THE SPITTING LYON

 

I can prove the regularity of Senator William Blount's intestinal functions, because his enemies in the U.S. Senate depended on them. Their trap was sprung on a Tuesday morning, while Blount was making his regular morning visit to  “The Necessity”, behind Philadelphia's “Congress  Hall”.  

The Senatorial conspirators gained time because Blount had to go all the way downstairs and out to the little shed, to "do his business".  And they need not rush because as always he took his time – such things should never be hurried. And by the time  had Blount returned from his seat to his seat,  the letter had been read and William Blount's political career was toast.  It was Monday, 3 July, 1797, and if he were not so arrogant (and regular) Senator Blount (below) might gone on to great things.  I'll bet even the “Spitting Beast of Vermont” wished he had.

“Dear Cary”, the letter began, “I wished to have seen you before I returned to Philadelphia,...I believe  the plan...will be attempted this fall...(and) in a much larger way then we talked about....I shall probably be at the head of the business on the part of the British...You must take care...not to let the plan be discovered by...any other person in the interest of the United States or Spain." And it was signed, "William Blount.”

The plan was the invention of John Chisholm, who owned a tavern and boarding house and general store (above) across the street from Senator Blount's Knoxville, Tennessee mansion.  His business made Chisholm a community leader, and living at the western edge of the United States, made him acutely aware of the precarious financial position of western farmers.  

Chisholm figured it was only a matter of time before Spain would be forced to sell their American colonies (green) to France. And if France controlled Louisiana and Florida, it might deny American ships duty free access to New Orleans - which the Spanish would do in 1802.  That would bankrupt the western farmers in Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia.  So Chisholm planned to use local militia and Creek Indians to capture Pensacola and New Orleans, in the name of the British Empire - who would then promise to allow Americans to use New Orleans as if they owned it.

It was a fantasy of course, but the more Senator Blount thought about this idea, the more he thought it was his idea - particularly after he had improved it by creating a well paid job for himself as a British agent in control of New Orleans.  So Blount wrote his letter to James Cary, who was a translator with the Creek Indian nation in eastern Tennessee.  Senator Blount expected Cary to convince the Creeks to join his conspiracy.  

Instead, Cary shared the letter with his bosses in the War Department, who immediately shared it with President John Adams. Adams (above left, seated) was a Federalist and he saw a chance to embarrass his own Vice President, Thomas Jefferson (above, right), who presided over the Senate (above) and was also the leader of the opposition party, the Democrat-Republicans - of whom Senator William Blount was an important member.  So Adams sent a copy of the "Dear Cary" letter to Federalists in the Senate, but insisted it be kept secret until Senator Blount could do nothing to stop the public reading of the letter. Blount's morning trip to the toilet provided that opportunity.

By noon half of Philadelphia (above) wanted to hang Blount as a traitor, and the other half was trying to deny they had ever met him . The President's wife even said it was too bad America did not have the guillotine. Senator Blount was arrested trying to slip out of town. Dragged in front of the Senate he denied writing the letter. He was arrested anyway and posted bail. And once free he hightailed it back to Knoxville – where being part of an anti-government conspiracy made him something of a hero. A week later, having decided they could not impeach Blount, since he was already gone, the Senate voted 25 to 1 to expel him.  And thus the Senate was done with William Blount

But over the next six months Federalists and Democrat Republicans downstairs in the House of Representatives, tried to make an impeachment of Senator Blount work for them in the upcoming 1798 Congressional elections. And that is how our story came to involve an expectorant infused Congressman from the Green Mountain State.

His name was Matthew Lyon (above), and he had been a Second Lieutenant in the Green Mountain Boys when they captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1776. The next year General Horatio Gates ordered Captain Lyon to take 60 men north to the Onion River. And just as they arrived, word came of a party of 500 Indians coming to attack them. Lyon said later, “The soldiers considered themselves sacrificed”, and they decided to retreat, despite Lyon trying to convince them to stay, Gates still ordered Lyon arrested and tried before a military court.  Found guilty, Matthew lost his command, but he was not reduced in rank. Captain Lyon later fought bravely in the battles of Bennington and at Saratoga, rising to the rank of colonel. After the war the Vermont hero twice ran for election to Congress, and failed when the court martial was used to smear him. Third time was the charm, however, and in 1796 he finally won election, as a radical Democrat-Republican supporting Jefferson. Two years later he was even re-elected.

