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Note: Article by Bill Hobby appeared in the Arlington, TX Star-Telegram newspaper, Dec. 1998
In 1832, a former Southern governor found himself accused in the lower chamber of Congress. It was the scandel that affected our history-and may have lessons for today. The U.S. House of Representatives seems to be thinking about censuring President Clinton. It has ample precendent dor so doing. Just 166 years ago, the House of Representatives censured (reprimanded) another former Southern governor who was soon to be a president. That former governor had abandoned his office, had well- publicised marital problems and was accused of using prsidential favoritism to get a government contract to provide rations to the Indians. He was conviicted by the House of violating the U.S. Constitution by attacking a congressman but was accquited of the charge relating to the contract. The nation's chief executive tried to keep the trial in the House of Representatives from happening. A famous lawyer represented the once-and-future governor. The defendant was Sam Houston. The president was Andrew Jackson. The lawyer was Francis Scott Key. The episode began March 31, 1832, when Rep. William Stanbery of Ohio asked on the House floor, "Was not the late Secretary of War removed because of his attempt fradulently to give Governor Houston the contract for Indian rations?". On the evening of April 13, Houston beat Stanbery with a hickory cane on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Stanbery drew his pistol and tried to shoot Houston. The pistol misfired. Had Stanbery known how to use a gun, we might be living in northern Coahuila. The next day, Stanbery complained to House Speaker Andrew Stevenson that he had been "attacked, knocked down by, bludgeoned, severly bruised and wounded by Samuel Houston; late of Tennessee; for words spoken in my place in the House of Representatives". And so he had. The Constitution says that a member of Congress shall not be held accountable elsewhere for what he says on the floor of Congress. The best that Key could say in Houston's defense was that Houston had beaten Stanbery, not for words said on the floor of the House, but for words attributed to him in a newspaper. ( The words were the same). The trial at the bar of the House began April 19, 1832. Like the current Clinton hearings; the trial lasted for weeks and was the center of attention in Washington. "Everything else in the current news was eclipsed", wrote Houston biographer Marquis James. "Niles Register", a Baltimore paper that coverd Congress fully, fell days behind its coverage of regelar congressional proceedings because it devoted so much space to the Houston trial. Se. Alexander Buckner of Missouri testified that when Houston had almost finished caning Stanbery, he lifted the congressman's feet into the air and "struck him elsewhere." The witness so phrased his testimony because ladies were present at the trial. ( Compare references to body parts in the Starr report). Nevertheless, the "Register" deprecated "apublic taste so thirsty for details of this raffish proceeding." The House found Houston guilty, 106-89, and sentenced him to be reprimanded by the speaker, who carried out the sentence on May 14, 1832. Stanbery, showing more fight than ever he did on Pennsylvania Avenue, then charged Houston with asssault. Houston paid a $500 fine. A House committee, even though headed by a hostile Stanbery, investigated the Indian ration contract for six weeks and decided that former Secretary of War John H. Eaton and Houston, "do hereby stand entirely imputation of fraud." Speaking of the Stanbery affair later, Houston said, "I was dying out and had they taken me before a justice of the peace and fined me ten dollars it would have killed me, but they gave me a national tribunal for a theatre, and that set me up again." Houston had been a congressman from Tennessee and then its governor. He left Tennessee and its governor's office because of problems in his 11-week-old marriage to Eliza Allen. The problems, apparently sexual, have never been fully identified. Nor are they anybody's business, any more than are the maritial problems of the former Southern governor who is now president. Purient interest in the Clinton case has been so high, so I shall attempt to satisfy purient interst in Houston's case by noting that his marriage apparently failed because Eliza Allen was repelled by a suppurating arrow wound in his groin. Houston had suffered the wound March 27, 1814, at the battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. (In 1836, Eliza Allen later decided that the wound was no longer so disgusting and wanted a reconciliation with Houston. Houston refused.) In his letter of resignation from the tennessee governorship (April 16, 1829), Houston referred to "private afflictions however deep or incurable." He concealed his problems thoughout his life, whatever the occasion, whatever the cost. The now-forgotten Stanbery afair shaped Texas history. James wrote that the episode made Houston decide to "do something grand. He would capture an empire and lay it at his old Chieftain's (Jackson's) feet--Texas, of the New Estremadura, as Houston used to say when poetic fancy was on the wing." Houston, of course, became president of the Republic of Texas. And when Texas became a state (thanks to the efforts of Jackson and Houston), Houston becam one of its first two U.S. senators, and then governor. Note; Bill Hobby (writer) was Lt. Gov. of Texas 1973-91.
