Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/510

 they are shut out. The insurance companies have adopted a rule, as I have been assured by gentlemen who took the pains to examine, that they will not underwrite a vessel on which one of these officers is employed. If they had originally chosen to follow their profession, and obtain employment in the merchant marine of the United States, they would have found no impediment to their future success; but here every barrier is interposed by the action of this board—I will not say judgment of this board, for I believe judgment had nothing to do with it. I believe it was either caprice, or whim, or jealousy, or prejudice, or hatred, or envy; and that the higher impulses of the human heart, and the more generous motives of the soul, which inspire men to do justice, have never been called in requisition for one moment.

I am sorry that the venerable Senator from Delaware [Mr. Clayton] is not now present. I desire now to allude to a circumstance on which he commented* and which will be recalled to the recollection of every Senator upon the mention of a name. That Senator spoke of the action of the board in the case of Commander Ringgold, of the navy, who was furloughed. I believe he spoke of it as a proper action of the board. When asked if the temporary delirium which he suffered had not existed only in one instance, the Senator said that he was sorry to say he had understood, or that rumor had said, that it was not the only instance, but that there were others. Now, to satisfy myself, having known the gentleman for thirty years, I went to the Navy Department, and I found that, whilst at the city of Canton, in July, 1854, whither he had proceeded with his squadron during the revolutionary disturbances (at the urgent appeals of American citizens), in the performance of the sacred and paramount duty of protecting their lives and property, the officer, whose duty it was to do this, being absent from the coast on other important duty, he had been suffering severely from chills and fevers, and the surgeon had administered to him undue quantities of quinine, of morphine, and of the elixir of opium—quantities sufficient to derange the strongest head. Without his knowledge, a medical survey was held on him by three surgeons, two of whom then saw him for the first time, and then only for a few minutes, while he was suffering from the effects of the narcotics; as we have all seen a hundred men grow delirious under paroxysms of chills and fever, or intermittent fever. The surgeons immediately decided that Commander Ringgold was deranged, that it was a case of mental aberration, and went off. When he threw away these poisons, and was recovering, he asked that a re-survey might be granted to him, but it was denied, and he was sent home under circumstances that were sufficient to derange any man. The physician who came home with him, as will be found by reference to the records of the Navy Department, said he was perfectly sane, intellectually and mentally. Another survey was called for last June, and again it was reported that Commander Ringgold was perfectly restored; that his health and intellect were as perfect as they had ever been, or as any man's could be.

Was this the excuse which the board had for its action in his case? Was it because, from indisposition, Ringgold had, on a survey, been ordered home under peculiar circumstances, which I will not here detail? In the examination of the records I found Commander Ringgold's application for the command ot the expedition to the North China Seas. In that application to Secretary Kennedy he desired the command, if it should not be called for by any officer of higher claims than himself or his senior in the navy. No other officer called for