more or less acrimonious attacks upon the candidates of the other party. The Know-Nothing or the American Party candidate was twitted about the oath by which he had bound himself, and Mr. Banks was not suffered to forget that in a recent speech down in Maine he had professed a willingness under certain contingencies to "let the Union slide." Whenever the candidate was gored so as to rise and explain, his tormentors seemed to enjoy it hugely. The men who were themselves at heart striving to sap and mine the Union turned up their eyes with grim-visaged horror at the want of patriotism of Banks, and he, I feel sure, must have felt disgusted at having so often to father a slip of the tongue sure to be branded by literary critics as coarse.

At length the candidates for the Speakership were put through a catechism, or a series of embarrassing questions, which all were required to answer. One of the supplementary questions propounded by Mr. Barksdale of Mississippi, who was afterwards killed in the rebel army, was the following: "Do you believe in the equality of the white and black races in the United States, and do you wish to promote that equality by legislation?”

To this Mr. Banks promptly responded: "So far as I have studied the subject, it seems to me to be the general law, that the weaker is absorbed or disappears altogether. Whether the black man of this continent, or any other part of the world, is equal to the white race, can only be determined by the absorption or disappearance of one or the other, and I propose to wait until the respective races can be properly subjected to this philosophical test before I give a decisive answer." The scientific fairness of the answer, dangling politically upon such a ludicrous and indefinite postponement, caused roars of laughter.

As a satire upon Mr. Barksdale's question, Mr. Kennelt, a courteous Union member from Missouri, proposed in addition the following: "I should like to know of each candidate for the Speakership, including my friend from New Jersey (Mr. Pennington), whether he believes in a future state or not? And then, provided he answers the question affirmatively, I desire to know whether he believes it will be a free or a slave state." This was felt as a palpable hit, and was angrily resented by Barksdale in some very hot words which were the next day withdrawn, when an explanation by Mr. Kennelt followed, and a duel was avoided

as Southern men, when the crisis came, had great skill in

a

avoiding. Mr. Pennington then made a witty answer to the theological question of Mr. Kennelt, saying, "I have been instructed by the (Westminster) catechism, that there is such a thing as a future state, and I pledge my friend, upon my honor, that I religiously believe it. I do not understand, however, that it is wholly a free state, nor yet, on the other hand, wholly a slave state. It is represented as divided into two states beatified state, and another state not quite so agreeable. The one I take to be a free state and the other a slave state. We are informed that these states are divided by an impassable gulf not exactly a compromise line, I believe. We are frequently reminded, too, that one of these states is much the hotter of the two, and hence I take it for granted, as a matter of fair inference, that it is a slave state and lies on the south side of the line." All this was said to the infinite amusement of the House, but good temper did not by any means always prevail. Mr. Richardson for some time had remained silent. Mr. Giddings said: "I asked him (Mr. Richardson) how he would act if elected to the Speakership? But, more dumb than Balaam's ass, I could extract nothing from him."

Mr. Richardson could not quite stand this, and said: "Mr. Clerk, I am, it is true, like Balaam, while in the presence of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Giddings). I let the ass speak." Our side of the House did not laugh so much at this sally as the other.

Twenty years ago there were always a few members who came into the House occasionally intoxicated and like most men under such circumstances were quite talkative and deeply impressed by their own wit. Mr. Bowie of Maryland and Mr. Cullen of Delaware, for example, in every night session were sure to be thus conspicuously happy. Both were large men, both able lawyers when sober, and gentlemen in many respects of high character. One evening at a late hour both full to the brim, and after both had claimed and occupied the floor to the distress of their friends, who could not prevail upon them to keep their seats or to sit down when they got through, each one discovered that the other was not in a fit condition to address the House, and, in the central area in front of the Speaker's chair, each one tried to prevail upon the other to retire, and spoke so loud in that strain and with such endearing, earnest embraces and gestures as to attract the attention of the whole House. The droll amusement

afforded was considerable and would have been greater, if the national spectacle had not been a sad one.

Doubtless a considerable number of the members from the South were fully bent upon the destruction of the Union at this time, but they held discordant views as to the mode and manner of bringing it about, some being for the perpetual disorganization of the House - saying, as Toombs said in 1849, "let discord reign forever" - some for peaceable secession, and others for a battle on the floors of the House and Senate. Mr. Brooks of South Carolina, who soon made his bloody assault upon Mr. Sumner in the Senate Chamber, was already fixed in the opinion which he held, and again avowed four years later, that the battle should begin in the House. "We are," said he, "standing upon slave territory, surrounded by slave States, and pride, honor, patriotism all command us, if a battle is to be fought, to fight it out here upon this floor." We became seared to these thrusts, and when McMullen of Virginia, a much weaker man, screamed out

"I tell you that when the North and the South sever the connection which now binds them together, the North will never take possession of this Capitol unless they pass over my dead body" — it was only received with jeers and laughter.