And that was how Lyon ended up delivering a speech from the well of the House chamber (above) on Tuesday, 30 January, 1798. In his speech Lyon chastised the Connecticut Federalists for not defending the honor of their citizens by not voting to impeach Senator William Blount. That suggestion brought Federalist Connecticut Congressman Roger Griswald to his feet. As Lyon stepped away from the podium, Griswald, in his best snarky voice, asked if Lyon would be defending the people of Connecticut with his wooden sword.

Now, Lyon never had a wooden sword. Occasionally, an officer convicted of cowardice would be required to wear a wooden sword, as a way of embarrassing him before the army. That had not happened in Lyon's case, because he was not accused of running from the enemy, but was tried for not maintaining discipline among his men. General Gates' later career provided ample evidence of his cowardice and incompetence, as Lyon's later career provided evidence of the reverse. But that was reality, and politics is about image - just ask John Kerry who was Swift Boat'ed over 200 years later.

Well, Lyon had been hearing this Federalist smear since the war. It had been used to defeat him twice in his congressional campaigns. And hit in the back of the head with it, the Green Mountain boy in Lyon reacted instinctively. He spun on Roger Griswald, and spit in his face. We can assume it was pretty disgusting logy. The forty year old Lyon was a tobacco user, and mouth wash and dentistry were still in their infancy. And then, having expectorated his peace, Lyon turned his back on Griswald again. In the words of an historian, from that moment “No man in the whole Republican party...(not even) Thomas Jefferson...was so hated and despised (by Federalists) as Matthew Lyon.”  Griswald went ape and charged at Lyon.

Cooler heads from both sides rushed to separate the two combatants.  And then, this being Congress, the argument about the traitor Senator Blount became about the “spitting Lyon” and the hot head Griswald. Federalists wanted Lyon censured for “gross indecency” - for spitting on a college - making him the first Congressman honored with an ethics charge.  Democrat-Republicans wanted Griswald censured for the insult,  making him the second Congressman so honored. In the end, both charges were dropped. So two weeks later, it got worse.

On Thursday 15 February, Roger Griswold entered the house chamber carrying a cane he had been loaned by a friend. He walked directly to Matthew Lyon's desk, and without warning began beating the Democrat-Republican with the stick. Covering his head, Lyon struggled to his feet, and retreated toward the fire pit, meant to take the morning chill off the chamber. He grabbed a pair of tongs from the wood pile, and began an insane fencing duel with his attacker (above). Again, cooler heads separated the two

The spitting only made the attacks on Matthew Lyon's honor louder. One bad Federalist poet even managed to include the insult into an ode to a theatrical Boston pig. “You boast your little pig can spell the hardest word; But did your little pig ever wear a wooden sword?....Though your piggy screws his snout in such learned grimaces, I defy the squeaking lout to spit in Christians’ faces...,Then tell us no more of your little grunting creature, But confess that the LION is the GREATEST BEAST in nature.”  As I said, he was a bad poet.

The Spitting Lyon so angered the Federalists members of Congress,  it made it easier for them to pass both the Alien and the Sedition Acts, the second of which was signed on 14 July, 1798, six months after the assault by and on the “Spitting Lyon.”  It's actual title was “An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes” (above), the crimes being writing or publishing anything false or malicious against members of the government.  It also forbid the defendant from pleading the truth of their writing as a defense. Three months later, on 10 October, Matthew Lyons was convicted under the Sedition Act, and sentenced to four months in jail.

But Representative Lyon had the last laugh.  Twice.  First he was re-elected from his jail cell, with 55% of the vote. Then, the Presidential election of 1800 was a tie, and thrown into the House of Representatives. The contest became a 35 ballot knock down drag out between Democratic Republicans Jefferson and Vice Presidential candidate and fellow Republican Aron Burr. The mess had been engineered by the lame duck Federalist majority. The issue was finally settled on the 36^th ballot, when the Federalist Representative from Vermont suffered an attack of patriotism and abstained. This allowed Matthew Lyon, the Democrat-Republican from Vermont, to cast the deciding ballot making Thomas Jefferson Third President of the United States.

