THE PULL AND POWER OF VIOLENCE
Staring out at the House for fourteen years, French saw a lot of fighting. He saw screaming matches, finger-pointing, and desk-pounding. He saw Southerners rise en masse in a chorus of fist-clenched outrage, bellowing for all they were worth. He saw men so red-faced and angry that they could barely speak. (John Quincy Adams’s bald head was a barometer of anger; the redder it got, the madder he was.)1 He saw stamping and shoving, fistfights and flipped tables. He saw a few all-out melees—“interesting and intellectual exhibitions,” he called them—with dozens of congressmen pounding one another or standing on chairs to get a good look. He saw bowie knives brandished and pistols drawn, and even saw one gun fired on the floor. Most of it didn’t faze French, not even the stray bullet that wounded his hunting buddy, Capitol police officer John Wirt. He was “in very great pain,” French reported to his brother, but because he was “a Democrat, with of course a clear conscience, he will no doubt soon get over it.”2
Amid all this mayhem, for French one fight stood out: the 1838 duel between Representative Jonathan Cilley (D-ME) and Representative William J. Graves (W-KY), the only fatal congressional clash in Washington.3 A fellow New England Democrat—a New Hampshire–born family man, no less—had engaged in deadly combat with a fellow congressman. It shook French to his core; he couldn’t get over it. He discussed it in letters. He ranted about it in newspaper columns. He debated its ins and outs in his diary for days, even visiting the dueling ground and sketching the details for himself.4 Twenty-six years later, when he published a memoir in magazine installments, he devoted two entries to the duel and its aftermath, the only event that received so much coverage.5
Routine “rough play” had led to a death.6 This wasn’t how congressional violence was supposed to work. Although threats, weapons, and fistfights were common, once the initial flashpoint of conflict had passed, friends and allies usually smoothed things over and avoided extremes, testimony to the congressional community’s powers of self-preservation and the degree to which fighting—but not killing—was a congressional norm. Most congressional bullying wasn’t about bloodlust, although some blood was shed. It was grounded on the gut-wrenching power of public humiliation before colleagues, constituents, and the nation-at-large. Fighting men used that power, joined with the threat of physical harm, to intimidate rivals and get their way.
The Cilley-Graves duel shows that power in action. It wasn’t caused by anger or a thirst for revenge; the two men had no ill will between them. Rather, Cilley and Graves were pulled into fighting. Like most congressmen, both men assumed that their honor was bound up with the honor of all that they represented: their party, their constituents, even their section of the Union. When insulted, both men took dishonor seriously. And when the congressional community failed to negotiate a settlement, both men felt compelled to fight.
As suggested by French’s prolonged gasp of a response, few things so effectively prompt earnest and ample testimony to the rules of the game than the game gone awry. In the wake of the duel, people inside and outside Washington weighed in on what had been wrong—and right—about it, highlighting the norms of congressional violence in the process. Indeed, virtually everyone even remotely involved in the duel registered his opinion during the formal congressional investigation that followed, resulting in a remarkable 175-page committee report full of sworn testimony to the pull and power of violence in Congress.7
Feelings were an important part of that power; fighting men put fear, shame, and anger to political use. And the Cilley-Graves duel certainly provoked strong feelings. French wasn’t alone in his fascination. Sermons condemned it. Town meetings raged about it. Petitions denounced it. Newspaper headlines literally screamed bloody murder. Congressmen filled their letters and diaries with it. And the surviving participants justified their actions in letters, newspapers, and even on the House floor. Perhaps the best documented duel in American history, the Cilley-Graves duel presents a perfect opportunity to pierce the veil of congressional violence, revealing its internal logic and what it meant to congressmen, to Congress, and to a watchful public, horrified, fascinated, and admiring all in one.
“THE FIRST FATAL CONGRESSIONAL DUEL”
French immediately grasped the duel’s historic significance: it was “the first fatal Congressional duel that has ever occurred.”8 Yet it was hardly his only brush with history. He had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. In 1835, when a deranged man tried to assassinate President Andrew Jackson, French was there.9 He dined with Charles Dickens during the writer’s 1842 tobacco-spit tour.10 Not long after John Quincy Adams’s fatal stroke in the House in 1848, French was by his side, his eyes filled with tears.11 And he was at President Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed in 1865, comforting his wife, Mary.12 In a sense, French was a professional history-stalker. But the Cilley-Graves duel was different.
In part, this was because he was smack in the middle of it. French saw the debate that set things off, tracked the circulating gossip, and even saw Cilley write the letter that invited Graves’s challenge. (When Cilley ducked into the Clerk’s office to write it, French was there.)13 On the day of the duel, French tried to intervene. Hours later, he saw a carriage with the victim’s body ride by, and days later, he attended the victim’s funeral.14
French also knew Cilley and Graves, and he liked them. They were pleasantly conventional. Graves—tall, dark, and strapping—was a “good-natured, pleasant” man, so much so that French deemed him “the last man … of all the members of the House” who seemed likely to duel (though this may say more about the good-natured French than about Graves; one New England congressman deemed Graves an “insolent … Kentucky rowdie.”15 The thin, bespectacled Cilley was “gentlemanly” and “seldom without a smile,” though when excited, “there was a curl of the lip indicative of firmness and determination.”16 That curled lip was in evidence more than once during Cilley’s time in Congress. According to French, he had “an excitable temperament,” and it’s obvious in his letters. He was given to blustery warnings like “They shall hear from me.”17
Jonathan Cilley, ca. 1838 (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
William Graves, ca. 1840 (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
In a sense, Graves and Cilley were average congressmen; they certainly fit the profile. Not quite forty (Graves was thirty-three; Cilley was thirty-five), both men were well educated; Cilley had a brief stint as a newspaper editor while studying law. Both men served in local office before coming to Congress. Both were loyal party men; like French, Cilley was a dedicated doughface Democrat. And both came from established families, particularly Cilley, who spoke often and proudly of the Cilley name: his grandfather, the Revolutionary War general Joseph Cilley, appears in one of John Trumbull’s epic paintings in the Capitol rotunda; his uncle Bradbury was in the House during the Madison administration; and his brother Joseph would be an abolitionist senator under President James K. Polk.18
Yet in one way, Cilley wasn’t average. He was unusually aggressive for a New England congressman. In part, this was a matter of circumstance; for years, he had been fighting for his political life in Maine against a league of friends turned enemies, usually emerging victorious. (Oddly enough, his foremost opponent would unintentionally play a role in the duel.) Elected to the Maine legislature in 1831 at the age of twenty-nine—a young man on the fast track to political power, much like his college friend Franklin Pierce in New Hampshire—Cilley held his own by taking strong stands. “I know that by many here, I am hated & feared,” he wrote to his wife in 1833. “I am hated because I am feared.”19 He was rewarded for his efforts by being elected Speaker in 1835; in the fall of 1836 he was elected to the U.S. House, following Pierce’s path to power. During a visit the summer before Cilley left for Washington, his college friend Nathaniel Hawthorne thought him a strange mix of sincerity and ambition, a shrewd “daring fellow”—“fierce as a tiger” if need be—who had fought his way into Congress by sheer force of will. Indeed, Hawthorne thought him a bit overconfident: “Hardly anybody, probably, thinks him better than he is, and many think him worse.” He predicted that Cilley wouldn’t be prominent in Congress.20 Sadly, it was a prediction that proved wrong for all the wrong reasons.
Spurred by the financial panic of 1837, the Twenty-fifth Congress convened three months early for a short six-week session, and Cilley took his seat in September with a reputation as a man of mettle. French later recalled that Cilley “came to Washington with the endorsement that he would fight”; already, French’s congressional calculations were under way.21 As a fellow New England Democrat, French doubtless cheered the news. And Cilley delivered, though his wife counseled otherwise. “Why do you want me to keep still,” he asked her on September 24. “It will not do for one who is sustained by the democracy to shrink from responsibility.… I never felt stronger or more confident in my life.”22 His confidence was apparent during the following session. Six weeks in, he was on his feet making speeches. “I made quite a sensation in the house, I assume,” he told his wife in January 1838, the “I assume” suggesting that perhaps he didn’t.23 He was doing well socially, mingling with his messmates and attending parties. And then he got into an argument with Henry Wise (W-VA).
