Partisan tensions had been growing in Congress for several years, primarily over the issue of whether the US should maintain neutrality and a good trading relationship with Britain, or whether it should deepen its ties with Revolutionary France and join the effort to rid Europe of monarchy.
On January 30, 1798, these tensions turned physical when Congressman Roger Griswold of Connecticut used his cane to beat Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon on the House floor. This week, we will look at how things got that bad.
Responding to France
Back in Episode 398, we left off with newly inaugurated President John Adams calling a special session of Congress in May, 1797 to resolve the diplomatic crisis with France. After President Washington had recalled James Monroe and sent Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to serve as the new French Ambassador, France rejected his credentials, threatened Pinckney with arrest, and began attacking US shipping. This was clearly an act of war. But the US was in no position to go to war.
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| Congressmen Lyon and Griswold |
The Federalists just liked Britain more than France. They certainly wanted to remain independent, but America had always had a good trading relationship with Britain. Working as equals to maintain that relationship was not returning to colonial status. France had killed the king who had supported America, and was involved in brutal internal wars, and attacks on the rest of Europe. This did not involve American interests and the US should simply stay out of it.
President Adams gave his address to Congress in May 1797, very clearly outlining the French insults and aggression against the US, and called on Congress to decide how to respond. Adams clearly sided with the Federalist position, calling for a larger army and navy to protect American interests.
For the next two weeks. Congress debated how to respond to the President’s address which called France’s actions “derogatory to the honor and aggressions so dangerous to the Constitution, union, and even independence of the nation” and that the response should be a massive buildup of the military to confront these threats.
Federalists wanted the congressional response to thank the President and tell him that Congress would respond as he wanted. Democratic Republicans objected to the presidential suggestions to build up the military and wanted to say so in the congressional response.
The House formed a committee of five members to hash out a unified response for this divided body. The committee consisted of three federalists, Roger Griswold of Connecticut, John Rutledge, Jr. the son of the former Governor of South Carolina, and Jonathan Freeman of New Hampshire. The two Democratic Republicans on the committee were Abraham Venable, of Virginia and John Kittera of Pennsylvania.
The Federalist majority on the committee simply pushed through a response that thanked the president, but did not push back on anything the president had said. Even other federalists in the House thought it was too complaisant.
Congressman John Nicholas, a Democratic Republican from Virginia, proposed an amendment to the committee report. He said that the country was moving toward a terrible war with France that would only bring difficulties. He wanted a response that used temperate and conciliatory language that would hopefully heal the breach with France, rather than using provocative rhetoric that would only worsen the existing situation. The government’s words would likely reach France before any envoy that the US sent. Angry language would only push the situation further toward war. There was no question that the US was weaker than France. Why would they want to provoke a war with a more powerful country? Instead of endorsing the president’s rhetoric, the congressional response should attempt to dampen its potential harm.
The Nicholas Amendment led to hours of debate on the House floor as to what sort of message Congress should send, and what would be the consequences of that message. While these debates went on for days, Federalists essentially argued that France was already engaged in hostile actions against America and regardless of what Congress did, might soon bring their war on Europe to America as well. The US needed to prepare. The president’s proposals to increase the army and navy were sensible preparations, even if war did not come.
The Democratic Republicans argued that, even if the US built up its military, it was in no condition to fight a full scale war with France. Pursuing a diplomatic goal that would sooth over whatever differences existed, and prevent war entirely, should be Congress’ primary goal.
Lengthy debate and multiple amendments, Congress finally came up with a response. That was a mish mash of conflicting ideas. We want peace with France, but we still have to maintain our national honor. We want more peace negotiations, but will also prepare for the possibility of war. The response ended by saying they would have to consider the details of any policy response to the situation - in other words, committing to nothing.
Preparing for War
Congress agreed to make preparations for war. It allocated funds to fortify US ports and harbors. It also approved completing three frigates for the Navy, the USS United States, the Constitution, and the Constellation. Construction of these ships were started years earlier, with slow progress due to lack of funds. Congress was now providing the necessary funds. It also approved the purchase of three additional frigates and six sloops of war.
Congress authorized the president to use this naval force to accompany convoys of merchant vessels. It also approved regulations to arm merchant vessels.
Congress also authorized some minor expansions of the standing army, including one additional regiment. In addition, the president could raise a provisional army if needed. Congress empowered the president to borrow money if needed for the defense and security of the country, and declared that it would raise taxes to cover any loans that the president borrowed. Finally, Congress restricted the exports of any arms and ammunition to make sure the US had a sufficient supply on hand. These compromise measures neither satisfied the Federalist desire for a stronger defense, nor the Democratic Republican desire to focus solely on diplomacy.
