Veganism Archives And Animals Geographies Of A

Multispecies World Catherine Oliver download

https://ebookbell.com/product/veganism-archives-and-animals-
geographies-of-a-multispecies-world-catherine-oliver-33355158

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Veganism And Eating Disorder Recovery Jenn Friedman

https://ebookbell.com/product/veganism-and-eating-disorder-recovery-
jenn-friedman-47172622

Veganism Politics Practice And Theory Eva Haifa Giraud

https://ebookbell.com/product/veganism-politics-practice-and-theory-
eva-haifa-giraud-50230166

Veganism Of Color Decentering Whiteness In Human And Nonhuman

Liberation Julia Feliz Brueck Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/veganism-of-color-decentering-whiteness-
in-human-and-nonhuman-liberation-julia-feliz-brueck-editor-36659122

Veganism In An Oppressive World A Vegansofcolor Community Project 1st

Edition Julia Feliz Brueck

https://ebookbell.com/product/veganism-in-an-oppressive-world-a-
vegansofcolor-community-project-1st-edition-julia-feliz-
brueck-11184002
How Veganism Can Save Us Emma Hakansson

https://ebookbell.com/product/how-veganism-can-save-us-emma-
hakansson-47439618

Why Veganism Matters The Moral Value Of Animals Gary Francione

https://ebookbell.com/product/why-veganism-matters-the-moral-value-of-
animals-gary-francione-51911010

Raw Veganism The Philosophy Of The Human Diet Carlo Alvaro

https://ebookbell.com/product/raw-veganism-the-philosophy-of-the-
human-diet-carlo-alvaro-24691028

Jewish Veganism And Vegetarianism Studies And New Directions Jacob Ari
Labendz Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/jewish-veganism-and-vegetarianism-
studies-and-new-directions-jacob-ari-labendz-editor-35511818

Understanding Veganism Biography And Identity 1st Edition Nathan

Stephens Griffin Auth

https://ebookbell.com/product/understanding-veganism-biography-and-
identity-1st-edition-nathan-stephens-griffin-auth-6616416
Veganism, Archives, and Animals

This book explores the growing significance of veganism. It brings together

important theoretical and empirical insights to offer a historical and con-
temporary analysis of veganism and our future co-existence with other
animals.
Bringing together key concepts from geography, critical animal studies,
and feminist theory this book critically addresses veganism as both a sub-
ject of study and a spatial approach to the self, society, and everyday life.
The book draws upon empirical research through archival research, inter-
views with vegans in Britain, and a multispecies ethnography with chick-
ens. It argues that the field of ‘beyond-human geographies’ needs to more
seriously take into account veganism as a rising socio-political force and in
academic theory. This book provides a unique and timely contribution to
debates within animal studies and more-than-human geographies, provid-
ing novel insights into the complexities of caring beyond the human.
This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in geogra-
phy, sociology, animal studies, food studies and consumption, and those
researching veganism.

Catherine Oliver is a postdoctoral researcher, currently working on the ERC-

funded Urban Ecologies project at the University of Cambridge. She com-
pleted her PhD on vegan geographies in 2020. Her research interests are
veganism, beyond-human geographies, and friendship. Catherine can be
found on twitter at @katiecmoliver.
Veganism, Archives, and Animals
Geographies of a Multispecies World

Catherine Oliver
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 Catherine Oliver
The right of Catherine Oliver to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-69277-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-69278-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14121-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
For Susan.
Contents

List of figuresix
Preface and acknowledgements x

Introduction 1

PART I
Pasts 17

1 Relational animals 19

2 Genealogies of animal activism 32

3 Beyond-human geographies of friendship 48

PART II
Presents 63

4 The contours of contemporary veganism 65

5 Embodied knowledges, ‘truth,’ and veganism 77

PART III
Futures 91

6 Chicken-human relations 93
viii Contents
7 Multispecies futures 104

Conclusion 118

Bibliography 125

Index 145
Figures

I.1 Chickens explore. Copyright Catherine Oliver, 2018.17

1.1 Brown dog memorial public meeting leaflet, 1908.
Held at the British Library, The Ryder Papers
[uncatalogued].25
3.1 Drawings of ‘Brown Doggers at Battersea’ trial in
The Daily Graphic, 1908. Held at The British Library,
The Ryder Papers51
II.1 Chickens rest. Copyright Catherine Oliver, 2017.63
III.1 Chickens speak. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2017. 91
6.1 Chicken coop. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2017. 99
7.1 Bluebell. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2017.105
7.2 Inside the coop. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2017.109
7.3 Four chickens. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2018.115
C.1 Heron. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2019.122
C.2 Heron takes flight. Copyright Catherine Oliver 2019.123
Preface and acknowledgements

