness for high command, though he was a gallant and brave soldier and admirably fitted for a division or a corps. The Union loss was serious. The killed and wounded exceeded eleven thousand. The year thus opened very inauspiciously.

The gloom of 1862 was not dispelled. The shadows had not lifted.

The weightiest anxiety oppressed both the government and the people.

The Confederacy had sustained a heavy loss in the death of Stonewall Jackson. He had a genius for war, and in a purely military point of view it would perhaps have been better for the Confederates to lose the battle than to lose the most aggressive officer in their Army.

The spirit of the Confederates rose high. They believed they would be able to hold the line of the Mississippi against the army of Grant, and in the defeat and demoralization of the army of the Potomac they saw their way clear to an invasion of Pennsylvania, for which General Lee began his preparations with leisure and completed them with thoroughness. After General Hooker's failure at Chancellorsville, and his remarkable order which followed it, he evidently lost the confidence of the President. Some of the hasty notes and telegrams sent to General Hooker after his defeat are in Mr. Lincoln's most characteristic vein. June 5 the President wrote, "If you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south of it. . . . In one word, I would not take any risk of being entangled up on the _river like an ox jumped half over a fence, liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other_."

Later, on June 10, the President wrote, "Lee's Army and not Richmond is your true objective point. If he comes towards the upper Potomac, follow on his flank on the inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is _fret him and fret him_."* Lee was, by the date of this note, well on his way towards the North, and the military situation grew every hour more critical.

THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG.

The indispensable requisite to Union success was a commander for the Army of the Potomac in whose competency the Administration, the people, and most of all the soldiers would have confidence.

In the judgment of military men it was idle to intrust another battle to the generals.h.i.+p of Hooker; and as the army moved across Maryland to meet Lee on the soil of Pennsylvania, General Hooker was relieved and the command of the army a.s.signed to General George G. Meade. This change of commanders was made by order of the President on the 28th of June, only two days before the opening engagement of the great battle of Gettysburg. By the middle of June the advance guard of Lee's army had reached the upper Potomac, and on its way had literally destroyed the division of the Union army commanded by General Milroy and stationed at Winchester. The agitation throughout the country was profound. On the 15th of June as the magnitude of Lee's movement became more apparent, the President issued a proclamation stating that "Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio were threatened with invasion and required an immediate addition to the military forces." He called therefore for one hundred thousand militia from these four States to serve for six months; ten thousand each from Maryland and West Virginia, thirty thousand from Ohio, and fifty thousand from Pennsylvania. All the surrounding States were aroused. Governor Seymour sent fifteen thousand extra men from New York. Governor Parker sent a valuable contingent from New Jersey. Western Maryland was occupied at various points as early as the 20th of June, and during the last week of that month rebel detachments were in the southern counties of Pennsylvania committing depredations and exacting tribute,--in York, c.u.mberland, Franklin, Fulton and Adams.

The two armies finally converged at Gettysburg, and on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of July the battle was fought which in many of its aspects was the most critical and important of the war. The Confederates began with the self-a.s.surance of victory; and with victory they confidently counted upon the occupation of Philadelphia by Lee's army, upon the surrender of Baltimore, upon the flight of the President and his Cabinet from Was.h.i.+ngton. It was within the extravagant and poetic dreams of the expectant conquerors to proclaim the success of the Confederacy from the steps of Independence Hall, and to make a treaty with the fugitive Government of the United States for half the territory of the Republic. But it was not so fated. The army under Meade proved unconquerable. In conflicts on Virginia soil the army of Lee had been victorious. Its invasion of the North the preceding year had been checked by McClellan before it reached the border of the free States. It was now fighting on ground where the spirit which had nerved it in Virginia was transferred to the soldiers of the Union. With men of the North the struggle was now for home first, for conquest afterwards, and the tenacity and courage with which they held their ground for those three b.l.o.o.d.y days attest the magnificent impulse which the defense of the fireside imparts to the heart and to the arm of the soldier.

General Meade had not been widely known before the battle, but he was at once elevated to the highest rank in the esteem and love of the people. The tide of invasion had been rolled back after the bloodiest and most stubbornly contested field of the war. The numbers on each side differed but little from the numbers engaged at Waterloo, and the tenacity with which the soldiers of the British Isles stood that day against the hosts of Napoleon, was rivaled on the field of Gettysburg by men of the same blood, fighting in the ranks of both armies.

The relief which the victory brought to the North is indescribable.

On the morning of the Fourth of July a brief Executive order was telegraphed from the Executive mansion to all the free States, announcing the triumph, for which "the President especially desires that on this day, He whose will, not ours, should ever be done, be everywhere remembered and reverenced with the profoundest grat.i.tude."

