1856

 __________ 

“Every immoral statute is void.” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

__________

Benjamin Brown French begins keeping a diary. He had moved to Washington D.C. in 1833, and continuing writing till his death in 1870. 

Joanne B. Freeman uses his diary as a focal point for her book, The Field of Blood, reviewed by The New York Times. Freeman notes that between 1830 and 1860 there were more than 70 incidents of violence between members of Congress. 

May 22: The most famous, Preston Brooks vs. Charles Sumner, elicited gift canes to the assailant: inscribed “Good Job,” “Hit Him Again” and “Use Knockdown Arguments.” 

Preston Brooks was naturally re-elected. 

The reviewer notes: 

In 1841, an exchange of insults between two representatives, Edward Stanly of North Carolina and Henry Wise of Virginia, led to a wild melee in which nearly all the members of the House pummeled one another. John B. Dawson of Louisiana “routinely wore both a bowie knife and a pistol” into the House and once threatened to cut a colleague’s throat “from ear to ear.” Angry over a speech delivered by the antislavery Ohioan Joshua Giddings, Dawson shoved Giddings and threatened him with a knife. Another time, Dawson pointed his cocked pistol at Giddings and was prevented from shooting him only when other congressmen intervened.

 

Freeman notes that Giddings, an outspoken abolitionist, was attacked “at least seven times,” by pro-slavery defenders. In fact, he often goaded Southerners to fight; and Freeman says Southerners were easily goaded. Even minor insults could lead to violent reaction. 

Freeman tells us of the fiery Mississippi senator Henry S. Foote, who fought four duels in his political career and was wounded in three. On the Senate floor, he raised a pistol toward an opponent, the Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, who bared his chest and invited Foote to shoot, yelling: “I have no pistols! Let him fire! I disdain to carry arms!” Another senator grabbed Foote’s weapon and locked it in a drawer. 

French recorded in his diary his delight as a spectator. Describing the huge brawl of 1841, he wrote, “The Speaker & I had the best chance to see all the fun, & while he stood at his desk pounding & yelling, I stood at mine ‘calm as a summer’s morning’ — enjoying the sport, and keeping the minutes of the proceedings!”

 

The absurdity of the code of honor is at times remarkable. Congressmen Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William J. Graves of Kentucky ended up facing off against each other in a fatal confrontation. As the NYT reviewer noted:

 

Cilley, a Democrat, had charged a Whig editor, James Watson Webb, with having accepted a bribe. Outraged by the accusation, Webb wrote a letter in which he challenged Cilley to a duel. He sent the letter through Graves, a Whig friend. When Cilley refused to accept the letter, Graves felt insulted and made his own challenge to Cilley. The two men faced off with rifles on a dueling ground outside Washington. Both missed their targets in the first two rounds, but in the third Graves killed Cilley.

 

What a bloody, idiotic code of “honor” to follow.

 

* 

John Townsend Trowbridge was a novelist, poet, and an abolitionist. Born in 1827, he had his first real success as a writer at age 29. 

I can’t pin the date of publication for this poem down, but here it is:

 

Farmer John

 

Home from his journey Farmer John

Arrived this morning, safe and sound.

His black coat off, and his old clothes on,

“Now I’m myself!” says Farmer John,

     And he thinks, “I’ll look around.”

Up leaps the dog: “Get down, you pup!

Are you so glad you would eat me up?”

The old cow lows at the gate, to greet him,

The horses prick up their ears, to meet him.

     “Well, well, old Bay,

     Ha, ha, old Gray,

Do you get good feed when I am away?”

 

“You haven’t a rib!” says Farmer John,

“The cattle are looking round and sleek,

The colt is going to be a roan,

     And a beauty, too: how he has grown!

We’ll wean the calf next week.”

Says Farmer John, “When I’ve been off –  

To call you again about the trough.

