The Field of Blood

by Joanne B. Freeman

  “GO TO THE BALLOT BOXES”

  Meanwhile, the North exploded in outrage. There were demonstrations and public meetings throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Writing from Chester, New Hampshire, French’s half brother Henry reported that Cilley’s death had “created a great sensation.” He felt sure that “New England would be glad to have Wise hanged—I should.”118 Maine was in an uproar. “You can form no conception of the excitement here,” wrote one of John Fairfield’s (D-ME) constituents.119 Scores of petitions spilled into the House and Senate demanding an anti-dueling law and the expulsion of the duel’s participants, particularly Graves and Wise.120

  The Northern press seethed with outrage of all kinds. Anti-dueling advocates saw a golden opportunity to push their point; antislavery advocates saw a chance to condemn slaveholders and the South; and Whigs and Democrats saw a chance to condemn one another.

  Democratic papers were particularly passionate in denouncing “the murder of Cilley” at the hands of a gang of Whig assassins. Isaac Hill’s former paper, the New-Hampshire Patriot, wins the prize for headline creativity (and excessive capitalization): “BANK RUFFIANS, HIRED TO SHOOT DOWN [Democratic-] REPUBLICAN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS.” The remedy, of course, was to “GO TO THE BALLOT BOXES.”121 The United States Magazine and Democratic Review published a lengthy article whose title said it all: “The Martyrdom of Cilley.”122 Given that the dead man was a Democrat, Whig papers were at a disadvantage, but they took their share of swings. Many chided the Democrats for using a “bloody tragedy … for electioneering purposes,” then turned around and did the same, claiming that Cilley’s friends—a gang of assassin Democrats—had sacrificed Cilley to get at Webb.123

  An example of the flood of commentary in the duel’s wake, this 1838 anti-dueling broadside asserts the superiority of Northern culture and mocks Southern “honor.” (By William Withington. Courtesy of the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine)

  Not surprisingly, the response was more subdued in the South and West. Crittenden was appalled by the “faint, puny, stinted sort of defense” of Graves in Kentucky newspapers.124 With anti-dueling laws on the books throughout much of the nation and reformers of all kinds condemning the practice, it was difficult to publicly defend dueling with gusto, even in dueling country.125

  Given the uproar and the risk to reputations and careers, many participants tried to spin things their way in public statements. Wise and Graves addressed their constituents; Webb published a statement in the Courier and Enquirer; Benton wrote a letter to the Washington Globe; and Pierce wrote a letter to the investigative committee that was later published in the press. Not surprisingly, all five men sent the same message: don’t blame me. Webb and Graves took the extreme Whig approach, accusing Cilley’s “violent political friends” of pushing him into a fight.126 Benton denied any real involvement, admitting only to being consulted on the day of the duel.127 And Pierce refuted a stream of accusations flooding Whig newspapers in New England: no, he hadn’t been Cilley’s second; no, he hadn’t urged Cilley to fight; no, after the duel, he hadn’t raced down the street with a smile on his face, eager to hear that Cilley had slaughtered Graves.128

  Wise’s and Graves’s statements had an added dimension because they directly addressed their constituents, Wise in a written statement, Graves in a speech in Louisville that later appeared in print. Both defended themselves at length for the same stated reason: they were being accused of dishonorable behavior, and their honor and their constituents’ honor were intertwined. “Your Representative is accountable to you for his personal as well as his political conduct,” Wise wrote, “for, by it he is worthy of you, or you are dishonored.” Graves was even more explicit. He had fought for his honor and the honor of Kentucky, and if his constituents continued to support him, he would continue to “preserve your honor with my own,” a declaration that drew “Great cheering.”129 Crittenden said the same in a private letter: Graves felt that “the honor of his State is in his hands.”130 Wise and Graves were advancing the same argument: a dishonored congressman dishonored all that he represented. In a very real way, congressmen were their constituents, states, and regions personified; they practiced a kind of performative representation, acting as physical surrogates for all that they represented.131

