Speech #430018569

I think myself that this is as meritorious an act as was the act of the person who had a pension given him for losing his arm by an accident while shooting ducks. If we go on the scale of moir I have no doubt that this ease is as meritorious as that. But that person was in the service of the United States. I do not understand that this person was in the service of the United States in any sense whatever. He was not doing this in the cause of the United States. The United States were under no obligation to protect these overland emigrants from te. peril of weather. and to rescue them in case they were snowbound.