124. Crittenden to Leslie L. Coombs, March 20, 1838, in The Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from His Correspondence and Speeches, ed. Chapman Coleman, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1871), 1:107–8.
125. Franklin, Militant South, 61–62.
126. Wise insisted that he had done all he could to prevent a fight; he thought Cilley’s Democratic friends had prevented him from putting in writing what he’d said to Graves in person.
127. Thomas Hart Benton to Editor of the Globe, March 6, 1838, Washington Globe, March 7, 1838; Niles’ Weekly Register, March 10, 1838; Farmer’s Cabinet (Amherst, N.H.), March 16, 1836. See also H. Rpt. 825, 105. Benton may have been more involved than he admitted. In his autobiography written years later, Jones recalled seeing Pierce and Benton conferring in the room of Lewis Linn (D-MO), and hearing Benton say, “They can’t object to the rifle and you can refer them to the cases of Moore and Letcher, of Kentucky, and others.” Linn and Jones were messmates. Jones’s autobiography, in Parish, George Wallace Jones, 160.
128. “Address of Mr. Wise,” National Intelligencer, March 16, 1838; “The Cilley Duel,” Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839; “Letter from Col. Webb,” February 28, 1838, Niles’ National Register, March 3, 1838; Pierce to Isaac Toucey, March 12, 1838, published as “Mr. Pierce’s Letter,” New Hampshire Statesman and State Journal, March 31, 1838; and Niles’ National Register, March 24, 1838 (among other places).
129. “Address of Mr. Wise,” National Intelligencer, March 16, 1838; “The Cilley Duel,” Niles’ National Register, July 27, 1839.
130. Crittenden to Leslie L. Coombs, March 20, 1838, in Coleman, Life of John J. Crittenden, 108. Emphasis in original.
131. My reasoning here was inspired by Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
132. H. Rpt. 825, testimony of Pierce, 121–22; ibid., testimony of Schaumburg, 86–87; ibid., testimony of Williams, 142.
133. “Nominis in Umbra” [French], “Washington Correspondence” [ca. February 1838], Chicago Democrat, BBFFP; French, diary entry, February 28, 1838, Witness, 75; “Washington Correspondent,” dateline February 12 and 23, 1838, Chicago Democrat clipping in BBFFP; Baltimore Age, February 24, 1838.
134. French to unknown correspondent, January 29, 1837, BBFFP. See also Globe, 24th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 27, 1837, 135. Emphasis in original.
135. French, diary entry, March 10, 1838, Witness, 76.
136. Adams to Charles Francis Adams, February 12, 1838, in Kirby, “Limits of Honor,” 145. Adams was praising Maine-born Seargent Smith Prentiss (W-MS).
137. Francis Pickens to James Henry Hammond, March 5, 1838, in Kirby, “Limits of Honor,” 175. Franklin Elmore (SRD-SC) likewise praised Cilley as “a true friend of the South.” Elmore to James Henry Hammond, April 2, 1838, ibid., 147.
138. See for example J. Emery to John Fairfield, March 19, 1838, John Fairfield Papers, LC. See also Levine, “Honor of New England,” 153–60.
139. Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 26, 1838, 199, 200. John Fairfield (D-ME) announced Cilley’s death in the House; Reuel Williams (D-ME) announced it in the Senate.
140. Adams to Charles Francis Adams, March 19, 1838, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1899), June Meeting, 1898, 288–92, quote on 292.
141. “Nominis in Umbra” [French], “Washington Correspondence,” dateline March 15, 1838, clipping in BBFFP; New Hampshire Patriot (Concord), April 9, 1838.
142. [French], dateline March 15, 1838, clipping in BBFFP.
143. See photo at www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=39386650, accessed October 2, 2011.
144. Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 28, 1838, 200–202.