  Cilley had made this argument in the days before the duel. His rights were his constituents’ rights; his humiliation was their humiliation. They were one and the same. By this logic, as much as his constituents might disapprove of dueling, they would disapprove far more of being publicly disgraced. Several times, he even hinted that he was defending the honor of New England as a whole. Given the circumstances, he thought it better to fight.132

  This wasn’t clouded thinking in the heat of the moment. It was the truth; as a fellow New Englander, French felt the power of Cilley’s logic, heart and soul. When Wise and Cilley had first clashed on the floor, French had gloried that a New Englander—even better, a Granite State native—was standing firm in rough waters. Wise had tried to “brag off” Cilley, but Cilley “would not budge an inch,” French gloated. He was holding his own “with an unflinching eye.” Then, even more remarkably, Cilley stood up to Webb in the face of a duel. “Yankees are not the fellows to back out of any thing when they are once in,” French crowed, pleased that Webb had found “a customer.”133 To French, Cilley was upholding New England’s honor as well as the honor of the Democracy.

  This wasn’t French’s first praise of an embattled New Englander. One year earlier, when John Bell (W-TN) had called Leonard Jarvis (J-ME) a liar during debate, Jarvis had stood Bell down, insisting that the matter “must be settled elsewhere Sir, & in another manner than by words, yes sir—in another manner sir”—rather heavy-handedly hinting at a duel. When colleagues pushed for apologies, Jarvis held his ground, demanding an unconditional withdrawal of the insult, which Bell delivered after hours of negotiations that occupied the House for an entire afternoon, with Henry Wise acting as Bell’s second. French was lost in admiration. “[N]o man could have taken higher & more honorable ground than Jarvis did. He was as firm as a rock.”134

  Like Jarvis, Cilley had “stood his ground manfully,” and to French that meant something.135 It showed that Northerners were men—that they wouldn’t be cowed. It showed that Northern qualms about dueling needn’t hamstring them in Washington. It showed that the North was fully and fairly represented—that the rights of Northerners were being defended on the floor. Although French disapproved of dueling and deplored Cilley’s death, he admired Cilley’s bravery and cheered him on. Even John Quincy Adams craved some Northern fire. On the same day that Wise and Cilley clashed over corruption charges, Adams was yearning for some “bold, dashing, fluent, and eloquent” Northerners who could “raise the reputation of New England” in Congress by overcoming its “tameness.”136

  This was just what Cilley had hoped: given the peculiar logic of cross-sectional politics in Washington, Northerners would support him regardless of hometown habits and ideals. And indeed, although the mode of his death was deplored far and wide, he himself was exalted as a courageous champion. To Southerners, he was the very model of a loyal Northern Democrat, making the ultimate sacrifice to uphold Southern interests. Southern Democrats spilled over with praise. Cilley “was the most gallant man I ever saw from the North,” declared Francis Pickens (D-SC). He was “the first northern man who openly denounced the Abolitionists and spoke as a Southern man.” He even looked Southern.137 New Englanders of all political stripes praised Cilley for defending New England’s honor, with even the staunchest anti-dueling Whigs doing little more than condemning his “violent friends.”138 The Maine Democrats who announced his death in the House and Senate likewise praised his “manly bearing towards opponents” and his desire to avoid “disgrace to himself, to his family, and to his constituents.”139

  The ever-clear-eyed John Quincy Adams characteristically str
ipped away the posturing and emotion. “The Career of Mr. Cilley is that of an ambitious Northern young man, struggling to rise on a Southern platform,” he explained to his son. Cilley

  had already announced that he had no sympathies for Indians or for human beings of a darker hue; and this declaration had already brought him golden opinions from the carnation colour of the South. He seized the first possible opportunity to announce and prove himself an unerring marksman with the rifle, and to select it as his favourite weapon for settling his points of honour.… All this was to display to the South and West how high he soared above the region of Yankee prejudices.