By 1838, the thirty-two-year-old Wise had served two terms in Congress, and in some ways he was much like Cilley and Graves. Similar in age, college-educated and trained in the law, Wise came from good Virginia stock; his father had been a Federalist presidential elector in the contest of 1800 that elected Thomas Jefferson.24 But there all similarity ended, because Wise was the virtual epitome of a Virginia gentleman, almost to the point of caricature. He was a man of extremes: blustering, flamboyant, impulsive, high-strung, even violent, yet a remarkably genial jokester when he wanted to be; once, during an endless evening session, French saw him sneaking up on sleeping congressmen and tickling their noses with a slip of paper.25 People who expected a firebrand when they met him were disappointed. As Wise himself put it, he was “warm in his affections” and “generous in his disposition,” but could make a man “hate him with a bitter hate.”26 The phrenologist who examined his skull and said that he made a “bitter enemy” had it right.27 Like many a Southerner, Wise was an inveterate tobacco chewer; he could spit to the impressive distance of fifteen feet. (Someone saw him do just that on a White House portico.)28 Tall, thin, and “ghastly” pale, his clothes and long hair usually a bit askew, Wise had a long, striding gait and a short fuse.
On the floor, Wise was a frequent, fiery, and eccentric speaker who sprinkled his invective with strange streaks of humor; once, when someone protested against a call to order by insisting that he could ask what he liked, Wise jumped to his feet and asked the Speaker “how to spell apple pie.”29 (He made his point.) Prone to dramatic displays of bravado, Wise seemed to revel in waging war, but his passions got the better of him time and again. By the time of the Twenty-fifth Congress, he already had fought a duel, started a fistfight, and nearly gunned down Reuben Whitney in a committee-room—and he was just getting started.30 Crediting Wise with “a dozen brawls,” French considered him the king of disorder, and many agreed. He was “an impudent & fancy fellow,” Cilley thought. “I do not like him at all.”31 So renowned were Wise’s congressional exploits that during Charles Dickens’s 1842 House visit, Wise was one of two men whom he wanted pointed out. (The other was the knife-wielding John B. Dawson; Dickens clearly had the inside scoop on misbehaving congressmen.) Just a few days before Dickens’s visit, Wise had denounced a visiting British abolitionist during debate, dramatically turning to face him when delivering his most biting barbs, a bit of stage business that Cilley would come to know all too well. Dickens described Wise as “wild looking … with a great ball of tobacco in his left cheek.” Wise undoubtedly contributed amply to the spit-spotted rug that so disgusted Dickens.32
In all these ways, Wise was the epitome of a congressional “fighting man,” even staking his reputation on it. As he explained to his constituents during the furor over the outcome of the Cilley-Graves duel, to properly fulfill his duties as their representative, all he needed was the protection of his “own trusty weapon, and a trusty friend.”33 A gun and a friend to fight by his side: these were the tools of Wise’s trade. He was even more explicit a year later when his role in the duel came up during debate. “In the face of an approaching election, I say to my good constituents … ‘If you are determined I shall not defend myself when assailed, like a true knight, do not send me to Congress, for I shall just as surely fight.’”34 His constituents approved of his fighting, he declared, and indeed they did, electing him to Congress a remarkable six times. He went on to become Virginia’s governor in 1855, the man responsible for signing the abolitionist John Brown’s death warrant in 1859.
Wise first clashed with Cilley on January 23, 1838, while debating the ongoing war against the Seminole Indians in Florida. When Wise sympathized with the Indians to malign the Van Buren administration’s handling of the war, Cilley erupted in defense of the Democratic president. “[W]hat was to become of the poor Indians?” he mocked. Far more important to worry about “poor Whites.” To Cilley, sympathy for “the dark red man” seemed “to be akin to that expressed in some quarters for the man of a yet darker hue.” Cilley was taunting Wise with abolitionism, and Wise felt the blow. He “cowered under the charge more than I have ever seen him before,” observed John Quincy Adams.35
Three weeks later, Wise returned the favor. He was in full form on February 12 when he rose to his feet with a newspaper in hand. The matter was “of the deepest importance,” he announced dramatically; two Whig newspapers had made charges of corruption against an unnamed Democratic congressman.36
Reading aloud the charges from the New York Courier and Enquirer, Wise demanded an investigation. Cilley objected. A free press could say what it pleased, he argued. Why credit one newspaper’s dark hints? He didn’t know the Enquirer’s editor, James Watson Webb, personally, Cilley added, but if he was the same man who had attacked the Bank of the United States in his paper and then changed his tune after it granted him a loan, he didn’t deserve much credit in Congress.
Whigs persisted. Democrats objected. The debate grew heated. The appropriately named tough guy Ratliff Boon (D-IN) growled that if anyone accused him of corruption he would settle it “by applying my fist to his spectacles,” an open threat to the author of the Enquirer piece, Matthew “Old Specs” Davis, a man who seemed to court controversy; he was an Aaron Burr supporter in times past. James W. Bouldin (D-VA) deemed the charge yet another example of Wise’s ongoing crush-the-Democrats blame game, played so artfully three years past when he had falsely accused Democrats of being drunk at the close of the session. Wise replied that they had been drunk and he could prove it. “So much for that.”37
Now it was Cilley’s turn to face Wise’s fire. A true man of honor wouldn’t quibble over details, Wise sneered, and as a Democrat, Cilley certainly shouldn’t quibble, given that he himself might be the anonymous culprit mentioned in the Enquirer. When Cilley predictably bristled at hearing “the basest charges insinuated against himself,” Wise stopped him mid-sentence and played the honor card. Dramatically turning to face Cilley, seated behind him, he asked if Cilley had meant to accuse him of making “base charges.” This was moving into duel territory. Cilley said that Wise had been “ungenerous.” Unsatisfied, Wise asked again and Cilley repeated himself. So Wise upped the stakes. Was Cilley deliberately insulting him? An answer of “yes” would have justified a duel. No, Cilley insisted, but he knew his rights and the rights of his constituents; he had every right to speak his mind. A little more taunting and sneering by Wise and the moment had passed. (The Globe summed up this spicy exchange as “some mutual explanations.”)38
But the impact lingered. This was harsh stuff. It impressed French. Flipping through his mental checklist, he decided that it seemed to require something more. Yet recently Wise had let someone get away with a “gross insult,” so perhaps he was too cowardly to push things further—a stellar example of the high price of letting insults pass.39 And what about Cilley? As a non-combatant Northerner, what would he do? Being a combative non-combatant could be hard to manage, and Cilley’s situation reveals why. His defense of his party had become self-defense within seconds. Soon, his life would be in the balance. In Congress, party politics could be a matter of life and death.
KNOCKING DOWN WHIGS
It’s hard to believe that the Cilley-Graves duel stemmed from vague charges of corruption in the Democratic Party, but so it was. Underneath all of its twistings and turnings, it was a good old-fashioned party battle at heart. It started as a Whig attack on Democratic corruption; touched on the Bank of the United States, a third-rail source of party strife; involved one of the nation’s most powerful Whig newspapers, James Watson Webb’s New York Courier and Enquirer; and pitted a team of Whigs against a team of Democrats.
In 1838, this battle was intensifying because of the financial panic the year before. In the wake of massive economic instability, party differences clarified and a united Whig Party was born. No longer an amalgamated cluster of “ites,” as French put it, the Whigs had cohered into a party that championed the use of government programs to develop the nation’s infrastructure and promote economic growth; they favored protective tariffs and the return of the Bank of the United States. The states’ rights Democrats, in contrast, blamed the nation’s problems on corrupt banking men, sometimes summed up as a “Money Power.” Thus the power of Wise’s charge of corruption in the Democratic Party; he was turning the table on his foes. And thus the Democratic sensitivity to such charges.40
Agenda-driven as this battle was, however, it was also profoundly personal. “The Whiggery” and “the Democracy” were enduring entities with an emotional heft that went beyond mere institutional loyalty. French’s love for his party ran deep. Its purpose, its principles, its founder, its revelry: he loved it all. The Democratic Party was more of a brotherhood than a political organization to French, and he wasn’t alone.
