MONUMENTS TO DECEASED SENATORS.
Remarks in the Senate, on a Resolution directing the Erection of such Monuments, February 27, 1867.
Mr. Poland, of Vermont, introduced a resolution directing the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate to see that monuments were placed in the Congressional burial-ground, in memory of Senators who had died at Washington since July 4, 1861. On the question of taking up this resolution for consideration, Mr. Sumner remarked:—
Originally there was a reason for these monuments. Senators and Representatives dying here found their last home in the Congressional burial-ground, and these monuments covered their remains. At a later day, with increasing facilities of transportation, the custom of burial here has ceased; but the monuments, being only cenotaphs, were continued until 1861, when this custom was suspended. Meantime Death has not been less busy here, and the question is, whether the former custom shall be revived, and cenotaphs be placed in an unvisited burial-ground, to mark the spot where the remains of a Senator might have been placed, had they not been transported to repose among his family, kindred, and neighbors.
I cannot but think that the suspension of this custom of monuments, which occurred at the beginning of the war, was notice or indication that the occasion for them had passed; and I doubt sincerely the expediency of reviving the custom, unless where an associate is actually buried here. If those dying here, but buried elsewhere, are to be commemorated by Congress in any monumental form, it seems to me better that it should be a simple tablet of stone or brass in the Capitol, where it would be seen by the visitors thronging here, and perhaps arrest the attention of their successors in public duty, teaching how Death enters these Halls. But why place an unsightly cenotaph in a forlorn burial-ground,—I may add, at considerable cost? I cannot doubt that the time has come for this expense to cease.
The resolution was referred to the Committee on the Contingent Expenses of the Senate.