Protection vs. Free Trade. Speech Hon. Louis E. McComas, of Maryland
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Louis E. McComas was an American congressman, senator, and jurist.
Background
Louis Emory McComas was born on October 28, 1846, near Williamsport, Maryland. He was the second child of Frederick C. and Catharine (Angle) McComas. The family was of Scotch-Irish origin, the founder of the American line having settled in Harford County, Maryland, early in the eighteenth century. McComas' paternal grandfather, Zaccheus, fought in the War of 1812, and subsequently entered the Methodist ministry, holding charges in Baltimore and Williamsport. His maternal grandfather, Henry Angle, of Pennsylvania origin, was a prosperous Washington County farmer. After an unsuccessful attempt at storekeeping in Springfield, Illinois, his parents returned to Maryland where the father engaged first in agriculture and then in the hardware business.
Education
Louis McComas received his elementary education in Williamsport, after which he attended St. James College in Maryland and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, graduating from Dickinson with high honors in 1866. He then began to read law in an office at Cambridge, Maryland, completed his studies under Judge R. H. Alvey of Hagerstown, was admitted to the bar in 1868, and practised law in the latter city until 1892.
Career
McComas' political career opened with his unsuccessful candidacy as a Republican for a seat in the Forty-fifth Congress. Entering the lists again some years later, he was chosen representative in the Forty-eighth Congress and served four terms, 1883-91, retiring following his defeat for reelection to the Fifty-second Congress. During these years, he developed into an able parliamentarian. His membership on the committee on coinage, weights, and measures and on those on appropriations and ways and means gave him a keen insight into currency and credit problems and several of his speeches on those subjects were used as campaign documents. Through his efforts, Antietam battlefield was placed under governmental control. He is also said to have framed the effective section of the contract labor law ("An act to prohibit the importation and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor in the United States, its Territories, and the District of Columbia") passed in the Second Session of the Forty-eighth Congress. He gained national attention by procuring the passage of a private pension bill over President Cleveland's veto. In 1892 McComas attended the Republican Convention in Minneapolis as delegate-at-large from Maryland and, being named secretary of the Republican National Committee, served in that capacity during the presidential campaign of 1892. In November of the same year President Harrison appointed him associate justice of the supreme court of the District of Columbia, which position he held until 1899 when he was elected senator from Maryland. During his six years in the upper chamber, he served as chairman of the committee on education and labor and as a member of various other committees. In 1900 and 1904, he again represented Maryland as delegate-at-large at the Republican conventions. From 1897 to 1901, he was lecturer on the law of contracts and evidence at the Georgetown University Law School and thereafter lecturer on international law and American foreign relations. For a quarter of a century he served as a trustee of Dickinson College. McComas retired from the Senate in March 1905 and in July was appointed justice of the court of appeals of the District of Columbia by President Roosevelt. He was stricken with pneumonia while on his way to Europe with his bride, returned home in feeble health after some weeks in an English hospital, and died of heart failure a month later.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Personality
Affable and obliging, though possessed of marked judicial dignity, McComas was greatly admired and respected by his constituents, colleagues, and students.
Connections
On September 23, 1875, McComas married Leah Humrichouse of Baltimore. To them two daughters were born. In July 1907, some years after his first wife's death, he married Mrs. Hebe Harrison Muir, the widow of Judge Upton Muir of Kentucky.