Cilley’s eight-year-old son, Greenleaf, had imbibed such lessons well. Not long before his father’s duel, Greenleaf told him that he couldn’t wait to knock down Whigs, bragging that “I guess I culd knock one of them down as fast as he could get up.” Cilley laughingly told Greenleaf to bide his time. “You are not quite large enough yet to knock down Whigs,” he chided. “Better wait till your beard & whiskers grow.”41 French’s five-year-old son, Frank, was also an early adopter of party politics, though he had little sense of its meaning; in 1842, seeing a massive crowd gathered at the White House to pay a call on President John Tyler on New Year’s Day, Frank asked with great seriousness if the people were going to “head Captain Tyler”—a phrase used by irritated Whigs who wanted to force Tyler to comply with their demands.42
Join the passions and ideals of party membership with its newly energized team-sports mentality, its political benefits, the confines of the congressional community, and the pressures of performing in the public forum of Congress, and you begin to see the many ways that party bonds inspired violence. They certainly did in the Twenty-fifth Congress. During the eight months of its first two sessions alone, in addition to the Wise-Cilley spat, there were at least nine nasty encounters—eight in the House and one in the Senate—most of them not degenerating into all-out fights but coming close.
Most of the clashes pitted Whigs against Democrats, though a brawl between the Tennessee Whigs William Campbell and Abram Maury was particularly dramatic. During an evening session, Campbell had gone home at 3:00 a.m. and was dragged back by the sergeant at arms; when Maury complained about slackers, Campbell took it personally and slugged him, nearly crashing him through a window. (Campbell later apologized.)43 Not surprisingly, Democratic newspapers put the fight to good use, branding it a sign of “Whig Manners and Decency.”44
Without a doubt, Henry Wise was the session’s most frequent fighter. There was a reason for this beyond his persistent floor-rage problem. He was in the midst of an extended campaign against Speaker James K. Polk (D-TN) and, through him, the Democratic Party. With the presidential election of 1840 looming and candidates gunning their engines, Wise was campaigning for a Whig president in the way he knew best: by dishonoring leading Democrats with man-to-man showdowns, with Polk at the top of his list. And he wasn’t alone. Joining him in his crusade were John Bell (W-TN) and his “trusty friend” Balie Peyton (W-TN).
The inner logic of this Whig onslaught was the inner logic of many a fight: insult one party member and you insult them all. The reverse was true too: disgrace a party and you disgrace its members. No man was an island when it came to party politics—a reality that brought Wise and Cilley to their feet. Wise was attacking a party; Cilley was defending it. And the consequences were profoundly personal as well as political. Two years later, when Edward Black (D-GA) attacked Whig policy and Waddy Thompson (W-SC) jumped to his feet as though personally insulted, Black confronted the problem outright: “Had it come to this, that a member could not get up here to question the course of a party, without being required to make personal explanations?”45 The answer, at least sometimes, was yes. Here is one explanation for congressional violence. A simple equation: my party, myself.
The impact of such thinking could be severe, as the Cilley-Graves duel shows all too well.46 That same thinking was in play a few months later during yet another battle in Wise’s anti-Democracy campaign, though this time Wise’s buddy John Bell did the dirty work, calling Polk supporter Hopkins Turney “the tool of tools” during debate. Seated directly in front of Bell, the “strongly excited” Turney wheeled around and declared Bell a liar (or as French recorded it: “Tis false—tis false”). Bell responded by slugging Turney, setting off a full-fledged rumble.47 Calculating outcomes in a letter to Wise two weeks later, Balie Peyton wondered if there would be a duel. If so, then Bell should
load up those rifle barrel pistols of his which will kill a Buffaloe 50 yards and meet him, shooting the first at the distance of at least 30 yards—holding it like a rifle in both hands, and aiming low, with a heavy charge. Bell can out shoot any man in that way you ever saw. He has a steadiness of nerve which I never witnessed in any other man. He would be hell in a street fight—rather too slow in a duel—but very deliberate anywhere.
Bell was no duelist, so Peyton went further. Wise should take him out shooting and test different stances to see “how he will be most certain” to get his man.48
This is congressional violence in all its glory: calculated, deadly, and close at hand. Bell had insulted Turney; Turney had insulted Bell; and now Peyton was plotting Turney’s death. Peyton’s tone is so casual and his plans so bloodthirsty that he almost seems to be joking. Except that he wasn’t.
Most fighting men didn’t seek bloodshed so blatantly, and not all bullying prompted violence; often a display of bravado or a dose of humiliation was enough. Nor was all violence this deliberate. Fatigue, frustration, testy tempers, and the ready availability of booze all played a role. Even so, people who were defiant or confrontational on the floor took their chances and they knew it, which is precisely what congressional bullies counted on: intimidating their opponents into silence.
“AS I AM FROM NEW ENGLAND, I AM TO BE ‘BLUFFED’”
Cilley knew what Wise had done when he spoke of “base charges.” He had thrown down the code of honor as a gauntlet to prove Cilley a coward for not taking it up, a cat-and-mouse game that fighting men used to great advantage against non-combatants; indeed, most clashes were sparked by Southerners and Southern-born Westerners who abided by the code.49 Wise’s parting words to Cilley drove this lesson home; as he turned away, he dropped his voice and sneered, “But what’s the use of bandying words with a man who won’t hold himself personally accountable for his words?”50 Wise was all but calling Cilley a coward for being a Northerner, and Cilley felt the sting, a sting felt by many Northerners. Cilley’s subsequent struggle to chart the right course shows the complications of sectionalism in the national arena of Congress, and the ways that it sometimes put Northerners and non-combatants at a disadvantage; with their manhood at stake and their political clout at risk, they were pulled into violence.51
Within one day of Cilley’s clash with Wise over the Enquirer story, Whig newspapers already were mocking Cilley’s manhood, playing the New England coward card for all it was worth, as in this article from the Baltimore Sun which someone placed in his hand. In Cilley’s part of the country, it scoffed,
duelling is considered an irresponsible and an irreligious pursuit, and the man who flogs his neighbor with any thing larger or more violent than an ox-gourd is set down for a rap-rascal, and is voted out of church by the pious deacons and deaconesses. As Mr. Cilley is a man of great practical and devotional piety, he may possibly eschew the pistol and seize the ox-gourd.
The message was clear. As Cilley’s second later put it, the article “was calculated to make the impression that Mr. Cilley was not a gentleman, or brave man.”52
Cilley had been scorned during debate and now the press was following suit. What should he do? How much damage had been done? And how could he fix it? The answers weren’t clear. Ignoring such insults could have a high price. Cilley’s manhood was at stake, as was the manhood of any congressman in the give-and-take (and push-and-shove) of congressional debate. Fighting men were quick to remind their victims of this fact, as Wise had done during Cilley’s first weeks in the House, lambasting not one but all Democrats as cowards. They reminded him of
scenes of fright in the haunted house. A ghost is seen—who shall go and see what it is? Will you? will you? or you? No: no: no. At last one poor trembling wretch, by volition or force, accident or half resolve, is pressed or ventures to totter forward, with broom-stick in hand—the rest pressing him on from behind—when, lo! a sound scatters them in backward flight, tumbling one over another in fright.53
Wise’s attackers “would make very brave starts, and march fiercely up to a certain line, but then they stopped.” Wise, according to Wise, was braver than them all. This was macho posturing to the point of absurdity. But it amply shows how manhood was coin of the realm in Congress.
Ignoring personal attacks also slashed at a man’s political power and influence. Cilley’s friend Franklin Pierce said as much not long after the duel. “You know well what is the consequence, if personalities are directed to you, and you allow them to pass in silence,” he noted.54 Disrespect and disempowerment in Congress and back home were sure to follow. Yet responding to insults was risky, particularly for a Yankee. By the 1830s, many New Englanders condemned dueling as irresponsible, irreligious, barbaric, and unequivocally Southern. As Pierce put it, on this “the tone of feeling in our section of the country” was quite clear.55 So when it came to dueling, Northern congressmen had a double burden: their constituents disapproved of it and they themselves lacked the expertise and easy familiarity of their Southern-born colleagues; thus the appeal of honor-taunting by fighting men. Those Northerners who did venture into dueling territory virtually all chose duel-savvy Southern or Southern-born Western allies as their seconds or “friends.”56
The “tone of feeling” was equally clear in the South. Dueling was respected and praised, with a dash of mournful regret thrown in. Although there were anti-dueling laws throughout the region, they were rarely enforced, and duelists were widely respected and routinely raised to high office, as Andrew Jackson’s political career shows all too well.57 The Southern dueling mantra was voiced by Senator William Campbell Preston (N-SC) after the Cilley-Graves duel. “Duelling had undoubtedly produced much folly and much misery,” he admitted, “but at the same time it had mitigated the indulgence of revengeful passions … Was it not … manifestly less outrageous upon receiving offense to send a challenge than to draw a dirk?”58 Dueling restrained violence, Preston argued; indeed, even the mere threat of a duel urged good behavior. Wise agreed. When it came to slander, he noted, “The law cannot restrain it—a pistol sometimes will.”59 All in all, many Southerners considered dueling an unfortunate but necessary civilizing force. It was also becoming a symbol of the South, perhaps even a matter of pride; in response to rising antislavery sentiment in the 1830s, defensive Southerners began aggressively touting all things Southern, including the code of honor.60
In the national center, charting a middle course between sectional customs and national demands could be challenging, particularly for men who didn’t abide by the code of honor; in a sense, sectionalism was always in play in Congress, shaping how men interacted, if not always shaping their votes. This was cultural federalism with a vengeance.
