The Field of Blood

by Joanne B. Freeman

  101.  David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, [January 1850,] DOP.

  102.  Not all confrontations involved two Southerners. William Seward (W-NY) left town when Thomas Jefferson Rusk (D-TX) threatened him over a reneged promise concerning Texas. Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 130–31. Assuring Rusk that Texas could get a better boundary in a bill that was separate from the Omnibus cluster of bills, Seward asked Rusk to draw up a bill, but filed it away and never acted on it. Not long after, Seward voted against a separate bill for Texas. The outraged Rusk threatened to expose Seward as a liar, and may have threatened him with a duel challenge. Seward made vague excuses and left town. My thanks to Walter Stahr for alerting me to this incident.

  103.  John Raven Mathewes to John C. Calhoun, October 7, 1849, in The Papers of John C. Calhoun, ed. Robert L. Meriwether and Clyde N. Wilson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959–2003): 27:77. For Foote’s confession along these lines, see Foote, Casket of Reminiscences, 337. Benton’s loyalties were already suspect in Congress; he was one of only two Southern senators not invited to John C. Calhoun’s Southern caucus. Sam Houston also wasn’t invited, but he went in the hope of tempering extremism. For Benton as traitor, see Mississippi Free Trader, June 6 and September 9, 1849; Richmond Enquirer, June 8 and 29, November 6, 1849; Rusk Pioneer (Rusk, Tex.), July 25, 1849; Macon Weekly Telegraph, August 14, 1849.

  104.  Solon Borland called Benton’s attack on Calhoun “an assault upon the South.” Borland to Calhoun, August 5, 1849, Papers of John C. Calhoun (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 27:13. See also John Raven Mathewes to Calhoun, October 7, 1849; Fitzwilliam Byrdsall to Calhoun, February 11, 1850, ibid., 27:77, 171; and A.Y.P. Garnett to Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett, June 29, 1849, Papers of the Hunter-Garnett Family, UVA; Garnett vowed “to raise Heaven & earth” to reply to Benton’s “attack … upon Mr. Calhoun & the South generally.”

  105.  Benton-Foote Report, 4.

  106.  Henry Stuart Foote, The Bench and Bar of the South and Southwest (St. Louis: Soule, Thomas & Wentworth, 1876), 161.

  107.  Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., March 26, 1850, 602–3.

  108.  David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, January 17, 1850, DOP.

  109.  Benton-Foote Report, Senate Representative Com. No. 170, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., July 30, 1850, 45, 50, 56, 57, 80, 87, 88, 121.

  110.  Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., January 18, 1840, 128. Fisher was attacked by Charles Mitchell (W-NY). For other examples, see ibid., June 23, 1840, 481; January 23, 1846, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 236; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 128, 269, 313; 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., 328; 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., 277; 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 661. To avoid attacking someone who was absent, some men forewarned their victims of a coming attack. See for example Globe, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., 172; 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 492; 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., 401; 29th Cong., 2nd Sess., 351.

  111.  On Benton leaving the chamber, see David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, January 17, 1850, DOP; testimony of Hannibal Hamlin (D-ME), June 20, 1850, Benton-Foote Report, 126.

  112.  Testimony of Hannibal Hamlin (D-ME), June 20, 1850, Benton-Foote Report, 126.

  113.  Ibid., 26th Cong., 1st Sess., March 14, 1840, 269. See also ibid., 28th Cong., 1st Sess., January 13, 1844, 139; and ibid., March 18, 1846, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 521–22. On personal explanations, see also Hinds, 5:5064–74, 79; Shelden, Washington Brotherhood, 31.

  114.  As Speaker John W. Davis (D-IN) put it, “Any question which conveyed an imputation on a member, as touching his integrity, was necessarily a question of privilege and must override all others.” Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., January 10, 1846, 177.

  115.  Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., April 27, 1846, 731.

  116.  See for example T. P. Chisman to Frederick Lander, April 13, 1860, Frederick W. Lander Papers, LC; New York Herald, March 1 and April 14, 1860.

