Part 4

It is with humiliation unspeakable that I rise in my place on this floor and admit to my constituents at home that in this House I am utterly powerless to bring any bill or measure, no matter how worthy or meritorious it may be, to a vote unless I can first make terms with the Speaker.

It may be a matter of news to some of the good people within the confines of the American Republic to know that there is no way of getting an ordinary unprivileged measure considered and voted upon in this House unless it suits the Speaker. I am aware that there are several _theoretical_ ways of getting a measure up; but they have no actual reality—no fruitage in fact. I make the statement on this floor now, that no member of this body who introduces a bill—not a private bill, but a public bill—can get it considered or brought forward for final determination unless it suits the Speaker. And if any one wants to deny that statement I am in a personal position and in a peculiarly happy frame of mind right now to give a little valuable testimony on that point! [Applause and laughter.]

Imagine, if you please, a measure—not a private measure, but a public measure—which has been considered at length by a great committee of this House and favorably reported with the recommendation that it do pass. That bill is then placed on the “Calendar.” The Calendar! That is a misnomer. It ought to be called a cemetery [laughter], for therein lie the whitening bones of legislative hopes. [Laughter.] When the bill is reported and placed on the Calendar, what does the member who introduced it and who is charged by his constituency to secure its passage do?

Does he consult himself about his desire to call it up? No. Does he consult the committee who considered the bill and recommended it for passage? No. Does he consult the will of the majority of this House? No. What does he do? I will tell you what he does. He either consents that that bill may die upon the Calendar, or he puts his manhood and his individuality in his pocket and goes trotting down that little pathway of personal humiliation that leads—where? To the Speaker’s room. Ay, the Speaker’s room. All the glories that clustered around the holy of holies in King Solomon’s temple looked like 30 cents [prolonged laughter and applause]—yes, looked like 29 cents—compared with that jobbing department of this government! [Applause and laughter.]

Then you are in the presence of real greatness. What then? Why, the Speaker looks over _your_ bill, and then _he_ tells _you_ whether _he_ thinks it ought to come up or not!

There is a condition which I commend to the patriotic consideration of the American people. Contemplate that for a method of procedure in the legislative body of a great and free republic.

WHO IS THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE?

Who is the Speaker of this House who sets up his immaculate and infallible judgment against the judgment of all comers? Is there anything different or superior in the credentials that he carries from the credentials that were issued to you and to me from 70,000,000 of American people? When he entered this House at the beginning of the Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh Congresses he was simply a Congressman-elect, bearing credentials like every other man on this floor. He has no greater power now than any other member, save the additional power we ourselves bestowed upon him by electing him Speaker and then adopting this set of rules. The question that now arises to confront us is: Have we put a club in the hands of some one else to beat us to death? Have we elevated one man on a pinnacle so high that he can not now see those who elevated him? Is the Speaker of this House a mere mortal man of common flesh and clay, or is he supernatural and immortal? What miracle was wrought at his birth? Did a star shoot from its orbit when he was born, or did he come into existence in the good old-fashioned way that ushered the rest of us into this vale of tears?

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

I make no onslaught on the individual. I have a high regard for the Speaker of this House personally and for him politically; but we face the fact that we have adopted a set of rules in this body that are an absolute disgrace to the legislative body of any republic.

Throughout the entire three years of my service in this body I have been up against the little machine that dominates the proceedings and the deliberations of this House. During the entire three years prior to this time I have always treated that machine with the deference due to its age and its reputation. I trust you will excuse my frankness when I tell you that from this time on I shall devote a little of my time and a tithe of my energy to putting a few spokes in the wheel of that machine that the designers of the vehicle never ordered. [Laughter.]

I for one expect to live to see the day in this House not when the Speaker shall tell the individual members of this House what he is going to permit them to bring up, but when those individual members, constituting a majority, will inform the Speaker what they are going to bring up for themselves.

X THE SUPREME COURT ROOM

Continuing our examination of what is called the original Capitol building, we would stop next at the Supreme Court room, once the Senate Chamber of the United States. For quiet, harmonious beauty it is unequaled by any other room in the building.

It was designed by Latrobe, after the model of a Greek theater—a semicircular hall, with low-domed ceiling, and small gallery back and over the seats occupied by the dignified judges of the Supreme Court of the United States.

“The Bench” is composed of large leather upholstered chairs, with the chair of the Chief Justice in the center, and those of the Associate Justices on either side. In front of these is a table around which the counsel are seated, and back of a railing seats are arranged around the wall for spectators.

