The Field of Blood
Page 29
Americans also tried their hand at poetry. In “Grow vs. Keitt,” the New London Chronicle had this to say about Keitt’s moment of glory:
Just then came a stunner beneath his left ear;
And “the gentleman from South Carolina” felt queer;
(’Tis whispered that “stunner” was “planted” by Grow,
But “Chivalry” fancies he just “stubbed his toe.”)
Keitt “stubbed his head against Grow’s fist and fell down,” charged one newspaper.146 There was punning: “According to one Washington correspondent, Grow struck Keitt twice in the face. First the eyes had it, and then the nose.”147 During a theater performance a few days after the brawl, an actor even referenced the fight with an impromptu quip.148
Keitt’s stubbed toe was an international sensation, though it was hardly the only fun poked at Congress in this period. The rise of congressional violence saw the rise of Congress-bashing in popular culture, and with it a healthy sampling of boxing culture, as countless references to “side licks, back handers, and stomach winders” attest.149 Mocking do-nothing Congresses and congressmen was nothing new. There was a long and storied history of ridiculing the People’s Branch that went back to the dawn of the republic. What changed in the 1850s was the amount of ridicule, its cutting edge, and its focus on violence.
A cartoon depicting a congressional rumble as a boxing match. A “mauly” is a fist. (Harper’s Weekly, February 20, 1858. Courtesy of HarpWeek)
By far the best practitioner of this new school of journalism was Vanity Fair, a New York–based humor magazine that had the good fortune to publish its first issue in December 1859, at the start of the months-long struggle to organize the Thirty-sixth Congress, a stalemate that guaranteed more material than any one humor magazine could handle.150 For a time, almost every issue spoofed brawling congressmen, making the journal a kind of Congressional Fights Quarterly. An article called “A Day in the House” was typical of the genre. Mimicking the style of conventional congressional press coverage, it reported a day’s proceedings, consisting largely of an extended exchange of insults, Congress-style (“Without calling in question the integrity of Mr. Sherman, he would say that gentleman was not fit, politically, to iron shirts in a third class laundry”), and climaxed with a fight:
Some evil-disposed person here cried “Order.” This was the signal for instantaneous uproar.… Then ensued rare pegging and stepping, unexceptionable clinching, feinting, and planting of one twos on pimple and in wind. The Sergeant-at-Arms, having at length detected a foul blow on the part of an inexperienced new member, interposed, and said that if the disturbance continued he should be compelled to exclude the reporters.
The following week an article depicted Congress as “The Great National Circus,” complete with knife-throwers, fire-eaters, and an equestrian who rides two horses going in different directions. A later issue included an advertisement for “The Congressman’s Guide to Fame; or, The True Vocabulary of Vituperation,” an alphabetical catalog of insults, including an example of the book in use: “Do we not know him for a Babbler,—for a Blasted Blattering, Blustering, Brawling, Blower?” Still another issue offered a skit in which a Democrat and a Republican, insulting each other in front of that perennial favorite of congressional combatants, Willard’s Hotel, agree to postpone their duel until after the organization of Congress—meaning, forever. One issue even featured a fight on the cover, complete with a bowie knife and a revolver flying through the air.151
Of course, there was plenty to ridicule in Congress aside from violence. A mock letter from a Washington correspondent made fun of the perpetual struggle to avoid talk of slavery:
Mr. SNOOKS (Dem.) of Coney Island, rose to introduce some resolution—concerning the state of the Union.
Mr. GRIMES (Rep.) of Kennebec, said he hoped no member would discuss such exciting matters in these times.
Mr. JONES (Opp.) of South Amboy, wished to present a bill for the better preservation of the Confederacy.
Mr. ROBINSON (Rep.) of Sconsett, expressed great sorrow that gentlemen should introduce such disturbing subjects now.
