r of
the Senate, wonderfully vigorous in mind and body.

The chief subject of political interest in this session was the
attitude of William Mahone, a Senator from Virginia. He had been
a distinguished officer in the Confederate army, was a small man
physically, but of wonderful vitality, of undoubted courage and
tenacity. He had broken from the Democratic party, of which he
had been a member, and had been elected a Senator on local issues
in Virginia, arising chiefly out of the debt of that state. When
he entered the Senate, that body was so equally divided that his
vote would determine which party should have the control of its
organization. He quickly made his choice. He was viciously assailed
by Senator Hill, of Georgia, who, not by name but by plain inference,
charged Mahone with disgracing the commission he held. The reply
of Mahone was dramatic and magnetic. His long hair, his peculiar
dress and person, and his bold and aggressive language, attracted
the attention and sympathy of the Senate and the galleries. He
opened his brief speech as follows:

"Mr. president, the Senator has assumed not only to be the custodian
here of the Democratic party of this nation; but he has dared to
assert his right to speak for a constituency that I have the
privilege, the proud and honorable privilege on this floor, of
representing without his assent, without the assent of such Democracy
as he speaks for. I owe them, sir, I owe you [addressing Mr. Hill],
and those for whom you undertake to speak, nothing in this chamber.
I came here, sir, as a Virginian, to represent my people, not to
represent the Democracy for which you stand. I come with as proud
a claim to represent that people as you to represent the people of
Georgia, won on field where I have vied with Georgians whom I
commanded and others in the cause of my people and of their section
in the late unhappy contest, but, thank God, for the peace and good
of the country that contest is over, and as one of those who engaged
in it, and who has neither here nor elsewhere any apology to make
for the part taken, I am here by my humble efforts to bring peace
to this whole country, peace and good will between the sections,
not here as a partisan, not here to represent the Bourbonism which
has done so much injury to my section of the country."

The debate that followed soon settled the position of General
Mahone. He acted with the Republican party. During the whole of