I replied: "If you have determined it, that is the end of the matter, and I shall so report to the friends who are gathered at the National, so that Uncle Jesse may go on home."
President Lincoln seemed much affected. He followed me to the door, repeating that he would like to take care of Uncle Jesse, but could not do so.
Jesse Dubois went home to Springfield, but he remained as stanch a friend to Lincoln as ever, and was one of the committee sent from Springfield to accompany the remains of the immortal President to their last resting-place.
George S. Boutwell was another member of the Thirty-ninth Congress who merits some attention. He afterward became very influential among the radical element, and was one of the managers on the part of the House in the impeachment of President Johnson. It is hard to understand in a man of his sober, sound sense; but I am convinced that he firmly believed President Johnson to have been a conspirator in securing the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. He was Secretary of the Treasury under President Grant, who had for him the greatest respect and confidence. I never was very intimate with him, but I knew him fairly well, and considered him one of the leading public men of Massachusetts of his day.
One of the leading members of the Pennsylvania delegation in the Thirty-ninth Congress was William D. Kelley. He was a prominent member of the House, a good speaker, although he always prepared his addresses at great length, principally on the tariff; but he did not confine himself to his manuscripts entirely. His specialty in Congress was the tariff. He was called "Pig-iron Kelley" because he was for high duties on pig-iron and, in fact, everything manufactured in Pennsylvania. That State, as everybody knows, is the great iron and steel manufacturing State of the Union, and its representatives in Congress were in that day, as they are in this, the highest of high protective tariff advocates.
Before entering Congress, William D. Kelley for a number of years had been a judge of one of the more important courts of Philadelphia. He was elected to and kept in the House, without any particular effort on his own part, because he was considered one of the most valuable men in Congress in matters pertaining to the tariff. When I was a candidate for re-election to the House he visited my district and made several very able speeches for me at my request, and, with his wife, was my guest in Springfield for several days. At that time Republicans were for a high protective tariff, and it was not considered then, as it seems to be in these days of so-called insurgency, a crime for a Republican to stand up and say that he was in favor of high tariff duties. In any event, Judge Kelley did me much good in the speeches he made in my district.
We occupied apartments in the same house in Washington—on F Street near the Ebbitt House, at which hotel we took our meals. F Street is now the heart of the business centre, but it was then one of the principal residence streets, and many Representatives and Senators lived in that vicinity. The only objection I had to living in the same house with Judge Kelley was that he was always preparing speeches, and when he got ready to deliver a speech he would insist on reading it all over to me; and as his speeches were generally two or three hours long, and always on the tariff, in which I did not take an extraordinary amount of interest, I became pretty tired of hearing them.
On one occasion when he was making quite an eloquent speech in the House, he was interrupted by a member from Kentucky, whose name I do not remember. He had already answered him once or twice and then gone on. He was interrupted again, and this time he answered: "Oh, don't interrupt me when the glow is on." The "glow" did happen to be on at that time, and naturally he did not desire to be interrupted.
In the same Pennsylvania delegation there were two members named Charles O'Neill and Leonard Myers, who were very short in stature. For some reason or other, some wag dubbed them "Kelley's ponies." They heard of it and became very angry, and on every occasion, when there was half a chance, they watched to see how Judge Kelley voted and would then vote the opposite.
They were both good men and good Republicans, and O'Neill served the same number of terms as Judge Kelley—fifteen—but O'Neill remained his full fifteen terms and retired from Congress. Judge Kelley was serving his fifteenth term when he died in Washington, in 1890.