Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/339



Blaine. Altho the House was democratic he was honored by the Republican caucus at one time for Clerkship of the House, showing the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues, after he retired from the House. Page 134—High Hollow Academy should be High Holborn Academy. On the same page, foot note, it is stated that Gen. Elliott resigned from Congress to accept the office of sheriff. While Gen. Elliott had his official residence in Aiken county, he and Mrs. Elliott had their home in Columbia, one of the show places of the city. I cannot conceive of him resigning the position of congressman to accept the insignificant office of sheriff of the small county of Aiken. He resigned in order to go to the House of Representatives at Columbia for the purpose of being elected Speaker of that body, and he succeeded. The other time he resigned was for the purpose of being a candidate for the U. S. Senatorship, but the Pennsylvania R. R. interests put John J. Patterson, who was a Cameron protege, over. Had he been elected sheriff of Aiken county it would have necessitated his living there.

On page 139—"From the year 1871—the period of service of the first Negro in Congress" should be 1870—Rainey, Dec. 12, 1870.

The greatest compliment I think that was ever paid to a Negro by a prominent white man was that by Benjamin F. Butler, the distinguished Union General, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, and who had charge of Sumner's civil rights bill in the House of Representatives. In the prefatory remarks to his speech on the day following the great speech made by Gen. Elliott on the same bill, he said:

"I should have considered more at length the constitutional argument, were it not for the exhaustive presentation by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Elliott) of the law, and the only law quoted against us in this case that has been cited, to wit, the Slaughter-House cases. He, with the true instinct of freedom, with a grasp of mind that shows him to be the peer of any man on this floor, be he who he may, has given the full strength and full power of that decision of the Supreme Court."

Garfield, Cannon, Frye, Hale, Hawley, Hoar (Geo. F.), Platt, Dawes, Phelps, Lamar, Beck, Stephens (A. H.), Randall, Mills, Cox, and Barnum, were among the prominent members of the House at that time, many of whom afterwards reached the Senate, and Garfield, the presidency. General Butler was considered one of the great constitutional lawyers of that period.