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

by J. Fairfax McLaughlin

[23] Life of A. H. Stephens, by Johnston & Browne, p. 306.

[24] Ibid, p. 306.

[25] Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 34th Congress, p. 44, et seq.

[26] Cong. Globe, 1855-56, Thirty-first Congress, 1st Session, pp. 191, et seq.

CHAPTER VI.

KNOW-NOTHINGS JOIN REPUBLICANS TO ELECT BANKS—SEWARD BECOMES LEADER—SKETCH OF HIM—DEFEAT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY—CAUSES OF IT—FREQUENT FIST-FIGHTS BETWEEN MEMBERS—DRUNKENNESS AND ROWDYISM IN CONGRESS—ANGRY DISPUTE BETWEEN KELLY AND MARSHALL—KELLY’S POPULARITY IN THE HOUSE—HIS RELATIONS WITH ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.

In the last chapter the strange spectacle was presented of Southern Know-Nothings, while declaring their opposition to the Abolitionists, actually aiding them to elect a Speaker, and offering as an excuse for their conduct the dread that the Catholic Church might obtain control of the Government! The Democratic caucus had adopted a resolution denouncing the enemies of civil and religious liberty. Humphrey Marshall and the Southern Know-Nothings declared this was an insult to them, and not only Marshall, but Cox of Kentucky, and Zollicoffer and Etheridge assigned the same cause as presenting an insuperable obstacle to their voting for any Democrat for Speaker. The Know-Nothings and Abolitionists, having nothing in common, united to overthrow the party of the Constitution, the former to prevent the Catholics from seizing the Government, the latter to get rid of slavery. This ridiculous pretext of the Know-Nothings concerning the political ambition of the Catholic Church was most effectively answered by the fact that out of the whole 234 members of the House, and 7 Territorial Delegates, John Kelly was the only Catholic in the Thirty-fourth Congress. Mr. Kelly declared truly that no sane man would offer such an insult to the intelligence of the country, as a justification for his conduct, but Davis of Maryland, Cullen of Delaware, Whitney of New York, and other proscriptionists were wedded to their idols, and in order to strike down an imaginary enemy, they became the tools of a real one.

For nine weeks the stubborn contest continued. The country, from one end to another, was roused to feverish excitement. It was the first time the Republican party had shown front in a National contest. Ever since the Seward-Fillmore quarrel had led to the overthrow of the Whig party in 1853, the Freesoilers had been a heterogeneous mass of the Northern population, unorganized, and with no common object in view. Mr. Seward keenly felt that success in the present struggle for the Speakership was vital to the perpetuity of the Republican party. He summoned to Washington his ablest friends, Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley and James Watson Webb. These four famous leaders soon organized their followers in the House into a compact body. Mr. Zollicoffer, who subsequently became a Secessionist, and fell in battle as a Confederate General, characterized them by name on the floor of the House as the chiefs of the lobby. In the course of a speech on the 20th of December, in which he declared, with a short-sightedness unworthy of so clever a man, that he would not vote for a Democrat against Banks, Zollicoffer said: “I see here a great organization, numbering from one hundred and four to one hundred and six members, who are steadily voting for Mr. Banks. Whilst I have reason to believe that the great lobby spirits who control that organization are Greeley and Seward, and Weed and Webb, men of intellect and power at the North, who are as bitterly opposed to the American party as they are to the Democratic party, I do, upon my conscience, believe that there are gentlemen voting for Mr. Banks, from day to day, who do not belong to the Abolition, or, as they style themselves, the Republican organization. For example, I cite the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Campbell), at whose position, as he announced it here the other day, I was surprised. He says he is an American, and he spurned the idea that the American party at the North were identified with the Freesoilers of the North and yet he casts his vote steadily against a conservative National American of his own State, and gives it to Mr. Banks, a Free Soil Democrat, who has affiliated, as his record clearly shows, with the most ultra and violent Free-soil and Abolition factions.”

The Capitol was alive with intrigues and with intriguers from every part of the country. The leaders retired to the Committee rooms day by day, and night by night, and runners kept them constantly informed of the movements of their adversaries. Counter-movements followed, and new plans succeeded each other on every side without avail. It was an interesting moment for the historian; the events of the hour were big with the fate of the country. Federalism and Democracy were once more, as in the year 1801, locked in a death struggle. Then, as now, it was the party of the Constitution against the party of Centralization. The Know-Nothings held the balance of power, and of course the followers of the man who wrote his own epitaph in these words, “Author of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Statutes of Virginia for Religious Freedom,” had nothing to expect from that pestilent band of bigots. Sprung from the same parent stem of John Adams Federalism, Joshua R. Giddings and his Abolitionists, and Henry Winter Davis and his Know-Nothings, were natural allies against the disciples of Jefferson.

Seward, Weed and Greeley, to their credit be it recorded, having led the anti-Know-Nothing branch of the Whig party in New York, were not personally influential with members of the American party in Congress. But the Republican leaders were men of varied resources, and Thurlow Weed, the Whig Warwick, was equal to any emergency. The fierce philippics of Henry A. Wise against the Know-Nothings in the memorable Virginia campaign just closed, and the tremendous blows which Alexander H. Stephens had dealt the party of dark lanterns in his then recent Georgia campaign, were artfully spread abroad among the proscriptionists in Congress, and the bitterness of their defeat in both those States added to the chagrin which the unanswerable arraignments of Wise and Stephens excited among them. The resolutions of the Democratic caucus, especially the one denouncing the enemies of civil and religious liberty, and the alleged contradictory constructions placed upon the Kansas-Nebraska bill by Northern and Southern Democrats, were also used by the Seward men as electioneering appeals for Mr. Banks. In one or two Democratic quarters the Republican leaders were strongly suspected of employing corrupt appliances.