Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/525

He was reelected to the thirty-third Congress in 1852 by a majority of 7,577 votes, and to the thirty-fourth Congress by the unanimous vote of the district, owing to his persistent opposition to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He passed the summer of 1855 in travel in Europe. He was reelected to the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses by the newly-formed Republican party, which he was largely instrumental in organizing. On July 4, 1861, he was elected speaker of the house of representatives, and at the close of the thirty-seventh Congress, March 3, 1863, he received a unanimous vote of thanks from the House, the first unanimous vote received by any speaker for many years. He was defeated in 1862, owing to the redistricting of the state, Susquehanna and Luzerne counties forming the district, instead of Susquehanna, Bradford and Tioga, as formerly. The change made the district Democratic. He was chairman of the committee on Territories in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth Congresses. He made five set speeches, and introduced four bills at four different sessions of congress to secure the Free Homestead law. Three bills were defeated in the senate before the final passage of the law. Under this law, up to 1903 more than 89,687,700 acres of the public domain had been transferred by the United States to 668,625 actual settlers who had taken up homesteads. As speaker of the house he signed the Free Homestead bill and it became a law by the signature of President Lincoln, May, 1862, to take effect January 1, 1863. Representative Grow had incurred politically the ill-will of the slave-holders in congress by his opposition to the extension of slavery and to the attempt to admit Kansas as a slave state. Both his courage and his respect for law were demonstrated in his reply declining a challenge sent him by Lawrence O'Brien Branch, representative from North Carolina, for words spoken in debate on the bill that had passed the senate for increasing the rate of postage. He closed his reply to the challenge as follows: "Regarding dueling as at variance with the precepts of the Christian religion and the sentiments of a Christian people, and it being prohibited and declared a crime by the laws enacted by the body of which we are members, I can not recognize it—even in cases of unwarranted provocation—as a justifiable mode of settling difficulties among men; but my personal rights and the freedom of debate guaranteed by the constitution, I shall defend whenever and wherever they are assailed." At the organization of