UNITED STATES. 



807 



appointment had been confirmed, he wrote a 

 letter to the President declining. In this he 

 said : u It will ever be a matter of pride and 

 satisfaction that you and the Senate deemed 

 me fit for so grave and exalted a trust. But, 

 for reasons which you would not fail to appre- 

 ciate, I am constrained to decline." The place 

 was then offered to Senator George F. Ed- 

 munds, of Vermont, who also declined. The 

 appointment was then tendered to Judge Sam- 

 uel Blatchford, of the Circuit Court, and by 

 him accepted. He was promptly and unani- 

 mously confirmed, and the Supreme Bench, for 

 the first time in several years, was fully occu- 

 pied. The name of Aaron A. Sargent, of Cali- 

 fornia, was submitted to the Senate in the lat- 

 ter part of February, for the position of Min- 

 ister to Germany, and the appointment was 

 confirmed in March. An appointment which 

 attracted some attention and produced consid- 

 erable opposition was that of Eoland Worth- 

 ington to be Collector of the Port of Boston. 

 He was identified with what was known as 

 the "Stalwart" wing of the Republican party, 

 and was opposed by both the Senators and 

 several of the Representatives from Massachu- 

 setts. The appointment was sent in early in 

 April, and, after considerable opposition in the 

 Senate, was confirmed on the 15th of May, by 

 a vote 38 to 14. Near the beginning of Au- 

 gust General U. S. Grant and Mr. William H. 

 Trescot were appointed commissioners to nego- 

 tiate a commercial treaty with Mexico. Among 

 the other important appointments of the year 

 were those of Alphonso Taft, of Ohio, to be 

 Minister to Austria; John Russell Young, of 

 New York, Minister to China; William W. 

 Astor, of New York, Minister to Italy ; James 

 R. Partridge, of Indiana, Minister to Peru; 

 Nicholas Fish, of New York, Minister to Bel- 

 gium ; William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, Min- 

 ister to the Netherlands ; Eugene Schuyler, of 

 New York, Minister-Resident and Consul-Gen- 

 eral in Greece, Servia, and Roumania; John 

 M. Francis, of New York, Minister to Portu- 

 gal ; M. J. Cramer, of Kentucky, Minister to 

 Switzerland; C. 0. Andrews, of Minnesota, 

 Consul-General at Rio Janeiro ; and Adam Ba- 

 deau, of New York, Consul-General at Havana. 

 The first session of the Forty-seventh Con- 

 gress continued until the 8th of August. The 

 main features of legislation were contained in 

 the bill granting a pension of $5,000 a year to 

 the widow of President Garfield, approved 

 February 16th ; the Anti-Polygamy Bill, March 

 22d ; the Apportionment Bill, increasing the 

 number of Congressional Representatives to 

 325 ; the Anti-Chinese bill, restricting Chinese 

 immigration for twenty years, vetoed April 4th, 

 and the modified bill limiting the restriction to 

 ten years, approved May 6th; the Tariff Com- 

 mission Bill, approved May 15th ; the bill ex- 

 tending the charters of national banks, ap- 

 proved July 12th ; and that providing for dis- 

 tribution of the remainder of the Geneva 

 award, approved June 5th. The appropria- 



tionp exceeded $251,000,000. The bill appro- 

 priating nearly $19,000,000 for the improve- 

 ment of rivers and harbors was vetoed >n the 

 1st of August, and passed, notwithstanding tho 

 President's objections, on the following day. 

 (For particulars of congressional action, see 

 CONGRESS; for action under the Tariff Com- 

 mission Bill, see TARIFF REVISION.) 



The political movements of the year were 

 confined to the several States, but received a 

 national significance from the fact that mem- 

 bers of Congress were to be chosen, and in a 

 number of States Legislatures were to be elect- 

 ed which would have occasion to choose Unit- 

 ed States Senators. In the more prominent 

 Northern States causes of dissatisfaction ap- 

 peared to be at work which especially affected 

 the Republican party. The change of the na- 

 tional Administration in the fall of 1881 had 

 produced an attitude of sensitiveness and sus- 

 picion on the part of the wing of that party 

 which had sympathized with General Garfield 



CHARLES J. FOLGER, SECRETARY OP THE TREA8TOY. 



[Bora in Nantucket, Massachusetts, April 16, 1813; graduated 

 at Hohart College, Geneva, New York, in 1S86 ; admitted 

 to the bar in 1889 ; elected Judge of Ontario County Court 

 in 1851 : elected State Senator in 1801, 1 63, '65, '67, and '69; 

 appointed by President Grant Assistant United States 

 Treasurer in New York, In 1869 ; elected Associate Judge 

 of the Court of Appeals in 1870, and Chief Judge in 1(80 ; 

 was appointed a member of President Arthur's Cabinet 

 October 27, 1881.] 



in his contest with certain leaders with whom 

 the new President was supposed to be closely 

 allied. Some of the appointments occasioned 

 criticism, and there was apparent a lack of cor- 

 diality between the Administration and a cer- 

 tain portion of the Republican party. More- 

 over, the course of Congress in failing to meet 

 and directly deal with the questions of reform 

 in the civil service and revision of the tariff, 

 together with its persistency in appropriations 

 deemed extravagant, aggravated the feeling of 