145. The lone Rhode Island Whig was Robert B. Cranston. Of the forty-nine negative votes, five were from Northerners (in addition to Cranston, three from New York and one from New Jersey), seven were from Northwestern states (Illinois and Indiana), and eight Southern votes were Democratic. Journal of the House, vol. 32, February 28, 1838, 506–507.
146. Intriguingly, modern Southerners are more likely than Northerners to approve of violence when used as a tool. Nisbett and Cohen, Culture of Honor, 28, 38.
147. In addition to the committee members, Graves, Wise, Jones, Menefee, and Pierce attended and were permitted to cross-examine witnesses. H. Rpt. 825, 2.
148. The four congressmen were Isaac Toucey (D-CT), William Potter (D-PA), Andrew D. W. Bruyn (D-NY), and Seaton Grantland (W-GA).
149. George Grennell (W-MA) and James Rariden (W-IN).
150. Franklin H. Elmore (D-SC).
151. This was the optimum outcome to Adams, who was outraged that the Democratic committee majority had taken sides. Adams, diary entry, May 10, 1838, Memoir, 10:527; for an account of the committee debate and the decision to table punishment, see Hinds’ Precedents, chapter LII, “Punishment of Members for Contempt,” no. 1644, 2:1116–19.
152. The Senate passed the bill on April 6, 1838; the House on February 13, 1839. See also Wells, “End of the Affair,” esp. 1805–808.
153. Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 30, 1838, 278.
154. Ibid., April 5, 1838, 284.
155. House Journal, February 13, 1839, 539. The bill passed with 110 yeas, 16 nays (virtually all Southerners), and 93 men in town but absent, only 23 of them offering a formal excuse.
156. French, diary entry, April 27, 1838, Witness, 79–80; French, diary entry, April 28, 1838, BBFFP. The marginal addition is dated 1847.
157. Parish, George Wallace Jones, 27; Joseph Schafer, “Sectional and Personal Politics in Early Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 4 (June 1935): 456–57; Shelly A. Thayer, “The Delegate and the Duel: The Early Political Career of George Wallace Jones,” Palimpsest 5 (September–October 1984): 178–88. Menefee didn’t run for reelection.
4. RULES OF ORDER AND THE RULE OF FORCE
1. Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire, 108–110. French told the organizers that if they didn’t like the song, it would “make very good cigar lights.” French to M. P. Wilder, October 29, 1849, ibid., 134.
2. French, “Congressional Reminiscences,” National Freemason 6 (November 1864), 93.
3. On the gag rule controversy, see William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York: Knopf, 1996); Freehling, Road to Disunion, 1:287–352; James McPherson, “The Fight Against the Gag Rule: Joshua Levitt and Antislavery Insurgency in the Whig Party, 1839–1842,” Journal of Negro History 48 (1963):177–95; Robert Ludlum, “The Antislavery ‘Gag-rule’: History and Argument,” Journal of Negro History 26 (1941): 203–43; George C. Rable, “Slavery, Politics, and the South: The Gag Rule as a Case Study,” Capitol Studies 3 (1975), 69–87; Scott Meinke, “Slavery, Partisanship, and Procedure: The Gag Rule, 1836–1845,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 1 (February 2007): 33–58; Jeffrey A. Jenkins, Charles Stewart III, “The Gag Rule, Congressional Politics, and the Growth of Anti-Slavery Popular Politics,” paper presented at Congress and History Conference, MIT, May 30–31, 2002; Russell B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830–1860 (East Lansing: Michigan State, 1963); Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York: Knopf, 1956), 326–51; Leonard L. Richards, The Life and Times of Congressman John Quincy Adams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 115–31; David C. Frederick, “John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Disappearance of the Right of Petition,” Law and History Review 9, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 115–55; Stephen Holmes, “Gag Rules, or the Politics of Omission,” in Constitutionalism and Democracy, ed. Jon Elster and Rune Slagstad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 19–58; Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings, 39–42, 69–78. For a skilled analysis of how public opini
on shaped the debate, see Edward B. Rugemer, “Caribbean Slave Revolt and the Origins of the Gag Rule: A Contest Between Abolitionism and Democracy, 1797–1835,” in Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Slavery in the New American Nation, ed. John Craig Hammond and Matthew Mason (Charlottesville: UVA Press, 2011), 94–113; Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship, 71–104. For a handy time line of gag rule votes, see Jenkins and Stewart, “Gag Rule,” 34.
