Fist-pounding arguments, vitriolic debates, name calling, public disturbances, and an assault by an armed mob have all been a part of the history of the U.S. Congress. Prior to the Civil War the acrimony was especially acute dividing the country into two major camps that led to war. In more recent times the rules of order have prevailed. But prior to the civil war how many acts of violence were there?
The William Graves, Jonathan Cilley Duel: One major debate led to the death of a congressman at the hands of another congressman. In February, 1838, Jonathan Cilley, a Maine Democrat, made a statement on the House floor that angered a newspaper editor with Whig inclinations, referring to the editor as biased. Cilley asserted that the editor, James Watson Webb, changed sides on the issue of supporting the renewal of the Second Bank of the United States because he received $52,000 in loans from the bank. As this was a blatant charge of corruption, Webb asked William Graves, a Kentucky Whig, to deliver a letter to Cilley that demanded that he take back what he had said or face off in a duel. Cilley refused to accept the letter, and this slight meant an insult to Graves and his Whig colleagues. To protect his honor Graves challenged Cilley to a duel, and Cilley accepted being honor bound himself. Dueling was prohibited in Washington in 1838, so the participants located the event at the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds in Maryland. Cilley was entitled to choose weapons since he was the challenged party, and he chose rifles at a distance of eighty yards in an effort to offset Graves’s alleged shooting prowess with a pistol. The first two rounds resulted in misses, but in the third round Graves shot Cilley through the femoral artery in his leg, and he bled to death within minutes. The hard irony is that Cilley and Graves did not have a dispute with each other and neither prefer to duel, but Graves felt obliged to act as a proxy for Webb.
The Attempt on Thomas Hart Benton’s Life: Thomas Hart Benton was a senator from the State of Missouri from August, 1821 to March, 1851. In February, 1844, he survived an accident on board the U.S.S. Princeton during a tour of the Potomac River when a canon misfired. Seven people including dignitaries were killed, and he was injured, but he did not miss a day at the Senate. However, in April, 1850, he came close to being shot on the Senate floor. During the Senate debate over the Compromise of 1850, Vice President Millard Fillmore attempted to call the rowdy senators to order. In doing so, he declared that Senator Benton was out of order. Senator Henry Clay angrily charged that Fillmore’s action was an attack on the power and integrity of the Senate itself. The ensuing debate pitted Benton against Senator Henry S. Foote from Mississippi. Benton, a large, husky man with a reputation for tough talk, shoved his chair aside and marched up the center aisle towards the much smaller Foote. Seeing this, Foote drew a pistol sparking pandemonium in the chamber. Benton then shouted, “I have no pistols! Let him fire! Stand out of the way and let the assassin fire!” Other members of the chamber intervened and wrestled Foote to the floor taking his pistol away from him. Although no one was seriously hurt, the fact that one of its members could have been shot to death prompted an internal investigation by a Senate committee. This incident came in conjunction with Fillmore’s attempts to bring about rules of order in the Senate before he became president three months later upon the death of President Zachary Taylor.
The Charles Sumner Caning: One of the most blatant acts of violence in Congress during the pre-civil war days came on May 22, 1856. Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts abolitionist Republican, made a philippic speech attacking the Kansas-Nebraska Act and especially one of its authors, South Carolina Democrat, Andrew Butler. The speech was basically anti-slavery and nothing new to the Senate, but it also included a personal attack on Butler who had recently suffered a stroke and had slurred speech. Further, the speech included sexual innuendos about slave owners and their slave women. Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina was a relative of Butler’s and took exception to Sumner’s speech as excessive. He consulted Representative Lawrence Keitt, another South Carolina Republican, on the rules and etiquette of dueling. Keitt advised him that dueling was too honorable for a person like Sumner, and the best solution to the problem would be caning him. On the Afternoon of May 22, 1856, Brooks, Keitt, and another Representative, Virginia’s Henry Edmundson, all entered the Senate chamber when it was nearly empty. They found Sumner still at his desk writing. Brooks told Sumner that his speech was a libel against his state and family. As Sumner began to rise out of his chair, Brooks beat him severely with a sturdy cane that had a golden head. Sumner tried in vain to protect himself, but was beaten to his knees. As he tried to get out from his desk, Brooks continued to beat him with the cane—even after the cane broke into several pieces. Several other Senators and Representatives tried to stop the beating, but Keitt pulled out his pistol and admonished them to stay out of the way. Sumner was badly hurt and required medical attention. It would be three years before he would be able to return to the Senate. Brooks was arrested and convicted of assault, but he was only fined and not imprisoned. He resigned from the House of Representatives, but was sent back immediately by a vote of his South Carolina constituents. He died of croup before the year ended.
The Congressional Brawl: On February 6, 1858, the U.S. House of Representatives debated the entry of the Kansas Territory into the Union as a State. The process included ratifying a constitution for the future state of Kansas. One of the proposals referred to as the Lecompton Constitution among other things provided for protection of slavery and barred basic rights for people of color. The debate was heated and divided into pro and anti-slavery camps. Around 2 AM on the 6th, Pennsylvania Republican Galusha Grow and South Carolina Democrat Laurence Keitt traded loud insults with each other followed by fisticuffs. Immediately, the floor of the House turned into a riot scene as over thirty members from both parties went after each other. The House Speaker, South Carolina Democrat James Orr, pounded the gavel furiously in a vain attempt to restore order. Adam J. Glossbrenner, the Sergeant-at-Arms was ordered by Orr to arrest those members who would not come to order. But Glossbrenner was only able to present the House Mace as a symbolic call to order while he waded through the melee. Finally, Wisconsin Republicans John “Bowie Knife” Potter and Cadwaller Washburn, while wrangling with William Barksdale, a Mississippi Democrat, ripped Barksdale’s hairpiece off causing the ruckus to degenerate into laughter and jeering on both sides. It was two days later before the House reconvened, but their vote created the first of a series of setbacks for the Lecompton Constitution that led to its ultimate defeat and replacement by the Wyandotte Constitution, paving the way for Kansas to enter the Union as a free state in 1861.
Conclusions: By law members of the House and Senate cannot be sued for slander or libel while in the respective chambers. Although the violent events, particularly the brutal caning of Sumner, drew outrage, there was little official activity done in the way of keeping order in either chamber. The bitter divide that would soon develop into a terrible war was mirrored by the outrage of these and other violent acts that occurred in the one place that we all would have expected to protect its members.
Sources: History.com, Violence in Congress Before the Civil War: From Canings and Stabbings to Murder, Becky Little, October 16, 2023.
Wikipedia, Thomas Hart Benton.
United States Senate, Bitter Feelings in the Senate Chamber, April 3, 1850.
History, Art & Archives, United States House of Representatives
Wikipedia, The Caning of Charles Sumner.