On a dark winter night in November 2013, on the floor of my bedroom in

the final year of my undergraduate degree, I watched the documentary
‘Earthlings’ (Monson, 2005). This film has a notoriety amongst vegans,
sometimes referred to as ‘the vegan-maker,’ because of the disturbing and
violent footage it contains. The film consists largely of undercover footage of
the exploitation, lives, and deaths of animals in puppy mills, factory farms,
research labs, entertainment animals, and the fashion industry. I cried.
Knowing that through my choices, my body was fuelled by these wrongs,
complicit in worlds of pain. I couldn’t reconcile this knowledge with who I
believed I was. My body rejected this new knowledge in the most obvious
and visceral outpouring of disgust. I vomited. Up until this point in my life,
I had been a vegetarian. The next morning, I went to the cupboards and
fridge in my student house-share and removed everything that contained
dairy or eggs and offered them to my housemates, telling them I had decided
to become vegan. For months after, at random times, I would feel waves of
horror and disgust come over me, leading to many nights of alternately tears
and anger at the pain I could now see everywhere I turned. This transition
to veganism was riddled with guilt, confusion, and a lot of strange meals
with the limited availability of accessible and affordable vegan foods even
just a few years ago.
Fairly soon after making this decision, I enrolled on Dr. Pat Noxolo’s
(who later became my PhD supervisor) undergraduate course on ‘mediated
geographies.’ It was in this class that I began studying what I would later dis-
cover to be a long and rich history of geographical and sociological research
on animals, interspecies relationships, and veganism. A couple of years
later, in 2015, I began my doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.
Over the course of the next four years, I had the pleasure of meeting not
only many brilliant scholars, but also of interviewing and learning about
the lives of vegans, past and present, across Britain. Knowing very little of
the world of higher education, its demands, and rules, I slowly pieced my
way through the first year of my PhD with something approaching a frame-
work for a research project on contemporary veganism, specifically in the
 Preface and acknowledgements xi
West Midlands of England. However, two things happened that expanded
and transformed this project. The first was taking a position on The British
Library’s PhD placement scheme in 2016, working in the archives of animal
activist Richard D. Ryder. The second was in 2018, with the intervention by
my mum in the lives of six chickens who were on their way to a battery egg
farm to her house in Lancashire. And so, between the unique insight into
the histories of animal activism through The British Library’s archives, and
developing a new mode of interspecies living with ‘rehomed’ chickens, the
research and stories in this book emerged.
Britain has long declared itself a ‘nation of animal lovers;’ evidence for
this is claimed at least as far back as Puritan rule under Oliver Cromwell
in the 17th Century, when bloodsports became outlawed, and such prac-
tices became associated with the lower (and thus less ‘civilised’) classes.
National animal loving has also been attributed to the Victorian era, with
the rise of widespread pet-keeping, prior to which ‘pets were often seen as
an elite extravagance, and small dogs frequently appeared in satirical prints
of aristocratic ladies, symbolising frivolity and indulgence’ (Hamlett, 2019).
The rise of dogs and cats as both domestic workers and companions drove
the popularity of pets in Britain. The founding of the world’s oldest ani-
mal protection society, the RSPCA, is also often used to qualify Britain’s
animal-loving history but, as Joe Wills writes, ‘the frequent claim that
Britain is a ‘nation of animal lovers’ can be hard to reconcile with the reality
of how we often treat even the most revered of our fellow creatures’ (2018,
407). This ‘love’ extends only to the animals we live with, not those who we
use for food, entertainment, and medicine.
In his book, Diet for a Large Planet (2020), Chris Otter explores the
history of humans, animals, plants, ecologies, and movement that pow-
ered Britain’s industrial revolution. Notably, the ‘nutrition transition’ and
‘meatification’ of the British diet in the 19th Century led to a ‘worlding’
of the British diet, with the British diet’s production moving outside of the
national borders and implicating, via colonial rule, great swathes of the
world as British agricultural hinterlands. Alongside this meatification and
distancing of Britain from the production of animal agriculture was the
early roots of a burgeoning alternative way of eating and living: vegetari-
anism. In September 1857, The Vegetarian Society was formed by a group
of social reformers and devout Christians in Manchester, performing a con-
testation in and of a society where eating animals was on the increase, both
through colonial expansion and as a symbol of wealth and upward social
mobility (Gregory, 2007). Early vegetarians tried and failed to win the sup-
port of the conservative RSPCA, which is a theme common to the Society
through the 20th Century, who determinedly focus only on domestic and
working animals (as I discuss in Chapter 2). This early vegetarianism was,
for many, deeply entangled with religion, especially Christianity, as well as
other social reform causes such as poverty alleviation, food reform, and
xii Preface and acknowledgements
even socialism. However, it was not until 1944 with the founding of The
Vegan Society that vegetarianism was formally split into those who ate
dairy and eggs, and those who did not.
After the founding of the Vegan Society alongside Dorothy Watson,
Donald Watson’s writing reveals how the spiritual elements of eating per-
sisted in his early British veganism: ‘Even though the scientific evidence
may be lacking, we shrewdly suspect that the great impediment to man’s
moral development may be that he is a parasite of lower forms of animal
life. Investigation into the non-material (vibrational) properties of foods
has barely begun, and it is not likely that the usual materialistic methods
of research will be able to help much. But is it not possible that as a result
of eliminating all animal vibrations from our diet we may discover the way
to really healthy cell construction [and] a degree of intuition and psychic
awareness unknown at present? (Watson, 1944).’ A few years later, in the
same publication, we also find the origins of the environmental roots of
veganism not only to soil, but to national security and self-sustenance: ‘the
question of growing health foods is of real national importance, for no
nation can be well which ignores the cultivation of its soil. We are taking a
long time to learn that although we have a most fertile soil, we are practi-
cally a landless people’ (Semple, 1945, 8).
Douglas Semple was an early member of the UK’s Vegan Society. His
concern with land use and urbanisation is contextualised at the time in con-
cerns for self-sustainability in Britain being at odds with milk production,
arguing that ‘so long as we use dairy products we cannot make the most
use of the land’ (1945, 8), and also with in a long colonial exporting of food
production (Otter, 2020). The echoes of this concern can be found today
with regards to contemporary cattle farming, deforestation, and environ-
mental damage. The connection between soil fertility, horticulture, and
