78 The Smithsonian Institutio7i 



by visit, he had known him, and therefore felt well fitted to 

 speak of the high qualities referred to in the resolutions." 



It should be remembered, however, that the passing of 

 resolutions and the delivery of eulogies have only been cus- 

 tomary when a member of the Board has continued actively 

 associated with the Institution until the time of his death. 

 It should not be forgotten that several of the Regents who 

 were most active in the defense of the Institution and in 

 the advancement of its interests were so remote in time 

 and place from the organization at the time of their death 

 that no reference to their services stand recorded upon the 

 Journal. 



In this connection, then, it seems but just to refer to the 

 activities of Robert Dale Owen, in securing the passage of 

 the act organizing the Institution, and as chairman of its 

 Building Committee ; the intense interest shown by Rufus 

 Choate, in the promotion of the library and bibliographical 

 work of the Institution in its days of organization, thus sup- 

 plementing the valuable services rendered at a still earlier 

 day in the Senate in preventing the diversion of the fund to 

 unworthy ends ; the courageous attitude of Henry W. Mil- 

 liard, of Alabama, in defending the Institution and its Re- 

 gents from an attack in the House of Representatives on the 

 part of Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, who desired to see 

 the organization, still in its infancy, destroyed ; the effective 

 service of Jefferson Davis, in preventing the repudiation by 

 the government of the responsibility which it had incurred 

 by ordering the investment of the Smithson bequest in State 

 bonds which had become worthless, and in securing the res- 

 toration to the Treasury of the money thus misapplied and 

 lost; also the bold stand taken by Mr. Davis in 1850, in the 

 Senate, resisting the demand to force upon the Institution 

 the miscellaneous collection of curiosities then housed in the 



