provided by the bill was $50,000 less than the amount originally proposed. On the 17th, President Arthur again submitted the documents in the case to the Congress, and the bills and the recommendations were referred to the respective Committees on Public Buildings and Grounds of the two houses of Congress, to which also went the numerous petitions and memorials of the medical profession. 10[1]
On 28 May 1884, William Mahone, late major general in the Confederate service but then Senator from Virginia, reporting for the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, submitted an amended bill for S. 403, carrying an appropriation of $200,000, which the Committee recommended for passage and which, on 3 June, was passed by the Senate and sent to the House. 11[2]
It was not until the second and final session of the 48th Congress was nearing its close, however, that final action was taken. On 16 February 1885, H.R. 48, the bill introduced by General Rosecrans, came before the House of Representatives. The bill, appropriating $200,000 recommended for passage by the Committee, was submitted by its chairman, Representative Strother M. Stockslager of Indiana.
Objections to Proposed New Building
Opposition was expressed on the grounds that the medical records of the Civil War should be housed in the Pension Building or in the State, War, and Navy Building, both of which were then under construction ; that the medical library should be merged with the Library of Congress in the building then in contemplation; and that the Medical Museum could be accommodated either in the new State, War, and Navy Building or in the Smithsonian Institution. One opponent, Mr. Potter of New York, went further, saying that he did not believe in "preserving the relics and bones or wounds caused by the war at any place in our capital" and expressing the wish that "they were all buried and covered all over with green grass and hidden from sight forever."
To meet objections, proponents of the new building pointed out that the buildings then being constructed for other purposes would not be adequate to house the collections and the records of the Surgeon General's Office ; also, that these features should be kept together, and that the present building, in the words of Representative Stockslager, was a "mere tinder-box" and in an "absolutely dangerous condition."
