Mr. Giddings: “I only repeat what was said by a leading member of the Democratic party, the Hon. Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, on this floor, and in the presence of the gentleman from Georgia, and his party in this House. That gentleman sat silently in his seat when Mr. Stanton declared the plurality rule to have been agreed to by the Committee, and he did not deny it; no member of his party denied the fact. I call the attention of the country to the fact that in their caucus the Democratic party, as a party, agreed with the Whig party, as a party, that this should be the rule. I do not involve gentlemen; I only involve the Democratic party. I mean to pin it on that party.”
Mr. Edmundson: “Anybody who asserts that the Democratic party agreed to adopt the plurality rule, asserts what is not true.”
Mr. Orr: “I was present on the occasion to which I suppose reference is made; and I state distinctly that no such resolution as that referred to by the gentleman from Ohio was adopted by the Democratic caucus, either directly or indirectly.”
Mr. Millson, and other members who had attended the Democratic caucus of 1849, made similar denials.
Mr. Cobb: “Fortunately the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Stanton), although not a member of this House, is here, and I assert, without one word of conference with him, that he never intended to say before this House, nor did a single member of the House at that time so construe his language—that the Democratic party had adopted the plurality rule in caucus.”
At this point Mr. Jones, of Tennessee, referred to the Globe of 1849, and showed that the words put in Mr. Stanton’s mouth by Mr. Giddings had not been used by him at all, but were words of the reporter distinctly employed in another connection. This revelation, so damaging to Mr. Giddings’s character for fair dealing, was clinched by Mr. Letcher, who quoted from a speech made in the House by Mr. Giddings himself, in 1849, five days after the adoption of the plurality rule, in which he declared the Whig party had forced the rule upon the House. Having quoted the passage from Mr. Giddings’s speech contradictory of himself, Mr. Letcher remarked: “Now, Sir, I submit that whatever may have been the opinion of other people, it does not become the gentleman from Ohio to rise here in his place, and undertake to charge that the Democratic party adopted that rule, after he has sent out to the country and published a speech, revised and printed in pamphlet form, in which he purports to give the facts as they occurred in 1849.”
Mr. Giddings: “I repeat what I said when I first rose, that the Democratic party in its caucus, speaking through its committee, did agree to the resolution.”
Mr. Edmundson: “I want to let the gentleman from Ohio know that he is asserting what is not true. I am stating facts within my own knowledge. The Democratic caucus voted down the resolution, and refused to adopt it. Now, any statement made in conflict with that, I say this from my own personal knowledge, is a statement which is not true, and he who makes it knows, at the time he is making it, that it is not true.”
Mr. Giddings:
“‘Go, show your slaves how choleric you are,