Peace Commission to France
President Adams, still focused on the diplomatic crisis with France, did not even wait for Congress’ response to his message in May before he acted. On May 31, Adams nominated a commission of three officials to go to France on a diplomatic mission.
Originally, Adams had considered sending one Federalist and two Democratic Republicans. The reasoning was that French officials had a better relationship with the Democratic Republicans and that might help negotiations. He had originally considered Elbridge Gerry and James Madison for the commission. But after learning that Madison’s appointment would cause all the Federalists to object, he gave up on that idea.
Instead, Adams proposed they send Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the designated French Ambassador who Washington had selected and who the French Directory had rejected, along with John Marshall and Francis Dana. Marshall was a moderate Federalist who had recently served as Virginia’s attorney general. Dana was also a moderate Federalist, who was at the time Chief Justice of Massachusetts. Dana had also been Adams’ secretary for many years while Adams was serving as a diplomat in Europe.
Congress approved the commission, but Dana declined to serve. In his place, Adams appointed Elbridge Gerry. Many Federalists in Congress balked at this nomination. Gerry wasn’t a Federalist. Like Adams, he didn’t really claim allegiance with either party. He had served in Congress for four years, but that was before the partisan break really defined itself. Gerry had refused to sign the Constitution at the Convention and had fought against it. He also articulated a strong sympathy for the French Revolution and for Thomas Jefferson, although he voted for Adams as an elector in 1796. In short, he seemed like a loose cannon. But Adams trusted him, and since there was already a Federalist majority on the Commission, Congress went along.
The Senate confirmed the nominees, although Gerry received quite a few dissenting votes.
Enforcing the Treaty with Spain
In mid-June, about a month after Adams called Congress into session, the president reported a new wrinkle. Remember that treaty with Spain that we signed that gave the US more land along its southern border? Well, Spain seemed to be rethinking that. Spain had suspended the efforts to draw the new border and announced that it was not withdrawing its troops from the forts in that territory.
Spanish officials delayed their treaty obligations by requesting a decision on whether to leave their forts standing, or to demolish them, and also to get an assurance from the US that it could keep the local natives pacified. Clearly Spain was having second thoughts about how much of a threat the US was, and whether it had given away too much in the treaty.
The Administration managed to complete the transition by taking a hard line with the Spanish Ambassador that the Treaty would be executed as signed and that Spanish forces would withdraw or else. At the same time, Adams told Spanish officials they were free to leave the forts intact or destroy them as they wished, but the garrisons needed to leave. He also pushed official assurances that local Spanish settlers who had land claims to property would be protected.
Adams also asked Congress in June to enact legislation to create a territorial government for the region. He also sent US soldiers into the region after the date permitted by the treaty. Spanish soldiers would have to decide whether to fire on the US Army, or withdraw according to the treaty. They chose to withdraw.
Blount Conspiracy
This is also the same time that Congress became aware of the Blount Conspiracy. I’ve mentioned this in earlier episodes. William Blount had been the territorial governor of Tennessee, and became one of the first US Senators once Tennessee became a state in 1796.
Blount also had his personal fortune invested in western lands. In late 1796, he heard rumors that Spain planned to cede the Louisiana Territory, and the Floridas to France. Given the hostility between France and the US, this would make settlement of those western lands far less attractive, thus destroying their value.
Blount did not trust the Federal Government to handle this situation, so he turned to the British. Blount knew Captain John Chisholm, who owned a tavern in Tennessee, right down the street from Blount’s home. Chisholm’s background is a little sketchy. He was born and raised in Scotland, moving to America in 1777. By some accounts he had been a British regular for a time and was also a loyalist during the war. But he mostly stayed out of the war, living on the frontier and marrying a Cherokee woman.
In late 1796, Captain Chisholm escorted several Cherokee to Philadelphia, with the intent of obtaining US citizenship. While there, he met with John Lister, the British Ambassador to the United States. The men proposed to use British military resources to capture the Floridas from Spain. At the same time, frontier armies consisting of both settlers and Native Americans, would seize Spanish settlements along the Mississippi River, including the capture of New Orleans.
Ambassador Listor was not sure what to make of the proposal, but he took it seriously enough to provide Chisholm with funds to go to London and make the pitch directly to the ministry.
