These crushing refutations of the charges of Mr. Giddings raise a strong doubt of his honesty in this matter. He was a sharp politician, and sought without regard to the means to elect Mr. Banks Speaker of the House.
The Know-Nothings, recruited as were the Republicans from the same parent stem of John Adams Federalism, were the allies of the Sectionalists led by Mr. Giddings in 1856. The folly of the Southern Know-Nothings in the great conflict over the Speakership in the Thirty-fourth Congress was remarkable.
Some of them, like Zollicoffer and Humphrey Marshall, were afterwards such violent Secessionists that they became Generals in the Confederate army. Even Henry Winter Davis was so much opposed to the Republican party at this time, and for several years after, that he denounced it as a miserable, useless faction, and sneeringly asked, “Why cumbers it the ground?” Mr. Zollicoffer, a Southern man, of no mean powers, with surprising inconsistency refused to vote for a Democratic candidate for Speaker when none other had the remotest chance to beat Banks, and at the same time inveighed against Mr. Campbell, a Pennsylvania Know-Nothing, for voting for Banks, and thereby aiding the Sectionalists in opening the door for disunion and civil war. These men and their congeners in bigotry, like the blood-stained fanatic Lord George Gordon before them, strove to excite a religious war, and preached proscription of foreigners, and persecution of Catholics in the American Congress. No union with slaveholders, was the platform of Joshua R. Giddings; no-Popery, and no citizenship for foreigners, the platform of Henry Winter Davis.
“I go against the Catholics,” said Mr. Cullen of Delaware, during the same Speakership contest. “I never will support them. They are not fit to be supported by Americans. The people of the State from which I come look upon them with abhorrence. A Catholic priest, a short time ago, came among us. He was a stranger. He taught the doctrine of purgatory. After he had proclaimed that doctrine, an honorable gentleman of the State of Delaware, and who at the last election ran for Governor on the same ticket with myself, declared that he ought to be egged! I vote against the Catholics!”
Mr. Dowdell, of Alabama: “I am exceedingly pained at the spectacle which has been presented to-night. When Rome was burning Nero was fiddling and dancing. Now, sir, we are standing upon a slumbering volcano. Upon our borders in the common territory of this country, our people are marshalling their forces to try the great question whether they are able to govern themselves, it may be with rifles in their hands. I have been reminded by the ludicrous scenes witnessed here of a parallel to be found in a book entitled, ‘Georgia Scenes.’ Ned Brace, the hero of the story, happened to be in a city during the prevalence of a great fire, the flames in red volumes were rising higher and higher each moment, the people were running to and fro in great consternation, women and children were screaming through the streets, and the midnight fire-bells were sending out their rapid and startling sounds, when Ned quietly took his position on the sidewalk. About this time a large old man, nearly out of breath, came running by in great haste, whose home was threatened with destruction perhaps, and was abruptly stopped by Ned with the interrogatory: ‘Sir, can you tell me where I can find Peleg Q. C. Stone?’ ‘Damn Peleg Q. C. Stone, my house is on fire;’ was the impatient reply. Now, sir, while the fire of civil war is threatening to be kindled upon our borders, questions are propounded here quite as impertinent at this time of danger, and calculated to provoke similar impatience, if not a similar reply. I have no fear that any party in this country opposed to religious liberty will ever be strong enough to control its legislation.”
Mr. Paine, of North Carolina: “I ask whether any gentleman in this House is willing to see the Government of the United States, and the Congress of the United States, in the hands of the Roman Catholics of this country? This is a matter which enters into the private feelings, however unwilling members may be to expose it. These very gentlemen themselves would not trust the government of the country and Congress in the hands of Roman Catholics.”
Mr. Valk, of New York: “The honorable gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Dowdell) took occasion to draw the attention of the House to the once living embodiment of that portrait on my right—that of La Fayette. I frankly and freely do honor to his memory. But the gentleman forgets one remark which fell from the lips of that man when living. He said: ‘If ever the liberties of this country are destroyed it will be by Catholic priests.’”
Mr. Bowie of Maryland: “Sparks says that is a lie.”
At this point Mr. Kelly tried to get the floor to repel the furious assaults of the Know-Nothings upon his church, of which the preceding extracts are but a few specimens.
Mr. Kelly: “I should like to explain my vote.”