Contemporary Reports of Brooks' Caning of Sumner, 1856

Previously:

Click here for a list of my other Pulaski/Rockcastle/Laurel County KY articles

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Preston Brooks' attack on Charles Sumner was sparked by a speech Sumner gave on Kansas, which can be found here. 

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[May 21, 1856] -

Mr. Sumner closed yesterday one of the most searching and fearless exposures yet made of the Giant Crime which, in its legitimate consequences, has filled Kansas with violence and threatens now to deluge her plains with blood. We are compelled to omit about one-fourth of it, but make room for this masterly effort to the utmost limit of our ability. We shall soon have the complete Speech ready in pamphlet form, and bespeak for it a wide circulation.

The whole menagerie was stirred up by the directness and power of this effort for Free Kansas, and Gen. Cain[?] responded with characteristic feebleness, Mr. Douglas with characteristic blackguardism, and Mr. Mason with characteristic insolence. Mr. Sumner briefly rejoined each, though it would have better befitted his character and the noble speech he had just closed to pass them by in scornful silence. When he had closed, the Senate adjourned.

The House spent the whole day on a Railroad Land bill for Wisconsin. Nothing was concluded. [1]

Matthew Lyon (1749 - 1822), Part 4: Duel with Griswold on House Floor

Part 1: Obituary of Matthew Lyon
Part 2: Spitting in Roger Griswold's Face
Part 3: History of the Wooden Sword
Part 4: Duel with Griswold
Part 5: Lyon's Kentucky Duel

From the book Matthew Lyon, the Hampden of Congress: A Biography by James Fairfax McLaughlin, published in 1900 (available online), comes this early political cartoon of the Lyon-Griswold duel:

There are quite a few contemporary newspaper accounts of the second altercation between Lyon and Griswold, and I read through dozens before choosing which to post.  This one is by far the most entertaining that I found. From Porcupine's Gazette of Pennsylvania, on February 16, 1798:

A Burning Shame.

The affair which took place in Congress yesterday was but imperfectly related in my Gazette of last night; I shall therefore now endeavor to give it more in detail.

After the House had decided that nothing should be done to Lyon for spitting in Mr. Griswold's face, it seems that the former had the prudence to avoid the fight of the latter, til yesterday, when he came and took his seat.  He was sitting alone, involved in deep contemplation, when Mr. Griswold first spied him.  No sooner did this happen than he catched up a thick hickory stick, made towards the man of spittle, and in the twinkling of an eye, without giving him time either to eject his saliva or say "my a--fe," began to belabour him.  Poor Lyon got out of his seat, made at his assailant, and endeavoured to grapple with him, but the supple New Englander, who is as active as he is strong, beat him from him with his left hand, while he thrashed him with the right, and thus did the member, from Vermont, receive a shower of blows, such as never fell on the devoted hide of Don Quixote or his incontinent steed Rosinante.  You must needs think the man was not very much at his ease in this situation.  He ran to the fireplace and catched up a pair of tongs just like a lady, and attempted to use them; but his antagonist presently disarmed him, and continued to beat away as regular a stroke as did the drummers of General Gates, on a former occasion.  At last Lyon made shift to close in with him, when Mr. Griswold immediately kicked him up, and made him measure his length on the floor.  Here several gentlemen came and took off the enraged New Englander, or, it is reasonable to suppose, that he would have continued to pummel away for some time longer.

The poor man of saliva was most dreadfully cut and bruized, and had not nature (foreseeing perhaps this re counter[?]) taken particular care to fortify his head, it must have been smashed to pieces.--It is said, that several connoisseurs, from the West Indies and from the Southward, have declared that never [a] negro suffered such a drubbing.

Lyon stopped an hour or two to wash and bathe, and then retired from the House, accompanied by his friend and countryman Blair McClenachan[?].  They walked down towards Fourth-street, followed by a crowd of boys; and, would you believe it, the naughty little rascals, hollowed and shouted, "there goes the Lion and Blair!" -- Whatever may be said, or thought, of the ribroasting, I am persuaded that every one will agree with me, that it is highly disgraceful to the police of Philadelphia, that these little blackguards be allowed thus to follow and mock a member of Congress, like so many small-birds at an owl that happens to change her roost by day-light.

Wm. H. Harrison and the 'White Slavery Slander'

William Henry Harrison's political opponents during the 1836 and 1840 Presidential campaigns accused him of supporting debt bondage, or "white slavery," laws while serving as Governor of Indiana (1807) and in the Ohio State Senate (1820).  Herein are a leaflet which promotes this claim, and a letter written by Harrison refuting it.

The laws in question legalized forced labor as a means for criminals to work off fines they could not otherwise afford to pay. The leaflet argues that the forced labor is not levied as a consequence of their crime, but as a consequence of the criminal's poverty.  In this way, the law effectively permits debt bondage.  And it makes this argument in an entertainingly over-the-top way:

"Did our fathers of the Revolution fight for MONEY?  On the contrary, did they not pour out their money and their blood also like water for LIBERTY?  Liberty was the watchword and Liberty the prize of a bloody and protracted civil war.  Liberty was achieved and behold a second generation has not passed away, before some of the children of Revolutionary Fathers place this blood bought prize on a level with MONEY!"

