Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/96

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88 H. R. KINCAID

drew Johnson. Why is it so? I do not know. After John- son went out of the office of President he was elected a Senator from Tennessee. I sat on a sofa a few feet from him and heard him speak in the Senate about one hour in defense of his administration as President. The Senators did not give him much attention. He did not seem to have any more influence in the Senate than he had with his administration when he was President.

There was more or less rivalry and jealousy between the Senators of nearly every state when there were two belonging to the same party. When there was one Republican and one Democrat they could get along all right, because one could not interfere with the appointments or party affairs of the other. The one belonging to the party in power was sole monarch of all he surveyed, and, like the devil in olden time, could take a constituent up on a high mountain and show him that he owned the whole world with a fence around it. But if there was another Senator of the same party to butt in, there was usually a row in the family or a feeling that one was superior to the other. Morton was the great man from Indiana, and any colleague of the same party who would have had the temerity to interfere with the great "War Governor" would have been reprimanded. Conkling of New York was the unquestioned Republican boss of New York. Edmunds of Vermont did not have to worry about old Morrill of Ver- mont, who usually kept quiet, but sometimes read or spoke a piece, slowly in a kind of stuttering voice, which Senators had heard for thirty years until they had become used to it. He did not interfere with Edmunds, the great, tall, stoop shouldered, bald-headed lawyer who tore to pieces every measure he failed to approve, and he usually disapproved of nearly everything and jumped on it with both feet. Lot M. Morrill, of Maine, whose bald head often arose when, in a loud voice, he laid down the law to his fellow Senators, did not seem to disturb or worry old Hannibal Hamlin, who had