And watch you, and pet you, while you drink,

Is a greater comfort than you can think,”

     And he pats old Bay,

     And he slaps old Gray,

“Ah, this is the comfort of going away.”

 

“For, after all,” says Farmer John,

“The best of a journey is getting home.

I’ve seen great sights but I would not give

This spot, and the peaceful life I live,

     For all their Paris and Rome,

These hills for the city’s stifled air

And big hotels all bustle and glare,

Land all houses, and roads all stones,

That deafen your ears and batter your bones!

     Would you, old Bay?

     Would you, old Gray?

That’s what one gets by going away.”

 

“There Money is king,” says Farmer John,

“And Fashion is queen, and it’s mighty queer

To see how sometimes, while the man

Is raking and scraping all he can,

     The wife spends, every year.

Enough, you would think, for a score of wives,

To keep them in luxury all their lives!

The town is a perfect Babylon

To a quiet chap,” says Farmer John.

     “You see, old Bay,

     You see, old Gray,

I’m wiser than when I went away.”

 

“I’ve found out this,” said Farmer John,

“That happiness is not bought and sold.

And clutched in a life of waste and hurry,

In nights of pleasure and days of worry.

     And wealth isn’t all in gold.

Mortgages, stocks and ten per cent,

But in simple ways, and sweet content.

Few wants, pure hopes, and noble ends,

Some land to till, and a few good friends,

     Like you, old Bay,

     And you, old Gray !

That’s what I’ve learned by going away.”

 

And a happy man is Farmer John —

O, a rich and happy man is he!

He sees the peas and pumpkins growing,

The corn in tassel, the buckwheat blowing,

And fruit on vine and tree,

The large, kind oxen look their thanks

As he rubs their foreheads and strokes their flanks,

The doves light round him, and strut and coo.

Says Farmer John, “I’ll take you too,

     And you, old Bay,

     And you, old Gray,

Next time I travel so far away.”

 

(This punctuation is from Story Hour Readings, published for school children by the American Book Company, in 1921.)

 

*

 

Chauncey Depew graduated from Yale in 1856. He remembers, “Our class of ninety-seven was regarded as unusually large.” “Athletics had not yet appeared, though rowing and boat-racing came in during my term.” (123-4)

 

Two classmates, David J. Brewer and Henry Billings Brown, both served on the U.S. Supreme Court later, and at the same time. A third member of the class would have joined them, but died after being nominated.

 

Depew spoke highly of his professors. Professor Woolsey “had the respect and affection of all.” “In his historical lectures he had a standard joke on the Chinese, the narration of which amused him the more with each repetition. It was that when a Chinese army was beleaguered and besieged in a fortress their provisions gave out and they decided to escape. They selected a very dark night, threw open the gates, and as they marched out each soldier carried a lighted lantern.” (123-6-7)

 

A touch of nascent racism, ha, ha.

 

The professor of Greek, Hadley, “had a caustic wit and his sayings were the current talk of the campus. He maintained discipline, which was quite lax in those days, by the exercise of this ability. Some of the boys once drove a calf into the recitation-room. Professor Hadley quietly remarked, “You will take out that animal. We will get along to-day with our usual number.”

 

Depew remembers the tension at home when he returned from college. His father was an avid supporter of the Democratic Party; but the son became a convert,

 

and I became a Republican on the principles enunciated in the first platform of the party in 1856. When I came home from Yale the situation in the family became very painful, because my father was an intense partisan. He had for his party both faith and love, and was shocked and grieved at his son’s change of principles. He could not avoid constantly discussing the question, and was equally hurt either by opposition or silence.

 

There had grown up among the young voters an intense hostility to slavery. The moral force of the arguments against the institution captured them. They had no hostility to the South, nor to the Southern slaveholders; they regarded their position as an inheritance, and were willing to help on the lines of Mr. Lincoln’s original idea of purchasing the slaves and freeing them. (123-16, 18)

 

Depew was a huge fan of Dickens and was in attendance when he visited American and did readings in New York City.

