"The reign of terror, then, is to be transferred to Washington"

From "The Caning of Senator Charles Sumner" at the United State Senate website: "Mocking the South Carolina senator's stance as a man of chivalry, the Massachusetts senator charged him with taking 'a mistress . . . who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight -- I mean,' added Sumner, 'the harlot, Slavery.'"  (Caning of Senator Charles Sumner, May, 1856, NY Public Library collection)

"That is a classic Brian Lamb question, and I should have thought to prepare for it," emails the delightful and erudite Senate Historian, Dick Baker, whom we'd caught the other morning on C-Span being stumped by a caller's query re the origin of the expression "lame duck." After a little googling, we came up with a few interesting tidbits and emailed Mr. Baker with our results. Here's what he wrote back:

Many thanks for taking the time to help out with the “lame duck” question . . . I frequently get the question “When was the U.S. Senate first called the `World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’?” The best we can do with that one is to suggest the mid-19th century. After we had moved on to other callers, it occurred to me that the mid-18th century would have been a good guess for the lame duck.  Now, you have confirmed it.  Thank you very much.

For your enjoyment and edification, here's what we found in two separate entries from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

Lame duck, originally Stock Exchange slang for "defaulter," is first attested 1761.

Lame-duck was originally (18c.) "any disabled person or thing;" modern sense of "public official serving out term after an election" first recorded 1863 in Amer.Eng., attributed to Vice President Andrew Johnson, in reference to Col. Forney.

Challenged by Mr. Baker's reference to "the world's most deliberative body," we headed out into cyberspace once more for some answers. The best we came up with was the standard issue:

The Senate is regarded as a more deliberative body than the House of Representatives; the Senate is smaller and its members serve longer terms, allowing for a more collegial and less partisan atmosphere that is somewhat more insulated from public opinion than the House.

"As uncivil as Senatorial debate may seem in our day, we've failed to reach the level of the caning of Senator Charles Sumner," we emailed Mr. Baker, adding a bit of polite political rant:

If only we taught our children the all-too-human facts of our own history, they might be more critical of the ahistorical hysteria fed to them daily by an agenda-driven press.

Regarding Senator Sumner, we were referring to a notorious example of deliberative debate described at Mr. Baker's own superb United States Senate website:

On May 22, 1856, the "world's greatest deliberative body" became a combat zone. In one of the most dramatic and deeply ominous moments in the Senate's entire history, a member of the House of Representatives entered the Senate chamber and savagely beat a senator into unconsciousness.

The inspiration for this clash came three days earlier when Senator Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts antislavery Republican, addressed the Senate on the explosive issue of whether Kansas should be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state.

This from a Boston Atlas [Republican] editorial at the time:

The reign of terror, then, is to be transferred to Washington, and the mouths of the representatives of the North are to be closed by the use of bowie-knives, bludgeons, and revolvers. Very well; the sooner we understand this the better. If violence must come, we shall know how to defend ourselves. We hope, for the credit of the State, that every man in it will feel this outrage upon Mr. Sumner as a personal indignity, no less than an insult to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and that there will be such a general and spontaneous expression of opinion, as will fully manifest our deep disinclination to submit to any repetition of the contumely.

Mr. Baker's latest response was a corker:   

We considered organizing a Senate-sponsored conference on “civility” in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Sumner-Brooks affair. The idea elicited only laughter, so we’ll wait for the 200th.

Too bad it was laughed -- nervously? -- off the agenda. A conference on "civility" referencing the Sumner-Brooks affair would be just the thing to lend some much-needed perspective to the overwrought national "debate" in these troubled times. Plus ça change . . .

Comments

[goomp]

In these days of political correctness, a welcome sight would be the caning of some of the judges who put their personal agenda ahead of the constitution.

[bird dog]

Ah. The good old days.

[hnav]

didn't Dick Durbin basically beat the Armed Forces with the comparison to Nazis?

or Hillary Rodham cane the President, holding up that NY Post Front Page, implying GW knew about 9-11 prior to the tragic event?

everytime i see Ted Kennedy speak in the Senate, i feel as if someone has knocked me on the head a few times...

[Tara]

Robert Byrd is enough for me to feel beaten into a stupor with his withering speeches on the Senate floor.

Great comments btw, to an exceptionally good post.

[Teresa]

I find it endlessly amusing to hear people talk about how terribly rancorous the current political debates are as opposed to those of the past. Everytime someone says such a thing I know they never paid one bit of attention to their history classes... after all, why do you need to know all that old fusty stuff?

[Rachel]

I kind of enjoyed it when Dick Cheney used the f-word to Patrick Leahy. Not as good as a caning, of course.