  Adams charged Cilley with adopting Southern standards to promote his reputation. Pierce had done the same to redeem his name when denounced as a doughface two years past. Cilley’s fate showed the price of this logic. It was a “monumental warning to his successors,” Adams thought—a warning that would go unheeded.140

  Of course, not every Northerner followed Cilley’s lead. Many wouldn’t, even couldn’t, go that far. Take, for example, Cilley’s roommate Timothy Carter (D-ME). Already in ill health, the thirty-seven-year-old lawyer lapsed into a state of delirium on the day of Cilley’s death, raving that he had been challenged to a duel. Given French’s comment that Carter “pretended” not to know the duel’s location, it’s tempting to attribute at least some of his suffering to a guilty conscience. Regardless of the cause, he died two weeks later, depriving Maine of another representative.141 The stunned French wrote and published a eulogy.142 Carter’s gravestone bears witness to his ultimate trial. It reads simply: “Died while a member of the 25th Congress at Washington, D.C.”143 For some, the complications of cross-regional conflict were simply too challenging.

  Others tried to level the playing field by demanding formal institutional retribution. On February 28, John Fairfield (D-ME) proposed an investigation into the causes of Cilley’s death, immediately provoking what the Globe might have called a “lively debate.” Whigs roared that emotions were too heated for a fair investigation. Democrats demanded justice.144 And then a handful of Southern Whigs essentially threatened violence, warning that because an investigation would touch on matters of honor, it was bound to cause more bloodshed. “It would require more than ordinary nerve to serve” on that committee, warned Cost Johnson (W-MD), advising its members to arm themselves. And what right did Congress have to investigate such matters anyway? This was an affair of honor, a private matter between gentlemen. In the end, the vote was 152 to 49 in favor of an investigation, but the results were strikingly sectional. With the exception of one lone Rhode Island Whig, every New Englander supported an investigation, regardless of party.145 Clearly, the threat of a duel was a powerful weapon in the Southern and Western arsenal.146

  The investigative committee was no less divided, though in more complex ways. Consisting of four Democrats and three Whigs, it ultimately produced three different reports.147 The majority—three Northern Democrats and a Southern Whig—exonerated Cilley, recommending expulsion for Graves and the censure of Wise and Jones for breach of privilege.148 In a separate report, two Northern Whigs protested that the committee had no right to take sides or suggest punishments.149 And in the third report, a Southern Democrat recommended a mild punishment given that none of Congress’s many duelists and near-duelists had been formally punished since the launching of the government.150 All in all, the results were partly partisan and partly sectional, an accurate reflection of congressional culture overall. Northern Democrats favored punishment. Northern Whigs didn’t. And Southerners were divided. Not surprisingly, the equally divided House tabled the report, effectively “smothering it,” noted John Quincy Adams, though the suggested punishments remained “suspended over the heads” of Graves, Wise, and Jones.151 Although one congressman had killed another for words spoken during debate—a flaming violation of a fundamental privilege—no one was punished. By the congressional community’s standards, no rules had been broken.

  But the hovering threat of a duel remained a problem for non-combatant Northerners. So they pursued an anti-dueling law in earnest, with Samuel Prentiss (AJ-VT) shepherding it through the Senate and Adams (W-MA) seeing it through the House. Given that it prohibited giving, delivering, or accepting a challenge in the District of Columbia only, it was essentially a congressional anti-dueling law, a specific solution to the specific problem of an imbalance of power. And it had teeth: ten years’ imprisonment at hard labor if someone was killed or mortally wounded in a duel, five years for dueling without a casualty, and three years for assaulting someone who refused to accept a challenge, the latter provision the most blatant Northern protective measure of all. Ironically, due to its harsh penalties, the law was rarely enforced, as some people warned when debating it.152 Although it ultimately discouraged duels, it didn’t prevent them, and it had little impact on congressional threats and violence.

