When I took my seat in the Senate I supposed every section of the country would be fairly heard in the details of business. There were twenty Republican Senators representing two-thirds the revenue, business and wealth of the country. How were they placed on committees? Out of seven in the Committee on Commerce they had one. I call attention to this fact. It bears the mark of design. How does this work?... I introduced at an early day a bill appropriating money for the St. Clair Flats, and it went to this Southern Committee on Commerce. I procured all the necessary maps and plans and estimates, and gave them into their charge. One hundred days rolled away and they had not deigned to examine them. I then introduced a resolution instructing them to report. Subsequently I introduced a bill myself which was laid on the table. By the most untiring efforts I succeeded in getting the desired appropriation tacked upon an appropriation bill and passed. But the President's friends threatened a veto of the whole bill unless this was stricken out--and that was done. Thus committees were packed against us and we were thwarted at every turn. Thousands of dollars can be obtained for almost any creek in the South, while the inland seas of the North are denied a dollar, and we are left to take care of ourselves the best we can. The second session of the Thirty-fifth Congress began in December, 1858, and on the 21st of that month Mr. Chandler moved to take his St. Clair Flats bill from the table. This time it was passed by a vote of 29 to 22, and sent to the House where it encountered a vigorous opposition but was finally passed, its introducer working for it with the utmost energy in the committee-rooms, on the floor, and by private solicitation. It reached Mr. Buchanan in the last days of that Congress, and he killed it by withholding his signature but without a formal veto. The Thirty-sixth Congress met in December, 1859, and on the 4th of January Mr. Chandler's bill to deepen the St. Clair Flats channel made its appearance. On February 2 Mr. Buchanan informed Congress, in a special message, of his reasons for "pocketing" the measure at the last session. This veto took the position that the improvement of harbors and the deepening of the channels of rivers should be done by the respective States, and suggested that Michigan in conjunction with Upper Canada should provide the necessary means to carry out the contemplated improvements in the channels of commerce between those two countries, whereas the plain fact was that the interest of that State in such works was a mere tithe of that of the whole Northwest. Mr. Chandler reviewed this message at length in the Senate on February 6, exposing Mr. Buchanan's misstatements in detail, and denouncing the Democratic construction of the constitution. Jefferson Davis at once came to the defense of the veto