On the walls are the busts of the former Chief Justices of the United States: John Jay, of New York; John Rutledge, of South Carolina; Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut; John Marshall, of Virginia; Roger B. Taney, of Maryland; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio; and Morrison R. Waite, of Ohio. Back of the judges is placed a number of graceful Ionic columns of Potomac marble, the white capitals copied from the Temple of Minerva.

The Standard Guide of Washington pictures the present court in this way:

+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ +--+ |8 |6 |4 |2 |1 |3 |5 |7 |9 | +--+ |10| +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ |11| +--+ +--+ -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- +--+ +--+ |13| |12| +--+ +--+ +------+ | 14 | +------+

SEATING PLAN OF THE SUPREME COURT CHAMBER

Chief Justice occupies Chair No. 1 His colleagues sit on either side

No. 10—Clerk’s Desk No. 11—Marshal’s Desk No. 12—Reporters’ Desk No. 13—Attorney-General’s Desk No. 14—Counsel’s Desk

In this hall Webster answered Hayne, and here Benton and John Randolph made their great speeches. On the left side of the Senate stood Calhoun in many a contest with Clay and Webster on the right.

One day Calhoun boasted of being the superior of Clay in argument. He said: “I had him on his back; I was his master; he was at my mercy.”

Clay strode down the aisle, and, shaking his long finger in Calhoun’s face, said: “He my master! Sir, I would not own him for my slave!”

It is said to be the handsomest court room in the world. Every week-day from October till May, except during Christmas and Easter holidays, just at twelve o’clock the crier enters the court room and announces: “The Honorable Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,” at which everybody, including visitors and lawyers, stand. Just then nine large, dignified old gentlemen, led by Chief Justice Fuller, kicking up their long black silk robes behind them, enter the room; each, standing before his chair, bows to the lawyers, the lawyers and spectators bow to them, then all are seated.

The crier then opens court by saying: “O yea! O yea! O yea! All persons having business with the honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give their attendance, as the court is now sitting. God save the United States and this honorable court.”

After this quaint little speech business begins.

The members of the court wear gowns like the ecclesiastical robes of the Church of England. This began in early days when this country took English law and customs for pattern and precedent.

The seats of the judges are placed in the order of the time of their appointment, the senior judges occupying seats on either hand of the Chief Justice, while the latest appointments sit at the farthest end of each row.

This order of precedence extends even into the consulting-room, where the judges meet to talk over difficult cases, the Chief Justice presiding at the head.

Our country is justly proud of its judiciary. The Supreme Court of our country is the last rampart of liberty. Should this court become corrupt our free institutions will surely perish.

The Supreme Court of the United States has, however, made some grave mistakes—witness the famous decision of Justice Taney—but, for the most part, time has only verified their decisions.

The men who have sat here have not only been fair representatives of the legal knowledge of their day, but also men of unimpeachable integrity and of the highest patriotism. Many of them have been devout Christians. Some on the bench at present are among the best church workers of Washington.

Courts are conservative bodies. Conservatism produces nothing, but is useful in preserving that which enthusiasm has created.

This Supreme Court room has been made further memorable as being the place in which, in 1877, sat the Electoral Commission which decided the Presidential contest as to whether Hayes, of the Republican party, or Tilden, of the Democratic party, should be the Executive of a great nation for four years.

In the fall of 1876, when the elections were over, it was found that the result was in serious and dangerous dispute. The Senate was Republican, the House Democratic. Each distrusted the other. It was feared that on the following 4th of March the country would be forced to face one of two series dilemmas: either that the country would have no President, or that two would-be Presidents would, with their followers, strive to enter the White House and take violent possession of the government. Men would have shot the way they voted. On the 7th of December, Judge George W. McCrary, a Representative of Iowa, afterward in Hayes’s Cabinet, later a circuit judge of the United States, submitted a resolution which became the basis of the Electoral Commission. Three distant Southern States had sent to the Capitol double sets of election returns—one set for Mr. Tilden, one set for Mr. Hayes. On these nineteen votes depended the Presidency for four years.

If they were counted for Tilden, he would have two hundred and three votes and Hayes one hundred and sixty-six; or, if counted for Hayes, he would have one hundred and eighty-five votes and Tilden one hundred and eighty-four. The States whose certificates of election were in dispute were Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon.