gardening remained central to The Vegan Society’s communications and
practices throughout the mid-20th Century, particularly amidst concerns
for the future of feeding the earth’s population in a time of land degradation
(Henderson, 1948, 6–7; Smith, 1949, 7–8): ‘To grow good crops it is essen-
tial that we co-operate with Nature and try to understand the relationship
between soil fertility and healthy plant tissues’ and ‘if we would go to the
root of our social and health problems we must individually live simpler and
more natural lives’ (Semple, 1947, 9–10). Animal activism, vegetarianism,
and veganism have long been entangled with British society, not as an alter-
native way of living, but as deeply ingrained within and responding to wider
social, cultural, and political issues.
In this book, I pick up the threads of activism and veganism across both
historical and contemporary landscapes of veganism in Britain, where con-
temporary veganism has its roots as a political and ethical movement dating
back at least to the 19th Century (Kean, 1998), and veganism and animal
activism have been deeply entangled with other social reform and justice
movements (see Oliver, 2018, where I have written about some pioneering
 Preface and acknowledgements xiii
women working across animals’, women’s, and LGBTQ+ issues). In think-
ing and researching across this elongated temporality, I understand how
friendship has been and continues to be a vital source of strength for the
organisation of activists, but also how they circulate around particular
ideas of ‘truth’ to inform and share their practices. This is then troubled
and tested by the introduction of six chickens into my life – Lacey, Bluebell,
Olive, Cleo, Winnie, and Primrose – in 2018.
Where archival ethnographies and interviews offer insight into the prac-
tices, past and present, of those who advocate for animals, and to the lives
of archival and abstract animals, it was only once I met these chickens that
I realised the necessity to attend to their lives, and explore what veganism
might mean, if anything, for them. The last two empirical chapters of this
book are as such dedicated to the often-posed question of how we might
live with other animals in a vegan world. In an ethnography with chick-
ens (and other animals), I attend to how deliberate cultivations of space
and interspecies relationships must be ingrained in vegan practices that
are future-oriented. This is, of course, entangled with a suite of other
social, cultural and political issues such as who has the space (and land
ownership) to live with animals; who has the knowledge and time to adapt
their lives; and how this is possible on a mass scale. I focus particularly on
how this chicken-human relationship changes the space in which we live
together as a multi-scalar transformation that intervenes into the agro-
industrialisation of chickens (Davis, 2009). In 2020, with the Covid-19 lock-
down in Britain, domestic chicken-keeping incurred a huge surge in interest,
with the British Hen Welfare Trust – who rehome 60,000 laying hens annu-
ally from slaughter via regional centres – having received unprecedented
numbers of requests to rehome hens (Oliver, 2020). Ex-laying hens being
rehomed has the potential effect of disrupting the usual spatial separations
between human and animal spaces to rethink who ‘belongs’ where. The
lived reality of animals such as hens, their needs and welfare, as well as the
hidden geographies of their exploited labour, are too often ignored even in
the most radical imaginings of future spaces. Covid-19 has opened a series
of broader ethical and practical questions around our relationships with
other species, and brought home the importance of the critical political,
ethical, and environmental challenges I attend to in this book.
This book, and the research contained within it, would not have been
possible without the work of generations of tireless advocates and thinkers.
I am grateful to all those who have participated in revealing and resisting
the abuses of animals, and in rethinking how it is possible to live with ani-
mals. In particular, this work owes a huge debt to the thinking and practice
of many activists and scholars (and activist-scholars), but in particular I am
grateful for the kindness and work of Kim Stallwood and Carol J. Adams.
In addition, I am especially grateful to Richard D. Ryder for preserving
his important archive at The British Library, allowing me to work within
these histories, and to The British Library, Polly Russell, Gill Ridgeley,
xiv Preface and acknowledgements
and Jonathan Pledge for homing me via their PhD Placement scheme in
2016–2017.
Similarly, I would like to thank all the advocates and activists who, over
many years, have contributed to the progress and growth not only of vegan-
ism, but of reimagining the contours of multispecies life and embodying the
politics and practice of friendship I write about in these pages. Especially, I
am grateful to the vegans who spoke with me in interviews, and those who
I had the pleasure of working with during and beyond the scope of this
research. I am also grateful to the whole team at Routledge for publishing
this book, especially to Faye Leerink for her kind and constructive feed-
back, to Nonita Saha for her help and editorial guidance, my copyeditor
Samynathan Mani, to Richard Twine for his kind feedback, and to the other
anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and engagements with
this book.
Writing this book was made possible only through the guidance and
mentorship of my PhD supervisor, Pat Noxolo, whose unwavering sup-
port for my work has allowed me the space to flourish and develop my
thinking and research. Additionally, I am grateful to the examiners of my
PhD, Peter Kraftl and Eva Giraud, for their generous and ongoing engage-
ment with my research. During the course of the research and writing of
this book, I was also incredibly fortunate to have the friendship of many
incredible people. In particular, I am grateful to all of my PhD colleagues,
academic mentors, and friends in the School of Geography and beyond
at the University of Birmingham, especially to Milly. I am also thankful
to the Urban Ecologies team and colleagues in the School of Geography at
the University of Cambridge for their challenging and thoughtful engage-
ment with my work. My research is also indebted to my wonderful friends,
particularly Andy and Lisa, who I was fortunate enough to meet and work
with at The Vegan Grindhouse. Although I won’t name each individually,
my friends across the world, both inside and outside of the academy, have all
been a joy to know and a huge source of support and strength throughout
this project. My special thanks go to my closest friends, Phil Emmerson and
Faye Shortland, for everything, and to Catherine, Lizzie, Chloe, Laura, and
Megan who have heard more than any friends should need to about vegan
geographies.
My work has always been a collective endeavour, and I hope that this is
reflected in this book. This collectivity has never been only human but is sit-
uated within beyond-human collectives, without whom my life would have
been less interesting. I am particularly thankful to Lacey, Bluebell, Olive,
Cleo, Winnie, and Primrose, and to Charlie and Fizz for their friendship
whilst working on this project.
Finally, thank you to my partner Liam who has carefully and tirelessly
supported me as I researched and wrote this book, and to my mum Susan,
to whom this book is dedicated, for being my guiding light.
Introduction