According to Harrison, the reasoning behind the law(s) were as follows:

...the proposed amendment of the law presupposed that the delinquent was in confinement for the non-payment of a fine and costs of prosecution (the payment of which was part of the sentence): it seemed, therefore, humane, in respect to the offender, to relieve him from confinement which deprived him from the means of discharging the penalty, and to place him in a situation in which he might work out his deliverance, even at a loss, for a time, of his personal liberty.

Full transcripts of both documents follow after the jump. The leaflet dates from the 1840 campaign, while the letter from Harrison was written in 1836.  The leaflet is from the LoC Printed Ephemera collection, while the letter can be found on google books, published in pro-Harrison campaign literature from 1840 which claims to compare the views of Harrison and Van Buren (the Presidential candidates in 1840).  

Interview with an Antebellum & Progressive Era Congressman

Galusha A. Grow was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives during the 32nd, 33rd, 34th, (1851-1863) and 56th (1894-1903) Congresses.  That is not a typo; he was re-elected to Congress after thirty years.  He also started his congressional career as a Democrat, but switched to the Republican party after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  During the first years of the Civil War, Grow also served as Speaker of the House.  In this interview, prompted by his re-election in 1894, Grow discusses details of his childhood as well as his earlier years in Congress, including the physical altercation he had with Lawrence Keitt which led to a sectional brawl among several members on the House floor.  

From The Saint Paul Daily Globe on March 4, 1894:

CHAT WITH GALUSHA GROW 

HIS RETURN TO CONGRESS AFTER THIRTY YEARS 

STORY OF HIS EARLY LIFE

How He Became the Successor of David Wilmot -- Interesting Recollections of the Leading Statesmen and Orators of the Ante-Bellum Period -- Passage of the Homestead Laws. 

 

Correspondence of the Globe.

GLENWOOD, Pa., March 2.--An interview with the most affable of American statesmen, Galusha A. Grow, who at the end of an election for congressman-at-large in Pennsylvania returns to the United States house of representatives, is a matter of pleasure as well of interest.  With a courtesy equal to Chesterfield, a dignity and ease that made him memorable as speaker of the house during the stormy times of 1861-1862, he is at the same time as truly democratic as when he was a young and unknown attorney.  In Pauwell's great allegorical picture, exhibited in the Holland section at the Centennial, prominent among the great Americans stands the figure of Galusha A. Grow, who as the originator of the homestead bill, has been hailed abroad as one of the benefactors of mankind. 

On the opening day of the Thirty-second congress, in December, 1851, a tall, smooth-faced young man of twenty-seven, walked to the clerk's desk and took the oath of office.  Curious eyes closely scanned the new member's make-up, for he came to the house as the apparently unknown successor of a man of national repute, David Wilmot, whose proviso had occupied the attention of previous congresses to the almost total exclusion of other matters.  The young man's name was Galusha A. Grow, and he soon demonstrated that those who had selected him to succeed so notable a man had made no mistake in their choice.  He early became the leader of the courageous and brainy men who, during the exciting days preceding the war, waged unyielding battle against the demands of the slave power on the floor of the house, and the leadership which he gained at the outset of his congressional career, his great abilities and unswerving devotion to duty and the right easily enabled him to retain during the twelve years he remained in congress. 

There was no important measure introduced during his period of service that did not feel the influence of his voice and vote, while to his determination, persistence and farsightedness was due the final passage of the homestead act, with perhaps a single exception, the most important legislation of congress, and which has done more than all else to make the West so great and prosperous. 

Editorial on Democratic Party & Whig Party Politics, 1838

This comes from the Kentucky Gazette of Lexington, KY on April 5, 1838.   To show that the Whig party are unworthy of their votes, the author traces the origins of that party as beginning with the Federalist party, arguing that they are different in name only.   This articles includes denouncement of the politics of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, argument against the chartering of a third national bank, argument against Henry Clay for President in the upcoming election, and discussion of strict versus broad interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.

My favorite part of the below address is this fable, which the author uses to illustrate how a broad interpretation of the Constitution's general welfare clause will be used to 'hack away' at citizen's liberties:

It has an excellent moral, that old fable of the woodman and the forest.  A certain woodman (it must have been in those early days of poetry when flowers spoke and trees reasoned)--a woodman one fine morning, humbly begged of the forest, that she would be so obliging as to give him some spare limb or other from one of her trees--quite a small one would answer his purpose--merely to make a handle for his axe.  The good tempered forest thoughtlessly agreed to his proposal; the axe handle was made; and the next day, the woodman having thus obtained the means of executing his project without further leave returned, and fell to work with so much effect, that in a few days the poor forest saw the noblest of her trees levelled with the ground, the death knell of the others, as one by one they sunk beneath the murderous axe, sounded hourly in her ears.  How bitterly then did she repent of her easy compliance!

The article has over ten footnotes that go along with it, but I had such a difficult time distinguishing symbols from smudges on the page, and then trouble figuring out which note corresponded with which symbol, so I left them out of my transcription.  Therefore, please see the original article (page 1 and page 2) to view the footnotes.

The Tragedy of the American Buffalo

Very large pile of American buffalo skulls, photo taken 1870.  Source: Wikipedia.

