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106. The six incidents included a fistfight in a restaurant between Jeremiah Clemens (D-AL) and Willey P. Harris (D-MS); duel negotiations between Francis Cutting (D-NY) and John C. Breckenridge (D-KY); the gun-toting lunge and thrust of Churchwell and Cullom; a scuffle over Indian policy between Mike Walsh (D-NY) and James H. Seward (D-GA); a tussle between James Lane and Ephraim Farley (W-ME) over delaying discussion of far-western territories; and the Campbell-Edmundson confrontation. There were also at least five near misses, including a barely averted duel challenge, two throwings of the lie (producing “great tumult—members running all about the House” and some effective mace wielding), Edmundson’s threats against Wentworth, and a face-to-face confrontation between Lewis Campbell and the Speaker over adjourning the House.
107. On the Kansas debate and Southern aggression, see Arnold, “Competition for the Virgin Soil of Kansas”; James L. Huston, The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2015).
108. On the Slave Power narrative in this period, see esp. Miner, Seeding Civil War, 174–75; Fehrenbacher, Slaveholding Republic, chapter 6; David Brion Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1969); Richards, The Slave Power; Foner, Free Soil, passim, esp. 90–102; Larry Gara, “Slavery and The Slave Power: A Crucial Distinction,” Civil War History 15 (March 1969): 5–18; Adam Rothman, “The ‘Slave Power’ in the United States, 1783–1865,” in Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in a Democracy, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 257–65 and passim.
109. Globe, 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., March 27 and 31, 1854, 761–64, 825. For the duel correspondence, see Weekly Herald (N.Y.), April 8, 1854.
110. Newark Daily Advertiser, March 29, 1854.
111. Connecticut Courant, April 1, 1854 (printing reports of March 29); Alexandria Gazette, March 29, 1854.
112. St. Albans (Vt.) Messenger, April 6, 1854; Massachusetts Spy (Worcester), April 5, 1854; Salem Register, April 10, 1854; Daily Advocate (Baton Rouge), April 8, 1854.
113. Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31, 1854; Massachusetts Spy, April 5, 1854; Albany Evening Journal, April 3, 1854; Portland Weekly Advertiser, April 4, 1854; Vermont Journal, April 7, 1854. On the Slave Power plot in the press, see Miner, Seeding Civil War, 174–75
114. Weekly Herald, April 1 and 8, 1854; Trenton State Gazette, April 10, 1854. The Democracy-friendly Herald had turned on Pierce for abandoning his promise to stay true to the Compromise of 1850.
115. Albany Evening Journal, April 3, 1854; National Democrat as quoted in Portland Weekly Advertiser, April 4, 1854; Vermont Journal, April 7, 1854. On Cutting as a fighting man, see also New York Mirror as quoted in Alexandria Gazette, April 1, 1854; Portland Weekly Advertiser, April 4, 1854.
116. Portland Weekly Advertiser, April 4, 1854.
117. Alexandria Gazette, April 1, 1854.
118. New-York Daily Tribune, March 7, 1854. Pike had urged Fessenden to hurry down to Washington to give a hell-raising speech that he promised to trumpet. Ritchie, Press Gallery, 48.
119. Fessenden to Elizabeth Warriner, March 26, 1854; Fessenden to Ellen Fessenden, March 11, 1854, in Cook, Civil War Senator, 88.
120. National Aegis, May 17, 1854.
121. Cutting’s obituaries in the press almost uniformly mentioned his “difficulty” with Breckenridge, and virtually nothing else about his congressional career. Some noted that he had earned his fame because he’d proven “that Northern men could fight.” See for example San Francisco Bulletin, June 18, 1870.
122. Macon Weekly Telegraph, June 20, 1854; Richmond Whig, June 6, July 11, October 10, and December 5, 1854.
123. Daily Union (Washington), June 8, 1854.
124. “Obsolete Ideas.—No. 6. By an Old Fogy,” Daily Union, June 8, 1854; Boston Courier, June 12, 1854; Globe, 33rd Cong., 1st Sess., June 8, 1854, 1361. See also Hinds’ Precedents, vol. 3, chapter 81, section 2641.
125. For Northern praise of Cutting’s defense of free speech, see for example Newark Daily Advertiser, April 12, 1854.
126. Ratner and Teeter, Fanatics and Fire-Eaters, 117–18; Harrold, Border War: Fighting over Slavery Before the Civil War, 161. See also Pfau, The Political Style of Conspiracy. On Everett’s resignation, see Ritchie, Press Gallery, 48; Matthew Mason, Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2016). The ill health of Everett and his wife contributed to his resignation.
127. French, diary entry, January 1, 1854, BBFFP. See also Henry Flagg French to French, May 25, 1856, ibid; French, diary entry, February 1, 1857, Witness, 276.
128. On their differing opinions, see for example French to Henry Flagg French, June 4, 1854, BBFFP; New York Evening Post, March 1, 1854.
129. French, diary entry, July 1, 1855, Witness, 260–63.
130. Ibid., March 13, 1855, 255.
131. Ibid., May 7, 1854, March 13, 1855, July 1, 1855, 250, 255, 260.
132. Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, 29.
