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man; though he did not draw men by sheer vitality - by the very gusto and zest of life like Douglas's or by gifts of jocularity and wit like Lincoln's or by smiling bonhomie like Blaine's he was always able to summon loyal and able support.

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The combination of these gifts helps one to understand the half-envious comments frequently encountered on his success in carrying his measures through Congress. Though it is too early to deal with the Land Grant College Act which deserves a chapter by itself, the first skirmishes in the enactment of that measure afford an example of his skill. On the 16th of December he introduced his bill in the House and moved that it be referred to the Committee on Agriculture of which he was then a member. The motion was defeated and the bill was sent to the Committee on Public Lands, which kept it for several months and reported it, as Morrill anticipated, unfavorably. Inasmuch as the House was Democratic, the outlook for the bill was dark, unless the majority could be divided. To accomplish this various motions were made; one to print and postpone consideration, a second to recommit to the Committee, and a third, made by Morrill himself, to take up a substitute amended to meet the more serious objections to the original bill and recommit that instead. The opponents of the bill now moved to lay it on the table, thus ending its career, but this Morrill and his friends were able to defeat and demanded the "previous question" which would cut off debate. Two days later, Cobb of Alabama, representing the opposition to the bill — here, as everywhere, in that period, sectional divisions appeared and a Northern measure, especially a Republican measure, was sure of Southern opposition - attacked it on constitutional and State rights' grounds. The sequel has been told by a careful student:

Mr. Cobb having finished, the rules now required the Speaker

to put to the House the pending motions. The first motion was Mr. Morrill's, to recommit the bill with his substitute to the Committee on Public Lands. Mr. Morrill evidently concluded that this was bad parliamentary tactics, as the adoption of "the previous question" enabled him to get a vote immediately upon the passage of the bill, and he asked permission to withdraw the motion, but opponents of the bill, angered at the cutting off of debate, objected, and the motion had to be put. Mr. Morrill then appealed to the friends of the bill to vote down his own motion, and in such good discipline were the supporters of the measure that the motion to recommit was voted down 105 to 93. The substitute offered by Mr. Morrill, which had never been before a committee, was then adopted, and the Speaker informing the House that the question was upon the passage of the bill, the bill was passed by a vote of 105 to 100.

In this way, through Mr. Morrill's ability in handling parliamentary procedure, a bill which had been reported unfavorably by its committee was passed eight days later with practically no discussion of the real merits of the bill on either side. It will also be noticed that the bill as passed had never even been considered by a committee and that the two speeches which the House was allowed to hear did not discuss the essential character of the measure.1

It is interesting to find Morrill, in his second term of Congress, referred to as having a large part of the House under "discipline," and there is no doubt that the passage of the bill against an unfriendly majority was a piece of very skillful tactics. The bill was, unfortunately, doomed to be long delayed in the Senate, and, even after it had passed there, to be vetoed by the President; but meantime all was well and the success of its first stage was greeted with praise and satisfaction by many throughout the North who were following its course, and especially by Morrill's friends in Vermont.

His constituents had every reason to be content with his record. Not only had he put forward his Land Grant meas

1 Federal Aid for Vocational Education, 7, 8. Carnegie Foundation.

ure which was popular among the farmers, but he had labored for an increased tariff on wool; he had defended the interests of his State at every occasion and continued to do so. On the 21st of January he rose to move that in the proposed legislation for the improvement of navigation on the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain should be included, and on February 15th, he took strong ground on a matter on which both the patriotism and the interests of Vermont were highly sensitive. About reciprocity with Canada, Vermont had always been jealous. She was both a rural and a frontier State, which is to say that the memories of the Revolution and the War of 1812 were kept alive long after they had ceased to smoulder in other parts of the country. The farmer of Vermont felt himself robbed by every pound of butter, every cord of wood, and every head of cattle that came across the border to be sold in competition with his own products. This gives the key to Morrill's attitude on reciprocity, both then and later, and is a factor in his views on the tariff. At any rate, on the 15th of February he introduced a resolution which, however illiberal it may seem to us to-day, undoubtedly reflected his own convictions and those of his constituents. The resolution which was read and by unanimous consent agreed to is in these terms:

That the Committee on Foreign Affairs be instructed to inquire into the expediency of abrogating the late so-called reciprocity treaty with Great Britain and whether the same does not operate disastrously upon the timber and grain-growing regions of the United States, as well as against American interests generally.

All this attention to the material interests of the country had not obscured his concern for moral questions: he continued to give thought to the problem of polygamy in Utah, and on January 4th introduced a bill "to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States and other places," which was read and after some

humorous discussion referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. Over all continued to loom the shadow of the slavery question.

As spring drew nearer, the desire to return to Vermont, to the wife he had left there and the infant son whom he had scarcely seen, grew upon him. His impatience showed in a playful letter complaining of the scarcity of letters, addressed with mock formality to Mrs. Justin S. Morrill, and beginning, "Dear Madam."

I can't say when

I propose to visit the North at some time -and from what I have learned of your character I desire to solicit a correspondence with you as a prelude to a further acquaintance, in order that we may not meet as strangers. On my part you will not expect that carefully beautiful chirography which comes from those who know how to teach the young idea [Mrs. Morrill had been a school-teacher before her marriage], but I promise docility and hope for facility in imitating such copy as you may set. On these terms I beseech your favorable consideration.

I may say that I am six feet high, nearly, a little bent, have some holes in my stockings (Mrs. W. will remedy all that) and keep my finger nails clean. My appetite is fair and I don't smoke.

But fun apart - I fear you have not been well enough to write. I am waiting rather anxiously to hear. Even Louise [Mrs. Morrill's sister] don't come up to her promise.

And now the Congressional elections approached again. This time he wanted to be reëlected; for he had set his hand to two tasks which he wished to fulfill: his Land Grant College Act was still pending in the Senate and he had begun to prepare for a revision of the tariff. Yet he shrank, as he had done and continued to do all his life, from an active or importunate canvass. During his term he had done what he deemed proper to keep his constituents informed on the labors and achievements of Congress. He had purchased 17,325 copies of the important speeches of the session and

sent them to his constituents. Although the bulk of these were his own speeches on Kansas and Utah, there were forty-six other titles which he apportioned among the voters according to their tastes and preferences which he well knew. In this as in all that he did, he was thoroughly methodical as may be seen in the three volumes preserved in the Library of Congress which contain a register of voters in his district and a minute record of every document sent to each of them while he was in Washington. To some he sent Douglas's speeches, to some Henry Winter Davis's, to some Seward's, Wade's, Giddings's, Chandler's, Collamer's, and Dawes's. By these and other constant, thoughtful attentions, he kept in such friendly relations with the voters of his district that when elections came he had little cause for anxiety lest he be supplanted in their affections.

They reciprocated his interest in many letters which laid a heavy burden on one who conscientiously answered all his correspondents in his own hand. They gave thanks for documents—and asked for more. A naïve supporter in Guilford writes: "There was some of our prominent men felt rather hard toward you for some time from the fact that you sent documents to no one but R. B. Field. They said they presumed you thought there was no one in Guilford but Rodney Field. Such is human nature; we are all jealous of each other." He closes with an appropriate postscript: "N.B. Are there any copies of the Pacific Rail Road surveys?... I think they must be a very valuable book."

One wonders whether such eagerness for public documents still exists? Probably the greater abundance of reading matter has diminished the charm of these dry records, but in 1856 it was acute. Another writes, "I wish you to send me the entire Patent Office Report for 1857... and I would like to have you likewise give Slavery the Devil." There spoke the heart of Vermont. It had an echo in the letter of George

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