As tangled as Cilley’s situation was, the arrival of the Enquirer editor James Watson Webb in Washington brought new challenges. Intent on defending his name against Cilley’s claims about the Bank and bribery, Webb came to the capital ready to fight. Though by no means a Southerner, the native New Yorker was a fighting man’s fighting man. The editor of a powerful and notably aggressive Whig newspaper, he talked big and backed up his words with weapons. Often. Over the course of his eventful career, he threatened, caned, horsewhipped, and dueled with his antagonists and was himself threatened, beaten, and shot, partly a product of his job, partly a product of his temperament, and partly a holdover from his eight years in the army; military men were connoisseurs of the fine art of personal chastisement.
When it came to threatening violence against Washington politicos, Webb was a repeat offender; he had a habit of racing from New York to the capital to clear his name. In 1830, he had attacked the Washington Telegraph editor Duff Green for insulting Webb in his paper, lunging at Green on the Capitol steps. But Green had greater fire power—literally; when he cocked a pistol, Webb backed down.61 He was foiled again in 1837 when he confronted yet another offender. As was his wont, Wise had insulted the Democrats during debate, and Samuel Gholson (D-MS) had defended them, denouncing Webb in the process. When Webb confronted Gholson and called him a liar—a virtual invitation to fight a duel—Gholson declared Webb too lowly to fight, and there things ended thanks to Webb’s friends, who intervened out of fear that Webb’s second would be forced to fight in his place as demanded by the code of honor.62
Now, five months later, Webb was trying the same move with Cilley. And like Gholson, Cilley wanted nothing to do with Webb. He didn’t think much of him, didn’t like his politics, was well aware of his fighting record, and didn’t want to be drawn into a “personal difficulty” with every editor who disliked what he said on the floor. Plus, he had the sneaking suspicion that Webb had pegged him as an easy mark. “I see into the whole affair,” Cilley told one of his duel advisors. “Webb has come on here to challenge me, because he, and perhaps others, think that, as I am from New England, I am to be ‘bluffed:’ and Mr. Webb will then proclaim himself a brave man.”63 Here is the logic of bullying in plain view: fighting-man Webb would promote himself by humiliating a non-combatant.
Webb took a step in that direction when he confronted Cilley. But in compliance with the code of honor, rather than approaching Cilley himself, he sent his friend William Graves (W-KY) in his place. Graves and Webb had come to know each other when Graves had visited New York some time past; Webb had been more than welcoming, and Graves wanted to return the favor, but they weren’t close friends.64 Wise later would scold Graves for entangling himself in an honor dispute for anyone less than a bosom friend.65
On the morning of February 21, Graves spotted Webb hobnobbing in the House lobby and went over to shake his hand. Democrats so detested the Whig press warrior that his mere presence raised hackles; when Jesse Bynum (D-NC) spotted him, he immediately asked the Speaker why Webb had been allowed in the hall.66 A few minutes later, Webb pulled Graves aside, and the two men stepped behind a screen at the edge of the chamber. When Webb asked a favor, Graves was more than willing, but then he handed Graves a letter to deliver to Cilley. “I paused,” Graves later recalled. “It instantly struck me that the paper was a challenge.” If it was, he wanted nothing to do with it, he told Webb. Plus, he was “totally ignorant of the etiquette of duelling,” so he wasn’t the man for the job. Webb assured him that it wasn’t a challenge; it was a letter of inquiry. As the code dictated, before things went further, Webb was giving Cilley a chance to explain or retract his remark about Webb and Bank bribery. If Webb sent a challenge, he assured Graves, someone else would be his second, the man responsible for fighting in Webb’s place if necessary. “Totally unconscious … that any possible mischief could arise out of my carrying a simple paper of interrogation from one gentleman to another,” Graves took the note.67
He immediately sent a page to fetch Cilley, and the two men stepped behind another screen. (The Cilley-Graves duel negotiations are a prime example of how much was happening around the edges of the bustling House chamber.) Graves held out the letter and Cilley reached for it, but when Graves said that it was from Webb, Cilley dropped his hand. Graves assured him that the note was “respectful,” but Cilley wanted none of it. He didn’t want to be “drawn into personal difficulties with the conductors of public journals” for what he said during debate, and he hadn’t insulted Webb as a gentleman; he didn’t even know Webb.
So now what to do? Neither man was sure. Acknowledging that he didn’t know much about the code of honor, Graves said that Cilley’s refusal to accept the letter seemed to put him in an “unpleasant” situation. Cilley apologized. He meant no disrespect. But he knew even less than Graves about the code; he needed time to think. A short time later, they met again behind the screen, but Cilley hadn’t changed his mind. He still wouldn’t take the letter. They were at a standoff. And so they parted, two men on dangerous ground without a map. They were fighting a party battle with a sectional weapon that could easily misfire in their hands.
A COMMUNITY AFFAIR
Well aware that they had wandered onto the thin ice of an honor dispute, both men immediately turned to knowledgeable friends to lead them to safety, as was the norm in congressional clashes. Cilley went straight to the Senate lobby and beckoned to Franklin Pierce, who had five years of congressional experience. Pierce didn’t know what to do but he knew whom to ask. Darting off to consult with Southern friends, he returned moments later, reporting that Cilley had done right; he shouldn’t accept Webb’s note. But he’d better arm himself, Pierce advised, because with a duel off the table, Webb would probably assault Cilley on the street.68 Such was the conventional alternative to a duel; if someone proffered an insult but refused to meet on the field of honor, a sound beating was the likely result.
So off Cilley went in search of a pistol. He first tried Alexander Duncan (D-OH), a large man—six feet tall and stout—known for his loud, confrontational style of debate. John Quincy Adams considered him “coarse, vulgar, and impudent … a thorough-going hack demagogue … with a vein of low humor exactly suited to the rabble of a populous city, and equally so to the taste of the majority of the present House of Representatives.”69 (Adams had a way with an insult.) An in-your-face Westerner, Duncan was a likely gun owner, but he only had a rifle, so he brought Cilley to gun provider number two, John F. H. Claiborne (D-MS), Gholson’s second in his dispute with Webb, who was happy to lend his pistols. “Now, Cilley, for God’s sake, don’t be drawn into a duel with Mr. Graves,” Claiborne jokingly advised as they parted. “No danger of that,” replied Cilley. “Mr. Graves and myself are not enemies; I never had a difficulty with but one person in the House”—Henry Wise.70
It’s easy to see how the process of collecting duel consultants could snowball; negotiating fights was a community affair. When a fight threatened to escalate, fighting experts often rushed into the breach to forge a compromise or devise a strategy. Indeed, given the high stakes, negotiating a fight often required a virtual board of advisors with varied levels of fighting expertise, institutional savvy, and congressional clout. This was especially true for Northern non-combatants, who relied on Southern party allies to decode the code of honor. In Congress, cross-sectional party bonds did more than win elections or shape legislation; they forged crucial cross-sectional personal bonds as well.71
Cilley had dire need of such bonds because, like most Northerners, he was unversed in the details of the code duello. Between February 21 and 23, he and his friends consulted at least ten Democrats, including Cilley’s New England messmates, other Maine and New Hampshire representatives, Southerners and Westerners who understood the code of honor, and the Globe editors Francis P. Blair and John C. Rives, who each offered Cilley a rifle, giving an entirely new meaning to the idea of a supportive party press. Cilley and Pierce alone worked their way through much of the Missouri delegation—including the longtime senator and past duelist Thomas Hart Benton—desperate for border-state men who could translate the code and act as Cilley’s second in case of a duel.72
Aware that Cilley’s refusal to accept Webb’s letter was an affront, Graves also went on a consultation spree, though a modest one given the many duel-savvy fellow Kentuckians offering advice. In that same three-day period, he talked to his three Kentucky messmates—including friend and fight expert Henry Clay (W-KY)—as well as two other Kentuckians and two notoriously confrontational Southerners, Waddy Thompson (W-SC) and Henry Wise, both experienced in the subtleties of duel challenges.73 During negotiations, Clay did his duty as a border-state man, translating the meaning of some of Cilley’s befuddling choices by explaining Yankee logic. For example, after Cilley’s initial refusal of Webb’s letter, Clay supposedly explained that the clueless Northerner probably assumed it was a challenge, and told Graves how to explain things to a Yankee.74
All told, in a three-day period, at least twenty-four congressmen and sundry congressional staffers, including French, learned of the looming threat of a duel—roughly 10 percent of the House. Not only did the business of Congress spark fights, but negotiating fights was sometimes the business of Congress. The Graves-Cilley tangle was negotiated almost entirely in the Capitol.75 Endorsed by the congressional community, fighting was woven into the fabric of Congress.