By one of those coincidences that have more than once happened in our history, the Fourth of July of this year was made especially memorable. Rejoicings over the result at Gettysburg had scarcely begun when word came from General Grant that the Confederate forces at Vicksburg had surrendered, and that at ten o'clock of the Fourth, the very hour when Mr. Lincoln issued the bulletin proclaiming the victory of Gettysburg, General Pemberton's forces marched out and stacked arms in front of their works, prisoners of war to General Grant. The city of Vicksburg was immediately occupied by the Union troops, the first division of which was commanded by General John A. Logan. Jackson, the Capital of Mississippi, defended by General Joseph E. Johnston, capitulated a few days later to General Sherman, and the Confederate forces at Port Hudson surrendered to the army of General Banks. This was the last obstruction to the navigation of the Mississippi, and the great river flowed unvexed to the sea.

The entire situation was changed by these important victories.

Heart and spirit were given to the people, hope grew into confidence, the strength of the Government was vastly increased, the prestige of the Administration was greatly heightened. Could the election for the Thirty-eighth Congress have taken place in the autumn of 1863, and not in the autumn of 1862, instead of being a close struggle it would have been an overwhelming triumph for the war policy which had wrought out such splendid results. The popular re-action was attested in every State where an election gave opportunity. Governor Curtin was re-chosen by a large majority in Pennsylvania over Judge George W. Woodward, who had p.r.o.nounced a judicial decision against the const.i.tutionality of the proscription law; the course of Governor Seymour was rebuked in New York by the thirty thousand majority given to the Republican State ticket, which was headed by the brilliant Chauncey M. Depew, then but twenty- nine years of age; while in Ohio the Democratic party was overwhelmed by an avalanche of popular indignation which responded to the nomination of Vallandigham with a majority of a hundred and one thousand for the Administration.

MEETING OF THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS.

The Thirty-eighth Congress met on the first Monday of December, 1863. The House was promptly organized by the election of Schuyler Colfax to the Speakers.h.i.+p. He received 101 votes; all other candidates 81. Mr. Samuel S. c.o.x received 42 votes, the highest given to any candidate of the opposition. The vote for Mr. Colfax was the distinctive Republican strength in the House. On issues directly relating to the war the Administration was stronger than these figures indicate, being always able to command the support of Mr. Stebbins, Mr. Odell, and Mr. Griswold of New York, and of several members from the Border States.

Schuyler Colfax was especially fitted for the duties of the Chair.

He had been a member of the House for eight years, having been chosen directly after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He came from good Revolutionary stock in New Jersey, but had been reared in the West; had learned the trade of a printer, and had edited a successful journal at South Bend. He was a paragon of industry, with keen, quick, bright intellect. He mingled freely and creditably in the debates. With a wisdom in which many able members seem deficient, he had given studious attention to the Rules of the House, and was master of their complexities. Kindly and cordial by nature it was easy for him to cultivate the art of popularity, which he did with tact and constancy. He came to the Chair with absolute good will from both sides of the House, and as a presiding officer proved himself able, prompt, fair-minded, and just in all his rulings.

The political re-action of 1862 had seriously affected the members.h.i.+p of the House. Many of those most conspicuous and influential in the preceding Congress had either been defeated or had prudently declined a renomination. E. G. Spaulding, Charles B. Sedgwick, Roscoe Conkling, and A. B. Olin did not return from New York; John A. Bingham and Samuel Sh.e.l.labarger were defeated in Ohio; Galusha A. Grow was not re-elected in Pennsylvania, and lost in consequence a second term as Speaker; Albert G. Porter and McKee Dunn gave way to Democratic successors in Indiana. In the delegations of all the large States radical changes were visible, and the narrow escape of the Administration from total defeat in the preceding year was demonstrated afresh by the roll-call of the House.

MEMBERS OF THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS.

But the loss of prominent members was counterbalanced by the character and ability of some of the new accessions. Henry Winter Davis took his seat as representative from one of the districts of the city of Baltimore. He had been originally elected to the House as a member of the American party in 1854, and had been re-elected in 1856 and 1858. He had not co-operated with the Republican party before the war, and had supported Mr. Bell for the Presidency in 1860. He was always opposed to the Democratic party, and was under all circ.u.mstances a devoted friend of the Union, an arch-enemy of the Secessionists. Born a Southern man, he spoke for the South,-- for its duty to the Federal Government, for its best and highest destiny. To him before and above all other men is due the maintenance of loyalty in Maryland. His course was censured by the Democratic Legislature of his State in the winter preceding the Rebellion.