The word "pile" seems a hopelessly inadequate description for this image.

The American Buffalo almost went extinct in the nineteenth century due to people over-hunting them for food, clothing, and sport.  Only a few small herds managed to escape the extermination, creating a severe genetic bottleneck.  Worse, scientists have recently discovered that the genetic makeup of the majority of these herds are contaminated with cattle DNA.  (Unlike the progeny of donkeys and horses, the offspring of cattle and buffalo are generally fertile.)

The following is from the second chapter of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root, published in 1901.   This chapter is actually about the Prairie ("the Great American Desert", as he refers to it), but talks in great detail about buffalo, which I have excerpted and arranged here.  Root was in Kansas Territory in the 1850s and '60s and drove overland stagecoaches during that time, and his book recounts many of his firsthand experiences.  You can view the book on google books for free if you wish to read this chapter, or the book, in its entirety.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREAT AMERICAN DESERT, HOME OF THE BUFFALO. 

The first buffaloes I ever saw were in the streets of Atchison.  It was in the early '60s, during the war; but after that I saw them on several occasions.  These were domesticated and yoked together, having been driven in by a ranchman from the Republican valley, hauling produce to the Atchison market.  They attracted considerable attention from the business men.  They seemed to travel all right, were extremely gentle, and, under the yoke, appeared to work quite as nicely as the patient ox.  Nothing particularly strange was thought about the matter at the time, when there were immense herds of buffalo roaming wild on the plains of western Kansas; but I never, after that year, saw any of the shaggy animals yoked and doing the work of oxen. 

The number of buffalo in the great West less than half a century ago was roughly estimated at from ten to twenty millions. Careful authorities put the number at fifteen millions.  They once existed in New York, a number of buffaloes having been killed in the western part of that state, near where the bustling commercial city of Buffalo is built, which will perpetuate the name of the now practically extinct American animal.  In western Pennsylvania, near the salt-licks, a number of buffaloes were found; and according to an early explorer, a few head were found in ... large numbers in Virginia.  According to early writers, they were found in the Carolinas and along the northeast coast of Georgia, the only record known of their existence on the Atlantic seaboard.  East of the Mississippi, they ranged south as far as northern Alabama and were found in places throughout Mississippi and Louisiana.  Large numbers abounded in Texas.  They were also found in the northern provinces of Mexico, New Mexico, a portion of Utah, and also in Idaho, Washington, and in the arctic circle as far north as Great Slave Lake.  ...   

A HERD OF BUFFALO ON THE PLAINS IN WESTERN KANSAS
Pg 26 of The Overland Stage to California by Frank A. Root (pub 1901)

History informs us they were found by Coronado on his march northward from Mexico as early as 1585, between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains; later they were found by Lewis and Clarke, Zebulon M. Pike, and Long, in the early part of the present century; still later by Fremont and others, who made tours of exploration through the great West.  Often they were seen by tourists and hunters in immense herds, numbering hundreds of thousands. ... 

... Daniel Boone, the famous Kentucky hunter, once found a herd of buffaloes in his state which numbered 1000 head.  That was then believed to be a big herd but it was not then known that there were herds numbering millions of buffalo grazing on the plains embraced in the region known as the "Great American Desert," lying between the Missouri and the Rockies. 

The pioneers of Kansas, particularly a number who settled on the frontier--along the upper valley of the Smoky Hill, Republican, Solomon and Saline rivers--practically owed their lives to the existence of the buffalo.  For years in the '60s a goodly portion of the meat consumed by those early settlers was cut from the carcass of the noble, shaggy animal which so long existed as monarch of the plains.  Thousands of people who at an early day went overland to Utah, Oregon and California drew their supply of meat from the buffalo.  Where this life-preserver was found, it was known that, by following their paths, nearby water would be found.  The principal article of fuel found on the frontier for cooking the meat of the buffalo was the dried excrement of the animal, known in early Kansas and Nebraska parlance as "buffalo-chips."  The buffalo was one of the noblest of all animals.  It seemed indispensable.  It furnished man with an abundance of the most wholesome meat; the hide was made into shoes and garments worn during the day, and it made a comfortable bed and supplied warm covering in or out of doors at night. 

The building of the Pacific railroad was made possible at so early a day simply because the buffalo existed.  From the mighty herds the vast army of railroad builders drew their daily supply of fresh meat, and thousands of the animals were annually slaughtered for food while pushing to completion, in the '60s, the great transcontinental line.  For a few years in the '70s the railways did an enormous business carrying East train loads of hides and buffalo bones, these for a number of years being the principal articles of commerce gathered from the plains.  For years the great West resembled a charnel-house. Losing their crops, the pioneer settlers gathered up the bleached bones that covered the land, and they were shipped to the carbon works in the East, for the sale of which enough was realized to enable them to pull through another season. ... 

