Imagine this process complete, and the House, on the last day of the year 1798, in languid session, balloting. The two members were standing near one another outside the bar, when Griswold made taunting allusion to an old "campaign story" of Matthew Lyon's having been sentenced to wear a wooden sword for cowardice in the field. Lyon, in a fury, spit in Griswold's face. Instantly the House was in an uproar; and although the impetuous Lyon apologized to the House, he only escaped expulsion, after eleven days' debate, through the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds vote. This affair called forth a caricature in which the Irish member was depicted as a lion standing on his hind-legs wearing a wooden sword, while Griswold, handkerchief in hand, exclaims, "What a beastly action!"
The vote for expulsion—52 to 44—did not satisfy Mr. Griswold. Four days after the vote occurred the outrageous scene rudely delineated in the picture already mentioned. Griswold, armed with what the Republican editor called "a stout hickory club," and the Federalist editor a "hickory stick," assaulted Lyon while he was sitting at his desk, striking him on the head and shoulders several times before he could extricate himself. But at last Lyon got upon his feet, and, seizing the tongs, rushed upon the enemy. This is the moment selected by the artist. They soon after closed and fell to the floor, where they enjoyed a good "rough-and-tumble" fight, until members pulled them apart. A few minutes after they chanced to meet again at the "water table," near one of the doors. Lyon was now provided with a stick, but Griswold had none. "Their eyes no sooner met," says the Federalist reporter, "than Mr. Lyon sprung to attack Mr. Griswold." A member handed Griswold a stick, and there was a fair prospect of another fight, when the Speaker interfered with so much energy that the antagonists were again torn apart. The battle was not renewed on the floor of Congress.
But it was continued elsewhere. Under that amazing sedition law of the Federalists, Lyon was tried a few months after for saying in his newspaper that President Adams had an "unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp," had turned men out of office for their opinions, and had written "a bullying message" upon the French imbroglio of 1798. He was found guilty, sentenced to pay a fine of a thousand dollars, besides the heavy costs of the prosecution, to be imprisoned four months, and to continue in confinement until the fine was paid. Of course the people of his district stood by him, and, while he was in prison, re-elected him to Congress by a great majority; and his fine was repaid to his heirs in 1840 by Congress, with forty-two years' interest. These events made a prodigious stir in their time. Matthew Lyon's presence in the House of Representatives, his demeanor there, and his triumphal return from prison to Congress, were the first distinct notification to parties interested that the sceptre was passing from the Few to the Many.
The satire and burlesque of the Jeffersonian period, from 1798 to 1809, were abundant in quantity, if not of shining excellence. To the reader of the present day all savors of burlesque in the political utterances of that time, so preposterously violent were partisans on both sides. It is impossible to take a serious view of the case of an editor who could make it a matter of boasting that he had opposed the Republican measures for eight years "without a single exception." The press, indeed, had then no independent life; it was the minion and slave of party. It is only in our own day that the press begins to exist for its own sake, and descant with reasonable freedom on topics other than the Importance of Early Rising and the Customs of the Chinese. The reader would neither be edified nor amused by seeing Mr. Jefferson kneeling before a stumpy pillar labeled "Altar of Gallic Despotism," upon which are Paine's "Age of Reason" and the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvetius, with the demon of the French Revolution crouching behind it, and the American eagle soaring aloft, bearing in its talons the Constitution and the independence of the United States. Pictures of that nature, of great size, crowded with objects, emblems, and sentences—an elaborate blending of burlesque, allegory, and enigma—were so much valued by that generation that some of them were engraved upon copper.
On the day of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President of the United States, March 4th, 1801, a parody appeared in the Centinel of Boston, a Federalist paper of great note in its time, which may serve our purpose here:
Monumental Inscription.
"That life is long which answers Life's great end."
Yesterday expired, deeply regretted by millions of grateful Americans,
and by all good men,
THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
animated by
A WASHINGTON, AN ADAMS, A HAMILTON, KNOX, PICKERING, WOLCOTT,
M'HENRY, MARSHALL, STODDERT, AND DEXTER.
Æt. 12 years.