He replied through an address "to the voters of Maryland," which for eloquence of expression, force, and conclusiveness of reasoning is ent.i.tled to rank in the political cla.s.sics of America as the Address to the Electors of Bristol ranks in the political cla.s.sics of England. As a debater in the House Mr. Davis may well be cited as an exemplar. He had no boastful reliance upon intuition or inspiration or the spur of the moment, though no man excelled him in extempore speech. He made elaborate preparation by the study of all public questions, and spoke from a full mind with complete command of premise and conclusion. In all that pertained to the graces of oratory he was unrivaled. He died at forty-eight. Had he been blessed with length of days, the friends who best knew his ability and his ambition believed that he would have left the most brilliant name in the Parliamentary annals of America.

Robert C. Schenck was an invaluable addition to the House. He had been serving in the field since the outbreak of the war, but had been induced to contest the return of Vallandigham to Congress.

His canva.s.s was so able and spirited that though in other parts of the State the Democrats captured eight Republican districts, he defeated Vallandigham in a Democratic district. Mr. Schenck had originally entered Congress in 1843 at thirty-four years of age, and after a distinguished service of eight years was sent by President Fillmore as Minister-Plenipotentiary to Brazil. After his return he had taken no part in political affairs until now.

His re-appearance in Congress was therefore significant. He was at once placed at the head of the Committee on Military Affairs, then of superlative importance, and subsequently was made chairman of Ways and Means, succeeding Mr. Stevens in the undoubted leaders.h.i.+p of the House. He was admirably fitted for the arduous and difficult duty. His perceptions were keen, his a.n.a.lysis was extraordinarily rapid, his power of expression remarkable. On his feet, as the phrase went, he had no equal in the House. In the five-minute discussion in Committee of the Whole he was an intellectual marvel.

The compactness and clearness of his statement, the facts and arguments which he could marshal in that brief time, were a constant surprise and delight to his hearers. No man in Congress during the present generation has rivaled his singular power in this respect. He was able in every form of discussion, but his peculiar gift was in leading and controlling the Committee of the Whole.**

MEMBERS OF THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS.

Several new members entered the Thirty-eighth Congress who were destined to long service and varying degrees of prominence. James A. Garfield came from Ohio with a valuable reputation acquired in the Legislature of his State and with a good military record, established in the war and recognized by the conferment of a Major- General's commission which he had won on the field. William B.

Allison, John A. Ka.s.son and Hiram Price of Iowa, John A. J. Creswell of Maryland, Glenni W. Scofield of Pennsylvania, all earned honorable distinction in after years. George S. Boutwell entered from Ma.s.sachusetts at forty-five years of age. Twelve years before, as a radical Democrat and Free-Soiler, he had been chosen governor of his State. James G. Blaine entered from Maine at thirty-three years of age. Among the new members on the Democratic side of the House were Samuel J. Randall, with the reputation of conspicuous service in the Pennsylvania Legislature, and William R. Morrison, fresh from his duty in the field as colonel of an Illinois regiment, and, though still young, old enough to have served with credit in the Mexican war. Fernando Wood, who had been elected a member of the House in 1840, and had served one term, now entered again.

Francis Kernan appeared in public life for the first time, having defeated Roscoe Conkling in the Utica district. Charles A. Eldridge of Wisconsin became one of the ablest parliamentarians of the House.

In the Senate some important changes were made. Governor Morgan entered from New York as the successor of Preston King; Governor Sprague came from Rhode Island, and Governor Ramsey from Minnesota.

These elections were all made in direct recognition of the valuable service which these Republican War-Governors had rendered the country. John Conness, a follower of Douglas, who had done much for the cause of the Union on the Pacific coast, now bore the credentials of California. B. Gratz Brown came from Missouri as pledge of the radical regeneration of that State.

To the Democratic side of the chamber three able men were added.

Reverdy Johnson of Maryland succeeded to the seat made vacant the preceding autumn by the death of James Alfred Pearce. Mr. Johnson had long been eminent at the Bar of the Supreme Court. He was a warm supporter of Mr. Clay, and was chosen to the Senate as a Whig in 1845. He was attorney-general in the Cabinet of President Taylor, and after the defeat of the Whigs in 1852 had co-operated with the Democrats. He had stood firmly by the Union, and his re- appearance in the Senate added largely to the ability and learning of that body. Thomas A. Hendricks entered from Indiana as the successor of Jesse D. Bright, who had been expelled upon a charge of disloyalty. Mr. Hendricks had served in the House of Representatives from 1851 to 1855. He was but thirty-one years of age when first chosen and his record in the House had not prepared the public to expect the strength and ability which he displayed as senator. He was in the full maturity of his powers when he took his seat, and he proved able, watchful, and acute in the discharge of his public duties. He was always at his post, was well prepared on all questions, debated with ability, and rapidly gained respect and consideration in the Senate. Charles R. Buckalew of Pennsylvania succeeded David Wilmot. Both he and Mr. Hendricks were fruits of the violent re-action against the Administration the preceding year. Mr. Buckalew came with high reputation, but did not gain so prominent a position in the Senate as his friends had antic.i.p.ated.