slavery 'goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.'" Mr. Edward McPherson writes him: "I watched your journey with interest and with pleasure, marked the heartiness and enthusiasm of your receptions, and the handsome style in which you maintained the honors of your position, and filled the expectations of your friends." Mr. John D. Defrees writes him: "A few men who pretend to be in the confidence of the President say that he means to have his policy tested in the election of Speaker, but I don't believe it. If he has the common-sense that I think he has, he will have nothing to do with any such test. It is not worth your while, however, to commit yourself on any question. You are strong enough to stand upon your own ground." The Hon. Charles Upson, of Michigan, writes him: "Rebel stock has risen rapidly within a few weeks, and now its holders begin to demand things as their rights, when just before they would have been willing to accept such terms as the general Government might dictate. Congress should provide for reconstruction, and the loyal citizens should be allowed to participate in the reorganization of loyal governments there."'

He received scores of such letters as these, many of them expressing uneasiness and dissatisfaction with the tendency of political affairs. It was as if the body politic felt the symptoms of approaching illness, and hastened to consult the family physician. He diagnosed the patient's case very well, as will be seen later. In November he writes Mrs. Woodhull from South Bend: "I am beset on every hand to lecture on my overland trip, and have accepted about a dozen invitations-all I have time for-declining scores of them, though they offered one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a night. I spoke Tuesday night to an immense crowd at Indianapolis; to-morrow night I speak at Valparaiso; Saturday at the Michigan College at Hillsdale; Monday at Mishawaka; Tuesday here; Wednesday at Niles; Thursday at Milwaukee; Friday at Chicago. Start Monday, the 13th, for the East; speak at Pittsburg the 14th; at Wheeling the 15th; and then to Washington, to look out that I am not voted out

of the Speakership, which don't seem dangerous, but will bear watching. In my own district I speak to my constituents without charge-my rule always. But outside I shall receive seven or eight hundred dollars, besides the pleasure of visiting. The lecture is very long, nearly two hours, but at Indianapolis those who got in-though the building holds two thousand, hundreds didn't-stuck it out till the last, the theme being a novel one. I had to decline invitations at Germantown, Westchester, etc., which would have brought me near you; but the timeah! why can't we make the time when we need it?" He delivered this lecture, whenever he could find time, for two years, making hosts of new friends, and clearing twelve thousand dollars by the work. "Don't quit,'' his friends wrote him; "you are carrying on a campaign." The money was an object to him. He was born poor; all the property he possessed he had made dollar by dollar; his station necessitated considerable expense, though he lived modestly; he was obliged to earn money.

Since it exhibits his feelings on another subject, the following is taken from the same letter to Mrs. Woodhull: "There isn't any 'fair charmer' at Blank, or elsewhere; so you guessed wrongly. People marry me to every lady I am respectfully polite to; but though I know I ought to marry, situated as I am, and mother would like me to do so, yet I have not the faintest idea of it. I have no vows against it; but it will never come till I meet some one whom I can love and who will love me like the dear wife who is in heaven, and I see no probability of that. I expect to get out of this public life and travel, and read books at home. That is my ideal of life-smoking included, of course. My love to Cousin George and the children, especially that mischievous Schuyler boy, whom I hope loves his mother as much as does her affectionate cousin, SCHUYLER."

In this lecture upon his journey across the continent, he dwelt with great earnestness upon the importance of the Pacific Railroad, as a national, a political, a military,

a commercial necessity. This part of the lecture ended as follows:

"You cannot realize here in what endearing language the settlers of that distant coast speak of the States they have left. Where they were born; where father and mother still live to send them blessings, which it takes a month for the mail to convey; where kith and kin lie buried in the village churchyard-that, and not California, is their home. It is this recollection of home which binds that remote part of the Union so closely to us. It was this which crushed out the ambitious suggestions of disloyal men, who once dominated in California, in favor of a Pacific Republic. It was this which, in the hour of our country's need, poured princely contributions into the coffers of the sanitary and Christian commissions, those twin-angels of mercy. It was this which, in the darkest hour of the struggle, kept all that coast so true and devoted to the national

cause.

