I have alluded to disorders which occasionally mar the course of legislation, when members hurl ugly names at each other or even exchange blows. While some such affrays have carried their high tension to the end and sent the combatants to the dueling field to settle accounts, others have taken a comical turn which decidedly relaxed the strain. Perhaps the most picturesque incident of this kind was the historic Keitt-Grow contest in February, 1858. The House had been engaged all night in a wrangle over an acute phase of the slavery question, and two o’clock in the morning found both the Northern and the Southern members with their nerves on edge. Mr. Keitt of South Carolina, objecting to something said by Mr. Grow of Pennsylvania, struck at him, but Grow parried the blow, and a fellow member who sprang to his assistance knocked Keitt down. From all sides came reinforcements, and in a few minutes what started as a personal encounter of minor importance developed into a general free fight.
Potter of Wisconsin, a man of athletic build, whirled his fists right and left, doing tremendous execution. Owen Lovejoy, seeing Lamar of Mississippi striding toward a confused group, ran at him with arms extended, resolved on pushing him back, while Lamar as vigorously resisted the obstruction. Covode of Pennsylvania, fearing lest his friend Grow might be overpowered by hostile numbers, picked up a big stoneware spittoon and hurried forward, holding his improvised projectile poised to hurl at the head where it would do most good; but having no immediate need to use it, he set it on top of a convenient desk. Everybody was too excited to pay any attention to the loud pounding of the Speaker’s gavel, or to the advance of the Sergeant-at-Arms with his mace held aloft. Even the unemotional John Sherman and his gray-haired Quaker colleague Mott could not keep out of the fray entirely.
But Elihu Washburne of Illinois and his brother Cadwallader of Wisconsin proved by all odds the heroes of the occasion. They were of modest stature, but sturdy and full of energy. Elihu tackled Craig of North Carolina, who was tall and had long arms, which he swung about him with a flail-like motion; and it would have gone hard with the smaller man had he not suddenly lowered his head and used it as a battering-ram, aiming at the unprotected waist-line of his antagonist and doubling him up with one irresistible rush. Just then Cadwallader, seeing Barksdale of Mississippi about to strike Elihu, ran toward him; but being unable to penetrate the crowd, he leaped forward and reached over the heads of the intervening men to seize the Mississippian by the hair. Here came the culmination; for Barksdale’s ambrosial locks, which were only a lifelike wig worn to cover a pate as smooth as a soap-bubble, came off in his assailant’s hand. The astonishment of the one man and the consternation of the other were too much for the fighters, who, in spite of themselves, united in wild peals of merriment; and their hilarity was in no wise dampened when Barksdale, snatching at his wig, restored it to his head hind side before, or when Covode, returning to his seat and missing his spittoon, marched solemnly down the aisle and recovered it from its temporary perch.