The question being put, the House divided—ayes 39, noes 39; and it passed in the negative by the casting vote of the Speaker.
Mr. Shepard said, I will do as much as any man to honor the memory of Washington. I have fought and bled with him several times. I have always supported and will continue to support him. But on the score of expense, I think we are going too far. I will go so far as to have his remains placed decently within these walls. Further I will not go; for I do not think we have a right to throw away the public money.
Mr. Macon delivered his reasons against a mausoleum, and in favor of an equestrian statue; and among other remarks, said, the idea that a mausoleum would be equal to the character of Washington, was preposterous. Few individuals in the world were capable of drawing his character. In a few words, he would say that no character that had ever lived was equal to him, and it was his firm belief, that the world would never see his equal.
Mr. Brown thought General Washington the best man that had ever lived; and he was surprised at the ideas of gentlemen on the ground of expense. If the mausoleum were agreed to, it would not cost each person in the United States four cents; and if the equestrian statue were also made, (which he hoped would also be done, for the sake of general accommodation,) it would not cost more than two cents. It seemed to him that some gentlemen were averse to doing any thing, though they did not wish the people to think so.
Mr. Alston would not have risen, had he not been marked by the gentleman from Rhode Island as an object of inconsistency.
Mr. Champlin explained by saying he did not mean to censure the gentleman for his change of opinion, for which he doubtless had good reasons.
Mr. Alston.—Let the measures of Congress be reviewed, and it would appear, that the House itself and the gentleman from Rhode Island had been as inconsistent as himself. He would appeal to the gentleman whether it was more honorable to desert his duty and fly a vote, than to act as he had done?
Mr. Huger said it was unnecessary at this time to take into view the old arguments that had been urged. The proposition of the gentleman from Tennessee, for an equestrian statue, was the only one he should notice. So impressed was he with the inadequacy of a common statue to express the gratitude of America, that he would rather have nothing done, than to have what was done in this backhanded way.
He was disposed to treat with respect the acts of the old Congress. But the act, to which the gentleman from Tennessee had alluded, and which he wished this House exclusively to carry into effect, was passed in reference to the military exploits of Gen. Washington, because, at the time it was passed, his life had been most characterized by them. Since that period circumstances had changed. If we are bound by the acts of the old Congress, are we not equally bound by those of the last session? If you adopt the ideas of the gentleman, do you not hold out the Commander-in-chief of the American Army as deserving a splendid monument, and the father of the constitution and other great civil acts as deserving nothing?
Without any concert whatever, a remarkable concurrence had taken place between West, Trumbull, and other respectable artists, who all gave an unequivocal preference to a mausoleum; which, in his opinion, would be far less expensive than a statue. The expense of the latter, as would appear from an estimate in the office of the Secretary of State, could not be less than forty thousand guineas, deliverable at Paris; and when the additional charges of transportation, insurance, and other incidental expenses, were considered, he was persuaded it could not be completed for less than two or three hundred thousand dollars.