"He was for many years, while the Republicans had control of the House, Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. This was a position of the highest importance and of the most commanding influence. It gave him control of all the appropriations of the Government and made his the actual leader of the House. A defeat of this committee by the House would be as disastrous to the party in power as the defeat of the ministry in England: a defeat by his own party would show such lack of unity of purpose, and of objects, and ideas on the part of the majority, as to render them incapable of carrying on the Government. "Firm, decided, full of expedients, and wonderful in debate, he not only carried his measures triumphantly through, but at each session strengthened his hold upon his party and the country. In the fierce contests that raged upon such occasions, he showed that his knowledge and intellect were stupendous. His quick perception grasped, his strong memory retained, and his ready logic commanded, immense sources of useful knowledge, gathered from science, reflection, the history of the past, and the stirring events of the present. In debate he rejected all rhetorical ornament, all ostentation and show. Stating his premises concisely, his reasoning led to the conclusion aimed at, as irresistibly as the current of a deep and strong river leads to the sea. There was a logical force and point to his clear sentences that tended to his conclusions with the directness and certainty with which the successive steps in a mathematical demonstration point to the grand result. In making an attack or repelling an assault upon his position, he always had a mark, and his intellectual shots fell in and around that mark with effective proximity. "But while he was truly great in devising and successfully carrying through the great appropriation bills, made necessary by the enormous expenditures of the war, he was greater by far as the philosophic leader of his party. "After the power vanished from his party in the House, although his knowledge, of the principles and rules of parliamentary law was full and accurate, he rarely spoke on questions of order; but when the principles, policy, methods, or measures of the Republican party were attacked, he was always put forward as their champion; and, although men will and do honestly differ about such matters, yet by the concessions of friend and foe alike, the proudest monuments of his intellectual greatness have for their base these masterly vindications.