I became vegan in November 2013 after watching the documentary

‘Earthlings’ (Monson, 2005). When I started writing this book, I decided
to watch at least the beginning of the film again wondering if, years later,
I would react similarly, having viewed similar images to those within the
film regularly since. For some vegans, watching mediated animal lives
and deaths strengthens their beliefs and is an important factor in prac-
ticing veganism and driving activism. This imagery can offer possibilities
and impossibilities for the transformation of food practices and systems
(Goodman, 2018). For other vegans, witnessing pain and violence can lead
to experiencing symptoms of compassion fatigue, or ‘secondary traumatic
stress disorder’ (Figley, 2013), often found in those treating the traumatised,
as a ‘cost of caring’ (ibid., 1). Joy applies this idea towards those acting for
animals as carnism-induced trauma: as witnesses we are also victims (Joy,
2009). In opening to the ‘truths’ of veganism (where the language of ‘truth’
is taken directly from the vegans I interviewed in Part Two), vegans also
open themselves to a transformed way of navigating the world, at once dis-
turbed and disturbing. Opening the video for Earthlings, I feel the tears rise
up: ‘earth·ling n: One who inhabits the earth’ (Monson, 2005).
I managed to watch eight minutes of the film. Even eight years later, I can-
not write of my own becoming vegan eloquently, because it is an embodied
and emotional knowledge that I carry with me. It clashes with the world I
inhabit every day, where ‘for many of us who take on that knowledge, it is a
strange, bifurcated existence. I live in my vegan world, in which I see what
I think is food; and I live in a meat-eating universe’ (Stallwood, 2013, 44).
Living in a heightened awareness of non-human suffering is spatially dis-
turbing. When walking from his home to the train station, Richard White
writes that were he ‘to push an observer to move beyond an anthropocen-
tric scripting of this encounter with place and ask that they critically focus
instead on the excessively obvious presence (or indeed absence) of more
than human animals’ (2015, 213), they would find a disturbing urban narra-
tive, rendering violence so commonplace it is invisible in its omnipresence.
When paying attention to concealed interspecies violence, pet shops,
fast-food restaurants and butchers become part of this disturbed and
2 Introduction
disturbing narrative of place, and sense of the world that cannot be unknown
(McDonald, 2000). Sadness, anger and despair transform the world and
hope, action and transformation seem so distant. These latter motiva-
tions and feelings emerge, for most vegans, later in their vegan transition
(explored in Chapter 5). The closeness of this work, and my own veganism,
mean the separation between field and not-field is not distinct, but entan-
gled and destabilised (Hyndman, 2001), ‘inverting assumptions about home
and field… and the taken-forgrantedness that the field is always somewhere
else’ (265). A relational and unbounded field is not static and elsewhere but
carried with me, shaping my knowing and being in the world within and
beyond the spatio-temporal confines of this research.
Veganism is generative in grasping how less violent multispecies worlds
can be imagined and enacted. In this book, veganism’s power and potential
for the future is demonstrated through empirical accounts of historical and
contemporary activism rooted in feminist care and extending friendship
beyond the human. Throughout the theoretical and empirical work, this
book explores the emergence and growth of vegan beliefs and practices,
and how these have and continue to transform space and society in Britain.
In this book, I contend that animals and our relationships with them
are always part of an ethically and politically informed and motivated
‘beyond-human’ geography. This term draws attention to anti-hierarchical
multispecies relationships and goes further than recent accounts of entan-
glement to destabilise the centrality of the human in human geography.
The development of this ‘beyond’ space that elongates space and time is in
contention with and resisting the romanticising (in the more-than-human)
and/or subjugating (in the non-human) of animals as mutual constitutors
of space, time and the world.
In this book, I contend that the geographical study of veganism pushes
‘more-than-human’ geographies and critical animal studies to take seri-
ously alternative interspecies relationships in the face of uncertain worldly
futures. No longer a ‘fringe’ belief and practice, veganism has firmly entered
the frame. The work in this book is located in Britain but overlaps with a
larger European/American/Australian vegan movement, due to the archives
and location of my interviews. Veganism is not, however, a Western move-
ment. There are indigenous and majority world practices of plant-based eat-
ing that far predate the histories in this book (see Zuri, 2021; Polish, 2016;
Harper, 2011; and Ko and Ko, 2017).
Veganism’s nurture and care for other species and the environment
has a history of being positioned as women’s work (Adams and Gruen,
2014). Contemporary veganism has enjoyed growth and visibility that is
in part, although not entirely, linked to a particular kind of femininity
through the rise of Instagram’s wellness aesthetic of thin, young, white
and wealthy women (see Greenebaum and Dexter, 2018). The landscape of
veganism has transformed quickly in Britain, with increasing visibility on
supermarket shelves (being Britain’s fastest growing food product market,
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 The original paper of Mr. Bayard, here referred to, with the
President's autographic emendations upon it, were in the possession
of Mr. Benton, and burnt in the conflagration of his house, books and
papers, in February, 1855.
These statements from Messrs. Ewing, Bell, and Stuart are enough
(though others might be added) to show that Mr. Tyler, at the time
that he sent in the first veto message, was in favor of a second bill—
open and earnest in his professions for it—impatient for its advent—
and ready to sign it within twenty-four hours. The only question is
whether these professions were sincere, or only phrases to deceive
the whigs—to calm the commotion which raged in their camp—and
of which he was well informed—and to avert the storm which was
ready to burst upon him; trusting all the while to the chapter of
contingencies to swamp the bill in one of the two Houses, or to
furnish pretexts for a second veto if it should come back to his
hands. The progress of the narrative must solve the problem; and,
therefore, let it proceed.
The 18th of August—the day on which Mr. Clay was to have
spoken in the Senate on the first veto message, and which subject
was then postponed on the motion of Mr. Berrien for reasons which
he declined to state—Mr. Tyler had a meeting with his cabinet, in
which the provisions of the new bill were discussed, and agreed
upon—the two members picked out (one in each House—Mr.
Sergeant and Mr. Berrien) to conduct it—the cabinet invited to stand
by him (the President) and see that the bill passed. Mr. Ewing gives
this account, of this days' work, in his letter of resignation addressed
to the President.