4. In 1837–38, the House received roughly 130,200 petitions protesting against slavery in the District of Columbia, 32,000 petitions against the gag rule, 21,200 petitions against slavery in the territories, 23,160 petitions against the slave trade, and 22,160 petitions against new slave states. Nye, Fettered Freedom, 46; Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, 340. See also Owen W. Muelder, Theodore Dwight Weld and the American Anti-Slavery Society (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2011). Far fewer petitions were presented on the floor. Jenkins and Stewart, “Gag Rule,” 39.
5. Adams, diary entry, February 14, 1838, Memoirs, 9:496; Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 14, 1838, 180.
6. French, Chicago Democrat, April 11, 1838, BBFFP.
7. Dale W. Tomich, ed., The Politics of the Second Slavery (Albany: State University of New York, 2016); idem., Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), chapter 3. On the noninevitability of abolition in the 1850s, see esp. James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Norton, 2014).
8. Corey Brooks, “Stoking the ‘Abolition Fire in the Capitol’: Liberty Party Lobbying and Antislavery in Congress,” JER (Fall 2013): 523–47; idem., Liberty Power, chapter 2.
9. “Nominis in Umbra” [French], dateline January 12, 1838, Chicago Democrat, BBFFP.
10. Fairfield to Ann Fairfield, December 20 and 22, 1837, John Fairfield Papers, LC. Present at the meeting were the full Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia delegations, as well as large numbers of men from Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Several senators also attended, including John C. Calhoun and John C. Crittenden.
11. On gag rules as attempts to salvage the functionality of Congress, see Douglas Dion, Turning the Legislative Thumbscrew: Minority Rights and Procedural Change in Legislative Politics (East Lansing: University of Michigan, 1997), 81; Holmes, “Gag Rules or the Politics of Omission.”
12. For party percentages on gag rule votes from 1836 to 1844, see Jenkins and Stewart, “Gag Rule,” 41, 43. In 1836, 82 percent of the Northern Democrats and 28 percent of the Northern Whigs supported the gag; by 1841, those numbers had dropped to 53 percent and 14 percent; and in 1844, 35 percent of the Northern Democrats and 16 percent of the Northern Whigs supported Rule 21.
13. French, ca. December 1837, Chicago Democrat, BBFFP.
14. Globe, 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 22, 1842, 780. See also ibid., 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 4, 1841, 324 appendix.
15. Adams, diary entry, July 22, 1842, Memoirs, 11:216; also www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/doc?id=jqad43_212&year=1842&month=07&day=22&entry=entry&start=0.
16. Giddings to Laura Giddings, February 13, 1843, in Stewart, “Joshua Giddings,” 185. On Giddings, see esp. Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings; and idem., “Joshua Giddings.”
17. On the usefulness of congressional chaos to abolitionism, see Brooks, “Stoking the ‘Abolition Fire’”; idem., Liberty Power, chapter 2.
18. French, Chicago Democrat, dateline January 12, 1838, BBFFP. On the right of petition, see esp. Ronald J. Krotoszynsi, Reclaiming the Petition Clause: Seditious Libel, “Offensive” Protest, and the Right to Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 81–123; Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship.
19. Register of Debates, 24th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 7, 1837, 1628–39.
20. Globe, 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., May 10, 1854, 976 app., in Foner, Free Soil, 101.
21. Ibid., 24th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 6, 1837, 162.
22. Daniel Wirls, “‘The Only Mode of Avoiding Everlasting Debate’: The Overlooked Senate Gag Rule for Antislavery Petitions,” JER (Spring 2007): 115–38; Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery, 44. Henry Clay favored a gag rule like the House’s. Globe, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., August 7, 1841, 188 app.
