82. See for example French, diary entry, January 9, 1844, Witness, 158.
83. French wrote countless electioneering songs. On his songwriting generally, see French, diary entry, January 9, 1844, Witness, 158.
84. Baltimore Sun, June 16, 1842; French, diary entry, January 10, 1852, Witness, 226. For a full account of the banquet and a copy of the invitation, see “Proceedings at the Banquet of the Jackson Democratic Association, Washington, Eighth of January, 1852” (Washington, D.C., 1852). For another such dinner, see New Hampshire Sentinel, January 29, 1835; New York Evening Post, January 16, 1835; Franklin Pierce to his brother, January 9, 1835, Franklin Pierce Papers, LC.
85. Salem Gazette, January 8, 1828; Salem Register, March 30, 1833. Published anonymously, the piece was probably written by the future congressman Robert Rantoul, Jr. (D-MA). Globe, 32nd Cong., 1st Sess., March 6, 1852, 248 app.; ibid., March 9, 1852, 293 app. Ultimately becoming a cliché for empty pomp, this line morphed into countless variations over the decades; for example, “tunjo,” became “tonjon,” “tonton,” “tomjohn,” and “tom-tom.” As late as 1916, a novelist put the phrase in the mouth of a happy coal miner: “Get ready to blow the hewgag and beat the tom-tom. We’re in it, this time!” Francis Lynde, After the Manner of Men (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 252.
86. Joel Mitchell Chapple, “Affairs at Washington,” National Magazine (October 1903), 20.
87. For a list of some of French’s activities, see Witness, xv–xvi; Rural Repository (Hudson, N.Y.), March 31, 1849; and his obituary in the NYT, August 14, 1870. French co-founded the Guardian Society to reform the city’s juvenile delinquents. Charles Moore, ed. and comp., Joint Select Committee to Investigate the Charities and Reformatory Institutions in the District of Columbia (Washington: GPO, 1898), 154; French, diary entry, August 24, 1862, Witness, 405. For the school for girls, see French, diary entry, January 10, 1852, Witness, 226.
88. French, diary entry, June 23, 1840. Witness, 101. French went to Bladensburg with George M. Phillips of Pennsylvania, a clerk in the solicitor’s office of the Treasury Department, and two House clerks, Horatio N. Crabb of Pennsylvania and Simon Brown of Massachusetts.
89. See for example Alexandria Gazette, October 3, 1844, which describes Western competition over the height of Whig and Democratic flagpoles.
90. French to M. P. Wilder, October 29, 1849, in Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire … Celebrated in Boston, November 7, 1849 (Boston: James French, 1850), 134.
91. French, “A Song,” in Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire, 108–10.
92. Daily National Intelligencer, March 29, 1843.
93. French, diary entry, November 6, 1841, Witness, 127–28. See also his speech at the laying of the cornerstone of a new Masonic temple on October 14, 1864. Freemason’s Monthly Magazine 24 (November 1, 1864): 23–25.
94. French, diary entry, March 13, 1842, Witness, 138.
95. See generally Cephas Brainerd and Eveline Warner Brainerd, eds., The New England Society Orations: Addresses, Sermons, and Poems Delivered Before the New England Society in the City of New York, 1820–1885, 2 vols. (New York: Century Co., 1901), 1:6; New England Society in the City of New York, www.nesnyc.org/about-us/history, accessed June 14, 2013.
96. Dall, diary entry, December 26, 1842, Daughter of Boston, 67–68.
97. Rural Repository (Hudson, N.Y.), March 31, 1849.
98. See generally Susan-Mary Grant, North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), passim (esp. 64–65).
99. Martin F. Tupper, “On the Union,” Littell’s Living Age, March 22, 1851, 575.
100. David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, January 30, 1848; July 27 and February 14, 1850, DOP. Outlaw found the Northern “he-woman” Anne Lynch unattractive and “as hard favoured as could be desired.” Ibid., July 3, 1850. On Outlaw and women, see also Berry, All That Makes a Man, 118–36, 158–60.
101. Notes for a speech, ca. 1844–45, Fisher Family Papers, UNC. Fisher was in Congress from 1817 to 1820 and 1839 to 1840.
102. George C. Rable, Damn Yankees!: Demonization and Defiance in the Confederate South (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2015).
103. On Northern ignorance about the South, see esp. Grant, North over South. On the intellectual erasure of Northern slavery, see Melish, Disowning Slavery. On the small cohort of Northern antislavery Democrats, see esp. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery.
104. See for example French to Henry Flagg French, November 1846, BBFFP.
105. French, diary entry, July 1, 1855, Witness, 260.
106. John Russell Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1848), 128. The dictionary’s 1860 third edition had a new term, “dough-facism,” defined as “truckling to the slave power.” Ibid., 128. Bartlett turned to John Inman, editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser, for some political definitions; Inman refined Bartlett’s definition of doughface in an appendix. Ibid., 397.