The first session of the first Congress (Sept. 24, I 789) provided for a Supreme Court with "a chief justice and five associate justices", four of whom should constitute a quorum. In February, 1801, the number of associates was reduced to four. On April 29, 1802, the Court was enlarged to six associate justices, The number of associates was increased to eight on March 3, 1837. On March 3, 1861, Congress increased the Court by making it consist of a chief justice and nine associates, and Stephen J. Field of California was appointed by President Lincoln to the new associate justiceship. To prevent President Johnson from appointing Attorney-General Stanbery to fill a vacancy on the bench, Congress reduced the number of associates to six on July 23, 1866. http://www.nidlink.com/~bobhard/constit4.html
On the evening of April 13, 1832, on the streets of Washington, Houston thrashed William Stanbery, United States representative from Ohio, with a hickory cane. The assault resulted from a perceived insult by Stanbery over an Indian rations contract. Houston was soon arrested and tried before the House of Representatives. Francis Scott Key served as his attorney. The month-long proceedings ended in an official reprimand and a fine, but the affair catapulted Houston back into the political arena. http://www.utexas.edu/ftp/pub/courses/mis311f/history/handbook/fho73.html
One of the strangest cases came in 1832, when Texas legend Sam Houston beat Rep. William Stanbery of Ohio with a cane after Stanbery accused Houston of corruption in his role as an Indian agent. Houston hired attorney Francis Scott Key, who is better known for writing the Star-Spangled Banner, to represent him in a House trial that lasted nearly a month.
The headstrong Texan spoke for himself in closing arguments, despite a hangover that left him unable to eat breakfast that morning. The House reprimanded Houston in a 106-89 vote, but the punishment did not prevent him from becoming president of the Republic of Texas, a U.S. senator and governor of Texas. http://www.startelegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:TOPSTORY/1:TOPSTORY120698.html
USU.S. Government & HistoryGovernment OfficialsCabinet Members With Dates of Appointment
Cabinet Members Under A. Johnson
Secretary of State William H. Seward (Cont.) Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch (Cont.) Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (Cont.) John M. Schofield, 1868 Attorney General James Speed (Cont.) Henry Stanbery, 1866 William M. Evarts, 1868 Postmaster General William Dennison (Cont.) Alexander W. Randall, 1866 Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles (Cont.) Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher (Cont.) James Harlan, 1865 Orville H. Browning, 1866
http://infoplease.com/ipa/A0101220.html
http://www.potifos.com/tpg/chrono/plyy1873.html Stanbery, William (1788-1873) Born in New Jersey. Member of Ohio state legislature; U.S. Representative from Ohio, 1827-33. Interment at Cedar Hill Cemetery, Newark, Ohio
http://www.shsu.edu/~smm_www/chrono.html
1832 January--Houston departs from the steamboat in New Orleans on his way to Washington, D.C.
April 2--Remarks of Congressman William Stanbery of Ohio appear in the National Intelligencer alleging fraud by Houston and John Eaton.
April 3--Houston writes to Stanbery, asking for an explanation of remarks made by the Congressman
April 13--Houston and Stanbery meet on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. and Houston beats Stanbery with a cane.
April 18--The case of Sam Houston goes before the House of Representatives. Francis Scott Key is hired as attorney.
May 7--Houston addresses the House of Representatives on his own behalf. He is subsequently reprimanded by the House for the Stanbery caneing.
