omestic institutions of his people. The delegate from
Oregon was Mr. Joseph Lane, who had served bravely in the Mexican
war, gone to Oregon as its first Governor, and been returned as
its first Territorial Delegate. He was a keen-eyed, trimly built
man, of limited education, but the possessor of great common sense.
Henry M. Rice, the first Delegate from the Territory of Minnesota,
had been for years an Indian trader in connection with the American
Fur Company, and was thoroughly acquainted with the people he
represented, and whose interests he faithfully served. New Mexico,
then a _terra incognita_, was represented by Don Jose Manuel
Gallegos, a native of the Territory, who had been educated in the
Catholic schools of Mexico, and who was devoted to the Democratic
party. He had as a rival Don Miguel A. Otero, also a native of
New Mexico, who had been educated at St. Louis, and whose Democracy
was of the more liberal school. He successfully contested the seat
of Mr. Gallegos in the Thirty-fourth Congress, and secured his re-
election in the two ensuing ones.

The Senate was behind the House in entering into the "irrepressible
conflict." The death of Vice-President King having left the chair
of the presiding officer vacant, it was filled _pro tempore_ by
Mr. Jesse D. Bright, of Indiana. He was a man of fine presence,
fair abilities, and a fluent speaker, thoroughly devoted to the
Democratic party as then controlled by the South. He regarded the
anti-slavery movement as the offspring of a wanton desire to meddle
with the affairs of other people, and to grasp political power, or
--to use the words of one who became an ardent Republican--as the
product of hypocritical selfishness, assuming the mask and cant of
philanthropy merely to rob the South and to enrich New England.
The rulings of the Chair, while it was occupied by Senator Bright,
were all in favor of the South and of the compromises which had
been entered into. The Secretary of the Senate, its Sergeant-at-
Arms, its door-keepers, messengers, and even its little pages, were
subservient to the South.

Mr. James Murray Mason, a type of the old patrician families of
Virginia, was one of the few remaining polished links between the
statesmen of those days and of the past. His first ancestor in
Virginia, George Mason, commanded a regiment of cavalry in the
Cavalier army of Charles Stuart (afterward Charles II) in the
campaign against the Roundhead troops of Ol