the 18th of August, the last day
of the session, the disagreement continued and the conference report
was taken up for action. A motion was made that the House insist
upon its amendments and agree to another committee of conference.
This was defeated, but no definite action was taken, as a majority
of the House was opposed to a further conference, and so the army
bill failed.

On the same day the President, by proclamation, convened the two
Houses in extra session to meet on the 21st day of August, three
days later. The President, in his message, urged Congress to recede
from the Kansas proviso in the army bill. The Republicans of the
House were determined to insist upon that proviso, and, by repeated
votes, refused to withdraw it or to reconsider it, but, after a
session of nine days, the House finally yielded, but only after
the Senate had agreed to an amendment, which contained the substance
of the proviso offered by me, as follows;

"_Provided_, That no part of the military force of the United
States, for the support of which appropriations are made by this
act, shall be employed in aid of the enforcement of any enactment
heretofore passed by the bodies claiming to be the territorial
legislature of Kansas."

This amendment was agreed to and thus, in the final struggle, while
no effective measures to relieve the people of Kansas from the
tyranny imposed upon them were adopted, the declaration was made
that the military force of the United States should not be used to
aid in the enforcement of any enactment theretofore passed by bodies
claiming to be the territorial legislature of Kansas.

Thus it appears that during this long and wearisome session (for
in fact the two were but one), I was almost exclusively occupied
in a futile effort to restore the prohibition of slavery in Kansas,
according to the Missouri Compromise, but the struggle made was
fruitful in good. It strengthened the Free State sentiment in
Kansas, it aroused public sentiment in the north, and drove the
south to adopt new and strange theories which led to divisions in
the Democratic party and its disruption and overthrow in 1860.
The compromise made was understood to be the work of Mr. Seward,
and, though not satisfactory to the Republicans of the House, it
was at least a drawn battle, and, like Bunker Hill to Yorktown,
was the prelude to the Revolution that ended at Appomattox.

Among the many who attained distinction in the 34th Congress