23. Mary M. Cronin, ed. An Indispensable Liberty: The Fight for Free Speech in Nineteenth-Century America (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016). Michael Ken Curtis, Free Speech, “The People’s Darling Privilege”: Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), 55–181.
24. Wirls, “‘The Only Mode of Avoiding Everlasting Debate,’” 133.
25. French, diary entry, February 6, 1842, Witness, 136.
26. See for example the debate of December 21, 1843, when Southerners claimed there had been a motion to table an antislavery petition and Adams yelled back, “Look to your Journal! That tells the truth!” Portsmouth Journal of Literature and Politics, December 30, 1843; Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., December 21, 1843, 59.
27. The resolution was tabled. 31st Cong., 1st Sess., Journal of the House of Representatives, September 3, 1850, 1363. French set this proceeding in motion. French to Henry Flagg French, August 21, 1850, BBFFP.
28. Rural Repository (Hudson, N.Y.) (March 1849), 106. The Repository editor William B. Stoddard quizzed French on parliamentary questions.
29. See for example French, Chicago Democrat, February 22, 1837, BBFFP.
30. Emerson, journal entry, 1843, in Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson with Annotations, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, 10 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910–14), 6:349. On Adams in Congress, see esp. Richards, Life and Times of Congressman Adams; Bemis, Adams and the Union; Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 43–68; Miller, Arguing About Slavery; Charles N. Edel, Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), chapter 5.
31. Giddings, diary entry, February 12, 1839, in Miller, Arguing About Slavery, 347. Also Julian, Life of Giddings, 70.
32. Giddings, diary entry, December 13, 1838, in Julian, Life of Giddings, 52. Giddings adds that Waddy Thompson (W-SC), “possessing much ready wit, and being himself willing to raise a laugh at the expense of the Speaker,” stepped up to Adams after the Speaker’s call for help and said, with great earnestness, “I am here, Mr. Speaker; I am ready to help. What shall I do?”—producing a roar of laughter. Adams caused the uproar by stating that he refused to vote because he deemed the House proceedings unconstitutional. See also Adams, diary entry, December 14, 1838, Memoirs, 10:65; see also www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/doc?id=jqad33_689.
33. Globe, 28th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 6, 1845, 255.
34. Adams, diary entry, December 22, 1836; May 2, 1838; Memoirs, 9:331, 521–23; see also www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/doc?id=jqad33_470&year=1838&month=05&day=02&entry=entry&start=0.
35. Richards, Congressman John Quincy Adams, 131. On abolitionist lobbying, see Brooks, “Stoking the ‘Abolition Fire in the Capitol.’”
36. According to chapter 5 of the book of Daniel, God wrote those words on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace to predict his downfall.
37. Globe, 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 25 and February 19, 1842, 168, 209; Adams, diary entry, May 21, 1842; May 2, 1838; Memoirs, 11:159, 9:523.
38. Adams, diary entry, December 25, 1839; Memoirs, 10:175–76; see also www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/doc?id=jqad42_312&year=1839&month=12&day=25&entry=entry&start=0.
39. On
the existence of a slave power dominating the federal government, see esp. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic; Richards, Slave Power; Van Cleve, A Slaveholders’ Union. See also Introductions, note 28; chapter 6, note 108.
40. This is the so-called Haverhill petition.
41. Globe, 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 25, 1842, 168.
42. Fessenden to unknown correspondent, January 23, 1843, Fessenden, Life and Public Service of W. P. Fessenden, 24. Fessenden was speaking generally about the debate as it unfolded over the course of a few days. Adams was a bit extreme, but given the provocation, it was justified, he thought.
43. French, diary entry, February 6, 1842, Witness, 136.
44. Globe, 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 25 and 26, 1842, 170, 176.
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