Senator Foote Draws His Pistol

In the chamber of the United States Senate, on April 17, 1850 Senator Henry S Foote (D-Mississippi) drew a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton (D-Missouri) as Benton charged across the floor at him.

Senator Foote (1804-1880), appointed to the upper chamber in 1847, had a violent history and was a firm believer in the Southern code of honor.  By 1850 he had engaged in at least four duels, been wounded three times, and also had a fist fight with his Mississippi senatorial colleague Jefferson Davis.

Nor was the nearly seventy year old Missouri senator a stranger to violence.  In 1817 while still living in Tennessee, Benton twice dueled Nashville attorney Charles Lucas, mortally wounding him in their final encounter.  And more famously, Benton and Andrew Jackson along with several others tangled in a notorious street brawl in Nashville in 1813.  Jackson attempted to shot Benton and failed, but Benton succeeded, wounding Jackson and leaving the future president with a bullet he carried in him the rest of his life.  A decade later Jackson and Benton reconciled and Benton became one of Jackson's greatest political supporters.

Congress was a much more physically threatening environment in the decades leading up to the Civil War.  Of course, political violence in the new republic started even earlier. In 1804 the sitting Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr, mortally wounded the former Secretary of the Treasury (Alexander Hamilton), but as sectional strife grew after 1830 violence constantly loomed in the House and Senate with fist fights, duel challenges (mostly initiated by Southerners), and occasional duels, in one of which a Maine Congressman died, a tale told in the new book The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War by Joanne S Freeman.

The occasion of the events of April 17 was the debate over the issues that resulted later that year in the Compromise of 1850.  Foote was and Benton had been owners of slaves and both opposed abolition, but while Foote was a full throated advocate for its expansion, Benton opposed expansion of the institution, in an 1849 speech stating:

“My personal sentiments, then, are against the institution of slavery, and against its introduction into places in which it does not exist. If there was no slavery in Missouri today, I should oppose its coming in.” 

Benton, along with Sam Houston, were the only senators from slave holding states to oppose expansion.  As such Foote, and other southern senators, saw Benton as a traitor and used the rancorous debates as a vehicle to expose Benton and perhaps cost him his chance of being reelected in 1851.  Two weeks prior, Foote had leveled a series of personal insults at Benton, accusing him of being a coward and daring Benton to challenge him to a duel, repeatedly asking him "Do you abide by the code of honor?"  Benton restrained himself for some time, having disavowed dueling after killing Lucas in 1817.

On the 17th Foote renewed his onslaught of insults and accusations of cowardice.  As Freeman describes in her book:

Foote threw the charge at Benton, but had gotten only halfway through the insult when Benton sprang to his feet, kicking aside his chair so violently that he toppled a glass from his desk  .  .  . on seeing Benton head his way . . . Foote retreated backward down the aisle toward the vice-president's chair, pistol in hand . . .

Henry Dodge (D-WI) [for more on Henry Dodge read Forgotten Americans: Henry Lafayette Dodge] tried to restrain Benton, who dramatically bared his breast and yelled, "I have no pistols. Let him fire." . . . At this point, a senator grabbed Foote's pistol and locked it in his desk, and for the moment the fireworks were over.

The next day the Senate gallery was jammed as spectators came to see if there would be further fireworks, but they left disappointed.  A Senate committee appointed to investigate the incident came to no hard conclusions, simply admonishing the parties to behave themselves.

Benton's attempt at a nuanced approach towards slavery, steering between the expansionists and the abolitionists failed, and he was defeated in 1851 ending thirty years as Missouri's senior senator.

And the violence in Washington continued to escalate with the most famous incident occurring on May 22, 1856 when South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks entered the Senate chamber, confronted abolitionist Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, and nearly beat him to death with a cane.