The other occasion was when he sent in the message at the time of the controversy between the House and the Senate in regard to the policy to be pursued in dealing with the outrages in the South.

The Senate had passed a bill giving a discretion to the President to take some firm measures to suppress these disorders, and to protect the colored people and the Republicans of the South, and if in his judgment he thought it necessary, to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus._ This measure, which had a considerable majority in the Senate, was voted down in the House under the influence of Speaker Blaine, Mr.Dawes, General Farnsworth, and other prominent Republicans.

During the controversy Mr.Blaine left the chair and engaged in the debate, being provoked by some thrust of Butler's.

There was a lively passage at arms, in which Blaine said he was obliged to leave the chair, as his predecessor Mr.Colfax had been compelled to do, "to chastise the insolence of the gentleman from Massachusetts." Butler replied by some charge against Blaine, to which Blaine, as he was walking back to take the gavel again, shouted out: "It's a calumny." My sympathies in the matter, so far as the measure of legislation was concerned, were with Butler, though I had, as is well known, little sympathy with him in general.
The House undertook to adjourn the session, but the Senate refused to do so without action on the bill for the protection of human rights at the South.

While things were in this condition, I was summoned one morning into the President's room at the Capitol, where I found President Grant, his Cabinet, several of the leading Senators, including Mr.Conkling, I think Mr.Edmunds, Mr.Howe of Wisconsin, and I believe General Wilson, Judge Shellabarger of Ohio, and one or two other members of the House.