OCR Text |
Show Republican Senators and the President. Presi-dent. Washington, December 11. The Republican Republi-can Senators met in caucus at 11 o'clock tor day. Sherman resigned the position as chairman of the caucus, and Edmunds was elected to that place. The action was due to the fact that no Senator had ever been chairman chair-man of the caucus and presiding officer of the Senat6 at the same time, and Sherman felt it incumbent on him not to depart from the line of precedent. The action of the caucus committee in the arrangement of the chairmanships of the Senate committee, viz.: in deciding to tender to Senator Sewell that of the joint committee on library and Senator Logan his old place on the military affairs committee, was ratified, Nearly all the time was devoted to the discussion dis-cussion of the line of policy to be adopted toward Presidential appointments. No additional ad-ditional action was taken on the proposition. The Senators expressed their views and were found to be practically unanimous against the adoption of any general policy of opposition, oppo-sition, but were agreed on ,the advisability of treating each nomination upon its merits. Opinions were expressed and generally assented to, that good , men appointed to office because they were ' Democrats should be confirmed, except in cases where their predecessors were removed upon unfounded charges brought for the purpose of making pretexts for a creation of vacancies. In such cases it was urged that the nominations should be held up to give the removed officials an opportunity for vindication. The Senators Sena-tors who were present expressed the opinion that this plan for the present will govern the course of the Republicans. i . - . . i |