Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/513

 his place; and in thirty-six hours afterward, I believe, he was on board the ship. He performed the cruise with perfect satisfaction to the officer who commanded; and the gentleman whose place he supplied has remained, I am told, up to this time in Washington city, most comfortably quartered; and, though inefficient, he has been retained on the active list, but he has not been promoted. Bartlett was one of the men who was willing and able to perform at sea an undue portion of service, because others had from disinclination refused to meet the detail made of them.

As Mr. Bartlett has been handed over to the tender mercies of the Senator from Louisiana, I will hand over to Mr. Bartlett's tender mercies Mr. Missroon and Mr. Jenkins, witnesses who appeared against him before the Committee on Naval Affairs. I think, by the time the Senator gets through with all of them, he will find that it is a troublesome business to nurse them all. To the tender mercies of Bartlett I commend these gentlemen. He was singled out of all the memorialists before the Naval Committee for the purpose of examination; and when he presented himself before that committee he asked to have the privilege of having counsel. Counsel were denied him; witnesses were brought forward and examined—I do not know whether they were sworn or not, but they were examined as to his general character, his character for veracity—all pointing to this publication in the newspaper which has been indorsed, and which I consider of perfect validity, because Commodore Perry in two months has never controverted or denied a single word of it. I consider it indorsed by his silence, and deriving all the verity which it could have received from his absolute affirmative sanction.

Mr. . Will the Senator permit me to say a word?

Mr. . With great pleasure.

Mr. . My colleague is absent, and I am not aware, of course, of those circumstances of detail which he obtained from Commodore Perry, and which are involved in the investigation of this quarrel—almost triangular I may call it. But so far as the Senator from Texas can draw any advantage from the supposed ratification of this statement by Commodore Perry, I beg leave to recall to his memory the fact that the last time when this subject was under consideration in the Senate my colleague distinctly stated that the extract from the letter which had been published in the New York Herald had remained unnoticed until some person would make himself responsible for it; that he himself, after correspondence with Commodore Perry, had in his hands the means of rebutting this pretended statement of Commodore Perry's as erroneous, to say the least—I believe my colleague used a harsher word, which I do not choose to repeat. He stated that it had remained unanswered only because there was no responsible person to father it; and as soon as the Senator—I think it was the Senator from Texas—informed my colleague that Mr. Bartlett was responsible for this statement, my colleague arose, and, on behalf of Commodore Perry, denied it the very first moment that an opportunity was offered him.

Mr. . I would suggest to the Senator from Louisiana that it was the Senator from Georgia [Mr. Iverson] who made the statement to which he has just referred.

Mr. . It was the Senator from Georgia; I was not quite certain in my memory.