"I then said to you, 'I have no doubt that the House having
ascertained your views will pass a bill in conformity to them,
provided they can be satisfied that it would answer the
purposes of the Treasury, and relieve the country.' You then
said, 'cannot my cabinet see that this is brought about? You
must stand by me in this emergency. Cannot you see that a bill
passes Congress such as I can approve without inconsistency?' I
declared again my belief that such a bill might be passed. And
you then said to me, 'what do you understand to be my
opinions? State them: so that I may see that there is no
misapprehension about them.' I then said that I understood you
to be of opinion that Congress might charter a bank in the
District of Columbia, giving it its location here. To this you
assented. That they might authorize such bank to establish
offices of discount and deposit in the several States, with the
assent of the States. To this you replied, 'don't name discounts:
they have been the source of the most abominable corruptions,
and are wholly unnecessary to enable the bank to discharge its
duties to the country and the government.' I observed in reply
that I was proposing nothing, but simply endeavoring to state
what I had understood to be your opinion as to the powers
which Congress might constitutionally confer on a bank; that on
that point I stood corrected. I then proceeded to say that I
understood you to be of opinion that Congress might authorize
such bank to establish agencies in the several States, with
power to deal in bills of exchange, without the assent of the
States, to which you replied, 'yes, if they be foreign bills, or bills
drawn in one State and payable in another. That is all the power
necessary for transmitting the public funds and regulating
exchanges and the currency.' Mr. Webster then expressed, in
strong terms, his opinion that such a charter would answer all
just purposes of government and be satisfactory to the people;
and declared his preference for it over any which had been
proposed, especially as it dispensed with the assent of the
States to the creation of an institution necessary for carrying on
the fiscal operations of government. He examined it at some
length, both as to its constitutionality and its influence on the
currency and exchanges, in all which views you expressed your
concurrence, desired that such a bill should be introduced, and
especially that it should go into the hands of some of your
friends. To my inquiry whether Mr. Sergeant would be agreeable
to you, you replied that he would. You especially requested Mr.
Webster and myself to communicate with Messrs. Berrien and
 Sergeant on the subject, to whom you said you had promised to
address a note, but you doubted not that this personal
communication would be equally satisfactory. You desired us,
also, in communicating with those gentlemen, not to commit
you personally, lest, this being recognized as your measure, it
might be made a subject of comparison to your prejudice in the
course of discussion. You and Mr. Webster then conversed about
the particular wording of the 16th fundamental article,
containing the grant of power to deal in exchanges, and of the
connection in which that grant should be introduced; you also
spoke of the name of the institution, desiring that that should
be changed. To this I objected, as it would probably be made a
subject of ridicule, but you insisted that there was much in a
name, and this institution ought not to be called a bank. Mr.
Webster undertook to adapt it in this particular to your wishes.
Mr. Bell then observed to Mr. Webster and myself that we had
no time to lose; that if this were not immediately attended to,
another bill, less acceptable, might be got up and reported. We
replied that we would lose no time. Mr. Webster accordingly
called on Messrs. Berrien and Sergeant immediately, and I
waited on them by his appointment at 5 o'clock on the same
day, and agreed upon the principles of the bill in accordance
with your expressed wishes. And I am apprised of the fact,
though it did not occur in my presence, that after the bill was
drawn up, and before it was reported, it was seen and
examined by yourself; that your attention was specially called to
the 16th fundamental article: that on full examination you
concurred in its provisions: that at the same time its name was
so modified as to meet your approbation: and the bill was
reported and passed, in all essential particulars, as it was when
it came through your hands."

