The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper CorrespondentBriggs, Emily Edson
History
The Olivia Letters: Being Some History of Washington City for Forty Years as Told by the Letters of a Newspaper Correspondent
Briggs, Emily Edson
United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1933; Washington (D.C.) -- History
Should Mr. Barclay have kept notes of his long experience at the
helm of the House, what a book he could make. His calm, judicial
mind would be sure to do justice to all parties. No reporter in
the gallery of “the gods” over his head--no statesman on the floor
below--could give so many fascinating pages. He could describe the
men who sat in the House when Cobb was Speaker,--most of them now
gathered to their fathers. He could tell us of the finished orator,
James McDowell, of Virginia, and of that great speech of his, in
1850, which electrified the country; of George C. Drumgoole, of the
same State, calm and clear even in his potations; of the knight of
later strifes, the spotless patriot and pure rhetorician, Henry
Winter Davis, of Maryland; of Hotspur Keitt, and handsome, hectoring
Brooks, of South Carolina; of dandy Dawson, of Louisiana; of gifted
but self-destroying McConnell, of Alabama; of quick George W.
Young, of Tennessee; of young Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, when
he first came into the House, wearing a Byron collar; of haughty
Toombs; logical Stephens; jolly T. H. Bayly; quiet Mr. Aiken;
nervous Clingman; dominating David Wilmot; brilliant D. K. Carter,
and eloquent Henry M. Fuller. He could narrate many a side-scene in
the great drama, when the actors got behind the curtain and sported
in their own green-room. He could show how the great struggle grew
from words to blows, from blows to battles, and from battles to
defeat. With Cobb and Orr, and Banks and Pennington, and Grow and
Colfax, Barclay was on terms of equality and intimacy. He could
describe the discomfiture of Barksdale when he lost his yellow wig;
of Potter, when he answered Pryor and offered to fight him; of the
quarrel between Cutting and Breckinridge; of Douglas in his prime,
and of Adams in his decay; and of the whole procession of life, fun,
frolic, sorrow, failure, disgrace, and death; of the pages who grew
to be generals, of the generals who became Congressmen, and of the
Congressmen who longed to be President. Write us a book, Colonel
Barclay. You are still in your prime. Take a reporter to your room,
and let him interview you, if you won’t jot it off in your own
clerkly hand; and if Congress don’t vote you a pension, or retire you
on a solid annuity, you and your posterity can live on the proceeds,
and be honored in the inevitable credit it will confer on your name.
OLIVIA.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
GRACE GREENWOOD, PHŒBE COUZINS, AND OTHER ADVOCATES OF THE CAUSE.
WASHINGTON, _January 18, 1870_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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