And no endorsement could be more apparent than the routine spurning of “privilege of debate,” a hallowed parliamentary rule that could have quashed any number of disputes. Embedded in Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution, it gave congressmen the right to “not be questioned in any other place” for words spoken during debate.76 But hiding behind an institutional shield seemed cowardly, so congressmen routinely cast it aside when embroiled in a fight. The 1837 exchange between Gholson and Webb was typical of many. When Webb called Gholson a coward for insulting him on the floor while shielded by his privileges, Gholson renounced them. “I claim no privilege from my situation as a member of the House of Representatives,” he wrote in his formal reply to Webb’s opening letter. Cilley followed Gholson’s lead.77 Even on the dueling ground, when Wise virtually begged him to plead privilege of debate, he refused.78
Even so, under different circumstances, Cilley might have found a way out. He had every right to refuse to duel with an inferior; the tradition of treating editors like lower-class artisans wasn’t entirely a thing of the past in the 1830s, and duels were fought only between equals. Five months earlier, Gholson had refused to meet Webb on those grounds, scorning him as “unworthy of any notice.”79 This snub was precisely why Webb was so fired up to fight Cilley. As Webb put it, the “true secret of my repeated difficulties, is to be found in … the abominable doctrine, that in becoming an editor I ceased to be a gentleman!”80
Cilley might have traveled down that path if it hadn’t been for the fact that his encounter with Graves involved the community of Congress. By spurning Webb, Cilley insulted Graves, Webb’s friend and envoy. In past congressional spats, Webb had chosen congressional outsiders as seconds, making it easier for congressmen to snub him without serious repercussions. The involvement of a brother congressman complicated matters.81 Dishonor him and you dishonored all that he represented, as Graves well knew, mentioning it more than once during negotiations. For the honor of himself, of his constituents, of Kentucky, and of the South, Graves felt that he couldn’t let Cilley’s implied insult slide, and his advisors agreed.
Cilley had no desire to inflict that sort of damage. Yet he couldn’t treat with Webb without dishonoring himself and all that he represented, as his advisors noted more than once in the days before the duel. Even merely insulting Webb required careful calculations. When Duncan—not a man of subtleties—suggested that Cilley write Webb a letter denouncing him as “an unprincipled scoundrel, a degraded coward, and a bought-up vassal” who was unworthy of meeting, even through Graves, Pierce quickly said no. Such an answer might do for a “Southwestern man,” he advised, but given New England’s hatred of dueling, it was “of the first importance that Mr. Cilley should only act in the defensive, and be clearly in the right.” If Cilley ended up fighting a duel, “it must clearly appear that he is forced to do so in defence of his honor and of his rights.”82
In the end, struggling to defend his honor without offending his constituents, Cilley decided he’d have to fight if challenged. “My people will be better pleased if I stand the test, than disgrace myself by humiliating concessions,” he reasoned.83 That said, he insisted that no “Northern friend” risk his reputation back home by acting as his second. He wouldn’t even let Pierce join him on the dueling ground; with elections coming in the fall, the risk to Pierce’s career was too great. “I’ll never be able to get any recognition in Maine after this,” Cilley told his second, even as he headed to the dueling ground.84 It’s easy to understand Cilley’s takeaway lesson about being in Congress, written to his wife in the midst of his wrangle: “[A] man, if he think free & boldly must take his life in his hand.”85
And so on the morning on February 23, Graves sent Cilley a formal challenge, noting that he was “left no other alternative but to ask that satisfaction which is recognized among gentlemen.”86 That evening, Cilley accepted. And the duel that no one wanted advanced to the dueling ground.
“AN AGITATION IN THE HOUSE”
By the day of the duel—February 24—both men had assembled teams of advisors to guide them through the coming confrontation. As a Southerner, Graves didn’t have to go far to find duel-savvy men whom he knew and trusted. He ultimately chose frequent fighter Henry Wise as his second, U.S. Navy surgeon Jonathan M. Foltz as his doctor, and Richard H. Menefee (W-KY) and John J. Crittenden (W-KY) as his secondary “friends,” the latter a mild-mannered senior senator with a national reputation who might be able to wield his influence to settle the fight.87 As Graves explained it, Crittenden’s presence “would be the best evidence I could offer at home, that I did not intend to act rashly.”88
As a congressional newcomer, Cilley had a harder time of it. With no close duel-savvy friends, he assembled a team of relative strangers with a history of fighting: his second was George W. Jones, a delegate from the Wisconsin territory, recommended by Missouri men as an experienced second (he had four duels under his belt); his doctor was the rifle-ready Alexander Duncan; and his secondary “friends” on the field were Jesse Bynum (D-NC), a veteran of two congressional duels, once as a second and once as a principal (plus a fistfight with Henry Wise two years past); and Jones’s college friend Colonel James W. Schaumburg, a hot-tempered Louisianan renowned for fighting a duel with swords on horseback and accidentally killing his unfortunate horse. Schaumburg became involved only because Pierce spotted the famous duelist on Pennsylvania Avenue and sought his advice. Well aware of Schaumburg’s hair-trigger temper, Jones blurted out, “For God’s sake, don’t take him,” but he was too late.89 Whigs had good reason to question the influence of Cilley’s “violent political friends.”90 As for Cilley’s closest nonviolent friend, Franklin Pierce, by the morning of the duel, he was beside himself with worry, walking into Cilley’s room and immediately walking out, too disturbed to speak.91
A few hours later at a little past noon, Cilley, Jones, Bynum, and Schaumburg met Duncan at his boardinghouse and set out for the Anacostia bridge, where they were to meet Graves and his friends and leave the District together. After a brief wait at the bridge, two carriages drove up, one carrying Graves, Wise, and Menefee, the other Crittenden and Foltz. All three carriages then set out for Maryland. A short time later, Whig representatives John Calhoon and Richard Hawes of Kentucky followed in their tracks, equipped with blankets in case Graves was shot.92 All told, ten congressmen were present that day.
From start to finish, the duel was a very human affair, as were all duels, but few were documented beyond bare-bones reports by the seconds. The Cilley-Graves committee report offers an intimate view of a duel’s gritty realities: the misunderstandings and mistakes, the offhand jokes, the quirky side stories, the surprises and oversights. It shows a group of men gingerly feeling their way through a deadly encounter, clinging to rules and rituals in the name of fairness, for the sake of honor, but hoping to end things with bloodless gunplay, a parting handshake, and nothing more.
Some of the duel’s details are almost funny: no one knew where the District’s border was, so they had to ask a stranger; a random tourist with a lifelong desire to witness a duel shadowed the carriages and insisted on watching; Menefee loaded Graves’s rifle incorrectly before the first shot, leading Wise to joke about so-called Kentucky riflemen; Cilley’s carriage driver and the son of the farmer who owned the field chatted with Graves between shots, the boy peppering him with questions (Are you fighting a duel? Are you members of Congress? Where are you from? Are you fighting over a debate?) until Graves asked him to stop.