The Stanbery affair--Sam Houston's time on the western frontier was a low period in his life, following his broken marriage and his resignation as governor. There were several trips to Washington, as well as to Tennessee. On one occasion he returned to Tennessee to his mother's side where she lay on her death bed. Both his mother's death and the Stanbery affair changed his life. While Houston was in Washington in early 1832, a man named William Stanbery made accusations about Sam Houston in a speech on the floor of Congress. Houston later met Stanbery on the street, and there was a scuffle. Houston proceeded to beat Stanbery with a hickory cane. The Congress ordered the arrest of Houston, and he was forced to defend himself. The trial before Congress dominated the news of the capital for days. Although Houston was found guilty, he was only lightly reprimanded, because his defense had been eloquent and inspiring. The debate and the speeches restored his confidence and his sense of personal destiny, and he then decided to seek a new arena of political fortune. In 1832, Sam Houston left for Texas. http://www.graceproducts.com/text_only/houston/life.html
Biogaphical Directory of the American Congress-1774-1961, pg. 1643 William Stanbery, a Representative from Ohio; born in Essex County, NJ, August 10, 1788; received an academic education; studied law in New York City and was admitted to the bar; moved to Ohio in 1809; settled in Newark, Licking County, and practiced law; member of the State senate in 1824 and 1825; elected as a Jacksonian Democrat to the Twentieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of William Wilson; re-elected to the tenty-first and Twenty-second Congresses and served from October 9, 1827, to March 3, 1833; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1832; resumed the practice of law; died in Newark, Ohio, January 23, 1873; internmet in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
William Stanbery, familiarly know as "Old Bill" Stanbery, was of colossal stature and of colossal character. He lacked the refinement of his distinguished brother , Henry Stanbery, of Cincinnati, but made up for it in rugged intellectual strength. Those old giants, did not cite authorities; they dispised them. They knew Coke, Chitty and Blackstone by heart and had the law reduced to a science. Their argument was in logic as irresistable as a piece of adamant. "Bill" Stanbery came into Mt. Vernon one day when court was in session on the circuit. Some one asked him if he was attending court. "No," he said. "in the old time a law suit was a gladiatorial contest, in which intellect won in establishing the great principles of jurisprudence; now some 5x6 lawyer hunts up an act of a one-hoss legislature or a decision by a Western ignoramus, calling himself a judge, and knocks you out. The last time I was here Hosmer Curtis was trying a case that involved a log chain; when I left he had been speaking two days and had only got to the third link." On one occasion he was trying a case against a young lawyer. In the evening the bar was gathered at the tavern for the customary rest and recreation, not to say conviviality. The young lawyer, however, spent the night looking up the authorities and came into court in the morning loaded to the guards. After firing his ordinance and blowing up Stanbery's case, the old man arose, white with wrath, and, pointing the finger of scorn at him said; "You young whipper-snapper, while your brethern of the bar, after the labors of the day, are engaged in social intercourse and the exchange of those amenities that are so becoming to our noble profession, you sneak off and spend the night hunting precedents to overturn the great principles of jurisprudence." Mr. Stanbery was not very punctual about paying his debts. In those days a man could be arrested for debt. On one occasion, when he was ascending the court house steps, the sheriff, who had just been inducted into office, touched him on the shoulder and served him witha summons and a warrant. "Old Bill" froze him with a look and told him to step into the court room and he would attend to his case. He sat down at a table and, with a heavy frown, commenced drawing up what looked like a portentous document. The sheriff, in the meanwhile, pale and trembling, awaited to hear his fate. Stanbery affixed then great seal of the State of Ohio, and told the sheriff to stand by while he read the article, reciting, "That William Stanbery, an attorney-at-law and officer of the court of the great State of Ohio, while engaged in the practice of his profession, had been wantonly and maliciously arrested on the steps of the court house, in violation of the Constitution and in contempt of the majesty of the great State of Ohio." The sheriff by this time was pretty nearly dissolved. He assured the indignant lawyer that he did not understand the fatal consequences of his act and that if he would let him off this time he would never make such a mistake again. Mr. Stanbery told him that on account of his dense ignorance he would overlook his flagrant violation of the legal prerogatives. From Memoirs of Lucas County Ohio
As published in: The Coshocton Democrat Coshocton, Ohio February 4, 1873
Hon. Wm Stanbery died at his residence, near Newark, on the 23rd alt. He was one of Licking county's pioneers having come into that county in 1810. He was eighty-two years of age at the time of his death, and had been in failing health for some months.
US Congressman. Born in Essex County New Jersey, he studied law in New York City before moving to Ohio in 1809. He settled and practiced law in Newark (Licking County) Ohio. After serving in the state senate in 1824 and 1825 he was elected, in 1827, to the US Congress as a Jacksonian candidate. He later won reelection as an anti-Jacksonian candidate and served in Congress until 1833. In 1832 he made accusatory remarks from the house floor regarding Sam Houston’s involvement with Native Americans. Houston later met the Congressman on a Washington DC street; a fight erupted and Houston beat the man with a hickory cane. The Congressman allegedly attempted to shoot Houston but his pistol misfired. In a trial before Congress, Houston was found guilty but was lightly reprimanded. For his part in the controversy, the Ohio Congressman was censured for use of “unparliamentary language”. His 1832 reelection bid failed, so he returned to Newark where he practiced law until his death.
Buried Cedar Hill Cemetery Newark, Licking County, Ohio
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