  117.  Unidentified newspaper article, Scrapbook, ca. 1859–60, Frederick W. Lander Papers, LC.

  118.  David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, December 13 and 16, 1849, DOP. On congressional street fights, see the actions of Henry Wilson (R-MA) when William Gwin (D-CA) challenged him to a duel in 1858. Wilson to the editors of the Saturday Evening Post, July 7, 1858, reprinted in NYT, July 10, 1858. Similarly, William Montgomery (D-PA) offered to fight William English (D-IN) on the street (“but without weapons”) after they clashed in 1858; they ended up fighting with a cane (English) and a brick (Montgomery). After one of the 1850 fights—between William Bissell (D-IL) and Jefferson Davis (D-MS) over whose regiment was more heroic during the war with Mexico—The New York Herald predicted a “street collision” because of the District’s anti-dueling law. Herald, March 1, 1850. Also, during the 1860 dispute between John Potter (R-WI) and Roger Pryor (D-VA), T. P. Chisman thought that as a Northerner, Potter might opt for a street fight. T. P. Chisman to Frederick Lander, April 13, 1860, Frederick W. Lander Papers, LC; New York Herald, March 1 and April 14, 1860. After Sumner’s caning, Horace Sergent declared a street fight the best alternative for men who wouldn’t duel. Sergent to Sumner, May 23, 1856, Charles Sumner Papers, LC. Sumner declared street fights a Southern custom. Sumner, The Barbarism of Slavery (N.Y.: Young Men’s Republican Union, 1863 reprint with new introduction by Sumner), 43, 55–56. See also Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor, 353.

  119.  David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, December 13 and 16, 1849, DOP. With the aid of seconds, Duer and Meade negotiated a mutual apology that was announced on the floor and met with applause. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., December 19, 1850; Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio), January 1, 1850.

  120.  Benton-Foote Report, 22, 28. See also Foote, Casket of Reminiscences, 339; Foote says that Senator Thomas Pratt (W-MD) told him that given the public threat, Foote should arm himself.

  121.  Benton-Foote Report, 30.

  122.  Ibid., 63. See also Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., April 17, 1850, 763. Henry Dodge (D-WI) was speaking.

  123.  Testimony of General Edny, June 7, 1850, Benton-Foote Report, 118.

  124.  Ibid.

  125.  Liberator (Boston), May 3, 1850. See also New-York Tribune, April 19, 1850.

  126.  Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., April 17, 1850, 762.

  127.  Ibid.; Baltimore Sun, April 18, 1850.

  128.  Testimony of Albert Gallatin Brown (D-MI), June 24, 1850, ibid., 129.

  129.  Testimony of Elbridge Gerry, May 3, 1850, ibid., 16. Gerry (D-ME) and James Bradbury (D-ME) examined Benton to see if he was armed.

  130.  New York Herald, April 15, 1858, reprinted from Washington Union, April 13, 1858. See also David Brown, Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and the Impending Crisis of the South (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2006), 135–37. Helper was fighting with Francis Burton Craige (D-NC). Brown notes that Wright accused Helper of starting the fight, but that Helper said that Craige was a “bully” who threw the first punch. Helper, author of The Impending Crisis of the South, had come to the House to defend his name against a personal attack delivered during debate by Asa Biggs (D-NC); Helper thought that Craige had given damaging personal information to Biggs. For more on this clash, see chapter 7.

  131.  Boston Courier, April 18, 1850, as reprinted in Littell’s Living Age, April 1850, 331. The piece was signed J.S.P. (James Shepherd Pike).

  132.  Benton also asked United States District Attorney Philip Fendall to bring the case before the District Criminal Court. Alexandria Gazette, April 20, 1850; Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.), April 23, 1850.

  133.  Benton-Foote Report, 16–17, 89.

  134.  Historians usually cite the Foote-Benton scuffle as a splash of color that brings the period’s political tensions to life, or as political theater aimed at Foote’s home audience, arguing that congressmen knew it was just for show. But in fact, the committee report shows that congressmen expected physical violence (people expected Foote to be beaten, an
d Foote worried about wounding senators if he fired his gun on the floor), and the reputations of Foote and Benton both in Washington and at home were implicated. Some bullying was aimed at both congressional colleagues and a home audience; indeed, the two audiences were intertwined, as congressmen themselves well knew.

  135.  New York Express, June 17, 1846, in Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information, 1844–1897 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 191.

