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183. Pryor tangled with the New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett’s son James Jr., John Sherman (R-OH), John Hickman (R-PA), Owen Lovejoy (R-IL), and John Potter (R-WI).
184. Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 3 vols. (New York: McClure, 1907–1908), 2:166.
185. NYT, May 16, 1860.
186. Scrapbook, Papers of Frederick Lander, LC; New York Herald, April 21, 1860.
187. See for example Milwaukee Sentinel, November 6, 1860.
188. Anonymous undated statement, January 1860, Lawrence O’Bryan Branch Papers, UVA; Boston Evening Transcript, January 2, 1860; Constitution (Washington), January 4, 1860. See also Boston Traveler, January 2, 1860; Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.), January 3, 1860; New Albany Daily Ledger, January 5, 1860; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 14, 1860; Augusta Chronicle, January 1, 1860. James Watson Webb’s resulting homily on the sins of dueling in the Courier and Enquirer irritated the Herald enough to detail Webb’s dueling history, including an extended discussion of the Graves-Cilley duel. New York Herald, January 15, 1860.
189. Vanity Fair, “Jonathan’s Idees,” January 14, 1860, 40.
190. French, diary entry, May 20 and 28, 1860, Witness, 322–24; NYT, May 21, 1860; Daily National Intelligencer, May 22, 1860; New York Herald, May 20, 1860.
191. Ibid., May 28, 1860, 324.
192. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., June 4, 1860, 2600; Sumner, The Barbarism of Slavery. Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, on the Bill for the Admission of Kansas as a Free State, in the United States Senate, June 4, 1860 (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 117–18.
193. Sumner, “The Barbarism of Slavery” (New York: Young Men’s Republican Union, 1863), 79–80.
194. French to Bess French, June 8, 1860, in the July 8, 1860, diary entry, Witness, 327. On July 8, French recounted events between June 5 and 27 by incorporating into his diary a series of letters to his wife while she and the children were in New Hampshire.
195. French to Bess French, June 10, 1860, in diary entry, July 8, 1860, Witness, 327; Donald, Charles Sumner, 357.
196. French to Bess French, June 10, 1860, in diary entry, July 8, 1860, Witness, 328.
197. Hammond to Francis Lieber, April 19, 1860, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, ed. Thomas Sergeant Perry (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1882), 310–11. See also William Porcher Miles to C. G. Memminger, January 23, 1860, in Crenshaw, “Speakership Contest,” 332. Miles said he couldn’t leave the House at the moment because he wanted to be fighting with the South if there was a “collision.”
198. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., January 12, 1860, 434–35. See also National Era, January 19, 1860; Chicago Times and Tribune, January 13, 1860; New York Herald, January 13, 14, and 16, 1860.
199. Schurz, Reminiscences, 2:163–4.
200. Vanity Fair, January 28, 1860, 76; Schurz, Reminiscences, 2:164. See also William Cullen Bryant, “Proof of Our Progress in Civilization,” January 19, 1860, in Power for Sanity: Selected Editorials of William Cullen Bryant, 1829–1861, ed. William Cullen Bryant II (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 370–73.
201. Crawford to Alexander Stephens, April 8, 1860, in Crenshaw, “Speakership Contest,” 335–36.
202. Crenshaw notes that Southern politicians disagreed about where they stood in relation to public opinion; some felt that the people were ready for anything, others felt that they were outstripping their constituents. Ibid.
203. Ibid.
204. Gist to W. P. Miles, December 20, 1859, in ibid., 334–5.
205. E. W. Hazard to Lyman Trumbull, May 23, 1856, Lyman Trumbull Papers, LC.
206. For a similar logic in another era of extreme politics—the 1790s—see Joanne B. Freeman, “The Election of 1800: A Study in the Process of Political Change,” Yale Law Journal 108 (June 1999): 1959–94.
207. Freehling, Road to Disunion, 2:338.
208. Ibid., 337–38, 371; Walther, Yancey, 270–71.
209. Susanna Sparks Keitt to Mrs. Frederick Brown, March 4, 1861, Laurence Massillon Keitt Papers, Duke University.
210. Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., December 5, 1860, 10.