Precisely mimicking such excuses as they appeared in the press, the article implied that in their efforts to avoid controversy (and thereby the fights that studded Vanity Fair’s pages), congressmen were doing nothing at all.152
Vanity Fair specialized in congressional violence, but images of brawling congressmen appeared everywhere: in poetry, in literature, in cartoons, even in plays.153 In 1857, the government clerk Henry Clay Preuss published Fashions and Follies of Washington Life, a play that centers on a Northern congressman in love with a boardinghouse owner’s daughter, and a government clerk and newspaper correspondent who loves the same woman and uses his column in a New York City newspaper to provoke a Southern congressman into challenging the Northerner to a duel and killing him. (“Sent off a slashing letter to New-York yesterday—fell like a bomb-shell in the House to-day!”) The clerk’s evil plot—to mention a recent congressional spat between the two congressmen and hint at “Southern chivalry and Southern aggression—and lament, most pathetically, a want of Northern pluck”—is remarkably true to life, as is his concern that the Northerner might not bite because he is “a Yankee—and these Yankees are hard to get in the ring.” The Northern congressman’s fear that he’ll be ostracized back home for dueling is just as searingly true, as are his friend’s urgings that the peculiarities of being a member of Congress leave him no choice but to fight. All in all, Fashions and Follies does a fine job of portraying the Northern congressman’s dilemma as well as the boomerang-like nature of congressional threats and violence, which influenced the public through the vehicle of the press and rebounded back to influence Congress.154
Popular culture offered the public an image of Congress as a bullpen of bravado, full of hot air and signifying nothing, and in so doing, made Washington a laughingstock as well, as in this quip from The New York Times:
Judge Kellogg, a venerable citizen of Michigan, arrived in this city on Saturday evening. It was his first visit to the Federal Capital, and when the cars stopped, he was a little uncertain where he was.… As he entered the main hall of the depot, he saw a man engaged in caning another ferociously, all over the room. “When I saw this,” says the Judge, “I knew I was in Washington.”155
Willard’s Hotel didn’t fare much better. A much-mentioned Punch cartoon showed an alarmed diner seated at a table in an “American hotel” with a gun pointed at his head. The caption? “Pass the mustard!”156
The rise of Congress-bashing and the rise of violence were in sync for good reason. First of all, there was a lot to bash. The image of staid congressmen throwing sidewinders and tossing spittoons was a near irresistible target of ridicule. But more than that, the humor served a purpose. For one thing, it defused tension, and there was plenty of tension to defuse. If Congress’s seemingly self-destructive chaos could be ridiculed, maybe it wasn’t so threatening after all.
Humor was also a prod—a kinder, gentler way of urging congressmen to do better.157 No one wanted to be laughed at, particularly self-important congressmen. Nor did they want to feel that they deserved ridicule; congressmen were all too familiar with the crushing weight of public opinion. (Keitt must have suffered agonies in 1858, though given that he started the fight, he deserved it.)
But perhaps most of all, humor was a way to vent public frustration. A fistfight between a Northerner and a Southerner was the ultimate demonstration of an overwhelmed Congress succumbing to the temper of the times at the precise moment when congressional intervention was urgently needed. Even worse, clusters of brawling Northerners and Southerners were playacting the very thing that they were supposed to prevent: civil warfare. It was more than irresponsible. It was disgraceful, as many tsk-tsking newspaper commentators said.
This cartoon from British Punch magazine, published not long after California’s Representative Philemon Herbert shot a waiter at Willard’s Hotel, mocks America’s routine viol
ence. (“Life in an American Hotel?” by John Leech, 1856. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk)
This isn’t to say that congressmen were blunderers. They were fighting for good reasons: to win political power, to impress constituents, to support a cause, to defend sectional interests, to shape the nation. When literal push came to literal shove, the voting public wanted their congressmen to fight for their rights at this moment of crisis. In fighting one another with fists, knives, and guns, congressmen were doing their job. Of course, not all congressmen turned to violence. Behind the scenes, out of the public eye, peace-loving congressmen were struggling to bind sectional ties. The ultimate example of such negotiations was the “Peace Conference” held at Willard’s Hotel in 1861 as a last-ditch effort to avoid disaster.