... The last herd of buffalo I ever saw in the wild, native state was in the fall of 1870.  It was along the Kansas Pacific railroad, near the head waters of the Smoky Hill river.  The railroad had just been built, and the animals seemed terribly frightened at the cars.  In their mad race westward along the railroad, they actually kept up with the passenger-train, which was moving along from fifteen to eighteen miles an hour.  The race became exciting, and all the passengers--many of whom had never before seen a buffalo--held their breath in suspense.  It was noticed that the animals never changed their course, but kept steadily coming nearer the train, apparently determined to cross the track at the curve a short distance beyond.  Not caring for a collision which might possibly derail the train, the engineer gave up the race and whistled "down brakes," stopping within a few rods of the animals to let them cross.  A parting salute was given by some of the passengers, who emptied the chambers of their six-shooters among the beasts, but which they did not appear to mind any more than a blast from a toy pop-gun.  While these animals used to cover the prairies and plains of western Kansas and Nebraska in countless millions, hardly one of them is now left to remind us of the once noble and powerful herds originally known in the great West as "crooked-back oxen." 

The best meat we used to get on the frontier in the early days was buffalo.  The markets at Atchison, Leavenworth, Topeka and a number of other Kansas towns, as early as 1857 and for some years following, were often supplied with buffalo meat, brought in from central Kansas.  No beef, it was said, could excel, even if it could equal, that of the buffalo; especially the hump upon the shoulders, which was invariably spoken of as a choice morsel."  Rich, juicy buffalo steaks and superb roasts were as common in the '60s on the plains as were other fresh meats in the best of well-regulated city markets. ... 

... What a shame, what an outrage on civilization! that the buffalo ... was so ruthlessly slaughtered.  Millions of the shaggy beasts were indiscriminately shot down by the white man in the '60s and '70s apparently just for the "fun of the thing." 

I remember well in the early '60s, while residing at Atchison, when long ox trains, loaded exclusively with buffalo hides, frequently were brought in from the plains by freighters.  The wagons were unloaded on the levee and the skins shipped on board steamboats down the Missouri river for St. Louis and Cincinnati.  Later, I saw hundreds of wagon-loads of these skins on the plains, in 1863-'65, when riding on the overland stage along the Platte and Little Blue rivers.  Several years afterward such trains were frequent sights at various towns on the Missouri.  Most of the wagon trains bearing the cargoes of untanned robes from the "Great American Desert" were from the Platte valley; some bound for Omaha, some for Nebraska City, some for St. Joseph, and most of the balance for Atchison and Leavenworth.  Hundreds of wagon-loads of the skins from the plains went into Kansas City from the "Old Santa Fe Trail." ... 

... According to a writer in Harper's Magazine a few years ago, Fort Benton--a military post about 2500 miles up the Missouri from St. Louis--in 1876 along sent 80,000 buffalo hides to market.  Toward the close of their career on the plains the animals had divided into two great herds--the southern and northern.  The great southern herd, however, was the first to go, being practically extinct at the close of 1872.  A few straggling herds only, after that date, were to be found.  The early '80s was about the last seen of the wild buffalo of the plains, which a quarter of a century or more before was so numerous between the Missouri river and the Rocky Mountains.  The greatest slaughter of the beasts was in 1872-'74, when, it was estimated, the number slain ran up into the millions. 

Hundreds of the best shots from all over this country and Europe, in the early '70s, were on hand to take a farewell hung before the shaggy bison became extinct.  Scores of noted Nimrods came from England, Scotland, Russia, and Germany--in fact, from almost every part of Europe.  The Grand Duke Alexis, youngest son of Emperor Alexander, of Russia, with quite a numerous retinue, came with a party from St. Petersburg, and went on a tour through "Buffalo Land" in the winter of 1871-'72. ...  

... During the immense overland traffic in the early '60s, portions of the plains were fairly white with bones of the buffalo.  The animals had first been killed by the Indians for their food and robes, and later, millions of the shaggy beasts had been indiscriminately slaughtered by the white man just for sport, their carcasses left a prey for the wolves, and their bones to bleach by the wayside.  In the '50s and '60's their bones were scattered promiscuously in center localities for hundreds of miles in central and western Kansas, and between Fort Kearney and Julesburg along the Platte, as far back from the river as the eye could reach.  

No one seeing the apparently endless mass of bones even dreamed that any use would ever be made of them; but after the completion of the Union Pacific railway and its branches across the "Great American Desert," and, later, the building of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line into the Southwest, an immense new industry was early inaugurated in Kansas.  Kansas was the natural home of the buffalo, and, during the '70s, hundreds of merchants in the western part of the state had a regular trade established and did a lively business buying and shipping buffalo bones to Eastern markets.

Desks, Benches, and Chaos in the House of Representatives

WHY THERE IS CONFUSION 
ON THE FLOOR.
Wichita Daily Eagle, Jan. 13, 1891

The House of Representatives originally had a seating arrangement of assigned desks.  These desks were not only where members participated in the daily agenda, but also served as their personal office space where they wrote letters, conducted research, and talked with other members.  This arrangement resulted in a lot of general confusion.  The most popular solution to this problem was to replace the desks with benches to keep the members from carrying on all manner of business on the House floor. It was thought this would reduce noise and increase collective participation. Two unsuccessful propositions for benches were made in 1842 and 1847.  A third proposition in 1859 succeeded, to begin in 1860.  The benches were changed back to desks after only twelve weeks due in part to an increase in fighting among members in the days before disunion.  However, criticism of the desks continued, and subsequent propositions to change to benches were made in 1878, 1883, 1889, and 1901, until the measure finally succeeded in 1913.