 

I was fresh from the country but had with me that evening a rather ultra-fashionable young lady. She said she was not interested in the lecture because it represented the sort of people she did not know and never expected to meet; they were a very common lot. In her subsequent career in this country and abroad she had to her credit three matrimonial adventures and two divorces, but none of her husbands were of the common lot. (123-12)

 

*

 

Women’s Health: Godey’s Lady’s Book begins pushing for more exercise and fresh air for women. Finley writes of Sarah Hale:

 

Women, she insisted, would be happier if they were strong; they would be more beautiful, more intelligent, more able, she insinuated, to control their own destinies. Tooth and nail she fought the conventional Victorian idea that physical frailty in women was an asset, an attraction.

 

Hale,

 

…deplored tight corsets, airless sleeping-rooms, over-eating and pie for breakfast. She advocated bathing, not daily bathing, of course, but its forerunner the once-a-week Saturday night bath.

 

In 1856 Mrs. Hale suggested that girls – young ladies, mind you – be taught so “tomboy” an art as swimming.

 

She became a riding enthusiast, as well, describing it as “beautifying to the female figure.” Hale also became an advocate of the “pic nic,” not yet one word, and touted the joys of a “day spent in dancing, fishing, walking in the woods.” (132-133)

* 

“Peace and our rights – or the knife and tomahawk.”

 August: In Utah, Brigham Young makes his feelings clear, regarding relations with the U.S. government and the American people: “We do not intend to have any trade or commerce with the gentile world…I am determined to cut every thread of this kind and live free and independent, untrammeled by any of their detestable customs and practices.” 

By August 1856, Young resolves: “That all the forces in said Territory hold themselves in readiness to march, at a moment’s notice, to repel any and all such threatened invasion.” He declares martial law; in his diary writes, “make every preparation to give the U.S. a Sound Drubbing.” He even writes to Mormon missionaries working with the Sioux and Cheyenne, suggesting an alliance, “for they must learn that they have either got to help us or the United States will kill us both.” To a friend he writes: “the deserts of Utah [will] become a battle ground for freedom.” 

The choice will boil down to “peace and our rights – or the knife and tomahawk – let Uncle Sam choose.” 

As pressure from the U.S. government grows, Heber Kimble, another leader of the Latter Day Saints, vows, “I will fight until there is not a drop of blood in my veins.” 

(Source: Time magazine review, I believe.)

 

Like many Americans, in that era, Brigham Young believed the Second Coming was near. “The nation in which we dwell is surely ripening for destruction. Not many years will roll away before the sceptre will pass into the hands of the righteous, and the people who possess this land be governed by the oracle of the Almighty.” Another 3,000 Mormons, many from abroad, arrived in Utah every year, during the 60s. 

Young once explained his position on the Bible: 

I have heard some make the broad assertion that every word within the lids of the Bible was the word of God. I have said to them, “You have never read the Bible, have you?” “O, yes, and I believe every word in it is the word of God.” Well, I believe that the Bible contains the word of God, and the words of good men, and the words of bad men; the words of good angels and words of the devil…. 

(I failed to note the source for these quotes, above. Probably: Leonard J. Arrington, Mormon historian)

* 

September 10: Watching violence explode, in Kansas as well as Congress, Ralph Waldo Emerson could stand no more. In a speech delivered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he complained: 

In the free states, we give a sniveling support to slavery. The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the known foundation of all law, that every immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas, the President [Franklin Pierce] says: “Let the complainants go to the courts,” though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him dismounting from his own horse and unbuckling his knife to sit as judge.  “On Affairs in Kansas” 

 NOTE TO TEACHERS: I had good success discussing with students the difference between law and morality. For example, Jim Crow laws made it legal to discriminate against African Americans. In Hitler’s Germany, the “law” was monstrous. My students would bring up the abortion question – which I merely moderated, never giving my opinion.