So it turned out, Senator Blount's act of betrayal did not end up preventing Jefferson from winning the White House. The arrogant Blount did not witness the victory, having died in his home (above) during an epidemic in March of 1800. 

The next year Matthew Lyon moved to Kentucky, and won election to Congress from that new state six times, finally retiring in 1811, and dying in 1822. The Spitting Lyon, the Green Mountain Beast, was then buried in the Blue Grass state (below). And what a shame we have allowed his memory to fade, in part because we insist upon neutering our "founding fathers" - denying both them and us our shared humanity, warts and all. The lessons are usually in the warts, you know.

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RUNNING AGAINST SOCIAL SECURITY

 

I would say that Bertrand Hollis Snell is a shinning example of the “Peter Principle” in action. Bertrand started out his adult life as a bookkeeper. Then he successfully ran a cheese factory, and then a lumber company in upstate New York.  For awhile  he was the president of a small college. Then, in 1915,  Bertrand was elected to congress as a Republican.  

In 1931 he became the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. That led, in 1932, to him being one of the primary architects of the disaster which befell the Republican Party in 1936 -  the first time they ran against the brand new Social Security program of the New Deal. In short, it was Bertrand Snell’s fault. Of course, he had some help.

Herbert Hoover's ineffectualness at dealing with the Great Depression  -the stock market crash had occurred just 6 months after he first took office - was so obvious that Herbert won only 6 states – Pennsylvania, Delaware, R.I., Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, and he lost the 1932 Presidential Election, by almost 18 percentage points.  And yet Herbert still had hopes he could engineer a come back. 

Yes, FDR’s New Deal had already created six million jobs, and had doubled industrial production and sent corporate profits from a $2 billion loss under Hoover to a $5 billion profit. 

But there were still 8 million Americans unemployed, and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) was charging that the new Social Security Administration was part of a fascist/communist take over of the federal government. Does any of this sound familiar?  Anyway, back to our story...

On Tuesday, 9 June, 1936, in the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio,  Representative Snell introduced Herbert Hoover to the Republican National Convention.  

Hoover did his very best to rally the faithful to his cause. And there were faithful in that auditorium. As Time Magazine detailed, “After 15 minutes (of) yelling, shrieking (and) hooting, (Hoover) was allowed to begin."

He warmed up quickly. According to Time, Hoover told the faithful, "Fundamental American liberties are at stake. Is the Republican Party ready…to cast your all upon the issue?" "Yes!" roared the crowd…."

".. have you determined to enter in a holy crusade for freedom which shall determine the future and the perpetuity of a nation of free men?" "Yes!" roared the crowd in ecstasy.” The faithful went on chanting “Hoo-ver, Hoo-ver, Hoo-ver,” long after Herbert had left the stage.

Noted Time Magazine; “The demonstration could not be stopped for half an hour, even when Speaker Snell tried to introduce a little old lady, surprisingly pert for her 77 years, the widow of President Benjamin Harrison.”  

Finally Bertrand banged his big gavel and informed the crowd that Herbert would not be coming out for a curtain call because he had already boarded a train for New York. Stunned, the floor demonstrators paused for a breath, and in vague confusion the demonstrations petered out. 

Except, Herbert had not even left the building. He was in fact, just off stage, waiting to be recalled by the carefully prepared demonstrations, and proclaimed the Presidential nominee by acclamation. That was his plan, anyway. 

But Bertrand (above, center) had already determined that the party nominee would not be Hoover. It could not be Hoover. That would be a disaster for the party. Instead, Bertrand had decided the choice would be the liberal Republican Governor, Alf Landon, known affectionately to the faithful as “The Kansas Coolidge”. The party chairman had cut the ground right out from under Hoover.

Governor Landon  was the only Republican governor re-elected in 1934. He had a reputation as a fiscal conservative who cut taxes and balanced the state budget. That made him the Republican wonder-kid, the perfect man to oppose the “tax and spend” Roosevelt.

Alf's candidacy had a few problems, of course. What candidate does not? First; Landon had balanced the Kansas budgets because Roosevelt's New Deal had kicked in millions of dollars to offset the state's deficits. 

Second; Alf publicly supported so many parts of the New Deal, including Social Security, that he was at odds with most of the Republican party platform. Third; Alf was a terrible public speaker. He mumbled. And like any good mid-westerner, even when speaking clearly he didn’t blow his own horn very much. As H. L. Mencken noted, he "simply lacks the power to inflame the boobs."

