The life and times of John Kelly, tribune of the people

by J. Fairfax McLaughlin

“All that I have to say to the Democracy is that you want active, earnest organization. Remember that if these Know-Nothings hold together they are sworn compact committees of vigilance. Go to work then. Organize actively everywhere. Appoint your vigilance committees, but take especial care that no Know-Nothings are secretly and unknown to you upon them. Be prepared. I have gone through most of Eastern Virginia, and in spite of their vaunting I defy them to defeat me. There are Indians in the bushes, but I’ll whack on the bayonet, and lunge at every shrub in the State till I drive them out. I tell them distinctly there shall be no compromise, no parley. I will come to no terms. They shall either crush me, or I will crush them in this State.”

Mr. Wise, though his health was impaired, conducted his campaign with extraordinary energy, travelling about 3000 miles, to every point in the State, and speaking fifty times before the election. He was triumphantly elected Governor of Virginia, receiving upwards of ten thousand majority over his Know-Nothing competitor. The impartial verdict of history is that Henry A. Wise did more to kill the Know-Nothing party than any other man in the United States.

Many Know-Nothings were elected to Congress from the Northern States, and a few from the Southern States. In the Senate and House of Representatives there were seventy-eight members of that party in 1855. Conspicuous among them all, on account of his prejudices no less than his ability, was Henry Winter Davis, a member of the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses from Baltimore.

The celebrated controversy upon the floor of Congress between Davis and John Kelly on the Know-Nothing question entitles the Know-Nothing leader to some notice here.

Henry Winter Davis was born at Annapolis, Maryland, August 16, 1817, and received his education at Kenyon College, Ohio, where he was graduated in 1837. His father was an Episcopalian minister. Young Davis was sent to the University of Virginia in 1839 by his aunt, a Miss Winter of Alexandria, Virginia, and entered upon his preparatory legal studies at that institution. He afterwards opened a law office at Alexandria, where he struggled with poverty for some years, making but little mark in that community, save as an occasional contributor of political essays to the Alexandria Gazette, but applying himself closely to his studies, and becoming an able lawyer. Reverdy Johnson recognized his talents and advised him to remove to Baltimore, where he would find a wider field for their display. Mr. Davis acted on this advice, and made Baltimore his home. He had married a Miss Cazenove of Alexandria, who soon died, and subsequently he married a daughter of John S. Morris, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Baltimore. Mr. Morris opposed the marriage on account of Davis’s peculiar political views.

Henry Winter Davis was a man of genius, with a natural bent for an opposition leader. In person he was handsome, in manners haughty and reserved, in demeanor elegant; and he possessed the gift of a fine oratory, both logical and persuasive. A morose temper and a cynical and cold nature served to heighten the picturesque effect of his character, and to make him delight in fomenting discord and violence. “The ignorant Dutch and infuriated Irish, let them beware lest they press the bosses of the buckler too far,” is said to have been a form of expression he applied to Germans and Irishmen in the course of one of his invectives on the stump in Baltimore. He soon became an acknowledged leader of the Know-Nothings, and no man knew better how to fire the rage and incite to acts of bloodshed the Plug Uglies of that city. Had Davis lived during the era of the Alien and Sedition Laws, his genius probably would have placed him at the head of that conspiracy, and his name would have become famous in history. He was a contemner of the sanctions of authority. The sacredness of institutions handed down from generation to generation unimpaired by the ravages of time, awakened no sense of reverence in the mind of this iconoclast. Burke’s beautiful allusion to the bulwarks of civil society which have been stamped with the “mysterious virtue of wax and parchment,” must have appeared to him only as a figure of rhetoric or a ridiculous fetich. How contemptuously he regarded the warning of Washington to his countrymen in the Farewell Address against entangling alliances with the nations of Europe is discovered in the following passage, found at page 367, of a book written by Mr. Davis, called “The War of Ormuzd and Ahriman in the Nineteenth Century.”

“They who stand with their backs to the future and their faces to the past, wise only after the event, and refusing to believe in dangers they have not felt, clamorously invoke the name of Washington in their protest against interference in the concerns of Europe. With such it is useless to argue till they learn the meaning of the language they repeat.”

