House Debates Bill to Restore Grant to Army Rolls

Which carried joy to every Northern heart. All the good would be remembered and all the mistakes would and ought to be forgotten, but Mr. Slocum believed that to-day it was the wish of the people of the South as well as the North that the Government should take care of Gen. Grant, and provide for him liberally. The honor of the Government was at stake and he trusted that the bill would pass the House with the same unanimity as it had the Senate.

Mr. Horr of Michigan and Mr. Thomas of Illinois opposed the bill, because they thought it was a trap to catch Republican votes and put the President in a tight place. The President, Mr. Thomas said, could not sign the bill and the Democrats knew that fact. Mr. Rosecrans of California regarded the bill as a plain proposition to reward Grant for distinguished military services and it was his duty to say that he could not vote for it. It had been the interest of the great political party to make Gen. Grant's services appear as large as possible, if he was their servant. Gen. Grant himself had prepared the first two volumes of Badeau's Life of Grant, upon which the students of history had placed the stamp of untrustworthiness, he said that Gen. Grant was poor, that there was nothing between him and the poorhouse, except the income from $250,000 and it had been circulated around by his family that that $250,000 was substantially lost. That was not true. There was another critical circumstance to which he called attention. Congress, by a solemn act, was asked to arrest the progress of public opinion for an investigation into that confidence mill, called Grant & Ward. If gentlemen could afford to put a cloak around that investigation and to deceive the public mind he could not. Mr. Horr called attention to the fact that the President had sent a message to the House—a message in which he asked that body to act upon a measure which would place Grant on the retired list and urged the passage of the second Senate bill. Mr. Slocum intimated the gentleman's opposition to the bill was due to the fact that Gen. Grant had tried to do justice to Gen. Porter. Even were the pending bill vetoed it could be passed over a veto. Suppose the President should veto this bill, what would happen? Why, in three weeks' time the House at the other end of the avenue would be occupied by a gentleman who would not stickle so for his prerogative to threaten the House with a veto message. Messrs. Cox of New York and Randall of Pennsylvania supported the bill.

The motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill was lost, yeas [...], nays [...], not the requisite two-thirds voting in the affirmative.

The bill to regulate the letting of mail contracts was passed. A bill appropriating $[...],000 for the erection in Washington of a building for the library of the medical department of the United States army was passed. Adjourned.