Below are a five newspaper articles (or excerpts of articles) which fill in some of the more colorful details of how desks augmented the chaos of congress. 

Source for this introduction: Pgs 1106-1107 of Volume 5 of Hinds' Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States by Asher C. Hinds, Clerk at the Speaker's Table, published 1907 and available on google books here. Also, due to the length of this blog post, all screencaps of articles have been placed at the very end with captions indicating their origin.

SEEN BY A CANUCK.

A Visitor From Canada Writes of the House of Representatives.

 [Toronto Globe republished in Macon Telegraph of Macon, GA on Feb 20, 1899]

From the Toronto Globe.
To the visitor in the house of representatives who has been accustomed to the severe discipline and strict decorum of British legislatures the degree of liberty indulged in by the members seems somewhat strange.  There is a continual hum of conversation, a constant moving about the floor, the frequent formation of groups of members for consultation and, what would doubtless be regarded as treason by the attendants in the gallery of the mother of parliaments, applause from the spectators at times.  The American politician is often accused of over-vehemence and a disposition to shout when ordinary tones would better serve the purpose.  After an hour in the big chamber of the popular house, with its continued din, one can well understand that the member of congress comes naturally by his strident tones and strenuous manner.  Without them he would never be heard by his chattering colleagues, and to the galleries he would speak only by gesticulation.  The official reporters suffer greatly from the noise.  Instead of sitting at their desks in front of the speaker's chair, they find it necessary to skip about to whatever section of the house a speaker may be in, dropping into a vacant seat if convenient, but more frequently leaning against a desk, pad in hand.  Unhappy indeed is that mortal in the middle of whose 'take' there is a change of speakers.  He may have crept close up to 'the member from Michigan' on the extreme left of the huge semicircle in which the seats are arranged, and may have to make a run like a baseball player for his home base to the other side to catch the opening remarks of 'the member from Arkansas' as he rises to interpose an objection. 

SHOWING THE WAY REPRESENTATIVES ARE NOW SEATED AT THE DESKS.
Plan of the 59h Congress.
From The New York Tribune, of New York, NY on Oct. 20, 1907.

It sometimes happens that members lose their tempers in the heat of debate.  The bowie knife and the revolver, contrary to the belief of many of our kinsmen across the seas, are no longer the weapons with which these quarrels are settled.  They have been replaced by the statutes in calf and the inkstand, which are much more convenient and less deadly.  When a row breaks out on the floor and the combatants come to close quarters, it is the duty of the sergeant-at-arms to interpose the mace between them.  The mace is the emblem of the civil power, but it is somewhat different in appearance from ours.  It consists of a bundle of ebony rods bound together with ligaments of silver and having on top a silver globe surmounted by a silver eagle.  It resembles the faces borne by the lictors[?] before the Roman magistrates.  It is known familiarly as "the bird."  Just before the declaration of war with Spain "the bird" did duty in quelling a row.  An excited member had enforced his remarks by throwing the law in the concrete form at his opponents head.  The latter made a rush at his antagonist, mutual friends held them back, while from all sides of the house came the cry, "Sergeant, bring the bird!"  The bird was sent forward to the fighting line as rapidly as possible and hostilities ceased.  The man who would dare to strike a blow over "the bird" has not yet entered congress.

Fists Are Shaken.

[excerpt from "Fistfights in the Halls of Congress" by the New York Herald published in The Ogden Standard of Ogden, Utah on July 2, 1910.]

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1860.
Wichita Daily Eagle, Jan 13, 1891

The most hotly contested Speakership election featured the opening of the Thirty-sixth Congress, in December, 1859.  The bitterness of preceding contests paled before this struggle, which lasted from December 5, 1860.  The tenseness was exaggerated by the seating arrangement in the House.  Instead of the seats and desks of an earlier and a later day, benches were installed, so that the House was drawn into a small compass.  During these days of turmoil and strife the members were thus in closer contact and were more easily impelled by the prevailing passion.  As a consequence there was much shaking of fists under noses, much hurling threats of personal violence and much assuming of insulting and defiant attitudes.

"The War on the Northern Pacific"

From Harper's Weekly magazine on May 25, 1901, Volume XLV, No. 2318, comes this wonderful cartoon by W. A. Rogers and related article by Henry Loomis Nelson.  Many volumes of Harper's Weekly are available on google books, including this one (available here).  Click the images to enlarge.

