MR. COWAN. I beg the honorable Senator’s pardon. I would
not diminish his stature an inch or half an inch, nor take
a hair from his head; and he weighs one hundred and forty
pounds, if you please. Is that equality? The honorable
Senator from Massachusetts is largely learned; he has
traversed the whole field of human learning; there is
nothing, I think, that he does not know, that is worth
knowing,--and this is no empty compliment that I desire to
pay him now; and he is so much wiser than I am, that at the
last elections he divined exactly how they would result,
and I did not. [_Laughter._] He rode triumphantly upon the
popular wave; and I was overwhelmed, and came out with eyes
and nose suffused, and hardly able to gasp.
MR. SUMNER. You ought to have followed my counsel.
MR. COWAN. Why should I not? What was Providence doing
in that? If Providence had made me equal to the honorable
Senator, I should not have needed his counsel, and I should
have ridden, too, on the topmost wave. [_Laughter._]
January 9th, the amendment of Mr. Gratz Brown was
rejected,--Yeas 8, Nays 24. The Senators voting in the
affirmative were Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Edmunds, of
Vermont, Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, Mr. Grimes, of Iowa, Mr.
Howe, of Wisconsin, Mr. Morgan, of New York, Mr. Poland, of
Vermont, and Mr. Sumner.