But regardless of the counterforce, the fighting’s impact was severe. The image of Congress as filtered through the press and popular culture was hardly reassuring. In mocking violence so enthusiastically, humorists suggested that it was pervasive, even unstoppable. The sensationalistic penny press sent a similar message: Congress was a brawling den of thieves, a “bear garden,” to use a favorite phrase of the time. It was a place where people of contending politics clashed but didn’t compromise. A place where underhanded plots to seize control of the Union were effected, step by step. A place of argument, not conversation. A place corroded by mutual distrust.
By the late 1850s, much of this was true; Congress wasn’t doing much to earn the public’s trust. And the violence reflected a very real problem: the inability of Congress to legislate, or for that matter, even to discuss, the issue of slavery. But in ironing out subtleties and highlighting the tempers and tempests of the floor, the press and popular culture filtered the public view of Congress so effectively that even today it’s hard to tell truth from lie.158
The end result was pervasive distrust of Congress, and not just for the public. The hotheads who plunged into collisions at a moment’s notice; the Buncombe speeches and banner-waving that provoked those fights; the waves of anger and violence that those fights produced; and the very real presence of a sectional foe that was desperate to have its way, perhaps at the expense of the Union: together these things taught congressmen to distrust one another. However moderate some congressmen were, however disposed they were to compromise, however much they got along in private, in the political climate of the late 1850s they would not—could not—compromise their section’s honor, interests, and rights, and they knew all too well that their opponents felt the same. There couldn’t be much give and take in a battle for the soul of the republic. Desperate measures were always on the table, breeding mutual distrust. The ultimate sign of this distrust was the decision of many congressmen to arm themselves in the late 1850s, not because they wanted to fight, but because they were afraid that they might have to.
DISTRUST AND DISUNION
In June 1860, French bought a gun.159 Not for hunting, which he loved to do on weekends. Not for his sons, whom he taught to hunt as boys. Not to guard his home, where he kept a loaded gun in case of burglary.160 Not even to shoot the irritatingly loud rooster next door, which French accidentally killed with a warning shot from his window.161 French bought a gun to defend himself from Southerners. He didn’t want to shoot them. But he feared that he might have to.
The chain of events that led to this decision and the circumstances that surround it reveal a lot about the congressional community in 1859–60. French wasn’t the only person who decided to wear a gun. Many congressmen strapped on knives and guns each morning as they headed off to Congress, and their number was growing; Northerners had been urging their representatives to arm since Sumner’s caning.162 At times, the distrust and simmering resentment on the floor was palpable.
Momentum had been building to this point for years, but in the Thirty-sixth Congress, violence intensified. What had first been parliamentary power plays, and then declarations of sectional rights and honor, had now become something different. For at least some congressmen, fighting had become a matter of life and death.
The change in the air was partly a product of circumstance and timing; several game-changing events happened just before Congress opened in December 1859. Conspiracy theories did their worst as well. A confluence of events and evidence increasingly convinced people on all sides that their darkest fears about their sectional foe were true. Considered in the light of an evil plot, simply wearing a gun seemed threatening. Why were Republicans armed?, asked The New York Herald in January 1860. “Is the republican party prepared to resort to violence and bloodshed on the floor of Congress as well as on the soil of the South?”163 Even self-defense could seem aggressive in a climate of extremes.
Even without game-changing events, the Thirty-sixth Congress was destined to be plagued with problems, particularly in the House, where no party had a controlling majority; there were 109 Republicans, 101 Democrats (some of them Anti-Lecompton Democrats), and 27 Americans. As in 1856, the possibility of a Republican Speaker enraged Southerners. As in 1856, the high stakes of a pending presidential contest heightened tensions—though in this case, with the very real possibility that a tied presidential election would be resolved by the House. As in 1850, Southerners threatened to raze the Capitol and destroy the Union. But in 1859, for the first time they took action.164
Two recent episodes had especially stoked their fury. One month before the opening of Congress, the abolitionist John Brown had made his infamous raid on a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, setting the nation on edge and terrifying Southerners. Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859. Congress opened three days later. Even as the House struggled to organize, the Senate was debating and investigating Brown’s actions.