107. William Plumer, Jr., “Reminiscences of Daniel Webster,” in The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, National Edition, 18 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1903), 17:553–55. Plumer (R-NH) noticed Benton’s formal manner, guessed what was happening, and later confirmed it with Webster. His assumption, based on nothing other than Benton’s body language, says a lot about the routine nature of honor disputes in Congress.
108. Connecticut Courant, March 15, 1809.
109. New-Hampshire Sentinel (Keene), April 1, 1820. On doughfaces and Northern Democrats, see esp. Landis, Northern Men with Southern Loyalties; Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000), 85–88, 109–16; Joshua A. Lynn, “Half-Baked Men: Doughface Masculinity and the Antebellum Politics of Household,” M.A. thesis, UNC, Chapel Hill, 2010; Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery; Nicholas Wood, “John Randolph of Roanoke and the Politics of Slavery in the Early Republic,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 2 (Summer 2012): 106–43 (esp. 129–30). Wood argues that Randolph was mocking Northerners who advocated restricting slavery for purely mercenary (as opposed to moral) reasons; others argue that he was mocking Northern allies. For discussion of the origins and meaning of the word, see Lynn, “Half-Baked Men,” 15–18; Hans Sperber and James N. Tidwell, “Words and Phrases in American Politics,” American Speech 2 (May 1950): 91–100 (esp. 95–100). For a lengthy (angry) opinion written not long after Charles Sumner’s caning, see “A Former Resident of the South” [Darius Lyman], Leaven for Doughfaces; or Threescore and Ten Parables Touching Slavery (Cincinnati: Bangs and Company, 1856).
110. Whitman, “Song for Certain Congressmen,” 1850, in Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1076. See also Betsy Erkkila, Whitman the Political Poet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Martin Klammer, Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Edward L. Widmer, Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 81–85. On doughfaces as cowards, see Lynn, “Half-Baked Men,” esp. 15–18.
111. Seward, Reminiscences, 83. See also Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1874), 2:295. During voting on slavery in the District of Columbia in 1848, Joshua Giddings (W-OH) saw dodgers vanish for that vote and return for the next one. Giddings to Charles Sumner, December 1848, in George Washington Julian, The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1892), 260. See also Landis, Northern Men, 312.
112. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Sess., September 12, 1850, 1807. Twenty-one senators didn’t vot
e for the Fugitive Slave Act. No Northern Whigs voted for it; eight voted against it and five were absent. Three Northern Democrats voted against it, three voted for it, and nine were absent. Sean M. Theriault and Barry R. Weingast, “Agenda Manipulation, Strategic Voting, and Legislative Details in the Compromise of 1850,” in Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress, ed. David Brady and Matthew McCubbins, 2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, 2002), 1:375; James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute, 1983), 69 footnote; Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1964), 161–64; Landis, Northern Men, 31–32.
113. Jeffrey A. Jenkins and Charles Stewart III, “The Gag Rule, Congressional Politics, and the Growth of Anti-Slavery Popular Politics,” paper presented at “Congress and History” conference, MIT, May 30–31, 2003, 27–28.
114. Fessenden to Ellen Fessenden, June 15, 1841, William P. Fessenden Papers, Bowdoin College. Giddings said much the same thing, complaining during debate that free-state men had been silent when insulted because they wanted to get down to business (and past the adoption of rules). Globe, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., June 15, 1841, 54.
115. Fessenden to Samuel Fessenden, July 29, 1841, William P. Fessenden Papers, Bowdoin College.
116. Globe, 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., February 13, 1843, 195 appendix; Giddings, diary entry, December 14, 1838, in Julian, Life of Joshua R. Giddings, 52.
117. Hale to Lucy Hale, June 10, 1844, John Parker Hale Papers, NHHS. See also Amos Tuck to John Parker Hale, January 15, 1845, ibid.; Charles D. Cleveland to Hale, March 24, 1844; S. Hale to Hale, April 12, 1850; W. Claggett to Hale, March 7, 1844, ibid.; Giddings, diary entry, December 14, 1838, in Julian, Life of Joshua Giddings, 52.
118. Globe, 25th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 11, 1838, 71 app. Discussing slavery in Florida, John C. Calhoun praised Randolph’s unyielding opposition to abolitionism; Clay was urging Calhoun to “deal more calmly with all parts of the Union.”
119. Ibid., 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., February 13, 1843, 195 app.
120. Hale to Lucy Hale, June 10, 1844, John Parker Hale Papers, NHHS.
121. Joseph Root (W-OH) made the comment. Globe, 29th Cong., 2nd Sess., February 5, 1847, 333; Hale to Lucy Hale, June 10, 1844, John Parker Hale Papers, NHHS.
122. “Northern Truckling,” Philanthropist (Cincinnati), March 1, 1843. See also ibid., February 8, 1843. Fillmore’s attacker was Henry Wise (W-VA).