At last, under the adoption of a plurality rule, Mr. Banks obtained the highest number of votes, and then before the vote was announced commenced a struggle for a further vote to declare him by a resolution duly elected Speaker by a majority of the House. Much noise and confusion reigned. Those who did not mean to vote for such a resolution strenuously contended that it was absolutely necessary, and others held that the vote of the majority when adopting the plurality rule was sufficient, and, if not, that those who voted for it were now bound in honor to vote for a resolution declaring Mr. Banks duly elected. Howell Cobb of Georgia, elected Speaker in 1849 by the same rule, held the opinion that Mr. Banks was already elected. Mr. Aiken of South Carolina, who had received the next highest vote, asked leave to escort Mr. Banks to the Speaker's chair, according to the courtesy usual upon the election of Speaker. Mr. Aiken was the owner of a thousand slaves, and yet was much less of a firebrand than others who perhaps owned none at all, but who must show by belligerent fanaticism that they could be trusted at home by the so-called conservative party. This manly action

of Mr. Aiken rather checked the disposition to throw further obstacles in the way of the organization of the House, and a vote declaring that Mr. Banks had been duly elected Speaker was passed with little opposition, or by 155 to 40 irreconcilables. Mr. Banks was thereupon escorted to the chair by Mr. Aiken, Campbell, and Fuller, made his speech of acceptance, and was sworn in by Mr. Giddings, the senior member.

This was the first gust, the large pelting drops, that preceded the storm of 1861. For sixty years the slaveholders had regarded the exaggeration of State rights as the summit of statesmanship and the all-sufficient shield of slavery. Under the name of domestic institutions, wholly controlled by States, it was to be placed in the ark of safety, and, under home rule, bid defiance to the rapidly accumulating and crushing opinion of the civilized world. Meantime in Virginia, and in parts of the Carolinas, the system and its crops had exhausted the soil, and slavery was maintained with an alarmed and quivering tenacity mainly for its value in breeding human stock for the auction block. New slave territory had become indispensable to its longer prosperous continuance. There must be vent or slavery would be stifled in its home, and when the enlightened conscience of the North would no longer prostitute the power of the National Government to the extension of slavery had taken its last unwilling steps in that direction then the South determined to wreck the fairest fabric of human government the world has yet known and to trust to the ensuing anarchy for the preservation of their domination over the African race.

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But, if there were workers for the downfall of the American Republic, there were fortunately a not less determined band who intended that these workers of iniquity should ingloriously fail, as they did fail in the forum of the legislative halls, in their appeals to the ballot box, and in their appeals to the God of battles. It may be of some interest to give some personal sketches of a few of the men, and of some incidents of the times not likely to be forgotten by any of those who witnessed them, and not likely to be learned by those who did not, except through the labor of some painstaking future historian of our country.

From Pennsylvania there were several members who became more or less prominent. Galusha A. Grow-named Galusha by

an old aunt who knew and was an admirer of Governor Galusha of Vermont - became noted at the next Congress for his encounter on the floor of the House, in the area in front of the Speaker's chair, with Lawrence M. Keitt of South Carolina. It was in a session protracted late into the night, and Mr. Grow, while walking near the right or Democratic side of the House, was rudely told by Mr. Keitt, with some profanity, "Go home, you black republican, to your own side of the House where you belong." To which Grow replied, "that he should go where he chose and that he obeyed no slave-master." Thereupon Mr. Keitt started from his seat and struck out rapidly and fiercely at Grow, who with equal promptitude warded off the blows and defended himself by striking back. The motions of both parties were as swift as the changes of a turning kaleidoscope, until Mr. Keitt fastened a hand into the neck-tie of Mr. Grow, when the latter appeared to have got in a blow which felled Mr. Keittboth going down with Grow on top. At once the whole House was in a lively hurly-burly, and made a general rush for the central spot of the battle, which spread, though jamming, pushing, and striking out right and left, until there seemed to be no noncombatants left. Intervening seats were leaped over and the voice and gavel of Speaker Orr amid the general din resounded [the call] to order with as little effect as they could have had in bidding a tempest to be still. John Covode, a large-boned, quaint, old Dutch member from Pennsylvania, sitting in the rear seats of the Hall, seized a very large spittoon, brandishing it in both hands over his head, and pushed forward into the thickest of the mêlée — a veritable Roundhead against the Cavaliers saying afterwards that he "thought he ought to have some kind of a weepon in his hands." Barksdale of Mississippi – afterwards the rebel general already mentioned who was killed at Gettysburg - was in the surging crowd, hot for any fray, and probably received a hard thump from a fist belonging to one of the three Washburns then in the House. His faith was firm that he had a blow - he felt it very good evidence of things not seen. His wig was torn or knocked off, and, while no hairs on his head were then standing up like quills to indicate the fretful porcupine, his wrath was ferocious, and he was ill-content to wait, with clenched fists and unclenched wig, until he could find where revenge most required him to strike. He suspected Elihu B.