John E. Kenna
While in the House he championed railroad legislation and crusaded for aid for slack-water navigation to help the coal, timber, and salt industries in his state.Kenna became Democratic minority leader and emerged as a powerful and controversial speaker on the issue of the independence of the executive branch of the government.He forcefully defended President Grover Cleveland on several issues and indicted the Senate Republican majority for failure to pass tariff reforms.Kenna was a practicing Catholic and member of the congregation at St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.[2] In late April 1891, he successfully argued the Ball v. United States case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which spared the lives of two West Virginians accused of murder in Texas.Longtime Washington journalist Benjamin Perley Poore described Kenna as "a tall, thick-set man" who was "negligent in his dress and rather slow in the utterance of his sentences.