This was the spirit of the hour when Congress met in November—the bitterness among the members fully as intense as among the loungers in the streets.
VIII
And yet it was not to be without its touch of comedy. Before the crisis came, two incidents had set the country roaring. Matthew Lyon, the Vermont Democrat, was a constant provocation to the Federalists. Hot-tempered, ardent, uncouth in his manners, but thoroughly honest at heart, he had outraged the clubby spirit of the Federalists. During the Revolution he had been shamefully cashiered for an act deserving of a medal, but almost immediately he had been vindicated. The vindication was thoroughly understood in Philadelphia, but it suited the purpose of his political foes to ignore the facts for the benefit of the slander.
The House was sitting, but in a state of confusion—every one including the Speaker talking—Lyon holding forth in conversation on the ease with which Connecticut could be converted to Democracy through a Democratic paper in that State. Roger Griswold, a Federalist leader, made a slurring reference to Lyon’s ‘wooden sword.’ The latter, hearing it, preferred to ignore the insult. Whereupon Griswold, following him and plucking at his coat, repeated the slander. At this Lyon made an unpardonable blunder—instead of slapping Griswold’s face, he spat in it. Instantly the Federalists were in ferment. The ‘little beast’ was unfit to associate with gentlemen, anyway, and should be expelled. There was an investigation, with denunciatory speeches as indecent as the act denounced. The purpose was clear—to get rid of Lyon’s vote. The Jeffersonians thereupon rallied to his support. Neither condoning the act nor asking that it go unpunished, Gallatin opposed the expulsion resolution on the ground that Congress was not a fashionable club and had no right to deprive a district of its representation on the basis of manners. A two-thirds vote was necessary to expel, and this was lacking. It was a party vote.
A few days later, Lyon was seated at his desk buried in papers, oblivious to his surroundings, and Griswold, armed with a hickory stick, approached from the rear and began striking him on the head. Several blows were struck before the victim of the assault
could extricate himself from his desk. Then, grasping some coal tongs, he advanced on Griswold, who, finding his enemy also armed, gallantly retreated, striking wildly. They clinched, rolled on the floor, and colleagues intervened. Here was another insult to the dignity of the House, but the Federalists were delighted with it. Since nothing could be done to Lyon without doing as much to Griswold, the matter was dropped. The scribes fell upon the morsel with a zest, the first political caricature in American history resulted, the public shrugged its shoulders and laughed, Jefferson thought the whole affair ‘dirty business,’[1394] but Gallatin, quite as much of a gentleman as Otis, thought that ‘nobody can blame Lyon for resenting the insult,’ since there was ‘a notable lack of delicacy in the conversation of most Connecticut gentlemen.’[1395] Fenno called Lyon a ‘filthy beast.’ ‘Porcupine,’ who had rather urged that some one spit in the face of Bache, gloated over Griswold’s assault,[1396] dubbed those who voted against expulsion ‘Knights of the Wooden Sword,’[1397] and virtuously resolved ‘to make the whole business as notorious as the courage of Alexander or the cruelty of Nero.’[1398] Speaker Dayton, whom he had recently denounced as a ‘double-faced weather-cock,’ having voted for expulsion, became an ornament over whom ‘New Jersey has indeed new reason to boast.’[1399] The real significance of the incident was that the war party had fared forth, chesty and cocky, to intimidate the Jeffersonians and had met a check—but they were to have another chance at Lyon.[1400]