On April 21, 1797, Senator Blount wrote to James Carey, a US Indian Agent with the Cherokee, hoping that Carey would help get the Cherokee on-board with the plot. The letter outlined the entire conspiracy and Blount’s role in it. Blount told Carey to burn the letter after reading it.
Carey did not burn the letter. Instead, he turned over the letter to federal officials who forwarded it to President Adams in June. Adams immediately turned over the documents to the Senate.
For Blount, the revelation of this conspiracy could not have happened at a worse time. Spain was threatening to break a treaty with the US, and France was threatening war, because both countries feared that the US was getting into bed with Britain and would become a threat to Spanish and French interests. Now came a revelation that a US Senator was involved in discussions to encourage Britain to help seize Spanish colonies in America.
The Senate confronted Blount with the evidence against him on the House floor. Blount did not know how to respond and attempted to flee. After being brought back to the Senate by force, he took the 5th and remained silent. Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania with the evidence of the conspiracy in hand, recommended Blount’s immediate expulsion from the Senate Blount then lawyered up and demanded a hearing.
He managed to delay a vote for a couple of days, but on July 8, the Senate voted against a motion to postpone and then voted 26 to 1 to expel Blount from the Senate.
The matter also created a rift with Britain. Secretary of State Pickering met with Minister Liston to inquire into British involvement. Liston obviously downplayed Britain’s role, and could truthfully say by that time that Britain had already rejected the proposal and had documentation attesting to that fact.
Blount, however, remained the primary target of national wrath. A prosecutor in Pennsylvania brought criminal charges against Blount for “disturbing the peace of the United States”. There was also debate over whether to prosecute him for violating the Neutrality Act. Several other conspirators were arrested, although Chisholm escaped arrest by fleeing to Britain. Some sources indicate that the British Ambassador helped with his escape.
The House of Representatives impeached Blount, with legal opinions from the Attorney General and the US Attorney agreeing that impeachment was appropriate.
The Blount Conspiracy would occupy the attention of government officials for the next year and a half. Blount returned to Tennessee where he remained popular and was elected to the State House. Federal efforts to arrest Blount and return him to Philadelphia failed when no one in Tennessee would assist with the effort.
The Senate debated trying Blount in absentia, but kept deferring a final decision. The matter simply lingered for the rest of 1797, and all of 1798. Finally, in January of 1799, the Senate dropped the matter on jurisdictional grounds, arguing that Senators and Congressmen were not subject to impeachment. Expulsion by their respective bodies was the appropriate action, and Blount had already been expelled.
While there was bipartisan condemnation of Blount’s conspiracy, the whole matter raised the temperature in the capital and around the country over having a foreign policy that respected national dignity while avoiding war.
Griswold v. Lyon
It was in the context of all this heightened partisanship and anger that a fight broke out in Congress. Not a war of words, an actual fight.
Congress’s special session lasted from May 15 to July 10, 1797. It picked up again with its regular session on November 13th. On January 30, 1798, the House voted on the impeachment of Sen. Blount so tensions were running high.
While everyone was standing around waiting for the votes to be tallied, Freshman Congressman Matthew Lyon, a Democratic Republican commented that the Connecticut Federalists here all hypocrites who voted against the views of 90% of their constituents, and that if he opened a press in Connecticut, he could start a revolution there and get all of the Federalists thrown out of office.
Lyon and Roger Griswold, a Federalist Representative from Connecticut, had been arguing for weeks over various issues related to the ongoing dispute with France. Griswold overheard Lyon’s comments, which witnesses later said were made in a loud voice for everyone to hear. Griswold then asked whether Lyon would be wearing his wooden sword when he marched into Connecticut.
This was a reference to a recent article that had reported that Lyon had been court martialed for cowardice during the Revolutionary war, and as a punishment General Hortio Gates ordered him to wear a wooden sword. Lyon either ignored the remark, or, as he later claimed, did not hear it. So Griswold walked over, grabbed his arm and repeated the remark.
In response, Lyon spit in Griswold’s face. Griswold simply wiped away the spit and walked away, knowing that Lyon would be condemned for his actions. The Committee of Privileges called Lyon’s actions “a violent attack and gross indecency.” Lyon sent an apology to the Speaker, claiming that because the House was in a break the rules of decorum should not apply.
The incident became a matter of debate in the House, as well as across the nation as newspapers reported on it. Federalists wanted “Spitting Lyon” as they now called him, expelled from the House for his behavior. The Federalist press also resurrected stories about Lyon’s cowardice during the war.
