A Fund of Reminiscences at the Command of the Journal Clerk of the House.

Washington, November 6, 1869.

For more than a score of years strangers visiting the House of Representatives may have noticed, at the right hand yet a little below the speaker, a dignified, majestic man, who says the least, yet, perhaps, we may say, does the most, for the country of any man within hearing of the Speaker’s voice. The name of this man is John M. Barclay, and without his presence, or another equally potent in his place, the House of Representatives might be likened to a locomotive deprived of its beloved steam. The business of the House can proceed with an indifferent Speaker, weakness and effeminacy in other officers can be borne; but the man whose business it is to keep a faithful record of all that is done in the House has to get his commission from his Creator, and then have it approved by the man who happens to be elected Clerk of the House. It is Mr. Barclay’s duty to hand down the archives of the nation to other generations. For the last twenty years his mind has been a river through which the work of the House of Representatives has found its way into history. In this noisy, turbulent House it is his place to catch that which is proper and legitimate and fix it in permanent form for the benefit of the whole country. The Clerk of the House is the responsible figure-head for this most important position, but Mr. Barclay is the power behind the throne. In the clamor for office, petitions few or none are sent up for the one Mr. Barclay occupies. A man to take his place must have a perfect understanding of parliamentary law. When the House is in session, not for a moment must his attention wander from the points of discussion. The reporters in the gallery can enjoy their little siestas, give and take from each other; but Mr. Barclay must depend upon himself. So long has he occupied this position, so admirably has he performed his difficult duties, that he may now be compared to an exquisite piece of machinery. He never gives offence. In early years he was a Whig, in later a Republican; but so just is he that partisan sentiments are entirely overlooked, and both parties in the House reverence him alike.

The usages and precedents of the British Parliament constitute the basis of all parliamentary law amongst people who speak the English language. Many years ago Thomas Jefferson wrote a book, which is called “Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice.” It is formed of the precepts of the United States Constitution, and the regulations early adopted in the United States Senate, collated with a digest of English Parliamentary practice. This book is a well-known authority in this country. Mr. Barclay furnishes the House with a manual containing a digest of its own rules, so much of Jefferson’s Manual as governs the proceedings of the House, together with the precedents of order, usages of the House, etc., which is really a complete and independent code by which the House is guided. The rules and laws of the House of Representatives of the United States are universally adopted for the government of all State and local conventions, and form the basis of the rules and practice of nearly all State legislatures. The influence of Mr. Barclay’s knowledge and judgment, therefore, in the parliamentary affairs of the country, will be seen to be very great. A correspondent of much repute, in a letter some time ago, which has been widely copied, made the clerk to the late Speaker, an estimable young man, entirely innocent of the profundities and bewildering intricacies of parliamentary law, the actual monitor of Mr. Colfax—a mistake hardly necessary to correct.

Mr. Barclay has seen the rise and decline of the reign of eight different Speakers, Mr. Blaine being the ninth on the list. Of the Speakers whose sceptres have withered, whose gavels have sounded for the last time, Mr. Barclay gives Mr. Colfax the credit of being the best parliamentarian, as well as the hardest and most persevering student of the law. Mr. Barclay has seen the proud honor of Speaker bestowed upon Robert C. Winthrop, Howell Cobb, Linn Boyd, N. P. Banks, James L. Orr, William Pennington, Galusha A. Grow, Schuyler Colfax, and James G. Blaine.

During the long years of treason and rebellion he was a silent witness of the moral battles in the House. This warfare steadily preceded the smoke of the cannon and the surgeon’s glittering knife. It is true Mr. Barclay stores up only the actual substance of the House; and yet how much he might reveal in regard to this august body which is left out of the official record, as well as out of “Gobright’s Recollections of a Third Century,” and also the awful columns of the Congressional Globe.

Should Mr. Barclay have kept notes of his long experience at the helm of the House, what a book he could make. His calm, judicial mind would be sure to do justice to all parties. No reporter in the gallery of “the gods” over his head—no statesman on the floor below—could give so many fascinating pages. He could describe the men who sat in the House when Cobb was Speaker,—most of them now gathered to their fathers. He could tell us of the finished orator, James McDowell, of Virginia, and of that great speech of his, in 1850, which electrified the country; of George C. Drumgoole, of the same State, calm and clear even in his potations; of the knight of later strifes, the spotless patriot and pure rhetorician, Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland; of Hotspur Keitt, and handsome, hectoring Brooks, of South Carolina; of dandy Dawson, of Louisiana; of gifted but self-destroying McConnell, of Alabama; of quick George W. Young, of Tennessee; of young Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, when he first came into the House, wearing a Byron collar; of haughty Toombs; logical Stephens; jolly T. H. Bayly; quiet Mr. Aiken; nervous Clingman; dominating David Wilmot; brilliant D. K. Carter, and eloquent Henry M. Fuller. He could narrate many a side-scene in the great drama, when the actors got behind the curtain and sported in their own green-room. He could show how the great struggle grew from words to blows, from blows to battles, and from battles to defeat. With Cobb and Orr, and Banks and Pennington, and Grow and Colfax, Barclay was on terms of equality and intimacy. He could describe the discomfiture of Barksdale when he lost his yellow wig; of Potter, when he answered Pryor and offered to fight him; of the quarrel between Cutting and Breckinridge; of Douglas in his prime, and of Adams in his decay; and of the whole procession of life, fun, frolic, sorrow, failure, disgrace, and death; of the pages who grew to be generals, of the generals who became Congressmen, and of the Congressmen who longed to be President. Write us a book, Colonel Barclay. You are still in your prime. Take a reporter to your room, and let him interview you, if you won’t jot it off in your own clerkly hand; and if Congress don’t vote you a pension, or retire you on a solid annuity, you and your posterity can live on the proceeds, and be honored in the inevitable credit it will confer on your name.

Olivia.