The report also reveals that neither Cilley nor Graves was good with a rifle, something that the two seconds deliberately suppressed in their joint post-duel account of their proceedings; it wouldn’t have done much for their principals to expose them as bumblers who misfired. But so they were. As a rifleman, Cilley had a slight advantage, but very slight. He hadn’t shot a gun in at least five years, and even then he’d been hunting squirrels—badly, because he was nearsighted. Graves was so bad with a rifle that his friends felt sure that he’d be killed; thus the presence of Calhoon and Hawes with blankets. (Menefee said that Graves fired “with an awkwardness very remarkable in one educated and residing in Kentucky.”)93 Graves’s friends filed down his gun’s trigger to keep him from firing prematurely, but during the second exchange of fire he did precisely that. Cilley misfired during the first exchange. Both men had practice sessions before the duel and they needed them.94
But for the most part, events went as planned. The three carriages arrived at the chosen spot, stopping just outside the fence surrounding the field. Wise and Jones, the two seconds, surveyed and measured the ground, linking arms and taking extra-large paces so that what was supposed to be a distance of eighty yards was closer to ninety-two. Then they signaled for everyone to “come on,” with Cilley and Graves arriving last, their places marked, their rifles loaded.
The two men walked to their designated spots, Cilley standing on a slight rise, Graves standing in front of a fence near a small wood; such things mattered because they might affect one’s aim. Graves faced the sun. There was a strong wind blowing against Cilley; it was a cold winter day.
The two men angled their left sides toward each other to narrow themselves as targets. They were handed their rifles. Jones, as determined by a coin toss, said, “Gentlemen, are you ready?” and when neither man said no, continued: “Fire—one, two, three, four.” (No one was to fire after the count of four). Cilley fired first before he’d fully raised his gun. Graves fired a second or two later and missed.
The rifle used by Jonathan Cilley in his duel (Photograph by Hugh Talman and Jaclyn Nash. Courtesy of National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
A few weeks after the Cilley-Graves duel, French visited the dueling ground to chart the duel’s logistics. Later that day, he drew it in his diary. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Now, as was customary, the seconds and friends assembled halfway between the principals and conferred; neither Graves nor Cilley could hear them. Jones asked Wise if Graves was satisfied. If so, they could shake hands and leave. “These gentlemen have come here without animosity towards each other,” Wise replied. “Cannot Mr. Cilley … make some disclaimer which will relieve Mr. Graves from his position?” Jones spoke with Cilley and returned: Cilley said that he meant no disrespect to Graves, “because he entertained for him then, as he now does, the highest respect and the most kind feelings.” He refused Webb’s note because he didn’t want to be drawn into a “controversy” with him, and didn’t “choose to be drawn into an expression of opinion as to him.” After a brief discussion, both men checked with their principals and returned, Wise stating that Cilley’s answer left Graves “precisely in the position in which he stood when the challenge was sent,” Cilley’s friends insisting that the exchange of fire and Cilley’s “peril of life” should satisfy Graves’s honor. Roughly twenty minutes were spent in “earnest conversation,” Graves and Cilley watching from afar.
But because nothing had changed, Wise and Menefee determined that the fight should continue. Cilley and Graves got back into position, and this time Graves fired before fully raising his gun and Cilley missed. Graves staggered back so violently at the misfire that his friends thought he’d been hit; embarrassed and frustrated, he demanded another shot.95 Again, the seconds and friends conferred. Jones insisted that Cilley had proven himself “a brave man” and had given satisfaction to Graves by risking his life. “The matter should end here.” But Wise, speaking for Graves, wanted Cilley to acknowledge that Webb was a gentleman, otherwise Graves had “borne the note of a man who is not a man of honor” and dishonored himself in the process.96
Meanwhile, off to the side, Cilley’s carriage driver chatted with Graves. He thought that Graves had been hit during the second fire. “I didn’t feel the ball or hear it,” Graves replied. The driver asked the distance between Graves and Cilley. “Eighty yards,” was the answer. “[I]t was a chance shot to hit a man at that distance, as the wind was blowing.” At that moment, the two seconds began reloading the rifles. “I am very sorry to see them rifles loaded again,” said the driver. Graves dropped his head and murmured, “So it is.”
As the reloading continued, Wise pulled Jones aside for one last stab at settling matters. Couldn’t Cilley claim privilege of debate? Cilley wouldn’t, Jones knew. Cilley’s team now objected “in the strongest language” to continuing, but Wise and Menefee wanted Cilley to either admit that Webb was a gentleman or plead privilege of debate. When Jones reported this to Cilley, he replied, “They must thirst for my blood mightily.”97 Here, Schaumburg’s hair-trigger temper did its damage. Arguing with Wise and Menefee about whether honor had been satisfied, he snapped, “[G]o on, and load and fire until you are satisfied.” And the two men stalked off and did just that.98
Again, Jones gave the count. Both men took aim and fired, nearly simultaneously. This time, Graves’s shot rang true. Dropping his rifle and grabbing his abdomen, Cilley reached for his friends and cried, “I am shot,” falling into Schaumburg’s arms. The ball had passed through Cilley’s body, severing his abdominal aorta. He died within minutes, his friends in tears.99 The random tourist (clearly not shy) arrived at Cilley’s side as his friends closed his eyes; walking back to his horse, he passed Wise, then Graves and the others, all of them asking after Cilley. “He is dead, sir,” was the answer. Crittenden asked him to deliver a note to Clay reporting the outcome. Wise, in tears, sent word of the outcome to his drinking buddy Pierce, who shunned Wise for the next fourteen years.100 Graves and his friends walked to their carriages, Graves’s face masked in his cloak. Cilley’s friends carried his body to their carriage. And they all headed back to town.
Back in Washington, the Capitol was abuzz. The duel was virtually common knowledge, though few had expected it to happen; given the involvement of a non-combatant Northerner and the mere “punctilio” at the heart of the conflict, until the morning of the duel most people had assumed that the combatants would find a way out. Thus French’s ability early in the dispute to joke that Cilley had been invited to “stand up and be shot at.”101
But there wasn’t much joking on the morning of the duel. Congressmen were clustered on the Capitol grounds, looking up the road, waiting for news. Inside the House chamber no one could concentrate. “There was an agitation in the House, different from that which is occasioned by an irritated debate,” reported John Quincy Adams. “[A] restless, uneasy, whispering disposition, clustering into little groups with inquisitive looks, listening ears, and varying reports as one member or another went out of, or came into the Hall.”102
Hoping to prevent gunplay, the congressional community kicked into gear. People were scampering all over town trying to intervene. Maine Democrats John Fairfield and Timothy Carter ran to a carriage that they thought contained Cilley and his friends, but were mistaken.103 French tried to pry the duel’s location from Carter, but Carter “pretended not to know anything.” (French’s phrasing would prove significant in events to come.)104 Hearing of the duel early that morning, two of Webb’s friends had rushed to Clay’s boardinghouse, waking him from a dead sleep. Stunned to hear that the duel was taking place (he thought that Whig delaying tactics had kept Graves from finding a rifle), but as Graves’s friend unable to intervene, Clay sent them to the district attorney and to the frequent fight mediator Charles Fenton Mercer (W-VA), who he knew would do all that they could.105 The district attorney promptly rushed to the Capitol to find out where the duel was taking place, then raced off to arrest the participants—at the wrong location.
And then there was the perennial loose cannon, James Watson Webb. Horrified to find that Graves was fighting in his place, he came up with a series of increasingly outrageous and ungentlemanly plans. First, he and two friends, all of them well armed, went to Cilley’s boardinghouse intending to give him two options: duel Webb immediately or swear to do so before fighting Graves. If Cilley refused, Webb would shatter his right arm so he couldn’t duel Graves. Finding that Cilley had already left, the desperados opted for Plan B: run onto the dueling ground and insist that Webb take Graves’s place. If Cilley resisted, they’d shoot him. If Graves and Wise ordered them off the field … they’d shoot Cilley. The three men spent much of the morning racing to dueling grounds all over the District and beyond with the dignity and aplomb of the Keystone Kops, but after visiting three wrong locations they returned to the city to await the result. (Clearly, congressional duelists had a wide range of playing fields.)