The members of the Electoral Commission were selected either as representatives of their party, or men considered the embodiment of honor and justice. The Commission consisted of five Senators, five Judges of the Supreme Court, and five Representatives from the Lower House of Congress. The attorneys were the leading lawyers of each party. The Cabinet, leading Senators, Congressmen, foreign Ministers, and distinguished people from all portions of the country, were present. The wit, the beauty, the writers, the wisdom of the country assembled in this room to weigh the arguments, and at last to hear the decision that Rutherford B. Hayes was rightfully to be the President of the United States.

This tribunal, and the wise patriotism of Mr. Tilden and his party, saved the country from a bloody civil war.

XI INCIDENTS CONCERNING MEMBERS OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

The Chief Justice of the United States is the highest legal officer in this country.

The position has always been filled by men of great learning and of high integrity, and, differ as we may concerning the wisdom and justice of some Supreme Court decisions, yet we must believe the judges were sincere and honest in their renditions.

When the country loses confidence in the integrity of this court, the very foundation of our government will be in danger.

The first Chief Justice was John Jay, appointed September 26, 1789. He soon resigned to accept the position of Envoy Extraordinary to England, where, after the Revolutionary War, the adjustment of our affairs demanded a person of great learning and skill. The country was fortunate in having John Adams, John Jay, and, later, John Quincy Adams as its representatives in this delicate and important service.

John Rutledge, of South Carolina, was a later appointment to the Chief Justiceship, but the Senate refused to confirm the nomination. Then William Cushing, of Massachusetts, one of the Associate Justices, was nominated and confirmed, but declined to serve. Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, was then appointed, and was confirmed by the Senate March 4, 1796. He served till 1799, when he resigned to go as the Special Envoy and the Minister to England.

John Jay was again nominated and confirmed by the Senate, but refused to serve. John Marshall, of Virginia, was appointed Chief Justice by President John Adams in 1801. He died in 1835. His term and that of Chief Justice Taney cover over sixty important years in the history of our government.

John Marshall had served on the personal staff of Washington in the Revolutionary War, and had suffered the miseries and trials of the camp at Valley Forge. At the time of his appointment he was Secretary of State in Adams’s Cabinet. He served in both capacities till the close of Adams’s administration.

The Supreme Court, when Marshall was called to preside over it, was held in a low-vaulted room in the basement of the Capitol, and remained there until the new wings were finished, about 1857. Mr. Ellis, in “Sights and Secrets of Washington,” tells this story of Marshall: “Upon one occasion Marshall was standing in the market in Richmond, Va., with his basket containing his purchases on his arm, when he was accosted by a fashionable young gentleman who had just purchased a turkey. The young man’s foolish pride would not allow him to carry the fowl through the streets, and, taking the Judge for a countryman, he asked him to carry it home for him. The request was promptly granted, and when the young man’s home was reached he offered the supposed countryman a shilling for his trouble. The money was courteously refused, and upon asking the name of the person who had rendered him the service, the young man was not a little astonished and chagrined to learn that his thanks were due to the Chief Justice of the United States.”

A bet was once made that the Judge could not dress himself without exhibiting some mark of carelessness. He good-humoredly accepted the challenge. A supper was to be given him upon these conditions: If his dress was found to be faultlessly neat upon that occasion, the parties offering the wager were to pay for the entertainment; but if they detected any carelessness in his attire, the expense was to fall upon him. Upon the appointed evening the guests and the Judge met at the place agreed upon, and, to the surprise of all, the Judge’s dress seemed faultless. The supper followed, Judge Marshall being in high spirits over his victory. Near the close of the repast, however, one of the guests who sat near him chanced to drop his napkin, and, stooping down to pick it up, discovered that the Judge had put on one of his stockings with the wrong side out. Of course the condition of affairs was immediately changed, and amidst the uproarious laughter of his companions the Chief Justice acknowledged his defeat.

Mr. Ellis also says: “The following incident in his (Marshall’s) life is said to have occurred at McGuire’s hotel, in Winchester, Virginia:

“It is not long since a gentleman was traveling in one of the counties of Virginia, and about the close of the day stopped at a public house to obtain refreshment and spend the night. He had been there but a short time before an old man alighted from his gig, with the apparent intention of becoming his fellow guest at the same house. As the old man drove up he observed that both of the shafts of the gig were broken, and that they were held together by withes formed from the bark of a hickory sapling. Our traveler observed further that he was plainly clad, that his knee-buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land, the courtesies of strangers passed between them, and they entered the tavern. It was about the same time that an addition of three or four young gentlemen was made to their number—most, if not all of them, of the legal profession. As soon as they became conveniently accommodated, the conversation was turned by the latter upon an eloquent harangue which had that day been displayed at the bar. It was replied by the other that he had witnessed, the same day, a degree of eloquence no doubt equal, but it was from the pulpit. Something like a sarcastic rejoinder was made as to the eloquence of the pulpit, and a warm altercation ensued, in which the merits of the Christian religion became the subject of discussion. From six o’clock until eleven the young champions wielded the sword of argument, adducing with ingenuity and ability everything that could be said, _pro_ and _con_. During this protracted period the old gentleman listened with the meekness and modesty of a child—as if he were adding new information to the stores of his own mind, or perhaps he was observing, with philosophic eye, the faculties of the youthful mind and how new energies are evolved by repeated action; or, perhaps, with patriotic emotion, he was reflecting upon the future destinies of his country, and on the rising generation, upon whom these future destinies must devolve; or, most probably, with a sentiment of moral and religious feeling, he was collecting an argument which, characteristic of himself, no art would ‘be able to elude, and no force to resist.’ Our traveler remained a spectator, and took no part in what was said.

“At last one of the young men, remarking that it was impossible to combat with long and established prejudices, wheeled around, and, with some familiarity, exclaimed, ‘Well, my old gentleman, what do you think of these things?’ If, said the traveler, a streak of vivid lightning had at the moment crossed the room, their amazement could not have been greater than it was with what followed. The most eloquent and unanswerable appeal that he ever heard or read was made for nearly an hour by the old gentleman. So perfect was his recollection that every argument urged against the Christian religion was met in the order in which it was advanced. Hume’s sophistry on the subject of miracles was, if possible, more perfectly answered than it had already been done by Campbell. And in the whole lecture there was so much simplicity and energy, pathos and sublimity, that not another word was uttered. An attempt to describe it, said the traveler, would be an attempt to paint the sunbeams. It was now a matter of curiosity and inquiry who the old gentleman was. The traveler concluded it was a preacher from whom the pulpit eloquence was heard. But no; it was the Chief Justice of the United States.”

Judge Marshall was followed by Roger Brooke Taney, of Maryland. He was nominated by President Jackson, and confirmed by the Senate in 1836. He died October 12, 1864. His decision in the Dred Scott fugitive case may be ranked as one of the factors which brought about the Civil War. The case was substantially this: A negro slave, with a wife and two children, sued his master for freedom under the plea that, having been taken North into free States a number of times, they were therefore entitled to freedom. The decision covers many pages, but the nation summed it up in these words: “The black man possesses no rights which the white man is bound to respect.” Since Moses established a judiciary no decision ever made such a disturbance. In the memory of most people Taney’s singularly pure life goes for nothing beside the infamy of this decision. It outraged the conscience of mankind. Taney claimed that he did not make the law, he simply gave its interpretation. The decision was approved by the majority of the court, but he alone was made to suffer the obloquy which followed.

This decision proved sufficient to bring down the wrath of a just God on a nation so lost to human justice. The South suffered for the sin of slavery, the North for conniving thereto.

Judge Taney sleeps at Frederick, Md. (where most of his private life had passed), beside his wife, who was sister to Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

In the summer of 1888 I heard Dr. Wardell, at Ocean Grove, N. J., tell this incident concerning Salmon P. Chase, who was appointed Chief Justice by President Lincoln in 1864, and who died in 1873. Dr. Wardell claimed to have the story direct from Dr. Newman, then pastor of the Metropolitan Methodist Church, Washington, D. C.

He said that Chief Justice Chase was in the habit of attending the Metropolitan Church, on Four and One-half Street, Washington, and Dr. Newman (afterward Bishop) noticed that while the Chief Justice was a member of the official Board, and attended faithfully to its duties, yet he always left the church when the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered.

After one such occasion Dr. Newman went to him and said: “Why do you not avail yourself of the means of grace in the Lord’s Supper?”

The Chief Justice answered: “I do not consider myself worthy to partake of the communion.”

The Doctor said: “We invite all who love the Lord, and who do truly and heartily repent of their sins, to join with us in this service.”

“Yes, that is just it. What do you mean by ‘repent’?”

Then the Doctor gave him a full and clear explanation of repentance.

On the next communion day instead of leaving the church the Chief Justice remained in his seat. After all had communed, Dr. Newman said: “If any soul feels its unfitness for this service, to him this invitation is specially given. If such a one fails to acknowledge the Savior and his own unworthiness before his fellowmen, we are assured that the Savior will not acknowledge him before his Father and His holy angels.”