  Discussing the bill wasn’t easy, even in the abstract. Although Northern congressmen opposed dueling, supporting a law that seemed aimed at protecting themselves seemed cowardly. Thus, even as they supported the bill and condemned dueling with fist-clenched righteousness, they did some symbolic chest-beating, insisting that they weren’t afraid to play rough. New England congressmen might need protection from “those gentlemanly assassins … who might seek to call them out for words spoken during debate,” argued Perry Smith (D-CT). But he himself “was not afraid of any man.”153 Nor was Franklin Pierce. New Englanders didn’t need any “special protection,” he insisted; if they failed to fend off a conflict, they would face the consequences like men. Enactment of an anti-dueling law was a purely moral matter.154 Given the formidable presence of fighting men and the implications of cowering before them, even the mere mention of avoiding a duel required compensatory swaggering. (Of course, it was no easier to oppose an anti-dueling law; when the bill passed in the House, roughly 40 percent of its members didn’t vote.)155

  Ultimately, few men were immune to the sway of congressional violence, not even the good-natured French. When the harried Henry Wise publicly insulted him for mumbling while reading the investigative committee report aloud, French, still reeling in the wake of Cilley’s death, considered flogging him. If he himself wasn’t a family man, French fumed in his diary, he “would have inflicted personal chastisement on Wise, at any risk,” adding for good measure that he feared no man. French wasn’t alone in his fight calculations. Two congressmen offered to help him “chastise Mr. Wise personally” and to stand by French “through any result,” clearly anticipating a duel or an assault. Fight calculations were going full-force, but in the final analysis French held back. Nine years later, he read through his diary and stopped at this point. “Never should have been written,” he wrote in the margin, sorry to have documented his surrender to the passions of the floor, but not apologetic for having felt them.156

  To French and his colleagues, congressional violence was routine. Party loyalties pulled them into fighting; concern for manhood pushed them into fighting; the community of Congress sanctioned fighting; and holding one’s own before a hometown audience sometimes seemed to require it. In the case of the Cilley-Graves duel, it was also rewarded and even praised by congressmen and constituents alike. Virtually every participant won reelection the following session: Bynum, Graves, Wise, Crittenden, Duncan, and Pierce. Only Wisconsin delegate Jones lost his seat, a casualty of wavering support in an eastern area settled largely by New Englanders. But even he suffered no permanent damage, winning a Senate seat in Iowa ten years later.157 The same holds true for most of Congress’s frequent fighters: many were reelected. Not only did Congress endorse fighting, but by reelecting combatants, the nation did the same, encouraging their representatives to literally fight for their rights. Here, perhaps, is the most fundamental reason for congressional violence. When it came to earning influence in Congress and back home, it worked all too well.

  4

  RULES OF ORDER AND THE RULE OF FORCE

  DANG
EROUS WORDS AND THE GAG RULE DEBATE (1836–44)

  Yankees were brave: for French, that was the moral of Cilley’s death. Years later, in a song written for the 1849 Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire, French set this theme to music, lauding Cilley as the “bravest of the brave.”1 As horrible as the duel had been—“never to be forgotten,” said French—it had proven Cilley a “fearless and honorable” man who had done New England proud.2

  French was less philosophical about clashes that stopped the wheels of government. Outbreaks of pandemonium that prevented sessions of Congress from formally opening or closing almost always sent him into a frightened tailspin of doom. Maybe this time there would be no compromise. Maybe this time the government would break down. Maybe this time the Union would dissolve.

  These thoughts tormented French at peak moments of strife during the nine-year conflict over instituting a gag rule to silence antislavery petitions.3 Beginning in the 1830s, antislavery sentiment reached the floor of Congress with a new and growing power due to the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 and its organized campaigns that flooded Congress with hundreds of thousands of petitions from petitioners black and white, male and female, many seeking the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, which was under congressional jurisdiction.4 French probably handled many of them; the House Clerk’s staff shouldered much of the workload. On one day in February 1838 alone—the month that Cilley died—John Quincy Adams presented 350 antislavery petitions to the House featuring roughly 35,000 signatures.5 The spate of anti-dueling petitions following Cilley’s death only added to the onslaught. If this “petition mania” lasted much longer, French griped a few weeks after the duel, the Capitol would need a new wing for storage, staffed by armies of clerks to sift through the paper.6

  The flood of petitions was for good reason. Slavery was expanding. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization led to massive demands for new kinds of raw materials, and the practice of slavery evolved to fill that need, shifting to new technologies and spreading to new territories. As tempting as it is to dismiss American slavery in the pre–Civil War decades as an antiquated holdover doomed to extinction, in the early decades of the nineteenth century it was flourishing.7