Saturday, November 8, 2014

Senator James W. Grimes to Elizabeth Nealley Grimes, April 10, 1865

Burlington, April 10,1865.

I send you a copy of “Naval Warfare Ashore and Afloat,” a pamphlet composed of the speeches made in the Senate and House of Representatives against Davis’s and Wade’s amendments. I do not know who got it up, but several copies have been sent to me. My speech is given the post of honor, though not entitled to it; for the other speeches were prepared, and mine was impromptu, and addressed entirely to the subject in hand. Some of the other speeches were orations, while mine, if anything, was a simple argument of the question directly in issue, and only received the corrections that you and I gave it one Sunday afternoon. Read Mr. Pike's speech, if you have not; for I think it a speech of great power and merit, and about as symmetrical and perfect in all its parts as any congressional speech that you have read for many a day. My remarks were the last made on the subject in the Senate, and should properly have been published last, as the other Senators alluded to me by name as being about to follow and close the debate; but I suppose you will discern this. I would have liked also to have the fact appear that after the protracted debate of two days there was but a single vote in favor of Wade's proposition, and forty-odd against it.

SOURCE: William Salter, The Life of James W. Grimes, p. 272

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