between Fifteenth and Fifteenth-and-a-half Streets, Washington, District of Columbia.
The bill was considered, amended, and passed.[1]
Ever alert to the educational needs of the colored youth, Senator Bruce introduced, among many other bills, during the second session of the Forty-sixth Congress, a bill:
To provide for the investment of certain unclaimed pay and bounty moneys now in the Treasury of the United States and to facilitate and encourage the education of the colored race in the several States and Territories.
The bill was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, amended by Mr. Pendleton of Ohio, and reported back adversely and postponed indefinitely.[2]
Senator Bruce was not returned to the Forty-seventh Congress. The record, however, which he made in the Forty-fourth, Forty-fifth, and Forty-sixth Congresses will ever maintain for him a prominent place among the progressive and constructive statesmen of this country. And here our account should end if it were not for the fact that some of our readers will want a glimpse of some of the significant events in Senator Brace's life, exclusive of his career in the Senate. A condensed account of such facts will suffice.
Senator Bruce was not a native Mississippian. He was born in the little town of Farmville, Virginia. At an early age, he made his way to Missouri, thence to Mississippi where he arrived in 1868. In 1878, he married Miss Josephine B. Wilson, of Cleveland, Ohio, a lady of most excellent parts and refined culture. A son, Roscoe Conklin, was born in 1879 a polished gentleman by birth, an educator by training, an orator and debater by choice, and a scholar by nature. Both wife and son survive the late Senator.[3]
Senator Bruce belonged to that rugged, self-made type of manhood that did right to prosper in this world and