French’s various writings describe what came next; as always, he witnessed it all. He was lounging at a “billiard saloon” when someone burst in yelling that the parties were returning from the dueling ground, leading French and a pack of billiard loungers to make a mad dash for the windows. Moments later, French emerged from the building as the carriage bearing Cilley’s corpse passed by, trailed by an immense crowd. Rushing around the corner, French watched as the body was carried into Cilley’s boardinghouse. A few moments more and French was home at his window with Bess, watching the angry, milling crowd and the agitated comings and goings at the dead congressman’s door.106
Cilley’s body lay in state in the Capitol’s rotunda before his funeral, not far from the Trumbull painting that included his grandfather’s portrait, an eerie coincidence that came to light when a little girl, standing before the painting with an explanatory card in her hand, asked her father, “Which is Colonel Cilley?”107 Then came Cilley’s enormous funeral in the House chamber, attended by the president, vice president, cabinet, Congress—and French, followed by a funeral procession to the Congressional Cemetery that extended for half a mile.108 It was a “political parade,” thought Wise.109 “The funeral of a saint,” Adams groused. But with a difference; the Supreme Court refused to attend the funeral of a duelist, as did some Massachusetts congressmen.110 On the opposite end of the dueling spectrum, some Southern congressmen were offended by the preacher’s anti-dueling sermon.111
Not surprisingly given the uproar, Cilley’s burial didn’t calm things in Washington. French noticed handbills announcing that Wise and Webb were to be burned in effigy near City Hall, Webb for causing the tragedy and Wise for pushing it to its violent close.112 For a short time, there was talk of a mob forming to hang Graves and Wise.113 Webb was threatened with a beating, even a lynching. True to form, he responded by taking a long, deliberate stroll up and down the Avenue—twice—daring his attackers to strike, combative, unrepentant, and heavily armed to the end.114
An 1838 cartoon mocking James Watson Webb’s post-duel strut up and down the Avenue, daring people to assault him. In reality, he was armed, but not with quite so many weapons. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Four years later, Webb finally succeeded in dueling a congressman but it didn’t end well. He and Representative Thomas Marshall (W-KY)—of the “spreeing gentry”—had been sniping at each other for months over a bankruptcy law that Marshall wanted repealed, and that Webb dearly needed. When Marshall went to New York City on business, the sniping got more serious, leading Marshall to issue a duel challenge. In the subsequent duel, Webb was shot in the leg; not long after, New York’s Democratic district attorney indicted him under the state’s anti-dueling law. Arguing that he hadn’t bothered to obey a law that was never enforced, Webb was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in the notorious Sing Sing penitentiary, but was pardoned by the governor after 14,000 New Yorkers petitioned for his release.115 Clearly, dueling had not yet had its day in the North.
Nor had it had its day in Washington. How long would “this tragical event” prevent congressional dueling? wondered British visitor Fredrick Marryat. “Well, I reckon three days, or thereabouts,” a stranger sarcastically shot back.116 In fact, it was three years until the next challenge, four years until the next duel, and three months until the next fistfight.117
“GO TO THE BALLOT BOXES”
Meanwhile, the North exploded in outrage. There were demonstrations and public meetings throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Writing from Chester, New Hampshire, French’s half brother Henry reported that Cilley’s death had “created a great sensation.” He felt sure that “New England would be glad to have Wise hanged—I should.”118 Maine was in an uproar. “You can form no conception of the excitement here,” wrote one of John Fairfield’s (D-ME) constituents.119 Scores of petitions spilled into the House and Senate demanding an anti-dueling law and the expulsion of the duel’s participants, particularly Graves and Wise.120
The Northern press seethed with outrage of all kinds. Anti-dueling advocates saw a golden opportunity to push their point; antislavery advocates saw a chance to condemn slaveholders and the South; and Whigs and Democrats saw a chance to condemn one another.
Democratic papers were particularly passionate in denouncing “the murder of Cilley” at the hands of a gang of Whig assassins. Isaac Hill’s former paper, the New-Hampshire Patriot, wins the prize for headline creativity (and excessive capitalization): “BANK RUFFIANS, HIRED TO SHOOT DOWN [Democratic-] REPUBLICAN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS.” The remedy, of course, was to “GO TO THE BALLOT BOXES.”121 The United States Magazine and Democratic Review published a lengthy article whose title said it all: “The Martyrdom of Cilley.”122 Given that the dead man was a Democrat, Whig papers were at a disadvantage, but they took their share of swings. Many chided the Democrats for using a “bloody tragedy … for electioneering purposes,” then turned around and did the same, claiming that Cilley’s friends—a gang of assassin Democrats—had sacrificed Cilley to get at Webb.123
An example of the flood of commentary in the duel’s wake, this 1838 anti-dueling broadside asserts the superiority of Northern culture and mocks Southern “honor.” (By William Withington. Courtesy of the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine)
Not surprisingly, the response was more subdued in the South and West. Crittenden was appalled by the “faint, puny, stinted sort of defense” of Graves in Kentucky newspapers.124 With anti-dueling laws on the books throughout much of the nation and reformers of all kinds condemning the practice, it was difficult to publicly defend dueling with gusto, even in dueling country.125
Given the uproar and the risk to reputations and careers, many participants tried to spin things their way in public statements. Wise and Graves addressed their constituents; Webb published a statement in the Courier and Enquirer; Benton wrote a letter to the Washington Globe; and Pierce wrote a letter to the investigative committee that was later published in the press. Not surprisingly, all five men sent the same message: don’t blame me. Webb and Graves took the extreme Whig approach, accusing Cilley’s “violent political friends” of pushing him into a fight.126 Benton denied any real involvement, admitting only to being consulted on the day of the duel.127 And Pierce refuted a stream of accusations flooding Whig newspapers in New England: no, he hadn’t been Cilley’s second; no, he hadn’t urged Cilley to fight; no, after the duel, he hadn’t raced down the street with a smile on his face, eager to hear that Cilley had slaughtered Graves.128
Wise’s and Graves’s statements had an added dimension because they directly addressed their constituents, Wise in a written statement, Graves in a speech in Louisville that later appeared in print. Both defended themselves at length for the same stated reason: they were being accused of dishonorable behavior, and their honor and their constituents’ honor were intertwined. “Your Representative is accountable to you for his personal as well as his political conduct,” Wise wrote, “for, by it he is worthy of you, or you are dishonored.” Graves was even more explicit. He had fought for his honor and the honor of Kentucky, and if his constituents continued to support him, he would continue to “preserve your honor with my own,” a declaration that drew “Great cheering.”129 Crittenden said the same in a private letter: Graves felt that “the honor of his State is in his hands.”130 Wise and Graves were advancing the same argument: a dishonored congressman dishonored all that he represented. In a very real way, congressmen were their constituents, states, and regions personified; they practiced a kind of performative representation, acting as physical surrogates for all that they represented.131
Cilley had made this argument in the days before the duel. His rights were his constituents’ rights; his humiliation was their humiliation. They were one and the same. By this logic, as much as his constituents might disapprove of dueling, they would disapprove far more of being publicly disgraced. Several times, he even hinted that he was defending the honor of New England as a whole. Given the circumstances, he thought it better to fight.132
This wasn’t clouded thinking in the heat of the moment. It was the truth; as a fellow New Englander, French felt the power of Cilley’s logic, heart and soul. When Wise and Cilley had first clashed on the floor, French had gloried that a New Englander—even better, a Granite State native—was standing firm in rough waters. Wise had tried to “brag off” Cilley, but Cilley “would not budge an inch,” French gloated. He was holding his own “with an unflinching eye.” Then, even more remarkably, Cilley stood up to Webb in the face of a duel. “Yankees are not the fellows to back out of any thing when they are once in,” French crowed, pleased that Webb had found “a customer.”133 To French, Cilley was upholding New England’s honor as well as the honor of the Democracy.