The party platform that Alf was going to have to stand on had been engineered by Chairman Snell and forty-four year old John Daniel Miller Hamilton (above), the “crinkly haired” “jut-jawed” G.O.P. general counsel, who reeked of “animal vigor.”  Or so said Republicans. 

Hamilton (above) was paid $15,000 a year to be the party's  attack dog. He was described by one fellow Republican as having, “…a seven-devil lust to live and shine under the blessings of the rich”.  Both Snell and Hamilton were Alf’s front men, and Hamilton had even nominated the Kansas Governor. And to seal the deal, in his nominating speech Hamilton had read a telegram from Governor Landon promising to support the anti-New Deal anti-Social Security platform. 

Said the Republican platform; “For three long years the New Deal Administration has dishonored American traditions…has been guilty of frightful waste and extravagance, …has created a vast multitude of new offices, …set up a centralized bureaucracy, and sent out swarms of inspectors to harass our people."

"It has bred fear and hesitation in commerce and industry, thus discouraging new enterprises, preventing employment and prolonging the depression…We pledge ourselves: To preserve the American system of free enterprise, private competition, and equality of opportunity...We advocate: Abandonment of all New Deal policies that raise production costs, increase the cost of living, and thereby restrict buying, reduce volume and prevent reemployment. …”.  

Sound familiar? It should. Basically, this has been the Republican Party Platform for the last ninety years!

But the platform saved its most vicious criticism for that newest New Deal program, Social Security. It was opposition to Social Security that had "energized the base". 

As it was initially passed the program did not cover farm workers, the self employed, state, federal or local government workers, railroad workers, or domestics. There was no aid for the disabled, and there were no cost of living allowances. Still, the Republican platform for 1936 charged the New Deal, "...while purporting to provide social security, have, in fact, endangered it", and claimed that "the fund will contain nothing but the government's promise to pay" and is "unworkable".  Again, does any of this sound familiar? 

 

Bertrand Snell had a master plan for victory, funded by a $14 million war chest (equal to $207.5 million today), with over a million of that coming from just three families – DuPont, Pew and Rockefeller – and the rest almost entirely from business leaders anxious to prevent further Federal regulations of their business. 

And then there was “The Liberty League,” described by one historian as “…the best-financed and the most professionally run…anti-big-government organization ever to come down the pike.” Before the Tea Party, that is. The League was the original "Astro-turf" - a pesudo-grassroots organization. It raised and spent as much cash as the two established parties combined (30% of it coming from the Koch brothers of the day,  the DuPont family). The League's  national headquarters occupied 31 rooms in the National Press Building, and there were 20 state branches. Hamilton confessed later, "Without Liberty League money we (the GOP) wouldn't have had a national headquarters."

The campaign that followed saw the constant repetition of the extremist scare tactics. The New Deal became “The Raw Deal”. Franklin Delano Roosevelt became “Stalin Delano Roosevelt”. William Randolph Hearst asserted in a pro-Landon editorial, “The Bolshevist tyranny in Russian has ordered all Bolshevists, communists and revolutionaries in the Untied States to support Roosevelt!" It all sounds so familiar in the anti-Obama Care pre and post Trump world.

In late October 1936 the Republican National Committee sent checks for $5.00 to 400 black pastors in Maryland, along with a letter, which began, “Dear Brother,” and then argued that the G.O.P. had always done more to help blacks than the Democrats had. Of course, not  since reconstruction, but it was the thought that counted, right?  And $5.00 wasn't small enough in 1936 to seem like an insult, right?

The Young Republicans grew up during this election to get out the "youth" vote.  And to encourage women to vote Republican, fashion shows were staged.  Every show would start with a woman wearing a wooden barrel on suspenders, marked, “If The New Deal Wins”, followed by lovely models in Paris designs, marked “If Landon Wins." Women were expected to be swayed by such "fashion politics".

A few weeks before the election, tens of thousands of workers opened their paychecks to find what looked like an official government notice. In fact it was from their bosses and the Liberty League, warning workers that if Roosevelt were re-elected, come January they would all suffer a 1% pay reduction because of the socialist Social Security Program. This prompted the head of the Social Security Board, a life long Republican, to issue an immediate response, asserting that "Any political message in a worker's pay envelope is coercion. It is a new form of the old threat to shut down the mill if the employer's candidate isn't elected. We're supposed to be beyond that in this country."  Well, we are approaching a century later and we still aren't!

