SLAVERY IN MISSISSIPPI. 185 All No full report of this debate has been preserved. It CHAPTER would appear, however, that Varnum and Gallatin said. something in favor of Thacher's amendment, while Giles 1798. and Nicholas, with Gordon of New Hampshire, opposed it. Only twelve votes were given in its favor. A large majority of the opposition were themselves slaveholders, while the Federal representatives of the North did not wish to offend their few confederates from Maryland and South Carolina, or to do any thing to add to the prejudices already so generally entertained in the South against the Federal party. Yet Thacher's opposition to the further spread of slavery was not entirely without fruits. A day or two March 26 after, Harper offered an amendment which was carried without opposition, prohibiting the introduction into the new Mississippi Territory of slaves from without the limits of the United States. Notwithstanding a provision that nothing in this act should operate in derogation of the rights of Georgia, a vehement opposition was made by the representatives from that State to the erection of the new territory, unless with a proviso that the consent of Georgia should first be obtained. To this it was answered that the State of Georgia had never been in possession of this territory; that it had remained under the Spanish government until recently ceded; that the right of the United States to it was clear, and that, whether clear or not, it was their duty to retain possession till the question of title was disposed of, and to provide, in the mean time, an efficient government for the settlers, distant, and unprotected, and surrounded by Indian tribes as they were: views which the House sustained by a vote of forty-six to thirty-four.* This case, it will be seen, had a very direct bearing on the ques CHAPTER Much of the earlier part of the session was devoted to the consideration of private matters, mostly Revolution1798 ary claims, which had come by degrees to constitute a formidable part of the business of the House. An act was passed authorizing grants of land to the refugees from Canada and Nova Scotia who had joined and adhered to the American cause during the Revolution. At a former session, in spite of a violent opposition, based on the alleged want of power in Congress for that purpose, a sum of money had been granted to the daughters of the Count de Grasse, reduced to poverty by the death of their father, who had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror. That sum had been exhausted, and a new act was now passed, in further acknowledgment of De Grasse's Revolutionary services, granting to his four daughters an annual pension for the next five years of $400 each. Numbers of banished Frenchmen continued to arrive in America, among whom, at this time, were the young Duke of Orleans, afterward Louis Philippe, king of the French, and his two younger brothers. The joy was great in America at hearing of the release of Lafayette from the Austrian dungeon where he had so long been confined. By way of pecuniary relief to his family, Congress had already appropriated to their use the full amount of his pay as a major general in the American service. The bill making provision for foreign intercourse be came a sort of party test, and many speeches were made upon it. The opposition maintained that the regulation of this matter ought to be with Congress. Instead of tion a short time since (1850) so violently agitated, of the erection of the Territory of New Mexico, notwithstanding the claims of Texas; yet so inaccessibly wrapped up in records, pamphlets, and newspapers has the history of this period hitherto been, that this case, so exactly in point, was never referred to in that whole discussion GRISWOLD AND LYON-BREACH CF DECORUM. 18: XII. voting a gross sum as heretofore, leaving the application CHAPTER of it to the president, they wished to limit the number of missions, and to make a special appropriation for each. 1798. Much time was consumed in the business of Senator Blount's impeachment, which was protracted through the whole session without being brought to any point. Every obstacle was placed in the way of it by the opposition, who were not a little alarmed at the idea of the mpeachment of members of Congress, for which, as they alleged, the Constitution gave no authority. During the balloting for managers of this impeachment, a scandalous breach of decorum occurred, the first Jan. 30 ever witnessed in Congress. The speaker, having left the chair, had taken a seat next the bar; Griswold and others were seated near, many members, as is usual on such occasions, being out of their proper seats. Standing outside the bar, and leaning upon it, Lyon commenced a conversation with the speaker in a loud tone, as if he desired to attract the attention of those about him. The subject was the Connecticut members, particalarly their course in reference to the Foreign Intercourse Bill, which just before had been under discussion. Those members, Lyon said, acted in opposition to the opinions and wishes of nine-tenths of their constituents. As to their advocating salaries of $9000 to the ministers abroad, on the ground that nobody would accept for less-that was false. They were all of them ready to accept any office, were the salary great or small. He knew the people of Connecticut, and that they were capable of hearing reason, having had occasion to fight them sometimes in his own district, when they came to visit their relations. "Did you fight them with your wooden sword?" asked Griswold, in jocular allusion to Lyon's having been cashiered, and to a story which had got CHAPTER into the newspapers since his display of himself at the XIL previous session, that he had been drummed out of the 1798. army on that occasion, and compelled to wear a wooden sword. Some other jesting remarks, made by the bystanders, had been received by Lyon in good part; Gris wold's taunt either failed to reach his ear, or he affected not to hear it, for, without noticing it, he went on in the same strain as before, declaring that, blinded and deceived as the people of Connecticut were, if he could only go into the state, and manage a paper there for six months, he could open their eyes, and turn out all the present representatives. Griswold, meanwhile leaving the seat he had occupied, had taken a place beside Lyon, outside the bar, and in reply to this last sally, laying his hand on Lyon's arm as if to attract his attention, he remarked, with a smile, "You could not change the opinion of the meanest hostler in the state!" Lyon replied that he knew better; that he could affect a revolution in a few months, and that he had serious thoughts of moving into the state and fighting them on their own ground. "If you come, Mr. Lyon, I suppose you will wear your wooden sword!" so Griswold retorted, at which Lyon turned suddenly about, and spat in his face. Griswold drew back as if to strike, but, upon the interference of one or two of his friends, restrained himself and remained quiet. The speaker instantly resumed the chair, and, after a short statement of the foregoing facts, Sewall submitted a mo tion for Lyon's expulsion: This was referred to a committee of privileges, another resolution being meanwhile adopted, that if either party offered any violence to the other before a final decision, he should be held guilty of a high breach of privilege. Lyon the next day sent a letter to the speaker, in Feb. 1. which he stated, that if chargeable with a disregard of MOTION FOR LYON'S EXPULSION. 189 XII. the rules of the House, it had grown wholly out of his CHAPTER ignorance of their extent, and that if through ignorance he had unwittingly offended, he was sorry to deserve censure. 1798. This letter was referred to the committee already appointed, who reported, the day after, a statement of facts, Feb. 2. and along with it a resolution for Lyon's expulsion. To the passage of this resolution Lyon's Democratic friends made a most obstinate resistance. It was only by fortynine votes to forty-four that the House consented to go into committee on the subject; and not content with the Feb.. statement reported, it was insisted that the witnesses should again give their testimony before the Committee of the Whole. Lyon put in for the consideration of that committee a long statement in reference to the military censure to which he had been subjected, in which he threw upon the other officers, particularly the one in command, the blame of the desertion of the post for which he had been cashiered. He repeated the same thing in a speech against the resolution; but in defending his conduct he made use of a very vulgar and indecent expression, which itself, on Harper's motion, and by the casting vote of the speaker, was referred to the same Committee of the Whole as a new and separate offense. Among the witnesses who had given testimony as to the fact of Lyon's having been cashiered, and his patience at home under allusions to it, was Chipman, the new Vermont senator. By way of rebuttal, Lyon stated in his speech that he had once chastised Chipman for an insult; a statement which drew out from Chipman, in a letter addressed to the House, a full account of the affair referred to, placing Lyon in a most ridiculous light. The adoption of the resolution for expelling Lyon was vehemently opposed by Nicholas and Gallatin on the frivolous and unfounded pretense which Lyon himself |