The sixteenth fundamental article, here declared to have been

especially examined and approved by the President, was the part of
the bill on which he afterwards rested his objections to its approval,
and the one that had been previously adjusted to suit him in the
interview with Mr. Stuart: Mr. Sergeant, and Mr. Berrien (mentioned
as the President's choice to conduct the bill through the two
Houses), were the two members that actually did it; and they did it
with a celerity which subjected themselves to great censure; but
which corresponded with the President's expressed desire to have it
back in three days. Every part of the bill was made to suit him. The
title, about which he was so solicitous to preserve his consistency,
and about which his cabinet was so fearful of incurring ridicule, was
also adjusted to his desire. Mr. Bell says of this ticklish point: "A
name, he (the President) said, was important. What should it be?
Fiscal Institute would do." It was objected to by a member of the
cabinet, and Fiscal Bank preferred. He replied, "there was a great
deal in a name, and he did not want the word bank to appear in the
bill." Finally, Fiscal Corporation was agreed upon. Other members of
the cabinet, in their letters of resignation, who were present on the
18th, when the bill was agreed upon, corroborated the statement of
Mr. Ewing, in all particulars. Mr. Badger said, "It was then distinctly
stated and understood that such an institution (the plan before the
cabinet) met the approbation of the President, and was deemed by
him free from constitutional objections; that he desired (if Congress
should deem it necessary to act upon the subject during the session)
that such an institution should be adopted by that body, and that the
members of his cabinet should aid in bringing about that result: and
Messrs. Webster and Ewing were specially requested by the
President to have a communication on the subject with certain
members of Congress. In consequence of what passed at this
meeting I saw such friends in Congress as I deemed it proper to
approach, and urged upon them the passage of a bill to establish
such an institution (the one agreed upon), assuring them that I did
not doubt it would receive the approbation of the President. Mr. Bell
is full and particular in his statement, and especially on the point of
constitutionality in the 16th fundamental article—the reference to Mr.
Webster on that point—his affirmative opinion, and the concurrence
of the President in it. A part of the statement is here given—enough
for the purpose."
 "The President then gave the outline of such a bank, or fiscal
institution, as he thought he could sanction. It was to be in the
District of Columbia, to have the privilege of issuing its own
notes, receive moneys on deposit, and to deal in bills of
exchange between the States, and between the United States
and foreign states. But he wished to have the opinion of his
cabinet upon it. His own consistency and reputation must be
looked to. He considered his cabinet his friends, who must stand
by and defend whatever he did upon the subject. He appealed
particularly to Mr. Webster, for his opinion on the point of
consistency; and whether there was not a clear distinction
between the old bank of the United States—a bank of discount
and deposit—and the one he now thought of proposing; and
whether the constitutional question was not different. He
reminded us that in all his former speeches and reports, he had
taken the ground that Congress had no constitutional power to
charter a bank which had the power of local discount. Mr.
Webster pointed out the distinction between the two plans,
which appeared to be satisfactory to him."

On the point of having himself understood, and all chance for

misunderstanding obviated, the President was very particular, and
requested Mr. Ewing to repeat what he (the President) had said. Mr.
Ewing did so; and having at one point deviated from the President's
understanding, he was stopped—corrected—set right; and then
allowed to go on to the end. Mr. Bell's own words must tell the rest.

"The President said he was then understood. He requested

Mr. Webster particularly to communicate with the gentlemen
(Messrs. Sergeant and Berrien), who had waited upon him that
morning, and to let them know the conclusions to which he had
come. He also requested Mr. Ewing to aid in getting the subject
properly before Congress. He requested that they would take
care not to commit him by what they said to members of
Congress, to any intention to dictate to Congress. They might
express their confidence and belief that such a bill as had just
 been agreed upon would receive his sanction; but it should be
as matter of inference from his veto message and his general
views. He thought he might request that the measure should be
put into the hands of some friend of his own upon whom he
could rely. Mr. Sergeant was named, and he expressed himself
satisfied that he should have charge of it. He also expressed a
wish to see the bill before it was presented to the House, if it
could be so managed."

Thus instructed and equipped, the members of the cabinet went

forth as requested, and had such success in preparing a majority of
the members of each House for the reception of this Fiscal
Corporation bill, and for its acceptance also that it was taken up to
the exclusion of all business, hurried along, and passed incontinently
—as shown in the public history of the bill in the preceding chapter;
and with such disregard of decent appearances, as drew upon the
President's two conductors of the bill (Messrs. Sergeant and Berrien)
much censure at the time—to be vetoed, like the first; and upon
objections to that 16th fundamental rule, which had been the
subject of such careful consideration—of autographic correction—
clear understanding—and solemn ratification. And here the
opportunity occurs, and the occasion requires, the correction of a
misapprehension into which senators fell (and to the prejudice of Mr.
Berrien), the day he disappointed the public and the Senate in
putting off the debate on the first veto message, and taking up the
bankrupt bill. He declined to give a reason for that motion, and
suspicion assigned it to an imperious requisition on the part of the
senators who had taken the bankrupt act to their bosoms, and who
held the fate of Mr. Clay's leading measures in their hands. It was
afterwards known that this was a mistake, and that this
postponement, as well as the similar one the day before, were both
yielded to conciliate Mr. Tyler—to save him from irritation (for he had
a nervous terror of Mr. Clay's impending speech) while the new bill
was in process of concoction. This process was commenced on the
16th of August, continued on the 17th, and concluded on the 18th.
Mr. Clay consented to the postponement of his anti-veto speech both
on the 17th and on the 18th, not to disturb this concoction; and
spoke on the 19th—being the day after the prepared bill had been
completed, and confided to its sponsors in the House and the
Senate. All this is derived from Mr. Alexander A. Stuart's subsequent
publication, to comprehend which fully, his account of his connection
with the subject must be taken up from the moment of his leaving
the President's house, that night of the 16th; and premising, that the
whig joint committee of which he speaks, was a standing little body
of eminent whigs, whose business it was to fix up measures for the
action of the whole party in Congress. With this preliminary view, the
important statement of Mr. Stuart will be given.