211. Ibid., 12.
212. French, diary entry, May 14, 1861, Witness, 356.
213. New-York Tribune, January 21, 1861.
214. See esp. Potter, Lincoln and His Party; Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1989). For a brilliant analysis of the evolving meaning of “disunion” as a prophecy, a threat, an accusation, a process, and then a program, see Varon, Disunion!
215. For examples of these speeches, see Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 21, 1861, 484–87.
216. New York Herald, January 22, 1861. The Globe doesn’t include those exact words, but Mason’s speech makes precisely that point throughout. Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 22, 1861, 503.
217. French, diary entries, November 27, 1860, February 3 and April 19, 1861, Witness, 336–37, 340–41, 351.
218. Ibid., November 11, 1860, 335.
219. On the credibility of a Baltimore assassination threat, see Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 403–405.
220. Ibid., January 1, February 24, and March 1, 1861, 339, 341–43.
221. Ibid., February 26 and March 6, 1861, 343, 348.
222. French’s instinct wasn’t without merit. On Confederate and Union Masons crossing battle lines to help each other, see Michael A. Halleran, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Freemasonry in the American Civil War (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2010); Allen E. Roberts, House Undivided: The Story of Freemasonry and the Civil War (Richmond: Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply, 1990).
223. Both sides of this correspondence are included in Proceedings of the Regular Conclave of the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar of the State of Michigan, Held at Detroit Michigan, June 4, A.D. 1861, A. O. 743 (Detroit: H. Barns & Co., Printers, 1861), 22–24. See also “The Voice of the Templars of Pennsylvania,” The Masonic Review 25 (September 1861): 341–46.
224. W. J. Bates to French, May 27, 1861; French to Bates, June 18, 1861, in “The Virginia Templar Secession,” Freemason’s Monthly Magazine 20 (August 1861): 307–309.
225. French, diary entry, March 6, 1861, Witness, 348.
EPILOGUE
1. French, diary entry, May 6, 1861, Witness, 354–55.
2. Out of a grand total of $454,001.70 sought by Kansas claimants, French awarded $449,498.11. He granted $10,000 or more to five claimants; George Brown, the owner of the Herald; Columbus Hornsby, William Hornsby, and Thomas Ferrell, owners of a merchandising warehouse; Shalron W. Eldridge, owner of the Free State Hotel; the estate of the hardware store owner Gaius Jenkins; and Charles Robinson. 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., Rpt. No. 104, Kansas Claims, March 2, 1861, 3 vols., 108–23, 403, 900. See also Dale E. Watts, “How Bloody Was Bleeding Kansas? Political Killings in Kansas Territory, 1854–1861,” Kansas History 18 (Summer 1995): 116–29.
3. French to Catherine Wells, June 3, 1862, in Michael Spangler, “Benjamin Brown French in the Lincoln Period,” White House History 8 (Fall 2000): 12. On Lincoln, see also French, diary entry, April 14 and November 24, 1861; January 8, 1862; July 8, 1863, Witness, 350, 381, 384, 426.
4. Lincoln first appointed William Wood commissioner, but after accompanying Mary Todd Lincoln on the controversial shopping trip that prompted French’s “mission,” Wood fell out of grace and French replaced him. Witness, 361, note 1.
5. Ibid., December 18, 1861, 383. See also ibid., September 8, 1861, and May 24, 1865, 375, 479; French to Henry Flagg French, October 13, 1861, BBFFP.
6.
French, diary entry, December 16, 1861, Witness, 382.
7. Ibid. See also French’s script of his conversations with the Lincolns in his letter to Pamela French, December 24, 1861, BBFFP; and Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Norton, 2008), 187–90. Baker notes that French ultimately buried the expenses in his commissioner budget and a congressional appropriation. Baker, Lincoln, 189–90.
8. French, diary entry, December 26, 1869, Witness, 608. French seems to have become less admiring of Mary Todd Lincoln over time. Early in their relationship, he noted that she was “imprudent,” an “accomplished … curiosity,” but that much of the gossip about her was untrue. French to Pamela French, December 24, 1861, BBFFP. See also French, diary entry, May 24, 1865, Witness, 479.