Finally, Landon himself was coaxed into actually speaking out against Social Security, and join the anti-Social Security bandwagon. In a Milwaukee speech, he called the program ""unjust, unworkable, stupidly drafted and wastefully financed."  It was socialism, communism, and an attempt at the redistribution of wealth. And it would bankrupt the nation in a year. Or maybe two. Almost a century later, and the Republicans are still predicting its immanent demise. And working to create it.

However, it appears that most Americans saw all of this Republican effort in the same light as that expressed by one voter,  who said that Roosevelt was "the first man in the White House to understand that my boss is a son-of-a-bitch"   In 1936 the Democrats came out swinging, including FDR, as illustrated in a speech he delivered in Boston, and which he wrote himself. “In the summer of 1933", said FDR, "a nice old gentleman fell off a pier. He was unable to swim. A friend ran down the pier, dived overboard and pulled him out. But his silk hat floated away with the tide. After the old gentleman was revived he was effusive in his thanks. He praised his friend for saving his life. Today, three years later, the old man is berating his friend because the silk hat was lost.”

The election of Tuesday, 3 November, 1936 was the most lopsided since James Monroe ran unopposed in 1820.  Eighty-three percent of eligible voters showed up at the polls and Roosevelt won almost 61% of their vote.  He carried every state in the union except Vermont and Maine, giving rise to the Democratic twist on the old adage, “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont”. 

Roosevelt won 532 electoral votes to Landon’s 8.  Seventy-one percent of Americans of African decent voted Democratic, as well as 57% of women, 63% of men, 76% of low income voters, 80% of Catholics and 86% of Jewish voters. After the election the Democrats held the Senate, 75-16, and the House, 332 to just 88 Republicans.

Landon would admit that his attack upon Social Security had been a mistake, and henceforth he publicly opposed any attempt to dismantle this New Deal program. John D. Hamilton would say after the election, "The Lord himself couldn't have beaten Roosevelt in 1936, much less the Liberty League." Maybe; but the election was the death knell of the Liberty League. They lingered into 1940, when the DuPont family finally pulled their funding, and the group quietly died. Long before that John Hamilton had his own reactionary reckoning. 

In 1937 Hamilton's wife sued him for divorce, on the grounds of “gross neglect of duty, abandonment and extreme cruelty.” That same year Alf Landon had Hamilton removed as Party Chairman, as Landon tried to rebuild the party in his own Midwestern less reactionary less-ideological image.

Under Landon's non-red baiting non-FDR hating conservative guidance,  the party stopped trying to overturn all of the New Deal all at once and began to climb its way back. The Republicans would gain strength until 1948 when it looked like they were certain to regain the White House. 

But late in that campaign they gloated too publicly about finally eliminating Social Security,  and that handed Harry Truman his come-from-behind re-election. It was not until Ronald Reagan in his 1981 inauguration speech that the G.O.P again openly called for overturning substantial parts of New Deal programs. But even Reagan knew better that to attack Social Security, openly. 

The election left Bertrand Snell, the leader of smallest minority in the House of Representatives since the Civil War.  He was one of the few Republicans re-elected in 1936. But he did not run again in 1938.  Instead, he went into the newspaper business. He published the "Potsdam, New York Courier-Freeman" and ran it until 1949. He also became the owner of the New York State Oil Company. He was ably qualified for both of those jobs. He died in 1958, while a Republican occupied the White House. That Republican was Dwight D. Eisenhower, He was a national hero, born and raised in Kansas, and a product of the Landon influence. But the conservative wing of the GOP charged that "Ike"was a Republican In Name Only, and his administration was nothing better than a "little New Deal" administration. 

It seemed that with time, the Grand Old Party is determined to forget the lesson Bertrand Snell had sacrificed to teach them, and which Alf Landon had given so much to drive home to the party faithful. Running against Social Security is political suicide. And now so is the Affordable Care Act. Republican ideology is so convinced it is evil, they have become blind to the advantages it gives middle class Americans.  And that isolates them as they have not been since 1936.

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