Even more productive of turmoil in the House was Hinton Rowan Helper’s controversial antislavery tract, The Impending Crisis—How to Meet It, published in 1857, and then in a compendium edition in 1859 at the encouragement of Republicans with fall elections in mind. A North Carolina abolitionist, Helper was a rare and special thing for Republicans: a Southerner attacking slavery for the sake of the South. His argument was straightforward: slavery was harmful to the economic and cultural prosperity of the South, and detrimental to poor whites who didn’t own slaves. Among Helper’s many inflammatory suggestions was his plea for those whites to join with slaves in fighting domineering slaveholders and abolishing slavery; Helper’s attack on tyrannical slaveholders was particularly severe. Essentially propounding class warfare and slave rebellion, the book was banned throughout the South.165 In 1858, Southern congressmen disparaged the first edition so caustically that Helper went to the House to assault his attackers in defense of his honor (thereby proving himself a Southerner at heart).166
When Congress opened in December 1859, Helper’s book dropped on the House like a bombshell because of a revelation only a few weeks before. As reported in the Herald, sixty-eight Republicans had signed a circular letter endorsing the compendium edition of Helper’s book, including sixty House members and the two leading Republican candidates for Speaker, Galusha Grow (R-PA) and John Sherman (R-OH). So on December 5, when John Clark (D-MO) proposed a resolution stating that anyone who endorsed the “insurrectionary” book would be banned from being Speaker, and then had the circular listing its endorsers read aloud, the House exploded.167
Southerners were outraged. Harpers Ferry threatened the security of the South. Helper’s book put such threats in print and promoted them. The endorsement of such a work by leading Republicans seemed to validate the South’s nightmare vision of the Republican Party’s true intentions. How could anyone who endorsed this book deny that he wanted to infiltrate and subjugate the South? To Southerners, the proof was on the printed page. To put a supporter of such a book in charge of the House—to submit to being governed by a declared enemy of the South: for many if not most Southerners, the dishonor not to mention the danger of such an outcome was too much to bear.
Thus the extreme Southern actions
and reactions during the speakership contest.168 Of course, for many Republicans, the threats and bluster were all too familiar. Virginian Roger Pryor’s complaints about Southern degradation; Laurence Keitt’s vow to “shatter this Republic from turret to foundation stone” in defense of Southern rights and honor: Northerners had heard it all before.169 The Southern disunion song had been sung for so long that it had become meaningless. It was a kind of “tragic strut,” said Henry Wilson in the Senate in January 1860, a Slave Power ploy “intended to startle and appall the timid, make the servility of the servile still more abject … and so retain their grasp on power.”170 Thaddeus Stevens spoke for many when he dismissed Southern threats as “barren thunders.”171
But in truth, the Southern fulminations weren’t more of the same. Southerners felt threatened and insulted as never before.172 During the first eight weeks of the first session alone there were nine fights and numerous “scenes” (nonviolent confrontations); six of the fights pitted a Republican against a Southern Democrat.173 Notable among that number was the assault of John Hickman (R-PA) by Henry Edmundson (D-VA), clearly a frequent fighter. During the speakership kerfuffle, Hickman belittled Southern fears and threats, scoffing that John Brown had terrified the entire state of Virginia with a handful of men. This was Republican bravado with a vengeance, and not surprisingly, Edmundson defended Virginia’s honor by striking Hickman during a chance encounter on the street. Laurence Keitt, of all people, grabbed Edmundson’s arm and pulled him away. The Richmond Whig half-joked that Keitt had been trying to avoid the talk of murderous Slave Power plots that were sure to appear in the Tribune the next day.174
The Senate wasn’t immune to uproars. During a closed session on January 17, Republican objections against a Southern diplomatic nominee launched a heated argument and almost caused a duel. Republicans complained that the nominee had vowed to destroy the Union in defense of the South, outraging Southerners who insisted that all loyal Southerners felt that way, and in the angry exchange that followed, Robert Toombs (D-GA) and James Doolittle (R-WI) each threw the lie at the other. Started and settled behind closed doors, this spat wasn’t mere theater; it was testimony to bad feelings on all sides.175