This wasn’t French’s first praise of an embattled New Englander. One year earlier, when John Bell (W-TN) had called Leonard Jarvis (J-ME) a liar during debate, Jarvis had stood Bell down, insisting that the matter “must be settled elsewhere Sir, & in another manner than by words, yes sir—in another manner sir”—rather heavy-handedly hinting at a duel. When colleagues pushed for apologies, Jarvis held his ground, demanding an unconditional withdrawal of the insult, which Bell delivered after hours of negotiations that occupied the House for an entire afternoon, with Henry Wise acting as Bell’s second. French was lost in admiration. “[N]o man could have taken higher & more honorable ground than Jarvis did. He was as firm as a rock.”134
Like Jarvis, Cilley had “stood his ground manfully,” and to French that meant something.135 It showed that Northerners were men—that they wouldn’t be cowed. It showed that Northern qualms about dueling needn’t hamstring them in Washington. It showed that the North was fully and fairly represented—that the rights of Northerners were being defended on the floor. Although French disapproved of dueling and deplored Cilley’s death, he admired Cilley’s bravery and cheered him on. Even John Quincy Adams craved some Northern fire. On the same day that Wise and Cilley clashed over corruption charges, Adams was yearning for some “bold, dashing, fluent, and eloquent” Northerners who could “raise the reputation of New England” in Congress by overcoming its “tameness.”136
This was just what Cilley had hoped: given the peculiar logic of cross-sectional politics in Washington, Northerners would support him regardless of hometown habits and ideals. And indeed, although the mode of his death was deplored far and wide, he himself was exalted as a courageous champion. To Southerners, he was the very model of a loyal Northern Democrat, making the ultimate sacrifice to uphold Southern interests. Southern Democrats spilled over with praise. Cilley “was the most gallant man I ever saw from the North,” declared Francis Pickens (D-SC). He was “the first northern man who openly denounced the Abolitionists and spoke as a Southern man.” He even looked Southern.137 New Englanders of all political stripes praised Cilley for defending New England’s honor, with even the staunchest anti-dueling Whigs doing little more than condemning his “violent friends.”138 The Maine Democrats who announced his death in the House and Senate likewise praised his “manly bearing towards opponents” and his desire to avoid “disgrace to himself, to his family, and to his constituents.”139
The ever-clear-eyed John Quincy Adams characteristically stripped away the posturing and emotion. “The Career of Mr. Cilley is that of an ambitious Northern young man, struggling to rise on a Southern platform,” he explained to his son. Cilley
had already announced that he had no sympathies for Indians or for human beings of a darker hue; and this declaration had already brought him golden opinions from the carnation colour of the South. He seized the first possible opportunity to announce and prove himself an unerring marksman with the rifle, and to select it as his favourite weapon for settling his points of honour.… All this was to display to the South and West how high he soared above the region of Yankee prejudices.
Adams charged Cilley with adopting Southern standards to promote his reputation. Pierce had done the same to redeem his name when denounced as a doughface two years past. Cilley’s fate showed the price of this logic. It was a “monumental warning to his successors,” Adams thought—a warning that would go unheeded.140
Of course, not every Northerner followed Cilley’s lead. Many wouldn’t, even couldn’t, go that far. Take, for example, Cilley’s roommate Timothy Carter (D-ME). Already in ill health, the thirty-seven-year-old lawyer lapsed into a state of delirium on the day of Cilley’s death, raving that he had been challenged to a duel. Given French’s comment that Carter “pretended” not to know the duel’s location, it’s tempting to attribute at least some of his suffering to a guilty conscience. Regardless of the cause, he died two weeks later, depriving Maine of another representative.141 The stunned French wrote and published a eulogy.142 Carter’s gravestone bears witness to his ultimate trial. It reads simply: “Died while a member of the 25th Congress at Washington, D.C.”143 For some, the complications of cross-regional conflict were simply too challenging.
Others tried to level the playing field by demanding formal institutional retribution. On February 28, John Fairfield (D-ME) proposed an investigation into the causes of Cilley’s death, immediately provoking what the Globe might have called a “lively debate.” Whigs roared that emotions were too heated for a fair investigation. Democrats demanded justice.144 And then a handful of Southern Whigs essentially threatened violence, warning that because an investigation would touch on matters of honor, it was bound to cause more bloodshed. “It would require more than ordinary nerve to serve” on that committee, warned Cost Johnson (W-MD), advising its members to arm themselves. And what right did Congress have to investigate such matters anyway? This was an affair of honor, a private matter between gentlemen. In the end, the vote was 152 to 49 in favor of an investigation, but the results were strikingly sectional. With the exception of one lone Rhode Island Whig, every New Englander supported an investigation, regardless of party.145 Clearly, the threat of a duel was a powerful weapon in the Southern and Western arsenal.146
The investigative committee was no less divided, though in more complex ways. Consisting of four Democrats and three Whigs, it ultimately produced three different reports.147 The majority—three Northern Democrats and a Southern Whig—exonerated Cilley, recommending expulsion for Graves and the censure of Wise and Jones for breach of privilege.148 In a separate report, two Northern Whigs protested that the committee had no right to take sides or suggest punishments.149 And in the third report, a Southern Democrat recommended a mild punishment given that none of Congress’s many duelists and near-duelists had been formally punished since the launching of the government.150 All in all, the results were partly partisan and partly sectional, an accurate reflection of congressional culture overall. Northern Democrats favored punishment. Northern Whigs didn’t. And Southerners were divided. Not surprisingly, the equally divided House tabled the report, effectively “smothering it,” noted John Quincy Adams, though the suggested punishments remained “suspended over the heads” of Graves, Wise, and Jones.151 Although one congressman had killed another for words spoken during debate—a flaming violation of a fundamental privilege—no one was punished. By the congressional community’s standards, no rules had been broken.
But the hovering threat of a duel remained a problem for non-combatant Northerners. So they pursued an anti-dueling law in earnest, with Samuel Prentiss (AJ-VT) shepherding it through the Senate and Adams (W-MA) seeing it through the House. Given that it prohibited giving, delivering, or accepting a challenge in the District of Columbia only, it was essentially a congressional anti-dueling law, a specific solution to the specific problem of an imbalance of power. And it had teeth: ten years’ imprisonment at hard labor if someone was killed or mortally wounded in a duel, five years for dueling without a casualty, and three years for assaulting someone who refused to accept a challenge, the latter provision the most blatant Northern protective measure of all. Ironically, due to its harsh penalties, the law was rarely enforced, as some people warned when debating it.152 Although it ultimately discouraged duels, it didn’t prevent them, and it had little impact on congressional threats and violence.
Discussing the bill wasn’t easy, even in the abstract. Although Northern congressmen opposed dueling, supporting a law that seemed aimed at protecting themselves seemed cowardly. Thus, even as they supported the bill and condemned dueling with fist-clenched righteousness, they did some symbolic chest-beating, insisting that they weren’t afraid to play rough. New England congressmen might need protection from “those gentlemanly assassins … who might seek to call them out for words spoken during debate,” argued Perry Smith (D-CT). But he himself “was not afraid of any man.”153 Nor was Franklin Pierce. New Englanders didn’t need any “special protection,” he insisted; if they failed to fend off a conflict, they would face the consequences like men. Enactment of an anti-dueling law was a purely moral matter.154 Given the formidable presence of fighting men and the implications of cowering before them, even the mere mention of avoiding a duel required compensatory swaggering. (Of course, it was no easier to oppose an anti-dueling law; when the bill passed in the House, roughly 40 percent of its members didn’t vote.)155
Ultimately, few men were immune to the sway of congressional violence, not even the good-natured French. When the harried Henry Wise publicly insulted him for mumbling while reading the investigative committee report aloud, French, still reeling in the wake of Cilley’s death, considered flogging him. If he himself wasn’t a family man, French fumed in his diary, he “would have inflicted personal chastisement on Wise, at any risk,” adding for good measure that he feared no man. French wasn’t alone in his fight calculations. Two congressmen offered to help him “chastise Mr. Wise personally” and to stand by French “through any result,” clearly anticipating a duel or an assault. Fight calculations were going full-force, but in the final analysis French held back. Nine years later, he read through his diary and stopped at this point. “Never should have been written,” he wrote in the margin, sorry to have documented his surrender to the passions of the floor, but not apologetic for having felt them.156
To French and his colleagues, congressional violence was routine. Party loyalties pulled them into fighting; concern for manhood pushed them into fighting; the community of Congress sanctioned fighting; and holding one’s own before a hometown audience sometimes seemed to require it. In the case of the Cilley-Graves duel, it was also rewarded and even praised by congressmen and constituents alike. Virtually every participant won reelection the following session: Bynum, Graves, Wise, Crittenden, Duncan, and Pierce. Only Wisconsin delegate Jones lost his seat, a casualty of wavering support in an eastern area settled largely by New Englanders. But even he suffered no permanent damage, winning a Senate seat in Iowa ten years later.157 The same holds true for most of Congress’s frequent fighters: many were reelected. Not only did Congress endorse fighting, but by reelecting combatants, the nation did the same, encouraging their representatives to literally fight for their rights. Here, perhaps, is the most fundamental reason for congressional violence. When it came to earning influence in Congress and back home, it worked all too well.