123. See also Brie Anna Swenson Arnold, “‘Competition for the Virgin Soil of Kansas’: Gendered and Sexualized Discourse About the Kansas Crisis in Northern Popular Print and Political Culture, 1854–1860” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2008), 194–233; Lynn, “Half-Baked Men; Thomas J. Balcerski, “Intimate Contests: Manhood, Friendship, and the Coming of the Civil War” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 2014).
124. Benton, Thirty Years’ View, 2:618; Globe, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., February 12, 1836, 89–93 app.; ibid., February 29, 1836, 149 app. King was talking about both Calhoun’s gaffe and a similar one made by John Black (AJ-MS) a few days later.
125. On women petitioners in the period, see esp. Zaeske, “‘The South Arose as One Man’”; idem., Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women’s Political Identity (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2003); Jennifer Rose Mercieca, “The Culture of Honor: How Slaveholders Responded to the Abolitionist Mail Crisis of 1835,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10, no. 1 (2007): 51–76.
126. Globe, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., February 12, 1836, 89–93 app.; ibid., February 15, 1836, 185–86. The article was in the Herald of Freedom (Concord). Holt, Franklin Pierce, 18–19; Cole, Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire, 180–82; Nichols, Franklin Pierce, 83–86; Benton, Thirty Years’ View, 2:615–18.
127. John Fairfield to Ann Fairfield, February 15, 1836, John Fairfield Papers, LC. Unfortunately, French didn’t “journalize” from January through March of 1836. French, diary entry, March 20, 1836, Witness, 64. On Pierce’s “excited” harangue, see also New-Bedford Mercury (Massachusetts), February 26, 1836.
128. Connecticut Courant, February 22, 1836.
129. New Hampshire Patriot, March 14, 1836.
130. French to Henry Flagg French, June 8, 1834, BBFFP.
131. French, Chicago Democrat, dateline January 4, 1837, BBFFP.
132. See for example the comments of Andrew Stewart (W-PA), Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., January 20, 1844, 173; David Outlaw to Emily Outlaw, March 20, 1848, DOP.
133. Dawson to William S. Hamilton, June 29, 1824, in Joseph G. Dawson, III, The Louisiana Governors, from Iberville to Edwards (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1990), 114; Elrie Robinson, Early Feliciana Politics (St. Francisville, La.: St. Francisville Democrat, 1936), 29. On Dawson, see ibid., 12–32, 57–64. Dawson almost fought a duel using a cut-and-thrust sword, described by his pistol-preferring opponent as a three-foot-long blade. Ibid., 29.
134. Globe, 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 28, 1842, 183–83. See also The New World (N.Y.), January 29, 1842; Liberator (Boston), February 14, 1845; Globe, 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., February 13, 1843, 277.
135. Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., December 10 and 11, 1845, 41–42.
136. Ibid., 27th Cong., 3rd Sess., February 13, 1843, 277.
137. Standing by Giddings were John Causin (W-MD), Solomon Foot (W-VT), Kenneth Rayner (W-NC), and Charles Hudson (W-MA); Giddings said that Causin and Rayner—the two Southerners—were armed. Standing by Dawson were John Slidell (D-LA), William Henry Stiles (D-GA), and two unnamed Democrats. Giddings says that Dawson and Causin stayed standing until he finished speaking. Giddings, History of the Rebellion, 241; George Washington Julian, The Life of Joshua R. Giddings (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1892), 174; Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.), February 8, 1845; Salem Register, February 10, 1845; Huron Reflector (Norwalk, Ohio), February 25, 1845.
138. Mercieca shows the link between the mail crisis and the culture of honor in “The Culture of Honor.” See also Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “The Abolitionists’ Postal Campaign of 1835,” Journal of Negro History 50 (October 1965): 227–38; idem., Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery (Cleveland: Case Western 1969), 149–66; Leonard Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Susan Wyly-Jones, “The 1835 Anti-Abolition Meetings in the South: A New Look at the Controversy over the Abolition Postal Campaign,” Civil War History 47 (2001): 289–309; Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 481–504; Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1997).
139. Globe, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., January 7, 1836, 81.
140. Grimsted, American Mobbing, passim.
141. Ibid., 15, 133–34. Scholarship on the link between Southern honor and violence is vast; particularly useful in a comparative or congressional context are Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South (Austin: University of Texas, 1979); “‘Let Us Manufacture Men’: Educating Elite Boys in the Early National South,” in Southern Manhood: Perspectives on Masculinity in the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia, 2004), 22–48; Nisbett and Cohen, Culture of Honor; Bowman, At the Precipice, chapter 3; Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Franklin, Militant South.
142. William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1994), 5:133; Ernest G. Fischer, Robert Potter: Founder of the Texas Navy (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1976), 22–25; Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006), 47–48; Grimsted, American Mobbi
ng, 90, 93.
143. Grimsted, American Mobbing, 99.
144. On the ethic of Southern honor overall, see esp. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Greenberg, Honor and Slavery; Ayers, Vengeance and Justice.
145. On the importance of proving bravery rather than shedding blood in dueling, see esp. Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale, 2001), 159–198.
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