96. Unknown to Lawrence O’Bryan Branch, June 13, 1856, Papers of Lawrence O’Bryan Branch, UVA.
97. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., July 14 and 16, 1856, 831, 838 app.
98. F.O.J. French to Bess French, May 25, 1856, BBFFP.
99. Sargent to Sumner, May 25, 1856, Charles Sumner Papers, LC.
100. Everett to Charles Eames, June 21, 1856, Edward Everett Papers, LC.
101. See for example Lawrence O’Bryan Branch to Nannie Branch, July 30, 1856, Papers of Lawrence O’Bryan Branch, UVA.
102. Winthrop to William Cabell Rives, June 5, 1856, William Cabell Rives Papers, LC.
103. Everett to Charles Eames, June 21, 1856, Edward Everett Papers.
104. French amended the proposal by adding representatives from the territories. Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860, and 1864, Including Proceedings of the Antecedent National Convention Held at Pittsburg, in February, 1856, as Reported by Horace Greeley (Minneapolis: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), 21–22.
105. French, diary entry, February 1, 1857, Witness, 276–77.
106. Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution provides that “for any speech or debate in either House, [Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other place.”
107. McCormick, “Personal Conflict, Sectional Reaction”; Curtis, Free Speech, “The People’s Darling Privilege.”
108. Unknown to Banks, July 10, 1856, Nathanial Banks Papers, LC.
109. Globe, 1856, 1056, in Gradin, “Losing Control,” 188. On dangerous words in this period, see also Miner, Seeding Civil War, passim.
110. Pierce to Horatio King, November 28, 1860, in Horatio King, “Buchanan’s Loyalty,” Century Magazine 23 (December 1881): 289–97, quote on 292; Pierce to Jacob Thompson, November 26, 1860, Constitution (Washington), December 1, 1860.
111. Leonard, Power of the Press, 81–82; Chambers, Old Bullion Benton, 425, 431, 436, 438.
112. See esp. McCormick, “Personal Conflict, Sectional Reaction,” 1519–52.
113. Lowell Daily Citizen, June 6, 1856; Salem Register, June 9, 1856. Brooks also mentioned Knapp’s revolver in his resignation speech, as well as the fact that Linus Comins (R-MA) was armed. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., July 14, 1856, 833 app.
114. Harlow, Rise and Fall of Kansas Aid, 16–20.
115. Lewis Clephane, Birth of the Republican Party, with a Brief History of the Important Part Taken by the Original Republican Association of the National Capital (Washington: Gibson Bros., 1889), 31. The organization followed in the model of—and possibly grew out of—the Washington Free Soil Association. Both organizations had a reading room on Capitol Hill. Jonathan Earle, “Saturday Nights at the Baileys,” In the Shadow of Freedom, 94–95.
116. “To Republicans,” May 8, 1858, New-York Tribune. The announcement—asking Republicans around the country to send cash—was widely reprinted; see for example Lowell Daily Citizen and News, May 22, 1858; National Era, May 20, 1858.
117. National Era, August 5 and September 3, 1858.
118. Albany Evening Journal, June 4, 1858.
119. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., March 7, 1860, 161 app. Wade followed his statement by stating that he wouldn’t hesitate to fight a duel “in an extreme case.”
120. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., March 15, 1858, 101, 105, 109–10 app. Republican protestors that night included William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME), Daniel Clark (R-NH), and William Seward (R-NY), who complained that he had been “crushed continually” for the past eight years.
121. Ibid., 35th Cong., 1st Sess., March 15, 1858, 101, 105, 109–10 app. See also Trefousse, Wade, 110–11.
122. [Memorandum], May 26, 1874, Simon Cameron Papers [microfilm]. See also Zachariah Chandler: An Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services (Detroit: Post and Tribune Co., 1880), 145–47.
123. [Speech on the Fourteenth Amendment], May 10, 1866, in The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, April 1865–August 1868, 2 vols. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997–98) 2:137–42. Quotes are from both the Globe version of Stevens’s speech and an eight-page draft in his notes; the draft mentions people’s names and includes more detail. See also Stevens’s speech of January 13, 1865; ibid., 1:522.
