OFFICE OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, AND MR. HUNTER.
Remarks in the Senate, on an Amendment to the Consular and Diplomatic Bill, creating the Office of Second Assistant Secretary of State, May 16 and 17, 1866.
May 16th, the Senate having under consideration the bill making appropriations for the consular and diplomatic expenses, Mr. Sumner moved an addition of twenty per cent. to the compensation allowed to the clerks of the State Department. A petition from the clerks was read. Mr. Sumner then said:—
I do not know that there is any necessity for me to add anything. The petition speaks for itself. It states the whole case. But a word will not be out of place with regard to the gentleman who heads the petition,—Mr. Hunter. He is one of the oldest public servants now connected with the Government. He has been in the Department of State for more than thirty years. He may be called the living index to that Department; and I believe I do not err in saying that in our Blue Book of office there is no person whose integrity is more generally recognized. Placed in a position of especial trust, where all the foreign correspondence of the Government passes under his eye, that which comes and that which goes, I believe he has passed a life without blame. He has been in a position where, had his integrity been open to seduction, he might have been tempted. No human being imagines that he has ever yielded. He has discharged his very important trusts on a very humble salary. I think the Senator from Maine [Mr. Fessenden] knows him well enough to know that he has brought to those functions ability of a peculiar character. And now, in the decline of life, he finds himself with the small salary of a clerk, on which he can with difficulty subsist,—and yet all the time rendering these important services and discharging these considerable trusts, absorbed in the business of the office so that he takes it home with him nightly. It leaves with him in the evening and returns with him in the morning, and then it fills the long day. I think that such a public servant deserves recognition. I have for some time felt that his compensation was inadequate. I have thought that his salary ought to be raised; but, after consideration of the question in committee, and consultation with others, it was thought best to present the case in a general proposition such as I have now moved, being for the addition of twenty per cent. to the compensation of all the clerks in the Department. The argument for this is enforced in the petition from these gentlemen which has been read at the desk. I can see no objection to it, especially after what we have done for the clerks of the Treasury. Are not public servants at the State Department as worthy as public servants at the Treasury?
The debate showed the indisposition of Senators to any general addition to the compensation of the clerks of the State Department, but with recognition of the merits of Mr. Hunter.
May 17th, after conversation and discussion, Mr. Sumner changed his motion, so as to read:—