CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



157 



" In the debate upon this bill in the Forty- 

 sixth Congress, the Senator from Illinois was 

 pleased to ascribe the opposition to this meas- 

 ure to partisan prejudice, and he exhorted 

 Senators on this side of the chamber to lay 

 aside all political feeling and approach this bill 

 in a broad and catholic spirit of nationality, as 

 giving credit to a great soldier. 



" Mr. President, I desire to place before the 

 Senate an act of magnanimity performed by 

 the Republican party, which not only 'broke 

 the column of this mighty nation's array in the 

 presence of future generations,' but in the 

 presence of this generation added another name 

 to the long list of those who have fallen vic- 

 tims to 'party prejudice.' 



"In the Forty-fifth Congress a bill was 

 passed, only six votes dissenting, authorizing 

 the President to place upon the retired list my 

 predecessor upon this floor, General James 

 Shields, of Missouri. That bill came to a Re- 

 publican Senate. Broken in body and in for- 

 tune, maimed by shot and shell, with the snows 

 of seventy winters upon his head, this gallant 

 Irishman came to the Congress of his adopted 

 country, and begged for the pittance which 

 would give comfort to his declining years. 

 Bulwer, with matchless pen and pathos, has 

 drawn the picture of a wounded veteran about 

 to pledge for a crust of bread his cross of the 

 Legion of Honor, given him upon the battle- 

 field by the Emperor himself ; but this picture 

 of fiction grows faint and colorless when I 

 state that the gallant old soldier who came for 

 relief to the Forty-fifth Congress had been 

 forced by actual want to pawn the swords pre- 

 sented to him by grateful States for gallantry 

 and heroism. It would seem, Mr. President, 

 that a case like that would exorcise even the 

 fiend of party ; but let the record show. 



" The bill placing General Shields upon the 

 retired list passed the House with only six 

 votes opposing, and was taken up in the Re- 

 publican Senate. By a party vote, only one 

 Democratic Senator voting in the affirmative, 

 the bill now pending, placing General Grant on 

 the retired list, was added as an amendment. 



" The Senator from Vermont (Mr. Edmunds), 

 who I am sorry to see is not now in the cham- 

 ber, after having voted for the amendment, 

 proceeded, in a speech remarkable for its clear- 

 ness and emphasis, to give the reasons why he 

 should vote against the bill as amended. 



"I need only add that after this presentation 

 of the subject, followed by the Senator from 

 Illinois, now presiding officer of the Senate, in 

 the same line of thought, the bill placing Gen- 

 eral Shields and General Grant upon the re- 

 tired list was defeated by a vote of thirty to 

 thirty-four in a Republican Senate. 



"Mr. President, if the arguments made in 

 the Forty-fifth Congress were sufficient to de- 

 feat the bill giving to an aged veteran a bare 

 support for himself and family out of the vast 

 wealth which his sword had helped to win for 

 his adopted country upon the plains of Mexico, 



how much more conclusive must be the same 

 arguments against the bill now pending ! 



" General Grant is not now within the re- 

 quirements of the law, nor does he ask or need 

 the proposed legislation. He is in robust health, 

 in the prime of life, and beyond pecuniary 

 want. The first American soldier to receive 

 the rank of general, he was the first American 

 citizen to seek for a third term, the highest 

 office within the gift of the republic. During 

 his second term as President, the salary of that 

 office was doubled for his benefit; and he is 

 to-day surrounded by wealthy connections, 

 living luxuriously in the city of New York, 

 and possessed, besides other fortune, of the in- 

 come from $250,000 donated to him by the 

 public. To give General Grant the full meas- 

 ure of glory as a great soldier is one thing ; to 

 tax the people of this country $13,500 annually 

 in order to enrich a man already in affluence is 

 a different proposition. 



" To Grant the soldier this country, forever 

 united, will be forever grateful ; to Grant the 

 politician it owes nothing. Not the American 

 people, but General Grant and his political fol- 

 lowers, marred the symmetry of his colossal 

 figure as it stood before the world at Appomat- 

 tox. To the pages of history emblazoned with 

 military achievements unequaled in modern 

 times has been added another page unequaled 

 in the annals of modern corruption. 



" Sir, it is not for me to paint the picture. It 

 has been done by a master-hand, and in colors 

 which will never fade. The junior Senator 

 from Massachusetts (Mr. Hoar), chairman of the 

 Chicago Convention, is the artist, and if I again 

 point to the canvas upon which in the Belknap 

 trial he placed the somber portraiture of 

 Grant's second terra as President, it is not be- 

 cause the contemplation is pleasant to any 

 American. Said the Senator from Massachu- 

 setts (Mr. Hoar) then : 



^ " ' My own public life has "been a very brief and in- 

 significant one, extending little beyond the duration 

 of a single term of senatorial office. But in that 

 brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of 

 the United States driven from office by threats of im- 

 peachment for corruption or maladministration. I 

 have heard the taunt, from friendliest lips, that when 

 the United States presented herself in the East to take 

 part with the civilized world in generous competition 

 m the^arts of life, the only products of her institutions 

 in which she surpassed all others beyond question was 

 her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union 

 foremost in power and wealth, four judges of her 

 courts impeached for corruption, and the political ad- 

 ministration of her chief city become a disgrace and 

 a by-word throughout the world. I have seen the 

 chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the 

 House, now a distinguished member of this court, 

 rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of 

 his associates for making sale of their official privi- 

 lege of selecting the youths to be educated at our 

 great military school. When the greatest railroad of 

 the world, binding together the continent and uniting 

 the two Jrreat seas which wash our shores, was 

 finished, I have seen our national triumph and exul- 

 tation turned to bitterness and shame by the unani- 

 mous reports of three committees of Congress two 

 of the House and one here that every step of that 

 enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have Tieard in 