  136.  On the telegraph, see esp. Blondheim, News over the Wires; Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 1–4, 690–98; Richard B. Kielbowicz, “News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph: Adapting to a New Technology,” Technology and Culture 28 (January 1987): 26–41; David W. Bulla and Gregory A. Borchard, Journalism in the Civil War Era (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2010), 90–94; Richard R. John, “Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age,” in A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and James W. Cortada (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 65; idem., Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010); Baldasty, Commercialization of News.

  137.  Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., April 21, 1856, 286 app.

  138.  Blondheim, News over the Wires, 39. Smith’s full name was Francis Ormand Jonathan Smith; French named his son Francis Ormand.

  139.  French, letter to the editor, October 31, 1848, in Daily Union, November 1, 1848.

  140.  French, “To the Editors,” Daily National Intelligencer, May 31, 1848. He paid a reporter $20.00 to cover the convention, and $10.50 in telegraphic charges.

  141.  The poem was titled “On the Changes of the World” and included a passage on the telegraph. John Thomas Scharf, History of Baltimore City and County, from the Earliest Period to the Present Day (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 505.

  142.  French, diary entry, June 18, 1843, Witness, 149.

  143.  Benton-Foote Report, 53–54, 82–83.

  144.  Ibid., 54–57.

  145.  Testimony of Jesse Bright, June 8, 1850, ibid., 70. Benton explicitly asked Jesse Bright (D-IN), did Foote “‘glide’ or ‘walk’”? “I should say he walked,” Bright replied. Ibid., 119. See also Foote’s footnote in the Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., April 17, 1850, 762.

  146.  Benton-Foote Report, 132, 128.

  147.  See for example Daily Missouri Republic, April 29, 1850; Trenton State Gazette, April 20, 1850; National Era (Washington), April 25, 1850; Daily Picayune (New Orleans), April 20, 1850; Savannah Republican, April 23, 1850; Plain Dealer (Cleveland), May 1, 1850. See also Daily Ohio State Journal, April 23, 1850.

  148.  Baltimore Sun, June 24, 1850, in Daily Missouri Republican, July 1, 1850.

  149.  Richmond Enquirer, April 26, 1850.

  150.  New-York Tribune, in Wisconsin Democrat, May 4, 1850. On Swisshelm’s admission to the reporter’s gallery, see Donald A. Ritchie, American Journalists: Getting the Story (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Jane Gray Cannon Swisshelm, Half a Century: The Memoirs of the First Woman Journalist in the Civil Rights Struggle, ed. Paul D. Sporer (Chester, N.Y.: Anza Publishing, 2005), 87–88. On Swisshelm’s account of the fracas, the Wisconsin Democrat wrote: “nobody but a regular woman could make a description of such a scene so interesting. That jerking, nervous, half breathless excitement which would embarrass the narrative of a man only adds piquancy and grace to that of a woman—and they always have words for their ideas and ideas for their words.”

  151.  Richmond Enquirer, April 26, 1850.

  152.  Washington Reporter (Pennsylvania), April 24, 1850.

  153.  St. Albans (Vermont) Messenger, April 25, 1850.

  154.  Trenton State Gazette, April 20, 1850; Evening Transcript (Boston), April 23, 1850. This article is titled “Yankee Sullivan, New York Hyer, Mississippi Foote, Missouri Benton.” Sullivan and Hyer were famous boxers.

  155.  Boston Herald, April 19, 1850.

  156.  Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict, 160.

  157.  Salma Hale to John Parker Hale, April 12, 1850, John Parker Hale Papers, NHHS.

  158.  Articles of Association and Charter from the State of Maryland, of the Magnetic Telegraph Company, Together with the Office Regulations and the Minutes of the Meetings of Stockholders and Board of Directors (New York: Chatterton & Crist, 1847), 231.

  159.  French to Henry Flagg French, December 27, 1852, BBFFP.

  6. A TALE OF TWO CONSPIRACIES

      1.  Another passenger later died of injuries. Boston Herald, January 7, 1853; New Hampshire Patriot, January 12, 1853.

      2.  French, diary entry, March 27, April 24, 1853, Witness, 233, 239.

      3.  Benjamin Brown French to French, August 9, 1852, BBFFP.

      4.  Connecticut Courant (Hartford), July 10, 1852; Richmond Whig, July 9, 1852; Trenton State Gazette, June 25 and 26, 1852; Albany Evening Journal, June 10, 1852; Kalamazoo Gazette, June 11, 1852; Weekly Journal (Galveston), June 11, 1852. For a Democratic defense, see Trenton State Gazette, June 7, 1852.