"ESTABLISHING A "COMMUNITY OF INTEREST"
cartoon by W. A. Roger

The War on the Northern Pacific

By Henry Loomis Nelson

There is much confusion of rumor, and consequently much confusion of thought, touching the recent struggle, perhaps not yet concluded, for the control of the Northern Pacific Railroad.  As a stock-jobbing operation, the facts are clear and pretty well understood.  During the week which ended on the 4th of May, the healthful week when the abounding wealth of the country and its rich promise of prosperity expressed themselves in the stock quotations of the Exchange, Northern Pacific, in the language of Wall Street, was "one of the most active stocks."  It had been selling below 80 a few weeks prior to the general rise in prices, and now it went bounding up towards 120.  Some one, or some combination, was buying it in large quantities, and there was an apparent change of ownership in hundreds of thousands of shares.  Monday, the 6th of May, saw a continuation of this buying, and there began what seemed to be, and was, a struggle for the possession of the road.  Stocks went in response to the eager demands for it, and finally Mr. Keene, seeing the effort that was being made, and knowing that prices must go up until the sellers begged for mercy, helped along the movement by becoming an auxiliary buyer.  When the stock broke, it had once reached, for a moment, the price of $1000 per share for the common stock of the road.  Thousands of shares had been sold which did not exist.  Money was borrowed at astonishing rates of interest, and small fortunes were paid for the loan of Northern Pacific stock.  Loss and ruin visited hundreds of rash speculators, but no so many as would have been caught under like conditions at any other moment in the history of the Stock Exchange.  Then the question rose as to who controlled the road.  The effort to buy it away from the control of J. Pierpont Morgan & Co. and Mr. Hill was made by Kuhn, Loer, & Co., Mr. Jacob Schiff being the active partner in the transaction, the firm representing the Union Pacific Railroad interest, at the head of which is Mr. Harriman.  Which of these parties controlled the road at the end of the contest is a question still unsettled.  The aggressive war was made upon the Morgan-Hill management, who still believe that they own and influence enough stock, as the stock account stands, to maintain themselves.  The others deny this, and assert that they possess a majority of the stock.  Mr. Hill neither bought nor sold a share during the excitement, and no one of his men who are of his party, and who are in his confidence, yielded to the temptation to part with a share of his stock while the high prices prevailed.  It may require the revelations of the natural annual meeting to determine the control of the property.

Nostalgia versus History

From the satirical magazine Puck, VOL. XXII, No. 508. on January 25, 1888.  This is viewable for free on google books here.

 

Ah, yes, the quiet life they used to lead in those days sitting  before the dear old open fire-place, with the great log smouldering  -- all  conducive to tender  thoughts and romantic attachments.  But no one has ever mentioned the dear old blow-downs they used to have from that dear old fire-place.

Cartoon: A Lesson About Personal Bias

This comes from the satirical magazine Puck, Volume 22, No. 508. on January 25, 1888.  This is available on google books here.  Click to enlarge.

One great reason why people are slow in learning the truth is found in the distorted medium through which they are accustomed to look.  The man who lives surrounded by the thick, foggy atmosphere of a political party can hardly be expected to see things as they appear when viewed in the clear ether from an independent standpoint.  When we seek impressions from the mirrors which our mentors, whether of the stage or of the press, hold up to nature, if the mirror be not an exact plane, we shall get queer and wrong ideas.  And it is not reasonable to expect correct judgements when the men whose interest is to show us things as they are not are ever holding up for us the concave or convex glass which show us things only as they wish them to appear.

 

THREE MIRRORS HELD UP TO NATURE.

1) This is the American Workingman as the Protectionists say he would be if it were not for the Tariff.
2) This is what they say the Tariff makes of him.
3) But We think the Tariff Reform Mirror does him justice.

Wireless Telegraphy and the RMS Titanic

The RMS Titanic, as we all know, was seen as the foremost in ship-building technology when it launched in April of 1912.  Although much attention in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster focused on the failures of technology, The Day Book of Chicago, Illinois on April 17, 1912, two days after the Titanic sank, illustrates how another technological innovation of the day allowed for there to be any survivors at all.

Story in Picture of How Wireless Waked The Midnight Sea
Californian, Virginian, Prinz Frederick Wilhelm, Olympic
Prinz Adelbert, Baltic, Carpathia, Mauretania, Cincinati, Parisian

The Day Book, Chicago, IL - Apr 17, 1912

Although the steamer Titanic sank before help arrived, one of the most remarkable features of the disaster was how the great liner's dying call for help by wireless telegraphy awakened the midnight sea.  "S. O. S." (Send out Succor) flashed out over the silent wastes shortly before 11 o'clock.  Every few minutes the air waves carried "S. O. S." until 12: 17, when it stopped.  But in that hour and a half the cry for help was picked up by a dozen ships--ships that turned from their courses and sped under forced draught to the spot in the old ocean where grim tragedy was at work.  The picture illustrates how the sea responded.

Oh, the Insanity: Daredevil Goes From Airship to Train

If Tesla had been more business-minded, and the Hindenburg hadn't crashed, I think the world would have turned out more like the settings of so many steampunk novels. And then this scene would've totally been in a James Bond movie.

From The Day Book of Chicago, Illinois on February 23, 1914:

Detective Finn, most renowned of dare devils, has accomplished the remarkable feat of steering his dirigible balloon over a fast-moving train and sliding down a rope to one of the cars, shaming the writers of detective fiction by outclassing their wildest of hair-breadth escapes.

Some Lesser Known Innovations of Nikola Tesla

Kansas City Journal
Jan 5, 1898

Here are some descriptions of lesser known innovations, or claims of innovations, of Nikola Tesla's, as reported in newspaper articles during his lifetime.   These are excerpts from multiple articles in multiple newspapers.  To read the full articles, you can do so for free on the Library of Congress website.

The photo and caption to the left comes from The Kansas City Journal of Kansas City, Missouri, on January  5, 1898.


