In the front row of desks on the Union side is a clumsy figure of gigantic mould. The head matches the body; and in old times (when such men as A. Lincoln were his colleagues,) Long John Wentworth proved that there was a good deal in it. His immediate predecessor in the representation of Chicago, now sixth Auditor, is in the lobby.
So one’s eye ranges over familiar faces or picks out noted new ones, in this House which is to administer on the effects of the great Rebellion, while the Clerk vociferates the roll.
“Samuel McKee” has just been called, and the young Kentuckian has answered; “Wm. E Niblack,” continues the Clerk. He has skipped, on the printed roll, from Kentucky to Indiana, omitting Tennessee. From the very heart of the Massachusetts’ group rises the “black snake of the mountains,” the long, black-haired, black-faced, Indian-looking Horace Maynard. Every man knows and honors the voice, but it can not be heard now. He shakes his certificate of election from Parson Brownlow and begins to speak. The sharp rap of the Clerk’s gavel is followed by the curt sentence, “The Clerk declines to be interrupted during the roll call. William E. Niblack; Michael C. Kerr;” and so the call goes steadily on. At last the member from Nevada had answered; the territorial delegates had answered; Mr. Maynard rose again. But “The Clerk can not be interrupted while ascertaining whether a quorum is present.” Then, reading from the count of the assistants, “One hundred and seventy-five members, being a quorum, have answered to their names.” “Mr. Clerk,” once more from Horace Maynard. “The Clerk can not recognize as entitled to the floor any gentleman whose name is not on the roll.” And a buzz of approbation ran over the floor as the difficult point was thus passed.
Then, as if poor Mr. Maynard’s evil genius were directing things, who should get the floor but that readiest and most unremitting of talkers on a bad side, Mr. James Brooks. Mr. Morrill had moved to proceed to the election of Speaker, but had made the mistake which at once suggested how defective he was likely to prove in the leadership of the House, to which rumor already assigned him—had forgotten to call the previous question.
Brooks never misses such an opening. He proposed to amend the motion. He thought the roll ought first to be completed. He couldn’t understand why a State good enough to furnish the country a President wasn’t good enough to furnish the House members. If Mr. Maynard, of Tennessee, was to be kicked out by the party in power, he hoped they would proceed to perform the same operation on their Tennessee President. And then he told how, in the years of the war, he had heard the eloquent voice of this persecuted and rejected Tennesseean ringing on the banks of the Hudson, on the side of an imperiled country. But he forgot to add (as his hearers did not forget to remember,) how earnestly he had himself then taken—the other side! And, as if determined to stab poor Maynard as dangerously as possible, he even dragged up the Rebel Virginians, (“Sandie” Stuart at their head,) placed them by the loyal East Tennesseean’s side and claimed for them equal rights!
Long John Wentworth made his début by slowly rearing aloft his ponderous hulk, and calling, like a stentor, for order. The Clerk, handsomely and fairly, decided the speaker in order. Long John sank down, and Brooks improved his chance: “When the newly arrived gentleman from Illinois becomes a little more familiar with matters in the House, he will be a little slower in undertaking to find me out of order.” Presently he essayed a tilt against Thad. Stevens, but came out from that, as most men do, badly beaten, with House and galleries roaring at his discomfiture. Finally, Brooks was ready to close and sought to yield the floor to a Democrat; the Unionists were quick enough, this time, and objected. Points of order were raised, and old heads tried to entangle the Clerk; but he was clear as a bell, and his rulings were prompt, sharp, and decisive. The moment a Unionist fairly got the floor, the previous question was moved, and the contest was over. “If Maynard had spoken,” says Judge Warmouth, the delegate from the “Territory of Louisiana,” “I should have claimed the right to speak too.”
The stoop-shouldered, studious looking, thin-voiced Mr. Morrill, rises. “I nominate for Speaker, Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana.” Across the way a ponderous Democrat: “I nominate James Brooks, of New York;” and some person of bad taste titters, the laugh is infectious, and breaks out all over the floor, and runs around the galleries; while Brooks tries to look solemn for a moment, then makes the best of it, and laughs with the rest.