The Report of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs was printed in full in the Congressional Record of March 3, 1909, in the form in which it was adopted and appears in the [Appendix] of this Report. (See Congressional Record 60th Congress, Second Session, pp. 2531, 2582 and 3770.)
Speaker Joseph G. Cannon, Representative James A. Tawney of Minnesota, Chairman of Committee on Appropriations and other members of the House from states not in direct touch with the undertaking gave it their support.
The Joint Resolution was favorably reported through Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate on February 24, 1909, and on motion of Senator Chauncey M. Depew it was passed. (See Congressional Record 60th Congress, Second Session, p. 2987.)
Senator Thomas C. Platt of New York and Senators William P. Dillingham and Carroll S. Page of Vermont also gave this and other matters pertaining to the celebration such consideration as was necessary to ensure Federal co-operation. The Joint Resolution was approved by President Roosevelt on March 2, 1909. (See Congressional Record 60th Congress Second Session, p. 3666.)
In this connection it will be remembered that Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont and the Honorable Elihu Root, while Secretary of State had presented the matter at a late day in a prior session of Congress and had in a measure prepared the way for favorable action in 1909. Senator Proctor took deep interest in the project, but to the great regret of his many friends he did not live to see it carried to completion. His death occurred in Washington, D. C., March 4, 1908.
His son, the Honorable Fletcher D. Proctor, while Governor of Vermont in 1906, had approved the original Concurrent Resolution, introduced in the House of Representatives of Vermont in November of that year by Hon. Robert W. McCuen of Vergennes, providing for the appointment of a Commission to confer with several Commissions to be appointed in New York and in Canada to arrange for a celebration of the Three Hundredth Anniversary of the Discovery of Lake Champlain.
From that time on Senator Redfield Proctor and Governor Fletcher D. Proctor of Vermont gave the matter their official and strong personal support as long as they lived.
Congressmen George R. Malby and David J. Foster were untiring in their efforts to insure Federal co-operation, as was Honorable Elihu Root, both as Secretary of State and as United States Senator, whose masterly address at Plattsburgh on July 7, 1909, is a contribution to the history of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The untimely deaths of Governor Fletcher D. Proctor, of Congressmen David J. Foster and George R. Malby before the Champlain memorials were dedicated and the work of the Commissions completed, to whose success they had all materially contributed, were deeply deplored. The loss of Professor Walter E. Howard of the Vermont Commission and of Assemblyman Alonson T. Dominy of New York Commission, both of whom were desirous of co-operation in the work of their respective Commissions, was keenly felt by their colleagues.