ADDRESS OF MR. FORDNEY, OF MICHIGAN

Mr. SPEAKER: The State of Kentucky has no bronze or marble in Statuary Hall, but her sons need no monument to perpetuate their fame. We of the Northwest owe to the Pioneer State a debt of historical and political magnitude that we can never repay. Had it not been for the daring of Daniel Boone and David Harrod and George Rogers Clark, and men of their kind, the Northwest territory would in all probability now be a part of Canada, and we of Michigan and Ohio, and Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota would be going with the members from Ontario and Manitoba to sessions of the Dominion Parliament at Ottawa, instead of coming to Washington to the Congress of the United States. There is no page of our history brighter than the story of the first of our bursting buds of empire, the first chapter of the Winning of the West. Before the Revolution the sons of Virginia began going over the top of the forest-darkened Alleghenies in a stream of home builders, whose progress has never stopped. God made the North Temperate Zone for the home of the white race, and he put Kentucky in the center of it. Forest and prairie, river and rock, soil of eternal fertility, climate mild yet bracing, its landscape and its people pure American, and we, the neighbors of Kentucky, are proud of every minute of her history. It was the men of Kentucky, headed by George Rogers Clark, who waded through miles of icy spring floods, surprised and defeated the British forces under Hamilton at Vincennes, sent him a prisoner to Virginia, and dealt the death blow to British dominion south and west of the Great Lakes. If Kentucky had done no more than that her place in the history of American independence and American development would be forever secure.

But every student of our early days must realize that while the Revolution passed the bill, the War of 1812 was a motion to reconsider; and it was not until Andrew Jackson and his riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee mowed down Pakenham and his British regulars at New Orleans that the motion to reconsider was laid on the table. Again all glory to the wild men of the blue grass.

I love to think of the Battle of New Orleans, because its diplomacy and its shooting were so characteristic of Americans. Pakenham, scorning the backwoods general and disdaining ordinary courtesy, wrote:

Jackson, surrender New Orleans!

Jackson wrote back:

Pakenham, come and take it.

Pakenham wrote:

Jackson, I expect to take my breakfast in New Orleans Sunday morning.

Jackson responded:

Pakenham, if you do, you will take your supper in hell Sunday

night.

And the tradition of all good Kentuckians is that the Kentucky riflemen were in the front rank that fired the fatal first volley which blasted Wellington's veterans like chaff in a blaze. That was American diplomacy and American shooting, both straight and to the point. It was that battle, the ending of the War of 1812, which made possible the treaty that put the United States of America beyond the experimental stage, and made permanent our dominion from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because in the negotiations about Oregon and Texas later Great Britain dealt with a nation she could not fail to respect.

Meantime from the limestone soil of Kentucky there was springing up a race of giants, sons of those long

Scotch-Irishmen, improving the breed with every generation. In 1808, 16 years after Kentucky was admitted to the Union, was born a boy destined to lead the South in the great Civil War, and a year later there saw the light in that State the boy who, as sixteenth President of the United States, was to do more than any other man to save the Union and live to see our Nation preserved. It is a remarkable fact that Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were born within a year of each other in the same State, which about half a century later furnished to each Army, the South and the North, thousands of its best sons, and which again became, as it had been once before, the dark and bloody ground.

Into this State, with this history, with these inspirations, there was born in 1871 the man whose memory we honor to-day; the son of a lawyer, who at the age of 20 was admitted to the bar, and whose personal qualities brought him almost at once into prominence. Other speakers here to-day will give the details of his early life. He was chosen a delegate to Democratic national conventions for 20 years, beginning when only 25 years of age, in 1896, and in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1916. He was permanent chairman of the conventions of 1912 and 1916. For 10 years he was a Member of this House; and beginning March 4, 1913, was one of the Senators from his State, an honored member of the illustrious company of great men who have held that office, of whom Henry Clay and John G. Carlisle are only two of many who might be recalled.

Perhaps Senator JAMES attained his greatest prominence in 1912, when he was permanent chairman of the Baltimore national convention, which nominated Woodrow Wilson for his first presidential term; and later was chairman of the committee that formally notified him of his nomination. In his speech as permanent chairman Mr. JAMES said:

The Civil War is over, and that flag—the brightest, dearest colors ever knit together in a banner of the free-waves above a united people, where it is loved by every heart and would be defended by every hand. And coming from the South as I do, I can say that if Abraham Lincoln were alive this night there is not a foot of soil under Dixie's sky upon which he might not pitch his tent and pillow his head upon a Confederate soldier's knee, and sleep in safety there.

That this is one united country has been shown again, more gloriously than anyone could have dreamed seven years ago, by the history of the great war since April, 1917.

Mr. Speaker, for many years the joint sessions of the Senate and House were held only once in four years, to count the electoral votes for President. But in the last six years there have been many joint sessions; and every time I see the Members of the Senate march into this Hall and take their places in the front rows reserved for them I think of the power and greatness of the States they represent. Why, such has been the increase in the efficiency of men in war that if the troops raised from the little State of Rhode Island, with their rifles, machine guns, and field artillery, could be turned upon the Persian hosts that thronged the field of Marathon, there would be no battle, but only a massacre of the barbarians. In the small State of Delaware there was made last year enough of high explosive to have destroyed all the armies of all the wars of antiquity. And the advance that has been made in methods of destruction has been equaled in the arts of construction and production as well. To be a Senator now from one of the States of this Union is a prouder privi lege, a far worthier place in the procession of human progress, than to have been any tyrant or monarch of old. Our dead friend was chosen by his State to be one of her Senators. It is honor enough for any man.

Mr. Speaker, when one gets to talking about Kentucky he never knows when to stop. Her pioneers, her warriors,

her statesmen are an inspiring topic. The great Speaker of this House is one of her illustrious sons. In literature and song, as well as in sterner things, Kentucky has an immortal place. Who does not love Stephen C. Foster's "Old Kentucky Home" and "Way Down Upon the Suwannee River"?

It was Kentucky's heroes in the Mexican War who called forth from Theodore O'Hara, one of her own people, what is probably the most perfect memorial poem ever written in any language, and which will be repeated over soldiers' graves as long as the English language is spoken. And with that immortal poem I close this eulogy:

THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo;

No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.

On fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread,

And glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance

Now swells upon the wind;

No troubled thought at midnight haunts

Of loved ones left behind;

No vision of the morrow's strife

The warrior's dream alarms;

No braying horn nor screaming fife

At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shivered swords are red with rust;
Their plumed heads are bowed;

Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,

Is now their martial shroud.

And plenteous funeral tears have washed

The red stains from each brow,

And the proud forms, by battle gashed,

Are free from anguish now.