CHAPTER VI.

KNOW-NOTHINGS JOIN REPUBLICANS TO ELECT BANKS—SEWARD BECOMES LEADER—SKETCH OF HIM—DEFEAT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY—CAUSES OF IT—FREQUENT FIST-FIGHTS BETWEEN MEMBERS—DRUNKENNESS AND ROWDYISM IN CONGRESS—ANGRY DISPUTE BETWEEN KELLY AND MARSHALL—KELLY’S POPULARITY IN THE HOUSE—HIS RELATIONS WITH ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.

In the last chapter the strange spectacle was presented of Southern Know-Nothings, while declaring their opposition to the Abolitionists, actually aiding them to elect a Speaker, and offering as an excuse for their conduct the dread that the Catholic Church might obtain control of the Government! The Democratic caucus had adopted a resolution denouncing the enemies of civil and religious liberty. Humphrey Marshall and the Southern Know-Nothings declared this was an insult to them, and not only Marshall, but Cox of Kentucky, and Zollicoffer and Etheridge assigned the same cause as presenting an insuperable obstacle to their voting for any Democrat for Speaker. The Know-Nothings and Abolitionists, having nothing in common, united to overthrow the party of the Constitution, the former to prevent the Catholicsfrom seizing the Government, the latter to get rid of slavery. This ridiculous pretext of the Know-Nothings concerning the political ambition of the Catholic Church was most effectively answered by the fact that out of the whole 234 members of the House, and 7 Territorial Delegates, John Kelly was the only Catholic in the Thirty-fourth Congress. Mr. Kelly declared truly that no sane man would offer such an insult to the intelligence of the country, as a justification for his conduct, but Davis of Maryland, Cullen of Delaware, Whitney of New York, and other proscriptionists were wedded to their idols, and in order to strike down an imaginary enemy, they became the tools of a real one.

For nine weeks the stubborn contest continued. The country, from one end to another, was roused to feverish excitement. It was the first time the Republican party had shown front in a National contest. Ever since the Seward-Fillmore quarrel had led to the overthrow of the Whig party in 1853, the Freesoilers had been a heterogeneous mass of the Northern population, unorganized, and with no common object in view. Mr. Seward keenly felt that success in the present struggle for the Speakership was vital to the perpetuity of the Republican party. He summoned to Washington his ablest friends, Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley and James Watson Webb. These four famous leaders soon organized their followers in the Houseinto a compact body. Mr. Zollicoffer, who subsequently became a Secessionist, and fell in battle as a Confederate General, characterized them by name on the floor of the House as the chiefs of the lobby. In the course of a speech on the 20th of December, in which he declared, with a short-sightedness unworthy of so clever a man, that he would not vote for a Democrat against Banks, Zollicoffer said: “I see here a great organization, numbering from one hundred and four to one hundred and six members, who are steadily voting for Mr. Banks. Whilst I have reason to believe that the great lobby spirits who control that organization are Greeley and Seward, and Weed and Webb, men of intellect and power at the North, who are as bitterly opposed to the American party as they are to the Democratic party, I do, upon my conscience, believe that there are gentlemen voting for Mr. Banks, from day to day, who do not belong to the Abolition, or, as they style themselves, the Republican organization. For example, I cite the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Campbell), at whose position, as he announced it here the other day, I was surprised. He says he is an American, and he spurned the idea that the American party at the North were identified with the Freesoilers of the North and yet he casts his vote steadily against a conservative National American of his own State, and gives it to Mr. Banks, a Free Soil Democrat, who hasaffiliated, as his record clearly shows, with the most ultra and violent Free-soil and Abolition factions.”

The Capitol was alive with intrigues and with intriguers from every part of the country. The leaders retired to the Committee rooms day by day, and night by night, and runners kept them constantly informed of the movements of their adversaries. Counter-movements followed, and new plans succeeded each other on every side without avail. It was an interesting moment for the historian; the events of the hour were big with the fate of the country. Federalism and Democracy were once more, as in the year 1801, locked in a death struggle. Then, as now, it was the party of the Constitution against the party of Centralization. The Know-Nothings held the balance of power, and of course the followers of the man who wrote his own epitaph in these words, “Author of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Statutes of Virginia for Religious Freedom,” had nothing to expect from that pestilent band of bigots. Sprung from the same parent stem of John Adams Federalism, Joshua R. Giddings and his Abolitionists, and Henry Winter Davis and his Know-Nothings, were natural allies against the disciples of Jefferson.

Seward, Weed and Greeley, to their credit be it recorded, having led the anti-Know-Nothing branch of the Whig party in New York, were not personally influential with members of the American party inCongress. But the Republican leaders were men of varied resources, and Thurlow Weed, the Whig Warwick, was equal to any emergency. The fierce philippics of Henry A. Wise against the Know-Nothings in the memorable Virginia campaign just closed, and the tremendous blows which Alexander H. Stephens had dealt the party of dark lanterns in his then recent Georgia campaign, were artfully spread abroad among the proscriptionists in Congress, and the bitterness of their defeat in both those States added to the chagrin which the unanswerable arraignments of Wise and Stephens excited among them. The resolutions of the Democratic caucus, especially the one denouncing the enemies of civil and religious liberty, and the alleged contradictory constructions placed upon the Kansas-Nebraska bill by Northern and Southern Democrats, were also used by the Seward men as electioneering appeals for Mr. Banks. In one or two Democratic quarters the Republican leaders were strongly suspected of employing corrupt appliances.

The great anti-Know-Nothing speech of Alexander H. Stephens at Augusta, largely quoted from in a former chapter of this book, was now being used by the Republicans to increase Know-Nothing enmity to the Democrats. On his part Mr. Stephens was a tower of strength to the Administration men in the House. He appreciated the magnitude of the struggle, and was indefatigable in his attempts to defeat the Republicanand Know-Nothing alliance. He rejoiced at the prominence which the Republican leaders were giving to the victory over Know-Nothingism in his own State. “I think,” he said in a letter to his brother, “the Georgia election is more talked of than that of any other State in the Union.”[27]

Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas, C. C. Clay, R. M. T. Hunter, Judah P. Benjamin, and other Democratic Senators, were in frequent consultation with Alexander H. Stephens, John Kelly, Howell Cobb, James L. Orr, William A. Richardson, and other Democratic members of the House. The relative strength of the two leading parties in the House, seventy-four Democrats and one hundred and four Republicans, was the subject of anxious thought, and all at length saw that Mr. Richardson, the caucus nominee of the Democrats, could not be elected. He was, therefore, dropped, and James L. Orr substituted as the Democratic candidate. As week after week elapsed, it became evident that the dead-lock could only be broken by the abandonment of a straight party man by the Democrats. Even then no election was likely to take place unless the plurality rule should be adopted. About ten days before the end of the contest, as alluded to already, a private consultation took place between Mr. Stephens, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Orr, and Mr. Cobb, at which the nomination of William Aiken of South Carolina was decided uponas that of the only available candidate against Banks. But in order to render this movement effective, the utmost secrecy was necessary until the time should have come to bring out the new candidate. This plan originated with Mr. Stephens. Mr. Kelly entered heartily into it. To him was assigned the important duty as a Northern Democrat of putting Mr. Aiken in nomination. He was only to do this, when Banks’s election should appear imminent, or after the plurality rule had been adopted, with Orr still running against Banks. The nomination was not to be enforced by any set speech on the part of the mover, which might show design and premeditation, but was to be made as if on the impulse of the moment, and as the sudden act of an individual who had given up all hope for Orr, and now named Aiken as a sort of dernier resort to beat Banks.

It showed that the Democratic leaders reposed extraordinary confidence in Kelly’s coolness, tact and good judgment, that he should have been selected to initiate this most delicate parliamentary move. Mr. Orr had agreed to withdraw at the proper moment in Aiken’s favor. In the meantime Mr. Stephens was to manage the preliminary strategy necessary to put the train of affairs in motion. He sounded various members in casual conversation, and found men of the most opposite views quite favorable to Aiken, as a compromise candidate against Banks. At length, February first,when it seemed probable that Banks would be elected, and at the right moment, with admirable brevity and effect, John Kelly rose and nominated Aiken. But before Orr could get the floor to withdraw in favor of Mr. Kelly’s nominee, Williamson R. W. Cobb, of Alabama, who had found members who were in the secret predicting that Aiken would win, now sprang up and in a cut-and-dried-speech, and with a great parade of theatrical language, declared that the time had arrived to name the winning man, that he had the pleasure of offering an olive-branch to all those who opposed the Republicans, and after giving everybody to know that he was about to announce a grand parliamentary stroke on the part of the Democrats, he nominated William Aiken of South Carolina. The effect of that supremely ill-timed speech was to drive off votes which Mr. Aiken would have otherwise won, for as soon as it dawned upon the Whigs and Know-Nothings, who had not gone over to Banks, that the latest move was a Democratic “olive-branch,” a sufficient number of them reconsidered their intention to vote for Aiken, and Banks was elected Speaker the next day, under the operation of that extra-constitutional device—the plurality rule.

The votes of John Hickman and David Barclay, two Democrats from Pennsylvania, were not given on the final ballot to the candidate supported by theDemocratic side of the House. They were much censured for their course.

The Congressional Globe contains the following:

“House of Representatives, Friday, February 1, 1856.

Mr. Ball. I offer the following resolutions, and upon it I demand the previous question:

Resolved, That Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, be, and he is hereby declared Speaker of this House for the Thirty-fourth Congress.

Mr. Kelly. I desire to offer a substitute for that resolution.

The Clerk. It is not in order to do so now, as the previous question has been demanded.

Mr. Kelly. Then I give notice, that if the pending resolution is voted down, I shall hereafter offer the following:

Resolved, That William Aiken, of South Carolina, be, and he is hereby elected Speaker of this House, for the Thirty-fourth Congress.”

The resolution declaring Banks the Speaker was lost by 102 ayes to 115 noes. Then, before Mr. Kelly could obtain the floor to name Mr. Aiken, Williamson R. W. Cobb made his fatal olive-branch speech in favor of Aiken, and Mr. Washburne of Illinois moved to lay “that olive branch on the table.” The House by a vote of 98 to 117 refused to table the resolution. The main question of declaring Aiken Speaker wasthen put and lost, ayes 103, noes 110. It will be observed that the vote for Aiken was larger than that for Banks. Banks 102 to 115; Aiken 103 to 110. Mr. Kelly would have had the honor of naming the Speaker but for the precipitancy of Mr. W. R. W. Cobb. The plurality rule, a device of doubtful constitutionality, was adopted the next day, February 2d, and Banks was elected. The following was the vote: Banks 103; Aiken 100; Fuller 6; Campbell 4; Wells 1. If Henry Winter Davis and the other five Know-Nothings who voted for Fuller, or even three of them, had supported Mr. Aiken, his election would have taken place. Or if only two of those Know-Nothings, and the two Democratic back-sliders, Hickman and Barclay, had voted for Aiken, the defeat of Banks, and election of the Democratic candidate, in this momentous national contest would have resulted.

“After a prolonged struggle,” says Mr. Blaine in hisTwenty Years of Congress, “Nathaniel P. Banks was chosen Speaker over William Aiken. It was a significant circumstance, noted at the time, that the successful candidate came from Massachusetts, and the defeated one from South Carolina. It was a still more ominous fact that Banks was chosen by votes wholly from the free States, and that every vote from the slave States was given to Mr. Aiken, except that of Mr. Cullen of Delaware, and that of Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who declined to vote for either candidate.It was the first instance in the history of the Government in which a candidate for Speaker had been chosen without support from both sections. It was a distinctive victory of the free States over the consolidated power of the slave States. It marked an epoch.”[28]If William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed were here to explain this “distinctive victory,” as Mr. Blaine calls it, they might, if they were in a confessing mood, call the thing by another name.

It is certain that votes were thrown away on nominal candidates, and some even were given for Mr. Banks which belonged rightfully to Mr. Aiken. The members who cast those votes not only failed to reflect the sentiments of their constituencies, but in some cases openly defied and misrepresented the will of the voters to whom they owed their seats. Why these men betrayed the Democratic party in the memorable parliamentary battle which, as Mr. Blaine says “marked an epoch,” will perhaps forever remain one of the mysteries of the lobby of that eventful Thirty-fourth Congress.

John Kelly, Howard Cobb and others strongly suspected that corrupt appliances were at work.

Mr. Stephens, in a letter to his brother Linton Stephens, February 1st, 1856, said: “But for afaux pason the part of that fool C——, I think we should have made Aiken Speaker to-day. I had set the programmefor it about ten days ago. My plan was this: after the plurality rule should have been adopted (which I had all along believed after a while would be), and two ballots should have been had under it, if the Southern Know-Nothings should not indicate a purpose to go over to Orr to prevent Banks’s election (which I did not much expect them to do), then Aiken was to be put in nomination on the floor, Orr to decline, and let the last vote be between Aiken and Banks. From my knowledge of the House, its present tone and temper, knowledge of Aiken and the estimation he was held in by several of the scatterers, I believed he would beat Banks. This I communicated to a few, and a few only. I gave Cobb, of Georgia, my idea; he was struck with it, and communicated it to a few others. It took finely. I sounded some of the Western Know-Nothings,—Marshall and others,—and found that they could be brought into it. I said nothing of my plan, but simply asked carelessly how Aiken would do. I found that he would do for them. But after his name began to be talked of, he got so popular in the minds of many that C——, a fool, plugged the melon before it was ripe. If we had then been under the pressure of the plurality rule, and the choice between him and Banks, he would have been elected, sure as fate, in my opinion.”[29]

In conversations with the writer of this memoir,and in letters to him on the subject, Mr. Stephens often spoke of Mr. Kelly’s conduct during this first great struggle between the Democratic and Republican parties in the House of Representatives, as truly admirable and patriotic. “Mr. Kelly,” said he, “never hounded on anybody against the South, but was one of the few Northern Democrats who then stood firmly by us, in defense of our Constitutional rights against the assaults of Republicans and Know-Nothings, who had formed an unholy alliance against us.” The present writer has sometimes read, with surprise, attacks on Mr. Kelly in Southern newspapers of respectability and standing, such as the BaltimoreSunand AtlantaConstitution, which only could be ascribed to insufficient information on the part of the writers, or perhaps they unintentionally erred in accepting the scurrilous caricatures ofPuck, and other Gerrymanders, for the real John Kelly.

Mr. Banks appointed the standing Committees of the House in the interest of the ultra wing of the Republican party, of which William H. Seward and Joshua R. Giddings were the leaders. M. Seward was at length at the head of a great organization, with the immense power of the popular branch of Congress at his back, and no other man in American politics ever made more of his opportunities. Five years before he had been rudely jostled from his dream of ambition by the death of President Taylor, to whosefriendship for him he was indebted for his elevation to leadership in the Whig party in 1849. That event had been rendered possible in consequence of the disastrous feuds in the Democratic party of New York in 1848. While Hunkers and Barnburners fought, the Whigs captured the Legislature of New York, by which a Senator in Congress was to be chosen. Mr. Seward was elected Senator. His political sagacity soon enabled him to grasp the situation. Deeming it certain that whoever might control the Administration patronage, whether Senator or not, would control the politics of New York, he went to Washington, and paid assiduous court to that dashing Virginian, William Ballard Preston, Secretary of the Navy, to whom President Taylor was more attached than to any other member of his Cabinet. As a charmer Mr. Seward had few equals. He was addicted to aphorisms, and studiedbon motswith the diligence of Sheridan. His affectation of philosophy was set off by good manners and easy address. He had been a school-master in Georgia, and had at his command a fund of South-of-Potomac reminiscences, saws, and anecdotes. In the company of William Ballard Preston he was never so happy as when expatiating over the types, and modes, and fascinations of Southern society. The Tazewells, Randolphs, Gastons, Lowndes, Calhouns, Crawfords, Forsyths, Lumpkins, and other famous Cavaliers, were all names familiar on Mr. Seward’s lips as householdwords. It did not take him long to win Preston, and that gentleman soon addressed himself to the task of winning over the President to the side of Mr. Seward. But Vice-President Fillmore was Seward’s bitterest enemy, and Taylor’s confidence was of slower growth than Preston’s. Fierce sectional passions upon the subject of slavery were already raging between the North and South, and the old hero of Buena Vista desired to allay those passions, and render his Administration the era of pacification. Pledges were finally exacted and given, James Watson Webb representing Mr. Seward, and Secretary Preston representing the President, and the patronage of the Administration in New York was placed at Mr. Seward’s disposal; in consideration of which that wily diplomat entered into engagements to take no part in the Senate of the United States in the Abolition agitation, but to pursue a policy of conciliation and compromise at Washington. He had been elected Senator to succeed a Democrat. Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John J. Crittenden, and the other leading Whigs in the Senate and House, were friends of Mr. Fillmore, and unalterably opposed to Seward’s recognition by Taylor, upon any terms, as leader of the Administration party in New York. Angry controversies took place in Administration circles. A breach occurred between the President and Vice-President, and their social relations were broken off. Preston had acquired complete personal ascendencyover Taylor, and the old soldier became a violent partisan of Mr. Seward. The Senator from New York was now recognized as the real leader of the Whig party, and wielded the Administration lash with exasperating indifference to the powerful men arrayed on the side of Mr. Fillmore. Alienations took place between life-long friends, and many of the great Whig statesmen were not even on speaking terms. The Whig party was rent in twain.

Mr. Blaine has recently discussed some of the political events of this period of American history, in his valuable work “Twenty Years of Congress,” but in assigning causes for the destruction of the Whig party, he has strangely overlooked this portentous quarrel, provoked by Seward, which was the underlying cause,—thecausa causans,—of the dissolution and utter extinction of that celebrated party.

On the 11th of March, 1850, Mr. Seward, unmindful of his pledges to William Ballard Preston, made a violent Abolition speech in the Senate. The Georgia school-master has outwitted the Secretary of the Navy. Charles Francis Adams, in his memorial address at Albany on Mr. Seward, stated that he was aware of the “agreement,” as he called it, between the Auburn statesman and Taylor’s Administration, but he must have been ignorant of its real terms, for a descendant of two Presidents would scarcely have regarded theviolation of voluntary pledges as a fit topic for glowing eulogy.

And now in that month of March, 1850, William H. Seward was at the height of power. In all human probability he would be next President of the United States. Short-lived triumph. The summer of his glory was soon overcast with stormy portents. Within four little months Zachary Taylor lay dead in the White House, and Fillmore, Seward’s dearest foe, was President. The downfall of the Whig party soon followed, and Mr. Seward and Winfield Scott sat amid its ruins. It was about this time that Daniel Webster said to his friend Peter Harvey of Boston: “One of the convictions of my mind, and it is very strong, is that the people of the United States will never entrust their destinies, and the administration of their government, to the hands of William H. Seward and his associates.”[30]

But Mr. Webster, perhaps, underestimated the character of Mr. Seward. In 1856, upon the election of Nathaniel P. Banks as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the distinguished New York Senator became titular primate of a new and more powerful organization than the Whig party ever had been in its palmiest days. England is governed by Cabinet Ministers with seats in Parliament; the United States by standing Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives,by whom legislation is initiated, secretly formulated, and then carried through both Houses by aid of caucus management, and under the whip and spur of imperious majorities. This vast energy Mr. Seward now commanded through Speaker Banks in the House of Representatives. He had admirable lieutenants. Banks was a fair Speaker in his rulings, and not a sticker over non-essentials, but in everything that seriously affected the welfare of the Republican party, he was an aggressive and tenacious partisan. The astute Thurlow Weed was even a shrewder politician than Mr. Seward himself; and Horace Greeley, adopting the maxim of Daniel O’Connell—that agitation is the life of every cause—employed his unrivaled editorial pen in the anti-slavery crusade, now fairly inaugurated throughout the Northern States. Yet with all his great advantages and skill as an organizer, Mr. Seward could not have carried the Republican party to victory, had not some of the leaders of the Democratic party, during the last five years of their ascendency at Washington, wilfully neglected their opportunities, and given to their more vigilant opponents the vantage ground in the collision of forces on the floor of Congress.

During the latter days of the Pierce administration, and the whole of that of Buchanan, measures of great national importance were defeated through the culpable negligence of a few Southern Democrats. Northern Representatives who stood by the South indefense of its constitutional rights, bitterly complained of this neglect on the part of those who were so deeply interested. These Northern men, like Mr. Kelly and Horace F. Clark, had to brave a false but growing public opinion at the North, on account of their heroic devotion to what they deemed the line of duty, especially on the great Territorial questions, over which the Union was being shaken to its foundations. They had, therefore, the right to expect corresponding earnestness on the part of all their fellow Democrats of the South. To hold to Jeffersonian, strict construction opinions was then becoming extremely unpopular at the North, and involved sacrifices that threatened to blight their political prospects. To maintain similar opinions at the South was a wholly different matter. Everybody there believed in the State-rights doctrine, and public men were carried smoothly on with the current in defending measures of administration.

Mr. Kelly observed some things which he could not but regard with pain during the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, for they were pregnant with ill-omens for the country, and to a man of his perspicacious brain they must have foreboded those disasters to the Democratic party which ere long overtook it. There was an incapacity for affairs on the part of a few Southern Representatives, and a proneness to intemperance among quite a number of otherwise excellent men from the same section. It was a bad symptom ofthe distempered state of the Democratic party to find many of its Representatives frequently, and inexcusably, absent from their seats when test votes were about to be taken, fraught with vital interest to the South, and decisive of great national policies. The fault was more grievous, when the absentees, as was often the case, would have been able to change the result by being present and voting. This was attributable in some measure to inexperience, and want of training for public life. Some there were who were addicted to pleasure parties, frequently went home to their families, and entertained fanciful ideas respecting the duties devolving on gentlemen in society. That they were honorable men who would not stoop to disreputable conduct, no one who knew them can for a moment doubt. Indeed their integrity bore refreshing contrast to the looser morality so often to be encountered in a later political generation. The trouble simply was that these men were impracticables, and out of place in the Halls of Congress during the stormy days of 1855-60. They talked politics in the parlor and bar-room, and neglected their duties in the House and Senate. John Randolph, in his Hudibrastic vein, scores a similar class that flourished in Virginia in 1831: “We hug our lousy cloaks around us, take anotherchaw of tubbacker, float the room with nastiness, or ruin the grate and fire-irons, where they happen not to be rusty, and try conclusions upon constitutional points.”[31]

But a still greater evil was intemperance. The Hole-in-the-Wall, in the House of Representatives, was the downward path to irretrievable ruin, where many a noble fellow of genius and promise drowned his faculties in rum, when his country most needed his services. While the Democrats and Republicans were in a deadly struggle on the floor of the House over questions involving the destinies of the Union, and the lives and fortunes of millions of human beings, the tipplers were in the bar-room drinking, or on the sofas of the lobby dozing in their cups. A vote is wanting to carry an imperiled measure to victory,—the inebriate is lifted into a sitting posture, dragged to the floor, and bid to vote aye, or no, provided he is there to mumble out the word. Too often he is absent, having been carried off to his lodgings in a state of drunken imbecility. John Quincy Adams[32], in his Memoirs, inveighs savagely against this melancholy vice, as the besetting sin of an earlier day; and Alexander H. Stephens, in his private letters to his brother, Judge Linton Stephens, pours out indignant lamentations over the same disgraceful spectacle at the period under review.

“One vote against us,” writes Mr. Stephens to his brother, August 23, 1856, on the loss of an important bill. “Seven more Southern men absent than Northern. If our men had stayed, we should have been triumphant to-day. On several votes we lost two tothree Southern men who were too drunk to be brought in.”[33]Again, February 5, 1858, he says: “I have been more provoked at the course of Southern men on this Kansas question from the beginning than upon any other subject in my public career. I mean their culpable negligence.”[34]He informs his brother that thirteen Southern Democrats were absent March 11, 1858, when an important vote was taken, and the Republicans prevailed. “Had the thirteen been present we should have saved the question. How shamefully the South is represented! Some of the Southern men were too drunk to be got into the House. * * Have we any future but miserable petty squabbles, parties, factions, and fragments of organizations, led on by contemptible drunken demagogues?”[35]

The next day he writes again: “As usual we lost the question by the absence of two Southern votes. Luck seems to be against us. We had all our other men there to-day except those paired. Some were so drunk they had to be kept out until they were wanted to say ‘aye,’ or ‘no,’ as the case might be.”[36]Two years later, after the celebrated Charleston Democratic National Convention had broken up in a row, and the Douglas wing had adjourned to meet in Baltimore, and the Breckenridge wing in Richmond, Mr. Stephens seems to hint that drunkenness had something to dowith that most fatal step the Democrats ever took. “I am sorry,” he says in a letter to Professor Johnston, “things are as they are; sorry as I should be to see the paroxyms of a dear friend in a fit of delirium tremens.”[37]Mr. Kelly, who was a delegate to the Charleston Convention, returned home mortified and sad. “The drunkenness down there,” said he to the author of this memoir, “was shameful. Men whose minds are inflamed with whiskey are not able to govern themselves, much less the country. Alas! for the poor Democratic party. The disruption means defeat, and unless the Douglas men and Anti-Douglas men come together and nominate a single ticket, the Republicans will carry the election.”

Mr. Kelly, during his two terms in Congress, witnessed the demoralizing scenes to which Mr. Stephens refers in his letters. Kelly was often amused in spite of himself when he went out to the lobby to shake up some poor inebriated gentleman, and lead him to the floor to give an important vote. The grotesqueness and difficulties of the task, and the absurd figure cut by the tipsy Solon, always excited his risibilities, although he tried to keep a straight face during the trip to and fro. His account of some of these scenes, never mentioned except among intimate friends, was rich in comic touches and facial contortions. His mimicry of the scenes was irresistible. But he, too, equally withMr. Stephens, saw what it would all lead to, and felt that the Democratic party was in a bad way.

Another element of Democratic weakness was the over-readiness of those called Fire-eaters to appeal to the code duello, or other forms of personal rencontre. This was made by an unfriendly press to bear the appearance of a species of terrorism, and was to some extent a revival of the bullying and domineering so common among the Federalists in Congress in their treatment of Democrats during the Administration of John Adams. Writing in 1809 of “the brow-beatings and insults,” to which the Federalists subjected the Democrats in the days of the elder Adams, Mr. Jefferson says: “No person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period can form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities we had to brook. They saved our country, however.”[38]The inexcusable assault of Preston S. Brooks on Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber, May 22, 1856, had had its exact counterpart on the floor of the House of Representatives, February 15, 1798, when Roger Griswold, a member of Congress from Connecticut, with a stout hickory club, made a furious assault during the sitting of the House upon the celebrated Matthew Lyon, one of the Representatives from Vermont. Griswold was a Federalist, and Lyon a Democrat. But in the latter case the assault was made by Brooks, aDemocrat, upon Sumner, a Republican. The Federalists condoned the offense of Griswold, and by the decisive majority of 73 to 21 refused to expel him from Congress. Even a resolution to censure him was lost.[39]The Republicans of 1856, political legatees of the Federalists of 1798, did not show the same forbearance in the case of Brooks. A resolution of expulsions received 121 affirmative, and 94 negative votes in the House, not enough to expel a member under the two-thirds rule required by the Constitution, but more than enough, remembering the palliation of Griswold’s offense, to prove that all such votes reflect the partisan prejudices rather than the impartial judgment of members.

In 1856 a scuffle took place upon the floor of Congress between Mr. John Sherman of Ohio, and Mr. Wright of Tennessee. Mr. Sherman attempted to throw a handful of wafers in Mr. Wright’s face, and the latter returned the compliment by aiming a blow at Sherman with his fist. The latter put his hand in his pistol-pocket, but before he could draw members rushed between the combatants, and separated them.[40]Intense excitement prevailed during this bear-garden performance.

A still more disgraceful scene occurred in the House, February 5, 1858. Mr. Grow of Pennsylvania, andMr. Keitt of South Carolina became engaged in a regular fist fight, which spread to others until the flourishing conflict boasted not less than thirty active participants. The fight took place directly in front of the Clerk’s desk. In the midst of the melee Mr. Barksdale, who afterwards fell in the battle of Gettysburgh, rushed at Mr. Covode of Pennsylvania, who had lifted up a heavy spittoon and was about to hurl it at the head of the Mississippian, but at that instant some one seized Barksdale by the head, and off came his wig, leaving his shining pate glittering in the gas light, perfectly bald. At this ludicrous vision the enraged combatants and all the spectators were moved to laughter, and finally Mr. Speaker was able, by aid of the Sergeant-at-Arms, who bore his mace on high and led his posse through the throng, to recall the House, if not to order, at least from pandemonium.

“Last night,” says Mr. Stephens, in a letter, February 5, 1858, “we had a battle royal in the House. Thirty men at least were engaged in the fisticuff. Fortunately, no weapons were used. It was the first sectional fight ever had on the floor, I think; and if any weapons had been on hand it would probably have been a bloody one. All things here are tending to bring my mind to the conclusion that the Union cannot, or will not last long.”[41]

Mr. Kelly in the midst of these belligerent and disgracefulscenes kept cool and calm. Once, however, Mr. Humphrey Marshall, the Kentucky Know-Nothing, provoked him into momentary indignation by an insulting allusion to Mr. Kelly’s religion, and by charging Catholics with abject servitude in all civil and religious matters to the will of a foreign prince, the Pope of Rome. Kelly rose and corrected Marshall without discourtesy or bad feeling, but the huge form of the Kentuckian dilated with rage, and he repeated the offensive charge in still stronger language. Then Kelly rose with fire in his eye, and hurled back the charge in such manner as to satisfy the whole House, and Marshall in particular, that the barbaric passion for war, however held in subjection at other times, now glowed in the bosom of the New York member with irresistible fierceness. The two gentleman sat near each other, and the scene as described to the author of this memoir by a member who occupied an intervening seat, Judge Augustus R. Wright of Georgia, must have produced intense excitement throughout the House. Judge Wright, a distinguished Southern lawyer, said that after the colloquy between Mr. Kelly and Mr. Marshall, which is imperfectly reported in the Globe, and after Mr. Marshall had concluded his speech, the latter walked over to Mr. Kelly’s seat, and demanded to know what he meant by declaring the statement he had made was false. Marshall was known to be a believer in the code duello, andwas a man of immense size. Mr. Kelly kept his eyes fixed on Mr. Marshall as he approached, and Mr. Wright said that his physiognomy would have been a study for Lavater. It was rigid and intent, but the eyes kindled with peculiar light, and he gave Marshall such a glance that he, Wright, never could forget it as long as he lived, and he supposed Marshall never would either. To the question Kelly replied: “I meant exactly what I said; your statement was not true, Sir.” Mr. Kelly was on his feet facing Mr. Marshall, and Judge Wright anticipated an immediate collision between them. It was avoided, however, and Marshall, with returning good humor, made some allusion to the plain modes of speech in vogue among New York members, and went back to his place.—The colloquy as published in the Globe, toned down considerably in asperity, is as follows:

Mr. Marshall. “I feel quite sure there should have been a distinction drawn between the Papist and the Catholic. I understand that a portion of the Catholics hold the doctrine that the Pope,—whether it springs from his spiritual power or his temporal power, or both combined, is in the last resort the ultimate judge, not only of moral right, but under the moral law, of political right; and, therefore, possesses the power in some way, to absolve the citizen from obedience to the law of the land or country to which he belongs, of which his Holinessmay disapprove as an infraction of the Divine law.”

Mr. Kelly. “I desire to ask the gentleman a question.”

Mr. Marshall. “The gentleman can take an hour to reply to my speech.”

Mr. Kelly. “The gentleman asserts what is not a fact, and I desire”—

Mr. Marshall. “I have found a great contrariety of opinions among Catholics upon this particular branch of my subject, and I do not expect that my friend from New York and I shall agree upon what are the facts in regard to it.”

Mr. Kelly. “I deny that they hold any such doctrine, and the gentleman states what is not true.”

Mr. Marshall. “Well, I must say that the gentleman puts his remarks in a very blunt form.”

Mr. Kelly. “I say that the statement is not true.”

Mr. Marshall. “Why surely one branch of the Church holds that doctrine.”

Mr. Kelly. “I say there is no branch in this country that holds that doctrine; and the gentleman has never seen one that advocates that doctrine.”[42]

Mr. Marshall reiterated the statement, and Mr. Kelly in still more positive language denounced it asuntrue, and challenged the Kentuckian to produce any evidence to sustain his allegation. The scene was becoming very animated, and as the two herculean Representatives glared at each other with angry mien and menacing front, Mr. Wright was reminded, as he afterwards said, of Milton’s picture:—

“Such a frownEach cast at the other, as when two black cloudsWith heaven’s artillery fraught, come rattling onOver the Caspian, then stand front to frontHovering a space, till winds the signal blowTo join their dark encounter in mid-airSo frowned the mighty combatants.”

“Such a frown

Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds

With heaven’s artillery fraught, come rattling on

Over the Caspian, then stand front to front

Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow

To join their dark encounter in mid-air

So frowned the mighty combatants.”

But this dispute with Marshall was a very exceptional thing to happen to Mr. Kelly. He was a universal favorite in both Houses of Congress, and his popularity continued to grow the longer he remained at the Federal Capital. Some rare men there are in this world in whom there is such unity of character, whose talents however high are equalled by the qualities of their hearts; whose virtues however great are equalled by the warmth of their affections and the sweetness of their temper; they carry a passport to the common heart written, as it were, upon their fronts by the finger of God. “The world is a looking-glass,” says Thackeray in Vanity Fair, “and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you;laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion.” Sir Thomas More was one of those rare characters who won the general heart by the sunshine that played about him. He met Erasmus at a dinner table in London without an introduction, but Erasmus knew him at once. “Aut Morus aut Nullus,” said he. “Aut Erasmus aut Diabolus,” was the waggish reply. In America occasionally some noble spirit appears who finds his way to all hearts without an effort. Such a man was Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, simple, plain, unostentatious, the political idol of John Randolph, “the last of the Romans” as Jefferson called him; “a speaker,” says Benton, “of no pretension and great performance, who spoke more good sense while he was getting up out of his chair and getting back into it, than many others did in long discourses.”[43]Mr. Stephens frequently said to the present writer that John Kelly reminded him more of Nathaniel Macon than did any other man in public life. Kelly’s rugged sense of right, his blunt honesty, sagaciousness, modesty, and good humor, conspired to make friends for him on all sides of the House. If he was asked to do a favor for any one, he generally did more than was asked, and never said anything about it afterwards. Kindness and service to mankind were virtues of which he was the cheerful exemplar.

Stephens and Kelly were strikingly alike in thisrespect, both seemed never to tire in well-doing and deeds of benevolence. The number of poor boys who have owed their education and success in life to these two men has been very large. There are hundreds of happy homes in this country to-day where poverty has been turned into comfort, and pinching want into comparative prosperity, by Alexander H. Stephens and John Kelly. The two gentlemen were deeply attached friends, and each regarded the other as the type of an honest statesman. Twenty years after the close of their Congressional relations, Mr. Stephens, in a letter to the present writer, desired to be remembered to Mr. Kelly in the kindest manner. The following is the letter, personal matters of no interest to the general reader being omitted:

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