The Democratic Republicans did not defend the behavior, but they also opposed expelling Lyon from the House over the matter. Debate on the matter continued for two weeks. In the end, the vote for expulsion was 52 in favor to 44 against. This meant that Lyon remained since the vote failed the necessary two-thirds majority.
Upset at the outcome, Griswold plotted his revenge. He purchased a hickory walking stick, then a few days later walked onto the House floor on February 15. Lyon then described what happened next:
As soon as I saw him [Lyon] in his seat I took my cane and walked across the floor in front of the speakers chair, which is more than forty feet in extent.—He saw me before I struck him, and was endeavoring to draw a sword cane when I gave him the first blow—I call’d him a scoundrel & struck him with my cane, and pursued him with more than twenty blows on his head and back until he got possession of a pair of tongues [tongs], when I threw him down and after giving him several blows with my fist, I was taken off by his friends—
The Federalists in the House considered the attack justified. A new committee report condemning the behavior but refusing to consider expulsion of either man was upheld by a vote of 73 to 21.
Nothing more really came of the incident since a few weeks later, new information from France called attention to more serious matters. We’ll cover that next week, when we face what became known as the XYZ Affair.
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Next Episode 403 The XYZ Affair (coming soon)
Previous Episode 401 War Comes to Puerto Rico
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Further Reading
Websites
President Adams Message to Congress, May 16, 1797: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/may-16-1797-special-session-message-congress-xyz-affair
The Impeachment of Senator William Blount—the First in American History https://allthingsliberty.com/2021/02/the-impeachment-of-senator-william-blount-the-first-in-american-history
Documents on the Blount Conspiracy, 1795‑1797 https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/AHR/10/3/Documents_on_the_Blount_Conspiracy*.html
Fracas in Congress: The Battle of Honor between Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold https://essaysinhistoryjournal.com/article/1339/galley/2535/download
Roger Griswold Starts a Brawl in Congress https://connecticuthistory.org/roger-griswold-starts-a-brawl-in-congress-today-in-history
(from archive.org unless noted)
Adams, Charles F. The Life of John Adams, Vol. 2, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1871.
Bowers, Claude G. Jefferson and Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America, London: Constable and Co. 1925.
Campbell, Tom W. Two Fighters and Two Fines: Sketches of the lives of Matthew Lyon and Andrew Jackson, Little Rock: Pioneer Publishing Co. 1941 (borrow only).
Mastereson, William H. William Blount, New York: Greenwood Press, 1954.
McLaughlin, J. Fairfax Matthew Lyon, the Hampden of Congress, New York: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co. 1900.
Morse, Jr. John T. John Adams, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 1884.
Turner, Frederick J. “Documents on the Blount Conspiracy, 1795-1797” The American Historical Review, 1905.
White, Pliny H. The Life & Services of Matthew Lyon. Burlington: Times Job Office, 1858.
Books Worth Buying
(links to Amazon.com unless otherwise noted)*
Austin, Aleine Mathew Lyon “New Man” of the Democratic Revolution, 1749-1822. Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1981.
Brown, Ralph A. The Presidency of John Adams, Univ. of Kansas Press, 1975.
Chernow, Ron Alexander Hamilton, Penguin Press, 2004.
Chervinsky, Lindsay M. Making the Presidency John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic, Oxford Univ. Press, 2024.
Cunningham, Noble E. The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789-1801, Univ. of NC Press, 1957 (borrow on archive.org).
Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993 (borrow on archive.org).
Kurtz, Stephen G. The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795-1800, Literary Licensing, LLC, 2011.
Malone, Dumas Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty, Little Brown & Co. 1962 (borrow on archive.org).
McCullough, David John Adams, Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Meacham, Jon Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Random House, 2012
Miller, John C. Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation (or Portrait in Paradox), Harper & Brothers, 1959 (borrow on archive.org)
Nester, William The Hamiltonian Vision, 1789-1800, Potomac Books, 2012.
Randall, Willard Sterne Thomas Jefferson: A Life, Henry Holt and Co. 1993.
Sharp, James R. American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis, Yale Univ. Press, 1993.
Shaw Peter The Character of John Adams, Univ. of NC Press, 1976.
Smith, Page John Adams, Vol. 2, Doubleday, 1962 (borrow on archive.org).
Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, Oxford Univ. Press, 2009.
Morgan, John C. Resist Tyranny: The Story of Matthew Lyon, Early American Patriot. Wipf and Stock, 2017 (borrow on archive.org).
* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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