But to maintain the reputation which his State had secured for committing its interests to master men, Mr. Reed had a hard task before him. Blaine, who had just passed from the House to the Senate, had made Maine of preëminent influence by reason of his formidable canvass for the presidential nomination. Eugene Hale and Mr. William T. Frye represented in part the State in the House. Hannibal Hamlin was a member of the Senate, and the tradition of the remarkable intellectual achievements of William Pitt Fessenden, so long a senator from Maine, was still so fresh in the minds of many members of Congress that it was common to hear Mr. Fessenden spoken of as perhaps the ablest senator since the days of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. But, unlike the stories that are told of the débuts of many statesmen, Mr. Reed's first speech was not a failure. On the contrary, it was a success. A success all the more brilliant because won under trying circumstances.
A bill was under consideration to pay the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, damages for the occupancy of its buildings by United States troops during the war. It was one of an almost innumerable class of similar claims in the South, and its payment would have established a precedent that would at that time have opened the door to the appropriation of millions of dollars. It had been put forward as being the most meritorious of these southern war claims, in the hope that the sympathy which could be aroused in behalf of the venerable institution of learning making the claim (it dating back to Washington's time, and being of a religious and eleemosynary as well as educational character) would stir up a sentimental feeling by means of which the other claims could be slipped through the House.
[Illustration: MR. REED'S BIRTHPLACE IN PORTLAND.]
Doctor Loring, a Republican member from Massachusetts, one of the most polished and eloquent speakers in the House, had made a strong and touching appeal, full of pathos and sentiment, in favor of the bill. At the conclusion of his speech spontaneous applause burst from all sides; Republicans and Democrats thronged to the desk of the orator to congratulate and shake him by the hand. The scene was a memorable one. Cries of "Vote," "Vote," rose from all parts of the House, and it seemed inevitable that the bill would pass by an almost unanimous vote.