The Chairmanships of the different Committees were assigned as follows:
Preamble and Bill of Rights—Wm. Hutchinson, of Lawrence. Executive
Department—John P. Greer, of Shawnee. Legislative Department—Solon O.
Thacher, of Lawrence. Judicial Department—Samuel A. Kingman, of Brown
Co. Military—James G. Blunt, of Anderson Co. Electors and Elections—P.
H. Townsend, of Douglas. Schedule—John T. Burris, of Johnson.
Apportionment—H. D. Preston, of Shawnee. Corporations and Banking—Robert
Graham, of Atchison. Education and Public Institutions—W. R. Griffith,
of Bourbon Co. County and Township Organizations—John Ritchey, of
Topeka. Ordinance and Public Debt—James Blood, of Lawrence. Finance and
Taxation—Benj. F. Simpson, of Lykins. Amendments and Miscellaneous—S. D.
Houston, of Riley Co. Federal Relations—T. S. Wright, of Nemaha Co.
Phraseology and Arrangements—John J. Ingalls, of Atchison.
I have studied the composition of these Committees with some interest,
reviewing the work of their members in the Convention, and recalling
their subsequent careers. And it appears to me that in making them up,
President Winchell exhibited phenomenally quick and accurate judgment of
men. He was, indeed, one of the best presiding officers I have ever
known. His imperturbable coolness, never for an instant ruffled by the
most sudden and passionate outbreaks of excitement in the Convention;
his mastery of all the niceties of parliamentary law; his uniform
courtesy and tact; his promptness and clearness in stating his
decisions; and above all, the mingled grace and kindness and firmness
with which he announced to an indignant member an adverse decision, were
really wonderful. But what shall be said of that still more wonderful
prescience with which he made up the Committees? What induced this calm,
grey-eyed, observing little man, whose brass-buttoned blue coat was
first seen by two-thirds of the Convention on the morning of the 5th of
July—what impelled him, within twenty-four hours, to select an obscure,
dull-looking, shock-headed country doctor as Chairman of the Military
Committee, and thus name in connection with military affairs, for the
first time, the only Kansas soldier who reached a full Major
Generalship? How did he happen to pass by half a dozen more widely known
lawyers, and appoint as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a man who,
during more than fifteen years thereafter, occupied a place on the
Supreme Bench of the State, for the greater portion of this time as the
Chief Justice? How came he to recognize so quickly, in the Engrossing
Clerk of the Territorial Legislature, the ripest scholar and the fittest
man in the body for the Chairmanship of the Committee to which every
article of the Constitution was referred for final revision and
amendment? In the youngest and most boyish-looking member he found the
man who was to form, for this State, a code of Finance and Taxation
whose clear directions and wholesome restrictions have guarded Kansas
against the wasteful extravagance of Legislatures and the curse of a
burdensome public debt, during all the tempting and perilous affairs of
its first quarter of a century. And he named, as head of the Committee
on Education, the first State Superintendent of Public Instruction. All
of his appointments were made with rare judgment, but those mentioned
appear notably discerning.