9. French, diary entry, April 23, 1861, Witness, 352.
10. On Washington in wartime, see esp. Winkle, Lincoln’s Citadel. On Congress, see Bogue, Congressman’s Civil War; David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party.
11. French, diary entry, June 30, 1861, 361–62.
12. The group included (but wasn’t limited to) William Richardson (D-IL), J. R. Morris (D-OH), John A. Gurley (R-OH), Alfred Ely (R-NY), Elihu Washburne (R-IL), Harrison Blake (R-OH), Charles B. Hoard (R-NY), Albert Riddle (R-OH), William Dunn (R-IN), Benjamin Wade (R-OH), Zachariah Chandler (R-MI), Simon Cameron (R-PA), Henry Wilson (R-MA), Lafayette Foster (OPP-CT), Alexander Rice (R-MA), Charles Delano (R-MA), John Logan (D-IL), and Sergeant at Arms George T. Brown of the Senate. Albert Riddle claimed to have promised an Ohio volunteer infantry company that if a battle was fought near Washington, he would fight alongside them. Riddle, Recollections of War Times: Reminiscences of Men and Events in Washington, 1860–1865 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895), 44–45; Samuel Sullivan Cox, Union-Disunion-Reunion: Three Decades of Federal Legislation, 1855 to 1885 (Providence: A. & R. A. Reid, 1885), 156–59.
13. Riddle, Recollections, 52–53.
14. Charles Lanman, ed., Journal of Alfred Ely, a Prisoner of War in Richmond (New York: D. Appleton, 1862). See also documents included in William H. Jeffrey, Richmond Prisons, 1861–1862 (St. Johnsbury, Vt.: Republican Press, 1893), esp. 75–82.
15. French, diary entry, July 22, 1861, Witness, 366.
16. Walther, Fire-Eaters, 187–89. On the two fights, see Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1989), 404–405 note 18; Alexandria Gazette, February 12, 1861; Baltimore Sun, February 9, 1861; San Francisco Bulletin, April 1, 1861; Plain Dealer (Cleveland), March 13, 1861.
17. Virginia Jeans Laas, ed., Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 23; Boston Herald, January 12, 1861; Plain Dealer (Cleveland), January 12, 1861.
18. Baltimore Sun, January 29, 1861; Plain Dealer (Cleveland), January 25, 1861; Charleston Mercury, January 25 and 28, 1861; William Wesley Woolen, William McKee Dunn: Brigadier-General, U.S.A.: A Memoir (New York: Knickerbocker Press, c. 1887–92), 44–48. Woolen quotes Dunn as saying that if he had killed Rust in a duel, “he should have had the same feeling as if he had killed him on the field of battle.” Woolen, Dunn, 47–48.
19. Chicago Tribune, February 20, 1861; NYT, February 16, 1861.
20. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., March 7, 1860, 1027–34. For talk of a duel, see ibid., 1032.
21. Massachusetts Spy, February 27, 1861; New-York Tribune, February 25, 1861; Salem Register, February 25, 1861; Vermont Journal, March 2, 1861; Jamestown Journal, March 1, 1861; Sandusky Register, February 25, 1861; Alexandria Gazette, February 25, 1861. For Van Wyck’s second speech, see Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., January 29, 1861, 629–32.
22. Proving a negative is inherently difficult if not impossible; in the same way that the total number of violent incidents is impossible to ascertain, it’s hard to be certain regarding their absence. Extensive searching of the same kind that uncovered the incidents that shape this volume produced harsh words, a few threatened duel challenges, and a close call in 1863, when Daniel Voorhees (D-IN) followed John Hickman (R-PA) into a hall after being insulted on the House floor, but was persuaded by friends to hold back. New York Herald, February 20, 1863.
23. Globe, 37th Cong., 4th Sess., March 15, 1861, 1464.
24. For example, see the clashes between Martin Conway (R-KS) and Philip Fouke (D-IL) in December 1861; Henry Burnett (D-KY) and William Richardson (D-IL) in July 1861; Roscoe Conkling (R-NY) and Elihu Washburne (R-IL) in May 1862; Clement Vallandigham (D-OH) and Benjamin Wade (R-OH) in May 1862; and James Moorhead (R-PA) and Albert Gallatin Riddle (R-OH) in February 1863.
25. NYT, March 16, 1862. See also The Round Table, June 16, 1864.
26. The Round Table, June 18, 1864, 2–3. See also New York Herald, February 15, 1863.
27. For a sample of such language, see Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., April 26, 1862, 1829. See also “Congressional Trifling and Truculence,” Springfield Republican, May 3, 1862; “Unparliamentary Conduct in Both Houses of Congress,” New York Herald, June 16, 1866. Not surprisingly, some Southern newspapers gloried in it: “The Lincoln Senate” and “Rows in the Lincoln House,” Macon Telegraph, June 17, 1862, and January 17, 1863.
28. New York Herald, June 16, 1866.
29. The Confederate Congress met behind closed doors; this sampling of fights may well be just a sampling.
30. Wilfred Buck Yearns, The Confederate Congress (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1960), 15–16. Edmund Dargan of Alabama made the knife attack. Thomas Hanly of Missouri inflicted the committee-room pounding, and William Swan was the umbrella assailant. See also E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865, vol. 7 of A History of the South (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1950), 143.
31. Wilfred Yearns, The Confederate Congress, 15–16; Edward A. Pollard, “The Confederate Congress: A Chapter in the History of the Late War,” The Galaxy 6 (July 1, 1868, to January 1, 1869): 749–58.
32. NYT, October 2, 1864; John E. Gonzales, “Henry Stuart Foote: Confederate Congressman and Exile,” Civil War History 11 (December 1965): 384–95; idem., “Henry Stuart Foote in Exile,” Journal of Mississippi History (April 1953): 90–98.
33. Congress had seated two congressmen from Louisiana in 1863 fifteen days before the close of the Thirty-seventh Congress, when their tenure expired. Joseph G. Dawson, Army Generals and Reconstruction: Louisiana, 1862–1877 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1982), 15.
34. For a detailed account, see 38th Cong., 2nd Sess., House Report No. 10, “Assault upon Hon. William D. Kelley,” February 7, 1865; quote on p. 1.
35. 39th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Rpt. 90, July 2, 1866, “Breach of Privilege.” On the incident generally, see also Address of Hon. Lovell H. Rousseau to His Constituents (1866); Reply of Gen. Rousseau to Wendell Phillips, NYT, May 10, 1867; Josiah B. Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Years: Autobiographical Reminiscences of an Active Career from 1850 to 1890 (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1891), 163–70; Marion and Oliver, Killing Congress, 208–27; Paul R. Abrams, “The Assault upon Josiah B. Grinnell by Lovell H. Rousseau, Iowa Journal of History 3 (July 1912): 383–402; Dan Lee, Kentuckian in Blue: A Biography of Major General Lovell Harrison Rousseau (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2010), 181–89; Charles Payne, Josiah Bushnell Grinnell. See Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., July 17, 1866, 3882 for James Garfield’s (R-OH) summary of the lead-up to the fight.
36. Grinnell, Men and Events, 169–70. Fellow Iowans—also at his lodgings that night—gave Grinnell a heavy iron-topped cane. Only three of Rousseau’s blows did damage. Rousseau later said, “I did not want to hurt you; I wanted to disgrace you, you damned poltroon.” He also noted that he asked for an apology as a warning to Grinnell, “to call his attention t
o what I was doing.” H. Rpt. No. 10, 6, 22, 25.
37. On disgracing the House floor, see H. Rpt. No. 10, 26; on demand for a “fair fight,” see ibid., 20–24, 36.
38. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., July 17, 1866, 3882, 3885.
39. Women in Louisville, Kentucky, and St. Louis, Missouri, sent canes. Alexandria Gazette, August 4, 1866; Providence Evening Press, July 26, 1866; Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.), August 3, 1866.
40. Daily Advocate (Baton Rouge), July 9, 1866; Macon Weekly Telegraph, July 9, 1866.