With many similar sophistries he declared it would be wise policy on the part of the United States to take part in European controversies, and pretended to find warrant in the Monroe doctrine for this radical reversal of Washington’s maxim. But that Davis was a demagogue in the offensive sense of the word is evident from the fact that the very advice of General Washington against foreign influence, which he scouted at in his book, was soon after relied upon by the same Davis as his chief argument in Congress for the exclusion of foreigners from the rights and privileges of citizenship. In the course of a Know-Nothing speech, delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6th, 1857, he said: “Foreign allies have decided the government of the country. * * * * Awake the national spirit to the danger and degradation of having the balance of power held by foreigners. Recall the warnings of Washington against foreign influence, here in our midst, wielding part of our sovereignty; and with these sound words of wisdom let us recall the people from paths of strife and error to guard their peace and power.” The insincerity of Davis is further shown from his conduct in regard to the Republican party. He denounced that party in the speech above quoted from, saying, among other things, “the Republican party has nothing to do and can do nothing. It has no future. Why cumbers it the ground?” In the course of a few years he became a Republican, and notwithstanding his former denunciation of them, swallowing at a single breath the most ultra tenets of that party. Consistent only in his inconsistencies, he again prepared to bolt from the Republican organization shortly before his death, and was the author of the celebrated Wade-Davis Manifesto in 1864, against the renomination of Abraham Lincoln. Once having been invited by a literary society of the University of Virginia to deliver the annual address before that body, he took up some eccentric line of political conduct before the commencement day occurred, and compelled the society in self-respect to revoke its invitation. He affected the Byronic manner, and the contagion spread to other members of Congress. Roscoe Conkling, after he entered the House of Representatives, is said to have become a great admirer of Henry Winter Davis, and to have fallen into his peculiarities of style as a public speaker. Mr. Conkling’s famous parliamentary quarrel with Mr. Blaine soon after occurred.

Such was the man the Know-Nothings recognized as their leader in the House of Representatives when John Kelly entered that body. In the early part of 1857 Mr. Kelly replied to a sneering assault of Mr. Davis on the Irish Brigade, and in the debate which followed not only proved himself able to cope with the Know-Nothing leader, but in a running debate with Mr. Kennett of Missouri, Mr. Akers of the same State, and Mr. Campbell of Ohio, who entered the lists against him, Kelly established his reputation as one of the best off-hand debaters in Congress.

A few extracts from the speeches on the occasion, which are taken from the Congressional Globe, will furnish an idea of the style of the speakers, and the merits of the controversy. In referring to the Presidential election of 1856, and the victory of the Democrats, Mr. Davis said: “The Irish Brigade stood firm and saved the Democrats from annihilation, and the foreign recruits in Pennsylvania turned the fate of the day. They have elected, by these foreigners, by a minority of the American people, a President to represent their divisions. The first levee of President Buchanan will be a curious scene. He is a quiet, simple, fair-spoken gentleman, versed in the by-paths and indirect crooked ways whereby he met this crown, and he will soon know how uneasy it sits upon his head. Some future Walpole may detail the curious greetings, the unexpected meetings, the cross purposes and shocked prejudices of the gentlemen who cross that threshold. Some honest Democrat from the South will thank God for the Union preserved. A gentleman of the disunionist school will congratulate the President on the defeat of Mr. Fillmore. The Northern gentlemen will whisper ‘Buchanan, Breckenridge and Free Kansas’ in the presidential ear, and beg without scandal the confirmation of their hopes. * * But how to divide the spoils among this motley crew—ah! there’s the rub. Sir, I envy not the nice and delicate scales which must distribute the patronage amid the jarring elements of that conglomerate, as fierce against each other as clubs in cards are against spades. * * The clamors of the foreign legion will add to the interest of the scene. They may not be disregarded, for but for them Pennsylvania was lost, and with it the day. Yet what will satisfy these indispensable allies, now conscious of their power? That, Sir, is the exact condition of things which will be found in the ante-chamber—exorbitant demands, limited means, irreconcilable divisions, strife, disunion, dissolution—whenever the President shall have taken the solemn oath of office and darkened the doors of the White House.