audience to Butler's remark that
he never recovered from it.

Cox was a splendid man. He always thought in those days that he
had not been quite appreciated by his friends in the Democratic
party, and they thought the same way; but he was so good-humored,
and such a whole-souled man and so fond of wit that he really never
did get what he was entitled to.

I was trying to pass a bill which I had prepared for the purpose
of prohibiting and wiping out polygamy in Utah. I had reported
the bill from the Committee on Territories, and I was doing my best
to pass it. For some reason or other (afterwards I learned it was
an ulterior reason to help out a friend), General Schenck undertook
to defeat the measure, and for this purpose he asked to have it
referred to the Committee on Judiciary. This committee probably
had jurisdiction over the subject; I did not think so at the time,
and believed that such a reference would kill the bill. He seemed
to be making some headway with the Republicans, when Cox came over
to me from the Democratic side of the House, and proposed that if
I would yield to him for five minutes he would help me to pass the
bill. I told him to go back to his seat and that I would yield to
him directly. When I did Cox took the floor, and to my utter
astonishment he denounced the bill as the most outrageous bill that
had ever been brought before the House, declaring in the most
spirited manner that of course it ought to be referred to the
Judiciary Committee, because every one knew that such a reference
would kill it.

But he was shrewder than I apprehended at the moment. His talk
had the desired effect, for the Republicans who had been following
Schneck determined that they would not be responsible for killing
the bill; they came back to me, and the measure was passed through
the House by a substantial majority.

CHAPTER IX
THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON
1865

As I look back now over the vista of years that have come and gone,
it seems to me that I entered the Lower House of Congress just at
the beginning of the most important period in all our history.
The great President had been assassinated; the war was over; Andrew
Johnson, a Union Democrat, was President of the United States.
Reconstruction was the problem which confronted us, how to heal up
the Nation's wounds and remake a Union which would endure for all
time to come. These were the difficult conditions that had to be
dealt with