Beschreibung:

Title: Autograph Letter Signed about an 1841 Fist fight free-for-all on the floor of US Congress Author: Goode, F.[rancis] C.[ollier] Place: Washington, [D.C.] Publisher: Date: August 9. 1841 Description: 2 pp. + stampless address leaf (franked by his brother, Ohio Congressman Patrick Gaines Goode). To Thomas Collins, New Albany, Indiana: “…The floor of the House has been today the scene of a perfect row, disgraceful to the parties engaged, their constituents and the nation…Harsh language having passed between Mess. Wise and Stanley in the course of debate, W went over to S’s seat to expostulate with him… and becoming excited struck him… Stanley says that Wise commenced scolding him and requested him to walk into the lobby with him and that he in reply told him to go off., that he wanted nothing to do with him, that Wise then turned and said something which induced him (S) to tell him he was a liar, upon which W struck at but did not hit him, that having warded off the blow he gave several in return, when they were parted. In the mean time, Butler of Ky. was engaged with Arnold, several others were at it…Tis said that blows were only passed by the two first and that the others were satisfied with choking each other. Mr. Wise immediately apologized to the House, said that he had broken the rules and begged to be forgiven. He is said to have had the worst of it. Wise denies that Stanley called him a liar and S denies that W struck him…. neither of them being seriously insulted there is no hope of a duel…” The sudden death of newly-inaugurated President William Henry Harrison and the succession of Vice President John Tyler, whose unexpected veto of his own Whig Party’s banking bill led most of his Cabinet to resign in anger, led to the highly-charged political atmosphere in which the free-for-all described here began after a heated argument between Democrat Henry Wise of Virginia (the future Governor who would execute John Brown and Whig Edward Stanly of North Carolina (later a Union General during the Civil War). The writer, Francis Goode, a government clerk in Washington while his Whig brother, a devout Methodist minister, served in Congress, understandably found the entire incident “disgraceful”. Lot Amendments Condition: Near fine. Item number: 238374