      5.  National Aegis (Worcester, Mass.), July 7, 1852. Pierce’s original statement was: “No North, no South, no East, no West.” Daily Union, June 6, 1852.

      6.  New-York Tribune, June 10, 1852; Litchfield Republican, June 17, 1852; Floridian and Journal (Tallahassee), June 26, 1852; Daily Alabama Journal, June 18, 1852; Daily Atlas (Boston), July 23, 1852; Wallner, Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire’s Favorite Son, 147–48; Nichols, Franklin Pierce, 161–63. According to Nichols, Pierce’s horse reared, banging Pierce’s groin against the saddle pommel, inflicting an “excruciating and sense-taking though hardly permanent injury” before falling on Pierce and wrenching his knee; at some point, Pierce passed out. The next day, though still in pain, he insisted on fighting at the battle of Churubusco; while advancing under fire he twisted his injured knee and fainted again, though when he came to, he allegedly insisted that his men leave him where he was, exposed to enemy fire. The “bottle” accusation originated in the New-York Tribune and was so loudly condemned that Greeley retracted it. Tribune, June 10 and 11, 1852.

      7.  Nichols, Franklin Pierce, 201–202. A Richmond editor had been asking candidates about their stance on the Fugitive Slave Act. Although not formally a candidate, Pierce knew that his dark-horse candidacy depended on his clarity on this key issue, so he wrote a letter to Major F. T. Lally, an old army friend in the Maine delegation, clearly stating his views.

      8.  Connecticut Courant, July 24, 1852; Salem Register, July 15, 1852; Richmond Whig, July 16, 1852; Alexandria Gazette, July 14, 1852. For defenses of Pierce against such charges, see Richmond Enquirer, July 20 and 26, 1852; Macon Weekly Telegraph, June 29, 1852. See also Stephen John Hartnett, “Franklin Pierce and the Exuberant Hauteur of an Age of Extremes: A Love Song for America in Six Movements,” Before the Rhetorical Presidency, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (College Station: Texas A&M University, 2008), 117–20.

      9.  New York Evening Post, June 8, 1852. Countering the Northern Democratic claims, see the Whig Albany Evening Journal, June 10 and 14, 1852; Enquirer (Richmond), June 15, 1852—for Southern Democrats; Connecticut Courant, July 17 and 24, 1852. The alleged speech was in January 1852. For an example of Southern Democrats citing Northern Whigs to prove Pierce’s South-friendly sentiments, see Macon Weekly Telegraph, June 29, 1852; also ibid., June 15, 1852, on the antislavery petition charge. On Pierce as South-friendly generally, see also Mississippi Free Trader, June 23, 1852; Enquirer (Richmond), June 25, July 20 and 26, 1852; Macon Weekly Telegraph, July 6, 1852; Enquirer, July 20, 1852.

    1
0.  For example, even as Northern Democratic newspapers praised Pierce for opposing gag rules, the Democratic Enquirer praised him for opposing the reception of slavery petitions; Enquirer, June 15, 1852.

    11.  Daily Union, June 8, 1852.

    12.  French, diary entry, January 2, 1853, Witness, 227.

    13.  Wise to Franklin Pierce, June 22, 1852, Franklin Pierce Papers; French to F.O.J. Smith, November 21, 1852, Collection 38, F.O.J. Smith Papers, Collections of the Maine Historical Society.

    14.  French to F.O.J. Smith, November 21, 1852, Collection 38, F.O.J. Smith Papers, Collection of the Maine Historical Society. French said that he stayed at a hotel where the Indiana, Illinois, New York, and Georgia delegates were staying. On the Convention generally, see Landis, Northern Men, 63–71.

    15.  Wise to Pierce, June 22, 1852, Franklin Pierce Papers. Wise also credited Caleb Cushing with influencing him and the Virginia delegation. Landis details the ardent efforts of the New Hampshire politico Edmund Burke. Landis, Northern Men, 61–69. For Wise’s account of the fight, see his card for the Portsmouth Democrat, reprinted in the American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), October 5, 1852; William A. Link, Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003), 69–70.