From The Princeton Union of Princeton, Minnesota, March 9, 1893:

(Sounds safe to me!)*
from The Princeton Union, Mar 9, 1893

Tesla is as yet only 36, and his great-discovery of a rapid alternating current was made some years ago.  One of the results of it is that an electric glow like daylight may be produced between the opposite walls of a room by simply having metallic wall paper and connecting it with the central generating plant.

Also From The Princeton Union of Princeton, Minnesota, March 9, 1893:

The Princeton Union, Mar 9, 1893

Tesla has perfected apparatus which will produce an alternating current of 1,000,000 alternations per second, such rapid waves, in fact, that they cause no effect on the human body.  He has produced a flame which lights without making heat or combustion, but which can be changed so as to produce both when they are wanted for warming a house or for cooking.  Thus the light will not burn up the oxygen of a room.  His machine will make ozone, and by another invention he has made he declares himself able to electrically disinfect all creation.  If he can give the world ozone in such quantity, then nobody need ever die of consumption or suffer for want of fresh air.  He has made an electrical current flow through vulcanite [rubber], hitherto regarded as the insulator nearest perfect of any known.  He says he has found five different kinds of electrical discharge, from an infinitesimally thin thread to a huge stream of light.  These are some of the claims of electrical wizard No. 2.

From The San Francisco Call, San Francisco, CA, November 13, 1898 (full page article with several wonderful illustrations).  The article goes on to describe this as "Tesla's system of electrical power transmission through natural media."

The San Francisco Call, Nov 13, 1898

Tesla's latest electrical wonder is out.  It is out because he has just received patents on it in this and other countries.

What Tesla proposes to do now is to transmit almost any amount of power almost any distance without wires, and without loss.  Although moving ships at sea may use the system for propulsion it is mainly intended for use on land.

To illustrate the anticipated results in the most concrete form it is proposed, for instance, that water power shall generate a great quantity of electricity on the lower courses of streams coming from the Sierras; that this electricity shall be conducted to a balloon arrangement floating a mile or two above the earth; that there shall be in San Francisco a similar balloon high above the city and that all the electrical energy conducted to the first balloon shall pass without loss and without wires to the balloon over the city, from which it shall descend to turn wheels and light lamps, etc.

A secondary result would seem to be that ships minus boilers and minus coal shall plow their way from the Golden Gate to Puget Sound, their churning propellers being driven by motors which draw their energy through the air from stations arranged every hundred miles or so along the shore.

The Same Force Made to Run Factories, Street Cars
and Electric Lights in a City Miles Away
The San Francisco Call, Nov 13, 1898

From The Washington Herald, Washington, D.C., December 5, 1915:

The Washington Herald, Dec 5, 1915

Mr. Tesla says his discovery has a direct and vital bearing on the problems now foremost in the public mind.  Wireless telephony will be brought to a perfection hitherto undreamed of through the application of this discovery, Tesla claims.  The inventor says that through his discovery electrical effects of unlimited intensity and power can be produced, so that not only energy can be transmitted for all practical purposes to any terrestrial distance, but even effects of cosmic magnitude may be created.

"We will deprive the ocean of its terrors by illuminating the sky, thus avoiding collision at sea and other disasters caused by darkness," Tesla claims.  "We will draw unlimited quantities of water from the ocean and irrigate the deserts and other arid regions. In this way we will fertilize the soil and derive any amount of power from the sun.  I also believe that ultimately all battles, if they should come, will be waged by electrical waves instead of explosives.


From The Evening Bulletin of Maysville, Kentucky, in 1898:

The Evening Bulletin, 1898

He has now discovered that it is just as easy to blow up an enemy's vessel by means of the ocsillator as it is to send a message by telephone from one end of the city to the other.  The question of distance between the enemy's ship and the oscillator does not enter into consideration at all.  The same force that can convey a message that distance will be able, Mr. Tesla thinks, to blow up the biggest battleship that has ever been afloat at an equal distance.





*I'm just kidding. Please don't try this. Obviously.

Article Describing Types of Petticoats, 1897

 The following article and illustrations come from the section "For Women and Home" in The Princeton Union of Princeton, Minnesota, September 9, 1897.  A scan of the article is viewable after the jump.

FOR WOMAN AND HOME

----

ITEMS OF INTEREST FOR MAIDS AND MATRONS.

All About the Petticoat.

----

The petticoat is quite as important a part of one's costume as the gown itself, for upon it depends "the hang" of the outside skirt.  Even the flannel 

petticoat, which in the opinion of so many people needs be but two yards of material seamed together, must be carefully gored.  The best flannel skirt is two and a half yards wide, gored and made with a muslin yoke fitted to the figure.  Colored flannels are used much more than white.  For traveling black is also used.  These flannel petticoats are quite short, ending just below the knee with a flounce embroidered in scallops.  Laces gathered behind the scallops, and a feather stitching heads the ruffles.

Cambric skirts are once more popular, probably because they are the best that can be worn under the light weight dresses which fashion advocates.  Indeed, to so great an extreme is the idea carried, that mull petticoats are worn under the thinnest of summer gowns.  They are made umbrella shaped, fitted with darts over the hips, and are fully long as the gown itself.  Lace is considered the prettiest trimming, but embroidery appears quite as often, more especially on the cambric spirts.  Silk petticoats are numerous, a fact due undoubtedly to the number of remarkably cheap remnants of silk to be had.  Any color is considered in good taste, although black for street wear is the greatest favorite.  For evening all the delicate colors are worn, trimmed with lace and an endless amount of ribbons.  