133. After drafting a series of pro- and antislavery constitutions, Kansas approved a free-state constitution in 1859 and received statehood in 1861. Harrold notes that the outbreak of violence in Kansas in 1855 was an expansion of an ongoing border war instigated by Missourians attempting to prevent slaves from escaping into Kansas. Harrold, Border War, 164–65, passim. See also Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas; Jeremy Neely, The Border Between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007); Michael Fellman, “Rehearsal for the Civil War: Antislavery and Proslavery at the Fighting Point in Kansas,” in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Fellman (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1979), 287–309.
134. French, diary entry, July 1, 1855, Witness, 262.
135. Ibid., January 2, 1855, 253.
136. Ibid., May 25, 1856, 269.
137. Ibid., June 5, 1855, 256.
138. Ronald P. Formisano, For the People: American Populist Movements from the Revolution to the 1850s (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2008), 198–212; Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Michael Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development: From the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1992), 112–50; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 69–166; Stephen E. Maizlish, “The Meaning of Nativism and the Crisis of the Union: The Know-Nothing Movement in the Antebellum North,” in Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860, ed. Maizlish and Kushma (College Station: Texas A&M University, 1982).
139. National Era, April 19, 1855, taken from a letter to his constituents.
140. French, diary entry, June 10, 1855, Witness, 257–58.
141. Evening Star (Washington), June 2, 1855.
142. French, diary entry, June 10, 1855, Witness, 256–59.
143. Alexandria Gazette, June 8, 1855; Daily Atlas (Boston), June 8, 1855; Evening Star, June 5, 1855; Ohio State Journal, May 30, 1855; The South-western (Shreveport, La.), May 30, 1855; NYT, June 5 and 9, 1855; Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 1855. For French’s insistence that he resigned, see Intelligencer, July 16, 1855.
144. Ohio State Journal, June 13, 1855; Henry Flagg French to French, June 5, 1855, BBFFP. French must have telegraphed the news to his half brother; in his letter, Henry said he’d telegraph back.
145. French to Pierce, June 30, 1855, BBFFP.
146. French, diary entry, March 13, 1855, Witness, 254–55.
147. French to Pierce, June 30, 1855, BBFFP.
148. Weekly New York Herald, April 8, 1854.
149. On the wrenching emotions tied to changing parties, see Woods, Emotional and Sectional Conflict, 145; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 7–8.
150. French, diary entry, July 1, 1855, Witness, 259–61.
151. Ibid., and June 7, 1856, 262, 271.
152. Ibid., July 1, 1855, August 5, 1855, and June 7, 1856, 259–60, 265, 271.
153. Ibid., January 2, 1856, 267. French was referring to Giddings’s speech of December 18, 1855, in which he said he was defining party terms. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., 42–45 app.
154. Boston Traveler, February 22, 1856; New York Herald, May 30, 1856.
155. Bess to French, October 9, 1856, BBFFP.
156. In the midst of French’s transition, Cilley’s son Jonathan Prince (known as “Prin”) visited Pierce and French separately. Prin Cilley to Julia Draper Cilley, [December] 1856, in Anderson, Breach of Privilege, 387.
157. Thomas R. Bright, “The Anti-Nebraska Coalition and the Emergence of the Republican Party in New Hampshire: 1853–1857,” Historical New Hampshire 27 (Summer 1972): 57–88. On the radicalizing impact of Slave Power aggression, see Foner, Free Soil, 209–10.
158. See for example the emotional letters of Georgian Hopkins Holsey to the former congressman Howell Cobb (D-GA) during the 1850 crisis. More than once, Holsey noted that his “heart bleeds at the unavoidable separation.” Holsey to Cobb, February 13 and 24, 1849, Correspondence of Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb, 151, 153. See also Woods, Emotional and Sectional Conflict.
159. James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., Pretense of Glory: The Life of General Nathaniel P. Banks (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1998), 25. Banks’s words as reported in the press were “[L]et me say, although I am not one of that class of men who cry for the perpetuation of the Union, though I am willing in a certain state of circumstances to ‘let it slide,’ I have no fear for its perpetuation. But let me say, if the chief object of the people of this country be to maintain perpetuate and propagate chattel property in man, in other words, human slavery—this Union cannot stand, and it ought not to stand. (Prolonged applause.)” Portland Advertiser, August 21, 1855.
160. [Memorandum on French’s poetry,] undated, BBFFP; Liberator, November 30, 1860.
7. REPUBLICANS MEET THE SLAVE POWER
1. French, diary entry, November 27, 1860, Witness, 336.
2. Ibid., December 4, 1859, 318.
3. Ibid.
4. French to Henry Flagg French, June 4, 1854, BBFFP.
5. French, diary entry, April 25, 1857, Witness, 280.
6. See for example ibid., April 25, 1857, 280.
7. On this panoply of Republicans, see Foner, Free Soil; Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969). On racism and Republicans, see Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, chapter 13. On the self-interested motives of some abolitionists, see Gara, “Slavery and the Slave Power.”
8. Larry Gara, “Antislavery Congressmen, 1848–1856: Their Contribution to the Debate Between the Sections,” Civil War History (September 1986): 197–207, vote count on 207. On the formation of the Republican Party with a congressional spin, see esp. ibid.; William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Allan G. Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); Trefousse, Radical Republicans; Foner, Free Soil; Holt, Political Crisis; Michael A. Morrison, Slavery and the American West (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1997); Sewell, Ballots for Freedom; Joel Silbey, “The Surge in Republican Power: Partisan Antipathy, American Social Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War,” in Essays on American Antebellum Politics, 1840–1860, ed. Stephen E. Maizlish and John J. Kushkia (College Station: Texas A&M University, 1982), 199–229; Heather Cox Richardson, To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
9. Fehrenbacher, Slaveholding Republic, 295–338.
10. Trefousse, Radical Republicans; Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 (New York: Norton, 1974); Edward Gambill, “Who Were the Senate Radicals?,” Civil War History (September 1965): 237–44; David H. Donald, The Politics of Reconstruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984).
11. See esp. Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting.
12. Greenberg suggests that aggressive expansionism led to an “unintended victory” for martial manhood that exacerbated sectional conflict in the 1850s. Although she doesn’t address this directly, it’s noteworthy that the Republican Party and its violent congressional undertow fit this pattern. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 17.
13. See esp. Kenneth Ira Kersch, Freedom of Speech: Rights and Liberties Under the Law; Michael Kent Curtis, “The People’s Darling Privilege”: Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000).
14. Varon, Disunion!, 283; Foner, Free Soil, 146.
15. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., December 6, 1859, 24–25; August Chronicle, December 10, 1859; National Intelligencer, December 7, 1859; New-York Tribune, December 9, 1859; Albany Evening Journal, December 9, 1859; Ohio State Journal, December 13, 1859; Massachusetts Spy, December 14, 1859. Only the independent press mentioned weapons, specifically mentioning Laurence Keitt (D-SC) and Edward McPherson (R-PA), Stevens’s protégé and friend. See also Hans L. Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1997), 98–99; idem., Radical Republicans, 131.
16. The original statement is by Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz: “War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.” Clausewitz, On War (1832–34).
17. French, diary entry, November 27, 1860, Witness, 336.
18. Ibid., January 19, 1857, August 25, 1858, March 2, 1861, 275–76, 299–300, 342.
19. Particular friends included Mason Tappan (R-NH), Aaron Cragin (R-NH), John Parker Hale (R-NH), and Daniel Clark (R-NH), among others.
20. For a particularly useful exploration of the difference between being antislavery and anti–Slave Power, see Gara, “Slavery and the Slave Power.”
21. French, diary entry, August 5, 1855, Witness, 265. French was in Chester talking to Yankee “knowing ones.” He was probably referring to the removal of Governor Andrew Reeder and the violence that was likely to result.
22. Boston Daily Bee, September 26, 1855.
23. Wilson to Parker, July 23, 1855, in Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, ed. John Weiss, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), 2:211; John L. Myers, Henry Wilson and the Coming of the Civil War (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005), 288. For similar forebodings, see Hunt to Samuel B. Ruggles, November 22 and December 23, 1855, in Gienapp, “The Crime Against Sumner: The Caning of Charles Sumner and the Rise of the Republican Party,” Civil War History 3 (September 1979): 218–45, quote on 218–19; Convers Francis to Sumner, May 29, 1856, Charles Sumner Papers, LC.
24. Keitt to Susanna Sparks, June 6, 1855, in Eric H. Walther, The Fire-Eaters (LSU, 1992), 180. On Keitt, see Walther, The Fire-Eaters; Stephen W. Berry II, All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 45–80; Holt Merchant, South Carolina Fire-Eater: The Life of Laurence Massillion Keitt, 1824–1864 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014). As defined by Walther, fire-eaters were dedicated to Southern independence and tended toward violence and showmanship, but not all Southern radicals were fire-eaters. Walther, Fire-Eaters, 2. Interestingly, not all declared fire-eaters were violent in Congress.
2
5. Keitt to Susanna Sparks, July 11, 1855; A. Dudley Mann to Keitt, August 24, 1855, Laurence Massillon Keitt Papers, Perkins Library, Duke University.
26. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., December 24, 1855, 77. On Banks’s election as Speaker, see Fred Harvey Harrington, “The First Northern Victory,” Journal of Southern History 5 (1939): 186–205; Joel H. Silbey, “After ‘The First Northern Victory’: The Republican Party Comes to Congress, 1855–56,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 20 (Summer 1989): 1–24.
27. On uproars on the floor during the balloting, see Anson Burlingame to Jennie Burlingame, January 10, 1856, Anson Burlingame & Family Papers, LC.
28. Daily Picayune, January 2, 1856; Cabinet (Schenectady), December 25, 1855; Chicago Daily Tribune, December 27, 1855; Daily Dispatch, December 24, 1855; Poore, Reminiscences, 1:466. “Extra Billy” Smith had a mail contract, and made a tidy sum in extra fees by expanding mail routes.