124. [Speech on the Fourteenth Amendment], May 10, 1866, in Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, 2:137–42.
125. Alexander Stephens to Linton Stephens, February 5, 1858, Life of Alexander Hamilton Stephens, 329–30. See also Charleston Mercury, February 11, 1858. Stephens notes, “Nobody was hurt or even scratched, I believe; but bad feeling was produced by it.… All things here are tending to bring my mind to the conclusion that the Union cannot or will not last long.”
126. Charleston Mercury, February 11, 1858. See also Boston Traveler, February 11, 1858.
127. Fehrenbacher, Slaveholding Republic, passim.
128. Alexander Stephens to Linton Stephens, March 12, 1858, in Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1878), 331.
129. On Grow, see James T. Dubois and Gertrude S. Mathews, Galusha A. Grow: Father of the Homestead Law (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1917); Robert D. Ilisevich, Galusha A. Grow: The People’s Candidate (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1989). On his abrasive manner see ibid., 158. On Keitt, see Stephen W. Berry II, All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1989); Walther, Fire-Eaters, 160–94; Marchant, Laurence Massillion Keitt.
130. On the Washburn brothers, see Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn: A Chapter in American Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1925).
131. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., February 5, 1858, 603. See also Alexander Hamilton Stephens to Linton Stephens, February 5, 1858, in Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1883), 329–30; NYT, February 8, 11, and 19, 1858; New York Herald, February 13, 1858; Weekly Champion (Atchison, Kans.), March 6, 1858. Though later accounts note that Cadwallader Washburn yanked off the wig of William Barksdale (D-MS), Charles Marsh—who seems to have gotten the story from Potter himself—credits Potter. Charles W. Marsh, Recollections, 1837–1910 (Chicago: Farm Implement News Co., 1910), 119–20.
132. Grow to unnamed relative, February 9, 1858, in Dubois and Matthews, Galusha A. Grow, 181–82. See also NYT, February 8 and April 15, 1858.
133. National Era, March 25, 1858; Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., March 15, 1858, 107 app.
134. Philadelphia Inquirer, February 8, 1858; Boston Traveler, February 11, 1858.
135. Frederick Douglass’ Paper, February 12, 1858. See also NYT, February 8, 1858; Philadelphia Inquirer, February 8, 1858; Boston Evening Transcript, February 11, 1858; Milwaukee Sentinel, February 17, 1858.
136. Boston Traveler, February 11, 1858.
137. NYT, February 11, 1858.
138. In Daily Advocate (Baton Rouge), February 22, 1858.
139. Charleston Mercury, February 11, 1858.
140. Virginia Sentinel, in Annapolis Gazette, June 24, 1858; Columbus (Georgia)Enquirer, February 11, 1858; Charleston Mercury, February 13, 1858.
141. Annapolis Gazette, June 24, 1858.
142. Virginia Sentinel, June 24, 1858; Charleston Mercury, February 13, 1858; Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer, February 11, 1858.
143. Laurence Keitt to Ellison Keitt, February 17, 1858, in “Autograph Letters and Portraits of the Signers of the Constitution of the Confederate States,” Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., Papers, Duke University.
144. Thomas Hood, Quips and Cranks (London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1861), 48–54.
145. “The Fight over the Body of Keitt,” from Punch, in Tribune, March
22, 1858. See also Massachusetts Spy, March 24, 1858.
146. Albany Evening Journal, February 25, 1858.
147. Lowell Daily Citizen, February 20, 1858.
148. Plain Dealer (Cleveland), February 11, 1858. In John Brougham’s play Pocahontas there was already a line referring to a fight: “Hold—have done! / Do you think you’re in Washington?” (A line that in itself says something.) Brougham added: “These blows must not be applied, / Even from the Administration side.”
149. Lowell Daily Citizen, March 17, 1858; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 20, 1858. Boxing was America’s “preeminent sport” by the 1850s. Elliott J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 129.
150. On Vanity Fair, see Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1850–1865 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), 520–29; Edward L. Gambill, “Vanity Fair: 1859–1863,” in The Conservative Press in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century America, ed. Ronald Lora and William Henry Longton (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), 139–45.
151. Vanity Fair, January 21 and 28, April 7, February 4, and January 14, 1860.
152. Ibid., December 15, 1860.
153. New York Herald, February 14, 1845.
154. Henry Clay Preuss, “Fashions and Follies of Washington Life. A Play. In Five Acts” (Washington, D.C.: Published by the author, 1857). See also Walter J. Meserve, “Social Awareness on Stage: Tensions Mounting, 1850–1859,” in The American Stage, ed. Ron Engle and Tice L. Miller (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 87–88. Interestingly, in 1862, Preuss was investigated by a House committee for disloyalty to the government. 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Report No. 16, “Loyalty of Clerks and Other Persons Employed by Government,” January 28, 1862, 5, 8. Preuss worked for the Engineer Bureau.
155. NYT, June 26, 1856. See also The United States Magazine (July–December 1856): 186; Wide West (San Francisco), August 17, 1856; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 30, 1856; The Magnet (London), September 29, 1856.
156. “Life in an American Hotel?,” Punch, June 28, 1856, 258; Boston Evening Transcript, July 12, 1856; Alexandria Gazette, July 17, 1856; Daily Advocate (Baton Rouge), July 26, 1856; Washington Reporter (Pa.), August 27, 1856; Weekly Wisconsin Patriot (Madison), August 30, 1856; Alta California (San Francisco), September 5, 1856.
157. On humor as a tool of reform, see Barnet Baskerville, “19th Century Burlesque of Oratory,” American Quarterly 20 (Winter 1968): 726–43. See also Dean L. Yarwood, When Congress Makes a Joke: Congressional Humor Then and Now (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
158. David Outlaw comments on how congressional violence weakened public confidence in Congress. Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, April 18, 1850, DOP.
159. French to Bess French, June 10, 1860, Witness, 327–28.
160. French to Bess French, July 25, 1852, BBFFP.
161. French to Henry Flagg French, May 2, 1852, ibid.
162. See for example the resolutions of Springfield High School, May 30, 1856; George Nourse to Sumner, June 4, 1856; Albert Browne to Sumner, June 6, 1856, all in Charles Sumner Papers, LC.
163. New York Herald, January 16, 1860.
164. On the contest generally, see David Brown, Southern Outcast: Hinton Rowan Helper and the Impending Crisis of the South (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2006), esp. 152–70; Freehling, Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 250–58, 265–66; Crenshaw, “Speakership Contest”; idem., The Slave States in the Presidential Election of 1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1945); Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2000), 208–10; Mary R. Campbell, “Tennessee’s Congressional Delegation in the Sectional Crisis of 1859–1860,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 19 (December 1960): 348–71.
165. On Helper’s book, see esp. David Brown, “Attacking Slavery from Within: The Making of ‘The Impending Crisis of the South,’” Journal of Southern History 70 (August 2004): 541–76; idem., Brown, Southern Outcast.
166. Helper intended to attack Asa Biggs (D-NC), who was absent, so he assaulted Francis Craige (D-NC) instead. Brown, Southern Outcast, 134–36.
167. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., December 5, 1859, 3. On the response to Helper in the House, see esp. Brown, Southern Outcast, 152–70; Freehling, Secessionists Triumphant, 240–45, 250–53. Freehling writes: “It was as if the slaveholders shouted at posterity: Read our speeches on the Compendium, instead of using your political science models, to discern our intentions. Then you will understand why we considered Republicans’ endorsement of Helper dangerous as well as insulting.” Ibid., 251.
168. On the fraught battle to elect a Speaker, see Landis, Northern Men, 218–19; Jenkins and Stewart, Fighting for the Speakership, 212–24.
169. Daily Confederation (Montgomery, Ala.), December 13, 1859.
170. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., January 25, 1860, 572. Wilson was speaking of the Territorial Slave Code. The “tragic strut” was a theatrical term. See Paul Kuritz, The Making of Theatre History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989), 206.
171. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., January 25, 1860, 586. For similar sentiments, see Edwin Morgan to his brothers, December 22, 1855; Schuyler Colfax to Charles Heaton, December 25, 1855, in Hollcroft, “Congressmen’s Letters,” 451; David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
172. On the importance of a sense of personal insult to the logic of secession, see Wyatt-Brown, Shaping of Southern Culture, 177–202; idem., Yankee Saints and Southern Sinners (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1985), 183–213; Kenneth Greenberg, Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1985), 107–46; Sinha, Counterrevolution of Slavery, 207–20.
173. There were fights between John Logan (D-IL) and William Kellogg (R-IL); Robert Toombs (D-GA) and James Doolittle (R-WI); Robert Toombs (D-GA) and Charles Scott (D-CA); Roger Pryor (D-VA) and the New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett’s son James Jr.; Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) and Martin Crawford (D-GA); John Haskin (ALD-NY) and Horace Clark (ALD-NY); Galusha Grow (R-PA) and Lawrence O’Bryan Branch (D-NC); Roger Pryor (D-VA) and John Sherman (R-OH); and John Hickman (R-PA) and Henry Edmundson (D-VA). On April 12, 1860, the NYT noted that there already had been fifteen “scenes” in Congress. In later years, John Sherman wrote, “It appeared many times that the threatened war would commence on the floor of the House of Representatives.” Sherman, Recollections, 172.
174. Richmond Whig, February 17, 1860. See also Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 486–89; New-York Tribune, February 13, 1860.
175. Manufacturers’ and Farmers’ Journal (Providence, R.I.), January 19, 1860.
176. Gist to William Porcher Miles, December 20, 1859, in Crenshaw, “Speakership Contest,” 335. Robert Barnwell Rhett, D. H. Hamilton, Keitt, Miles, and possibly others were in contact with Gist concerning the plot. Brown, Southern Outcast, 171. Susanna Keitt’s March 4, 1861, letter to Mrs. Frederick Brown suggests that Roger Pryor and Thomas Clingman were involved as well. Laurence Massillon Keitt Papers, Duke University. On Gist, see Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery; Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York: Norton, 1974).
177. Susanna Keitt to Alexander Sparks, [December 1859], Laurence Massillon Keitt Papers, Duke University. The letter is undated but indicates that Susanna and Keitt are married; they married in May 1859 and returned from a trip to Europe in December. My thanks to Elizabeth Dunn at Duke University for helping me determine the date. On Wise’s threat, see also Lincoln and His Party, 254–55.
178. See esp. Brown, Southern Outcast, 167–68.
179. Ibid., 158–59.
180. On Pennington’s election, see Jenkins and Stewart, Fighting for the Spe
akership, 220–23.
181. French, diary entry, February 9, 1860, BBFFP.
182. On the Potter-Pryor clash, see [Rockford, Ill.] Daily Register, December 26, 1882; Chicago Tribune, December 24, 1882; Harper’s Weekly, April 21, 1860; New York Herald, April 14 and 16, 1860; Daily Dispatch, April 16, 1860; Charleston Mercury, April 18, 1860; Chicago Press and Tribune, April 18, 1860; NYT, April 12, 1860; Ben A. Riley, “The Pryor-Potter Affair: Nineteenth Century Civilian Conflict as Precursor to Civil War,” Journal of West Virginia Historical Association (1984): 30–39; William Hasseltine, “The Pryor-Potter Duel,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (June 1944): 400–409; Potter to Pryor, April 11, 1860; Gary L. Ecelbarger, Frederick W. Lander: The Great Natural American Soldier (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000), 56–61; T. P. Chisman to Frederick Lander, April 12, 1860; Pryor to Potter, April 12, 1860; Potter to Pryor, April 12, 1860; Lander to Chisman, April 12, 1860; Chisman to Lander, April 12, 1860; Pryor to Potter, April 12, 1860; Chisman to Lander, April 13, 1860; in Papers of Frederick W. Lander, LC; W. A. Sugrue[?] to William Porcher Miles, May 22, 1860; contents of Folder 28, William Porcher Miles Papers, UNC.
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