A silk petticoat should be two and a half yards wide--no more, no less--to make it hang properly.  Of course additional width is secured by the use of a flounce, making the upper skirt stand out better.--The Latest.

Raising, Slaughtering, and Preserving Hogs, 1839

This is from a book entitled The Kentucky Housewife by Mrs. Lettice Bryan, originally published in 1839.  This appears on pages 92 and 93.  (The diagram appears in the index.)  The entire book is available for free on Google Books.

Political Cartoon: A Bunch of Hot Air

The Sun, Jacksonville, FL, May 26, 1906

The above political cartoon comes from The Sun of Jacksonville, FL, printed May 26, 1906.  In this cartoon, President Theodore Roosevelt is caricatured with his trademark toothy grin.  Also notice on the ground are a big stick ("Speak softly and carry a big stick") and a pitchfork.  Benjamin Tillman, a US Senator, was known as "Pitchfork Ben."  According to Wikipedia, citing Time magazine from March 26, 1956, Tillman earned this nickname because he announced "his determination to go to Washington and plunge a pitchfork into the rump of President Grover Cleveland."

Here is an article from The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., January 12, 1909, that is just one example of the exchange between Senator Tillman and President Roosevelt.

DONE FOR SPITE

-----

Roosevelt Links Senator Tillman With Land Grab Deal.

-----

BATTLE HAS BEGUN.

-----

President Gives Out Result of Secret Investigation -- Tillman Admits Having Tried to Obtain Land in West--Wanted Sections for Himself, Family, and Secretary. 

The Iconic Toothy Smile of Teddy Roosevelt

From The Day Book, Chicago, Illinois, January 10, 1916:

An Aztec T. R.

This statue was carved centuries before the real T. R. ever bared his teeth.  The figure was an Aztec diety and in its day was worshiped pretty much as thousands of this country now worship our own Teddy.  The statue was unearthed in the City of Mexico.

1882 Article About the Life of Jesse James

The Bourbon News 

Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky: Tuesday, April 18, 1882.  

[Picture] Jesse James, The Bandit.  From the last photograph he had taken.  

The cut of Jesse James in this issue, was kindly loaned us by James J. Burns, editor of the Flemingsburg Democrat, who is not only a sprightly editor, but an accomplished wood engraver.  He copied it from a cut in the life of Jesse James published some two years ago.  The original photo was taken while the bandit was a guest at one of the principal Long Branch hotels, about the year 1870. 

The Dead Bandit. 

Jesse James was the son of a Baptist preacher of prominence and eloquence in his day.  The father was a native of Logan county, this state, and the mother, whose maiden name Zerelda Cole, was born in Woodford county, about half way between Versailles and Lexington, where her father kept a hostelry known as “Cole’s Tavern.”  On the death of her father the widow removed to the neighborhood of Stamping Ground, in Scott county, among her relatives, and there the future mother of the greatest bandit of modern times grew from childhood into girlhood, and from girlhood into womanhood, and there was married, in 1840, to Rev. Robert J. James.  In the subsequent year their first child, Frank, was born in Scott county.  In 1843 the Jameses removed to Missouri, setting in Clay county, where Jesse was born in 1845.  Mrs. James was a handsome, vivacious, devil-may-care girl, careless of good or evil report.  Tall, large-framed, and full of animal life, she was a universal favorite among those of the opposite sex, and her marriage to a clergyman was one of those surprises she was fond of indulging in.  Her hair was black as the raven’s wing, her eyes black and piercing.  Her temper was quick and fiery, her tongue sharp and cutting, and her enimity deadly and enduring.  She was constant and faithful in her friendships, and her hatreds were hot and undying.  She is now an exceedingly large woman, her hair sprinkled with gray, her eyes still keen and piercing, her temper as ungovernable as ever, and in all her ways, walks and talks, a fitting dam for such ferocious cubs as her two sons.  Her husband was a meek and humble-minded man and she made his life a hell, from which he finally fled to California, where he found the peace of death in 1851.  A few years afterwards the widow was married to Robert Mimms, whom she speedily harassed into the grave, and was succeeded in the connubial harness by Dr. Samuels, a prominent physician of Clay county.  To her is attributed the evil life led by her sons.  She upheld them in their career of crime, applauded their dare-devil deeds, and at all times extended them succor and protection.  All the affection in her nature is centered in them, and, while hard, and cruel, and vindictive toward others, she was ever the soft, loving, indulgent mother toward her children.  They inherited her own fearless spirit, and she gloried in them.  Deeds that filled the world with horror and heaped upon their names denunciation and detestation, she hailed as heroic and worthy of songs of praise and the hero’s wreath.

Engraving "Crossing the Plains," 1853

Below is a scan of an etching called "Crossing The Plains: Views Drawn From Nature, In 1853, By George H. Baker" which I found folded up in an old book.  It contains illustrations of wagon trains, indians, and famous rock formations in the American West.  I googled the copyright listed at the bottom of the sheet, and found that the Online Archive of California has the same engraving on their website, but in a slightly worse condition. 

Click to enlarge: