His hostility to me began with my election to Congress in 1849, in which, as a Free Soiler, I had the united support of the Democratic party of my district, of which he was then a member. I never obtained his forgiveness for my success in that contest, and his unfriendliness was afterward aggravated by his failure as a Republican leader to supplant me in the district, and it continued to the end. I knew him from his boyhood. We resided in the same village nearly twenty years, and began our acquaintance as members of the same debating club. For years we were intimate and attached friends, and I believe no man was before me in appreciating his talents and predicting for him a career of political distinction and usefulness. During the war, earnest efforts were made by his friends and mine looking to a reconciliation, and the restoration of that harmony in the party which good men on both sides greatly coveted; but all such efforts necessarily failed. If I had been willing to subordinate my political convictions and sense of duty to his ambition, peace could at once have been restored; but as this was impossible, I was obliged to accept the warfare which continued and increased, and which I always regretted and deplored. I only make these statements in justice to the truth. The bill providing for negro suffrage in the District of Columbia was among the first important measures of the Thirty-ninth Congress. The debate upon it in January, 1866, was singularly able and thorough, and gave strong evidence of political progress. All efforts to postpone the measure, or make the suffrage restrictive, were voted down, and on the announcement of its passage the cheering was tremendous. Beginning on the floor, it was quickly caught up by the galleries, and the scene resembled that which followed the passage of the Constitutional Amendment already referred to. The majority was over two to one, thus clearly foreshadowing the enfranchisement of the negro in the insurrectionary districts. I believe only two of my colleagues voted with me for its passage.