- Shedd— James A.
I went to the House soon after 9. O’Clock—and gave the Bill to
incorporate a Cotton manufacturing company at Georgetown to be copied in
the Clerk’s Office— In the
House, Reports from the standing Committees were called— I reported from
the Committee on the
Public
Lan Manufactures, the Bill from the Senate
N. 99. reducing the duties on certain Articles of import, with
amendments—referred to the Committee of the whole on the State of the
Union— The question to what Committee the Bill from the Senate for
distributing among the several States the proceeds of the public Lands,
should be referred was debated till one O’Clock; by Gillet, Granger and Briggs. Bynum of
North-Carolina, sputtered to get the floor without success. At one the
fortification Bill came up as the order of the day, in Committee of the
whole on the Union, Abijah Mann in
the Chair. Townes of Georgia, made
a speech of two hours, presidential electioneering, formally answering
the Speeches heretofore made by Bell
of Tennessee, and by Robertson
of Virginia upon the Navy Appropriation Bill—for
it is becoming a common practice to make long Speeches upon one Bill in
answer to long Speeches upon another— Townes sent to the Clerk to read,
many extracts from Speeches and Letters of H.
Clay, and Hugh L.
White to prove their inconsistency—and he replied with
some point to Bell who was not in the house (there were not more than
sixty members in the house, the rest were at the races) and to Robertson
who was— In defence of Jackson’s
proscriptions from Office, Townes charged me with having when Secretary
of State dismissed a printer of the Laws, who was in favour of General
Jackson, and appointed in his place one friendly to me— I interrupted
him and denied the fact—adding that the only change of Printer in
Tennessee that I ever made was at the request of General Jackson,
(whether he recollects it or not I could not tell) and of his colleague
John H. Eaton— I further said
that I had never removed any person from Office, for political
opposition to me— Townes finished soon after 3. the Committee rose and
the House adjourned— I went into the Library and consulted Thurloe’s State Papers. Saw Persico there— In the Evening I had a
visit from James A. Shedd of
Dayton, Ohio— Who spoke of Antimasonry and the Cumberland road.