"Your committee recommend that the sum of $200,000 be appropriated by Congress, on behalf of the people of the United States, to aid the memorialists in completing the Monument to Washington now in the process of erection at the seat of the Federal Government. But they are of opinion that this amount ought to be disbursed in annual sums of $20,000 for each fiscal year; that each annual installment be paid to the Treasurer of the Society, on a joint warrant, to be signed by the chairmen of the committees of the two Houses of Congress for the District of Columbia; and that the accounts of disbursements be settled at the Treasury in the usual mode of auditing the accounts of disbursing agents. We report herewith a bill accordingly." The recommendations of this report, however, were not adopted. The reported collections for the year 1861 were $9,917.64, of which amount $9,000 was the contributions collected in California in November, 1860; the balance, $424.08, was collected at the Monument, $70.02 in the box at the Patent Office, and $298.33 paid by the Ladies' Washington Monument Society. The funds the Society had now secured--about $12,000 net over necessary expense incurred--was invested in good interest-bearing stocks. The change in the national administration and changes in the reorganization of the Post-Office Department demoralized the plan to secure collections through the medium of local post-offices, and it was shortly discontinued. The funds of the Society were now but little augmented for a number of years, the only moneys received being deposits of small amounts in boxes placed for the purpose at the Monument grounds, in the United States Patent Office, and in the Smithsonian Institute. At no time did the sums thus received aggregate more than $700 per annum (1867), the average being far less. The paralyzing influences of the Civil War put a blight upon any further labors of the Society to accomplish the long-cherished object of erecting, on behalf of the people, a national monument to Washington, and public interest and attention being absorbed in more momentous questions, the erection of the Monument was all but forgotten. To the pen and to the patriotic devotion of the learned and scholarly Secretary, Mr. John Carroll Brent, is due what little public notice the Monument obtained during the years of strife. At the meeting on the 22d of February, 1866, for election of officers, there was a large attendance. The President of the United States, Mr. Andrew Johnson, presided. Replying to some remarks of welcome, he said: "GENTLEMEN OF THE ASSOCIATION: It is no ordinary pleasure to me to have it in my power to meet you here on this occasion and participate in your proceedings, intended to resume and progress in the completion of a monument, if I may speak the language of his eulogist, to him who was 'the first in war, the first in peace, and the first in the hearts of his countrymen.'