rn the Senate.

Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama, was appointed a member of the
Foreign Relations Committee in 1879, and served continuously as a
member of it until his death in 1907, a total service of twenty-
eight years. I do not know of any other Senator who served on that
committee for so long a period. When the Senate was in control of
the Democrats under the second Cleveland Administration, he was
chairman of the committee.

Senator Morgan was an extraordinary man in many respects. He had
a wonderful fund of information on every subject, but was not a
man of very sound judgment, and I could not say that he was a man
on whose advice one could rely in solving a difficult problem. At
the same time, no one could doubt his honesty and sincerity of
purpose. He did not have the faculty of seeing both sides of a
question, and once he made up his mind, it was impossible to change
him, or by argument and reason to move him from a position deliberately
taken. I probably had as intimate an acquaintance with him as any
other Senator enjoyed, for we not only served as colleagues on the
Committee on Foreign Relations, but, as I have stated in another
chapter, we served together on the Hawaiian Commission. He was
one of the most delightful and agreeable of men if you agreed with
him on any question, but he was so intense on any subject in which
he took an interest, particularly anything pertaining to the
interoceanic canal, that he became almost vicious toward any one
who opposed him.

If an Isthmian canal be finally constructed, Senator Morgan must
be accorded a large share of the credit; and his name will go down
as the father of it, even though he himself affirmed in debate in
the Senate one day, after the Panama route had been selected, that
he would not be "the father of such a bastard." Senator Morgan
fought for the Nicaraguan route with all the power at his command.
He fought the treaties with Colombia and Panama, first for many
weeks in the committee, and then in the executive sessions of the
Senate. He wanted to arouse public sentiment against the Panama
route, and he addressed the Senate about five hours every day for
thirteen days on the subject, desisting only when we consented to
publish his speeches and papers on the subject, notwithstanding
they had been made and presented in executive session. Nevertheless,
it was Senator Morgan who for very many years kept the subject of
an interoceanic canal be