Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

As a secret session is always supposed to be for the purpose of discussing a Presidential communication, the fiction is embalmed in the form of a motion “that the Senate proceed to the consideration of executive business.” This is the signal for the doorkeepers to evict the occupants of the galleries and shut the doors leading into the corridors; but sometimes the real reason for the request is widely removed from its pretext. I have known it to be offered for the purpose of cutting short the exhibition which a tipsy Senator was making of himself; or to prevent a tedious airing of grievances by a Senator who had quarreled with the President over the dispensation of patronage in his State; or to silence a Senator who, objecting to the negotiation of a certain treaty, kept referring to it in open debate while it was still pending under the seal of confidence. In this last instance, the offending Senator was so obstinate of purpose that the doors had to be closed and reopened several times in a single day.

On the face of things, there is no reason why the President should not attend any session of the Senate at which business of his originating is under debate. No President since the first, however, has made the experiment. Washington attended three secret sessions, but was so angered by the Senate’s referring to a committee sundry questions which he insisted should be settled on the spot, that he quitted the chamber, emphatically vowing that he would waste no more time on such trifling. The Senators excused their conduct by saying that they were embarrassed in talking about the President and his motives while he was sitting there.

The custom of wearing their hats while transacting business was continued by the Representatives for fifty years or more. Even the Speaker, as long as he sat in his chair, would keep his hat on, though he was accustomed to remove it when he stood to address the House. The Senators, whatever may have been their practice during the years of their seclusion, distinguished themselves from the Representatives immediately thereafter by sitting with bared heads. They also avoided the habit, common in the House, of putting their feet up on the nearest elevated object—usually a desk-lid—and lolling on their spines. English visitors, though accustomed to the wearing of hats in their own House of Commons, nevertheless found a text for criticism in the way the American Representatives did it; and they all had something severe to say of the prevalence of tobacco-chewing in the House, with its accompaniment of spitting, as Mrs. Trollope put it, “to an excess that decency forbids me to describe.” Less offensive to the taste of our visitors from abroad was the indulgence in snuff-taking, which was so general that boxes or jars were set up in convenient places inside of both halls, and it was made the duty of certain employees to keep these always filled with a fine brand of snuff. Any of the most eloquent orators in Congress was liable to stop at regular intervals in a speech to help himself to a large pinch, bury his face in a bandanna handkerchief, and have it out with nature. A few of the lawmakers, indeed, cultivated snuff-taking as a fine art, and were proud of their reputations for dexterity in it. Henry Clay was one of the most skilful.

While we are on the subject of indulgences, we must not overlook a drink called switchel, which was very popular, being compounded of rum, ginger, molasses, and water. Every member was allowed then, as now, in addition to his salary and traveling expenses, a fixed supply of “stationery”; and this term, which was elastic enough to include everything from pens and paper to jack-knives and razors, was stretched to cover the delectable switchel under the thin disguise of “sirup.” In later years, when a wave of teetotalism had swept over Washington, and the open sale of alcoholic drinks in the restaurants of the Capitol was under a temporary ban, any member who wished a drink of whisky ordered it as “cold tea,” and it was served to him in a china cup. This stratagem fell into marked discredit when one of the most respectable and abstemious members of the House, who had never tasted intoxicating liquor of any sort, ordered cold tea in entire good faith to clear his throat in the midst of a speech, and became maudlin before he was aware that anything was amiss.

Besides sprawling with their feet higher than their heads, and otherwise airing their contempt for conventional etiquette, many of the old-time Representatives felt free to read newspapers while debates were going on around them, indifferent to their disturbance of both orators and audience. The first pointed rebuke of this practice was administered by James K. Polk when Speaker of the House. He noticed one morning that substantially every Representative had a newspaper in hand when the gavel fell for beginning the day’s session. The journal was read, but nobody paid any attention to it, and then the Speaker made his usual announcement that the House was ready for business. Still everybody remained buried in the morning’s news. After another vain attempt to set the machinery in motion, Mr. Polk quietly drew a newspaper from his own pocket, seated himself with his back toward the House, spread the sheet open before him, and ostentatiously immersed himself in its printed contents. One by one the Representatives finished their reading, and perhaps a quarter of an hour passed before there came from all sides an irregular volley of calls: “Mr. Speaker!” “Mr. Speaker!” Mr. Polk ignored them till one of the baffled members moved that the House proceed to the election of a presiding officer, to take the place of the Speaker, who appeared to be absent. This brought Mr. Polk to his feet with the remark that he not only was present, but had notified the House that it was ready for business and had received no response. The House took the joke in good part and showed by its conduct thereafter that it was not above profiting by the Speaker’s reproof.

Although women were admitted as spectators to the sessions of both chambers on the same terms as men, there was for many years an undercurrent of feeling against their encroachments. There was limited room in either hall for their accommodation behind the colonnade. In this space—the original “lobby”—there was an open fireplace at each end, and it soon became a common complaint among the Senators that the feminine guests drew the sofas up in front of the fire and thus effectually shut off the warmth from every one else. Aaron Burr, while Vice-president, was the first person in authority to take cognizance of this indictment. He notified the visiting women that after a certain date they must cease coming into the lobby and find seats in the gallery. They were appropriately indignant and declared an almost unanimous boycott against the Senate. Vice-president Clinton was of a different temper from his predecessor and let them all come back again. By degrees, however, as the privileges of the floor became more and more restricted in both chambers, the women were given a special gallery for themselves.

From the time they began coming to Congress in any multitude, the fair visitors have made their presence felt. In the House one day John Randolph drew attention to them by halting a debate to point a long, skinny finger in their direction and snarl out: “Mr. Speaker, what, pray, are all these women doing here, so out of place in this arena? Sir, they had much better be at home attending to their knitting!” In spite of that, they continued to come and to attract attention, till the number of members who habitually quitted their seats to repair to the gallery and pay their devoirs to their lady friends threatened to play havoc with the roll-calls. This abuse did not last long, and nowadays the visit of a member of either house to the gallery is an incident.

So far from objecting to spectators, both House and Senate now offer distinct encouragement to the public to come and hear the debates. To this end, each chamber has a deep gallery completely surrounding it, with cross partitions at intervals. One section is reserved for the President and Cabinet and their families; another for the members of the diplomatic circle; a third for the members of the press, and so forth. Control of each press gallery is nominally retained by the chamber concerned, but actually is left in the hands of a committee of newspaper men, who enforce an exemplary discipline, so that a writer guilty of misconduct would be excluded thenceforward from his privileges. On the other hand, the newspaper men have always stood firmly for their right to discuss the members and measures of Congress with all the freedom consonant with truth. It has required a long and sometimes dramatic struggle to bring about the present harmonious mutual understanding between Congress and the press as to the legitimate preserves of each body upon which the other must not trespass.

Some of the battles leading to this result are entertaining to recall. In the later forties, while members of the press were still permitted to do their work at desks on the floor of the House, a correspondent of the New York Tribune named Robinson published an article about a certain Representative named Sawyer, whose unappetizing personal habits he thought it would be wise to break up. Among other things he described the way Sawyer ate his luncheon: “Every day at two o’clock he feeds. About that hour he is seen leaving his seat and taking a position in the window back of the Speaker’s chair to the left. He unfolds a greasy paper, in which is contained a chunk of bread and sausage, or some other unctuous substance. He disposes of them rapidly, wipes his hands with the greasy paper for a napkin, and throws it out of the window. What little grease is left on his hands, he wipes on his almost bald head.” There was more to the same effect, but this will suffice. When the paper containing the article reached Washington, there was much laughing behind hands in Congress; but, though most of the members rejoiced that somebody should have told the truth for the dignity of the House, few had the courage to come out boldly and say that the satire was deserved.

One of Sawyer’s colleagues retaliated with a resolution that all writers for the Tribune be excluded thenceforward from the floor; after a brief debate it was adopted, and the offending correspondent was obliged to go up into the gallery and sit among the women. But his pursuers were not satisfied with this measure of revenge; for, reviving a half-forgotten rule that men were to be admitted to the gallery only when accompanied by women, and then must be passed in by a member of the House, they sent a doorkeeper to eject him even from his temporary refuge. At once several ladies volunteered to accompany him for his visits, and among the Congressmen who climbed the stairs from day to day to pass him in was one not less distinguished than John Quincy Adams. Nor