Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/65

Rh foot, and he was consequently obliged to leave the service in February, 1863. When the 46th Iowa regiment was organized, in June, 1864, he was so far recovered that he was appointed colonel and assumed command for the "hundred days service." After his return from the field he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1865. In November, 1865, Colonel Henderson was appointed collector of internal revenue for the third Iowa district. He held that appointment until June, 1869, when he resigned and became a member of the law firm of Shiras, Van Duzer and Henderson. Soon after, he was made assistant district attorney for the northern district of Iowa, serving two years. He was elected, on the Republican ticket, in the fall of 1882, a representative in the lower house of congress, from the third Iowa district; and he was continuously reelected until 1903, when he declined further service. His career in congress was conspicuous for fidelity to public interests, and he was rewarded with many preferments. For ten years he was a member of the committee on Appropriations; he was chairman of the committee on Judiciary; a member of the committee on Rules during the fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth Congresses; and he was speaker of the fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh Congresses.

The Spanish-American war, and the resultant territorial expansion of the United States made the fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh Congresses epochal in the history of the country; and during this period Speaker Henderson took a prominent part in shaping the many measures which were made necessary by changed conditions and added responsibilities. Following upon the monetary conference, at Atlantic City, presided over by Speaker Henderson, the fifty-sixth Congress gave to the gold standard the "vitality and validity" of law, and then followed many new and important measures, culminating in the anti-trust legislation enacted shortly before the close of the fifty-seventh Congress.

Although in many respects Mr. Henderson was the very antithesis of Speaker Reed, whom he succeeded and whose principal lieutenant he had been on the famous committee on Rules, yet he followed pretty closely in the wake of Reed's rulings. Perhaps he had the tact to make these rules easier and to make the task of following his leadership pleasanter, and the way smoother. When he first assumed the gavel, he said to some of his friends, with whom he was discussing certain matters pertaining to the organization of