Albert J. Beveridge, a freshman senator from Indiana, made his first speech as a U.S. senator on 9 January 1900. Having just returned from a visit to the front lines in the Philippine Islands, where American troops were fighting Filipino insurrectionists, he chastised the Democrats for wanting to give up the islands and praised the Republican effort to establish and maintain control over them.

On 5 December 1904 it was announced that Sen. Francis Marion Cockrell of Missouri would retire after twenty-nine years of service and would take with him the last pair of cowhide boots worn in the Senate. After Cockrell's retirement, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Secret Service agent William Craig was killed and President Roosevelt suffered an injured leg when the carriage in which they were riding was struck by a trolley car near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on...