"It is for such a people, who have already sent us a thousand millions, extracted from sterile mountains and broken ravines, for whom I plead when I urge the speediest possible construction of the Pacific Railroad, and not as a boon to them alone, for its increase of our national wealth will speedily pay back to the Treasury far more than the bonus which now aids in its construction. But I plead for it, too, for our own national development and grandeur. Already I see in the swift-coming futurenot weak and sparsely settled Territories upon its route, but rich and growing States, with the iron horse speeding his way through all the valleys and over the mountains of the interior; not vast untilled and unimproved plains, but irrigation and artesian wells combining to make the desert blossom as the rose; not scores of millions per year from the gold and silver-bearing rocks the Creator has reserved for ages for our own times, but hundreds of millions. And our Republic, bound together then as never before, firmly as the eternal hills over which this great road will run-already with its vast agricultural resources the granary of the world; with these increased facilities; with cheaper transportation; with illimitable mineral fields; with ability to develop their teeming wealth; with improved processes of mining; with the gigantic unfolding and disclosure of our yet unimproved capacities-shall thus become indeed, as our beloved but martyred President predicted to me, on that last day, when having lived for us so faithfully he was about to die for us, the Treasury of the World!"

CHAPTER IX.

THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS.

1865-1867.

SERENADE SPEECH AT WASHINGTON.-POINTS OUT THE TRUE RECONSTRUCTION POLICY.-RE-ELECTED SPEAKER.-Lecturing.-Declines THE EDITORSHIP OF THE New York Tribune.-LAST MEETING OF THE UNITED STATES CHRISTIAN COMMISSION.-ANTAGONISM BETWEEN CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDent.-CorreSPONDENCE SERENADE SPEECHES. HIS POLICY. FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT PROPOSED BY CONGRESS.-PARLIAMENTARY RULING, ROUSSEAU AND GRINNELL.-RECEPTION AT HOME.-CANVASS.--COLFAX AND THE IRISH.-ATTITUDE TOWARD THE PRESIDENCY.-ESTIMATES Of the

SPEAKER.

-

AND

MR. COLFAX arrived at the National Capital about the middle of November. The one subject of solicitude among the people, North and South, was the restoration of the late insurgent States to their original status in the Union. Absolutely ostracizing Union men, and substantially reenslaving the freed men, the ex-rebel States had conceded just enough to secure President Johnson's recognition. They had repudiated the ordinances of secession and the Confederate debt, and had ratified the (thirteenth) Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery. They had elected their quota of pardoned Confederates to Congress. Backed by the President, these pseudo-Representatives demanded their old seats in Congress, without delay or parley. The immediate and pressing question was, whether Congressmen, in obedience to their States, could withdraw from the National Capital, levy war to dismember the nation, prosecute it until they were exhausted, and, upon being beaten in the field, return to the Capital as the Representatives of their States, and resume their seats in Congress as if only the ordinary vacation had occurred.

The Northern people narrowly escaped the idiocy of allowing them to do this. The Northern people narrowly escaped the ineffable meanness of leaving their faithful allies in the South, black and white, in the absolute power of a class whose tender mercies in that connection were cruelties.

Saturday evening, November 18th, Colfax was serenaded. In response, he declared in substance that the reconstruction of the late Confederate States must precede their restoration to their original standing in the Union. This was the platform upon which he challenged the Representatives of the people, soon to assemble to elect him Speaker, or to repudiate him, and upon which he also challenged the approval or disapproval of the people themselves. Following is the important part of the speech:

"It is auspicious that the ablest Congress that ever sat during my knowledge of public affairs meets next month, to face and settle the momentous questions which will be brought before it. It will not be governed by any spirit of revenge, but solely by duty to the country. I have no right to anticipate its action, nor do I confine myself to any inflexible, unalterable policy, but these ideas occur to me, and I speak them with the frankness with which we should always express our views. Last March, when Congress adjourned, the States lately in rebellion were represented in a hostile Congress and Cabinet, devising ways and means for the destruction of the country. It may not be generally known, but it has been represented to me, on the testimony of members of the socalled Confederate Congress, that General Lee, the military head of the Rebellion, declared last February, in his official character, that the contest was utterly hopeless; but their Congress and Cabinet determined to continue the struggle, and after that time twenty thousand men fell on both sides in the battles around Petersburgh and Richmond and elsewhere. Since the adjournment of the United States Congress not a single rebellious State surrendered, not an army laid down its weapons, not a regiment abandoned their falling cause; but the Union armies conquered a peace not by any promise or voluntary submission, but by the force of Some of these members of the so-called Confederate Congress, who, at our late adjournment last March, were struggling to blot this nation from the map of the world, propose, I understand, to enter Congress on the opening day at its session next month, and resume their former business of governing the country they struggled so earnestly to ruin. They say they have lost no rights. It seems as if burning the ships of our commerce on the ocean, starving our prisoners on the land, and raising armies to destroy the nation would impair some of these

arms.