The Speaker's usually loud, clear voice hesitated as he at last announced: "One hundred and four in the negative. The ayes have it, and the demand for the previous question is seconded. Shall the main question be now put?" The main question was next put, and the vote by ayes and nays on a reference of the Kansas question to the Committee on Territories, was ayes, 113; nays, 114. Then came the vote on the reference to a select committee of fifteen, and Speaker Orr had to announce the result, ayes, 114; nays 113. The North was at last victorious.
[Facsimile] Howell Cobb HOWELL COBB was born at Cherry Hill, Ga., September 7th, 1815; graduated at Franklin College, 1834; was Representative from Georgia, 1843-1851 and 1855-1860; was chosen Speaker, 1849; was Governor of Georgia, 1851; was President of the Confederate Congress, 1861; died in New York city, October 9th, 1868.
CHAPTER XLIV. POLITICIANS, AUTHORS, AND HUMORISTS.
Bluff Ben Wade, a Senator from Ohio, was the champion of the North in the upper house during the prolonged debates on the Kansas- Nebraska Bill. Dueling had long been regarded as a lost art in the Northern States, but Mr. Wade determined that he would accept a challenge should one be sent him, or defend himself should he be attacked. But no one either assaulted or challenged him, although he gave his tongue free license.
One day Senator Badger spoke plaintively of slavery from a Southern point of view. In his childhood, he said, he was nursed by an old negro woman, and he grew to manhood under her care. He loved his "old black mammy," and she loved him. But if the opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska bill were triumphant, and he wished to go to either of those Territories, he could not take his "old black mammy" with him. Turning to Mr. Wade, he exclaimed: "Surely, you will not prevent me from taking my old black mammy with me?" "It is not," remarked the Senator from Ohio, dryly, "that he cannot take his old black mammy with him that troubles the mind of the Senator, but that if we make the Territories free, he cannot sell the old black mammy when he gets her there."
The future leader of the Great Rebellion, Senator Jefferson Davis, had then assumed the leadership of the Southern Senators and their Northern allies. His best friends were forced to admit that his bearing, even toward them, had become haughty, and his manners imperious. His thin, spare figure, his almost sorrowful cast of countenance, composed, however, in an invariable expression of dignity, gave the idea of a body worn by the action of the mind, an intellect supporting in its prison of flesh the pains of constitutional disease, and triumphing over physical confinement and affliction. His carriage was erect—there was a soldierly affectation, of which, indeed, the hero of Buena Vista gave evidence through his life, having the singular conceit that his genius was military and fitter for arms than for the council. He had a precise manner, and an austerity that was at first forbidding; but his voice was always clear and firm. Although not a scholar in the pedantic sense of the term, and making no pretensions to the doubtful reputation of the sciolist, his reading was classical and varied, his fund of illustration large, and his resources of imagery plentiful and always apposite.
Senator Robert W. Johnson—"Bob Johnson," every one called him— had made many friends while a member of the House, and was one of the most popular Senators. He was a man of generous feeling, honorable impulses, and a cheerful humor, which had endeared him to the homely backwoodsmen of his State. He was a fine speaker, pouring forth fact and argument with an earnestness that riveted attention, and lighting up the dull path of logic with the glow of his captivating fancy, while he spiced his remarks with the idiosyncrasies of frontier oratory, familiar and quaint illustrations, and blunt truth. At heart he loved the Union, but he could not stand up against the public sentiment of his State.
Henry Bowen Anthony was the first Republican Senator who had not been identified with the Abolitionists. Before he had been a week in the Senate, he was graciously informed that the Southern Senators recognized him as a gentleman, and proposed to invite him to their houses. "I can enter no door," sturdily replied the man of Quaker ancestry, "which is closed against any Northern Senator." Mr. Anthony was at that time a very handsome man, with jet black hair, blue eyes, and a singularly sweet expression of countenance. His editorial labors on the Providence Journal had given him a rare insight into men and politics, which qualified him for Senatorial life. He was soon a favorite in Washington society, wit and general information embellishing his brilliant conversation, while his social virtues gave to his life a daily beauty.
Ostensibly to negotiate a postal treaty, but really to see what could be done about an international copyright between Great Britain and the United States, came Anthony Trollope, Esq. He was a short, stout old gentleman, with a round, rosy face and snow-white hair, who loved to talk, and who talked well. His mother, Mrs. Frances Trollope, had written a cruelly sarcastic book on the manners and customs of Americans in 1830, and he was somewhat dogmatic in his criticisms of what he saw and heard. He shone especially at gentlemen's evening parties, at which he narrated anecdotes about Macaulay, Dickens, and Thackeray, and of his own exploits in "'unting," which he regarded as the noblest of all pastimes.
Mike Walsh was not only a demagogue, but an incorrigible joker. He used frequently to visit Washington after the expiration of his Congressional term, and was in the city after the close of the summer session of the Thirty-fifth Congress. Judge Douglas was also there, busily engaged in advancing his Presidential prospects. One evening, as Walsh was sitting in front of the Kirkwood House, he remarked that the weather looked threatening, but that he hoped it would prove good on account of the serenade that was to be given to Judge Douglas that night. The thing took at once, and he visited all the hotels, and in casual conversations broached the serenade, and the fact that the Marine Band had been engaged for the occasion. When ten o'clock P. M. came there were not less than six or seven hundred people in front of Judge Douglas's new residence; and as the streets had been newly opened and were still unpaved, the mud was ankle deep. There were also some thirty or forty hacks and a number of private carriages; and as the Judge and his beautiful and accomplished wife had heard of the intended ovation, they had prepared for the emergency by taking up the parlor carpets and setting out a collation for the sovereigns. But, alas! no Marine Band appeared; and as eleven o'clock came and no music, the crowd began slowly to thin out, until at last it got whispered around that Mike Walsh had something to do with the getting up of the serenade, when, amid curses and loud guffaws, there was a general stampede of the crowd.