"Upon leaving the President, I took a hack, and drove

immediately to Mr. Webster's lodgings, which were at the
opposite end of the city; but, unfortunately he was not at home.
I then returned to my boarding-house, where I told what had
transpired to my messmates, Mr. Summers, and others. After
tea I went to the meeting of the joint committee, of which I
have already spoken. I there communicated to Mr. Sergeant,
before the committee was called to order, what had occurred
between the President and myself. When the committee was
first organized there was a good deal of excitement, and
difference of opinion; and an animated debate ensued on
various propositions which were submitted. Finally I was invited
by Mr. Sergeant to state to the committee what had passed
between the President and myself; which I did, accompanied by
such remarks as I thought would have a tendency to allay
excitement, and lead to wise and dispassionate conclusions.
After much deliberation, the committee concluded to
recommend to the whig party, in both Houses of Congress, to
accede to the President's views. A difficulty was then suggested,
that the veto message had been made the order of the day at
noon, and Mr. Clay had the floor; and it was supposed that the
debate might possibly assume such a character as to defeat our
purposes of conciliation. Mr. Mangum at once pledged himself
that Mr. Clay should offer no obstacle to the adjustment of our
 difficulties; and engaged to obtain his assent to the
postponement of the orders of the day, until we should have an
opportunity of reporting to a general meeting of the whig party,
and ascertaining whether they would be willing to accept a bank
on the basis agreed on by Mr. Tyler and myself—with this
understanding the committee adjourned. On the next day (17th
of August) Mr. Mangum, with Mr. Clay's assent, moved the
postponement of the discussion of the veto, and it was agreed
to (see Senate Journal, p. 170): and on the 18th of August the
subject was again, with Mr. Clay's concurrence, postponed, on
the motion of Mr. Berrien. (Senate Journal, p. 173.) During this
time the whigs held their general meeting, and agreed to adopt
a bill on the President's plan; and Mr. Sergeant and Mr. Berrien
were requested to see that it was properly drawn; and, if
necessary, to seek an interview with the President to be certain
that there was no misunderstanding as to his opinions. From
this statement, confirmed by the journals of the Senate, it will
be seen with how much truth Mr. Tyler has charged Mr. Clay
with an intolerant and dictatorial spirit, and a settled purpose to
embarrass his administration. So far from such being the fact, I
state upon my own personal knowledge, that Mr. Clay made
every sacrifice consistent with honor and patriotism, to avoid a
rupture with Mr. Tyler. The result of the labors of Messrs.
Sergeant and Berrien, was the second bank bill, which these
distinguished jurists supposed to be in conformity with the
President's views."

From this array of testimony it would seem certain that the

President was sincerely in favor of passing this second bill: but this
account has a per contra side to it; and it is necessary to give the
signs and facts on the other side which show him against it from the
beginning. These items are:—1. The letters in the New York Herald;
which, from the accuracy with which they told beforehand what the
President was to do, had acquired a credit not to be despised; and
which foreshadowed the veto, lauding the President and vituperating
his cabinet. 2. A sinister rumor to that effect circulating in the city,
and countenanced by the new friends who were intimate with the
President. 3. The concourse of these at his house. 4. The bitter
opposition to it from the same persons in the House and the Senate;
a circumstance on which Mr. Clay often remarked in debate, with a
significant implication. 5. What happened to Mr. Bell; and which was
this: on the 17th day of August Mr. Tyler requested him to make up
a statement from the operations of the war department (its receipts
and disbursements) to show the advantage of such a bank as they
had agreed upon, and to be used as an argument for it. Mr. Bell
complied with alacrity, and carried the statement to the President
himself the same evening—expecting to be thanked for his zeal and
activity. Quite the contrary. "He received the statements which I
gave him (writes Mr. Bell) with manifest indifference, and alarmed
me by remarking that he began to doubt whether he would give his
assent (as I understood him) to any bill." 6. What happened to Mr.
Webster and Mr. Ewing, and which is thus related by the latter in his
letter of resignation to the President: "You asked Mr. Webster and
myself each to prepare and present you an argument touching the
constitutionality of the bill (as agreed upon); and before those
arguments could be prepared and read by you, you declared, as I
heard and believe, to gentlemen, members of the House, that you
would cut off your right hand rather than approve it." 7. What
passed between Mr. Wise and Mr. Thompson of Indiana in the
debate on the veto of this bill, and which thus appears on the
Congress Register: "Mr. Wise rose and said, that he had always felt
perfectly assured that the President would not sign a bank: that if he
had been waked up at any hour of the night he would have declared
his opposition to a bank." To which Mr. Thompson: "Then why not
tell us so at once? Why all this subterfuge and prevarication—this
disingenuous and almost criminal concealment? What labor, care,
and anxiety he would have saved us." 8. Rumors that Mr. Tyler was
endeavoring to defeat the bill while on its passage. 9. Proof point
blanc to that effect. As this is a most responsible allegation, it
requires a clear statement and exact proof; and they shall both be
given. On the 25th of August, after the bill had passed the House
and was still before the Senate, Mr. Webster wrote a letter to
Messrs. Choate and Bates (the two senators from Massachusetts) in
which, speaking in the interest of the President, and of his personal
knowledge, he informed them that the President had seen the rapid
progress of the bill in the House with regret, and wished it might
have been postponed;—and advised the whigs to press it no further;
and justified this change in the President on Mr. Botts' letter, which
had just appeared. This is the allegation, and here is the proof in the
letter itself—afterwards furnished for publication by Mr. Webster to
the editors of the Madisonian:

"Gentlemen:—As you spoke last evening of the general policy

of the whigs, under the present posture of affairs, relative to the
bank bill, I am willing to place you in full possession of my
opinion on that subject.
"It is not necessary to go further back, into the history of the
past, than the introduction of the present measure into the
House of Representatives.
"That introduction took place, within two or three days, after
the President's disapproval of the former bill; and I have not the
slightest doubt that it was honestly and fairly intended as a
measure likely to meet the President's approbation. I do not
believe that one in fifty of the whigs had any sinister design
whatever, if there was an individual who had such design.
"But I know that the President had been greatly troubled, in
regard to the former bill, being desirous, on one hand, to meet
the wishes of his friends, if he could, and on the other, to do
justice to his own opinions.
"Having returned this first bill with objections, a new one was
presented in the House, and appeared to be making rapid
progress.
"I know the President regretted this, and wished the whole
subject might have been postponed. At the same time, I
believed he was disposed to consider calmly and conscientiously
whatever other measure might be presented to him. But in the
mean time Mr. Botts' very extraordinary letter made its
appearance. Mr. Botts is a whig of eminence and influence in
our ranks. I need not recall to your mind the contents of the
letter. It is enough to say, that it purported that the whigs
designed to circumvent their own President, to 'head him' as the
expression was and to place him in a condition of
embarrassment. From that moment, I felt that it was the duty of
the whigs to forbear from pressing the bank bill further, at the
present time. I thought it was but just in them to give decisive
proof that they entertained no such purpose, as seemed to be
imputed to them. And since there was reason to believe, that
the President would be glad of time, for information and
reflection, before being called on to form an opinion on another
plan for a bank—a plan somewhat new to the country—I
thought his known wishes ought to be complied with. I think so
still. I think this is a course, just to the President, and wise on
behalf of the whig party. A decisive rebuke ought, in my
judgment, to be given to the intimation, from whatever quarter,
of a disposition among the whigs to embarrass the President.
This is the main ground of my opinion; and such a rebuke, I
think, would be found in the general resolution of the party to
postpone further proceedings on the subject to the next
session, now only a little more than three months off.
"The session has been fruitful of important acts.—The wants
of the Treasury have been supplied; provisions have been made
for fortifications, and for the navy; the repeal of the sub-
treasury has passed; the bankrupt bill, that great measure of
justice and benevolence, has been carried through; and the land
bill seems about to receive the sanction of Congress.
"In all these measures, forming a mass of legislation, more
important, I will venture to say, than all the proceedings of
Congress for many years past, the President has cordially
concurred.
 "I agree, that the currency question is, nevertheless, the
great question before the country; but considering what has
already been accomplished, in regard to other things;
considering the difference of opinion which exists upon this
remaining one; and, considering, especially, that it is the duty of
the whigs effectually to repel and put down any supposition,
that they are endeavoring to put the President in a condition, in
which he must act under restraint or embarrassment, I am fully
and entirely persuaded, that the bank subject should be
postponed to the next session. I am gentlemen, your friend and
obedient servant. (Signed, Daniel Webster, and addressed to
Messrs. Choate and Bates, senators from Massachusetts, and
dated, August 25th, 1841.)"

This is the proof, and leaves it indisputable that the President

undertook to defeat his own bill. No more can be said on that point.
The only point open to remark, and subject to examination, is the
reason given by Mr. Webster for this conduct in the President; and
this reason is found in Mr. Botts' letter—which had just made its
appearance. That letter might be annoyance—might be offensive—
might excite resentment: but it could not change a constitutional
opinion, or reverse a state policy, or justify a President in breaking
his word to his cabinet and to the party that had elected him. It
required a deeper reason to work such results; and the key to that
reason is found in the tack taken in the first eight or nine days of the
session to form a third party, breaking with the whigs, settling back
on the democracy, and making the bank veto the point of rupture
with one, the cement with the other, the rallying points of the
recruits, and the corner-stone of the infant Tyler party. That was the
reason: and all the temporizing and double-dealing—pushing the bill
forward with one hand, and pulling back with the other—were
nothing but expedients to avert or appease the storm that was
brewing, and to get through the tempest of his own raising with as
little damage to himself as possible. The only quotable part of this
letter was the phrase, "Head Captain Tyler, or die:" a phrase quoted
by the public to be laughed at—by Mr. Webster, to justify Mr. Tyler's
attempt to defeat his own bill, so solemnly prepared and sent to the
whigs, with a promise to sign it in twenty-four hours if they would
pass it. The phrase was fair though it presented a ridiculous image.
This "heading," applied to a person signifies to check, or restrain;
applied to animals (which is its common use in the South and the
West) is, to turn one round which is running the wrong way, and
make it go back to the right place. Taken in either sense, the phrase
is justifiable, and could only mean checking Mr. Tyler in his progress
to the new party, and turning him back to the party that elected him
Vice-president. As for the "dying," that could imply no killing of
persons, nor any death of any kind to "Captain Tyler," but only the
political death of the whigs if their President left them. All this Mr.
Webster knew very well, for he was a good philologist, and knew the
meaning of words. He was also a good lawyer, and knew that an
odious meaning must be given to an innocent word when it is
intended to make it offensive. The phrase was, therefore, made to
signify a design to circumvent the President with a view to
embarrass him—Mr. Clay being the person intended at the back of
Mr. Botts in this supposed circumvention and embarrassment. But
circumvent was not the word of the letter, nor its synonyme; and is a
word always used in an evil sense—implying imposition, stratagem,
cheat, deceit, fraud. The word "heading" has no such meaning: and
thus the imputed offence, gratuitously assumed, makes its exit for
want of verity. Embarrassment is the next part of the offence, and its
crowning part, and fails like the other. Mr. Clay had no such design.
That is proved by Mr. Stuart, and by his own conduct—twice putting
off his speech—holding in his proud spirit until chafed by Mr. Rives—
then mollifying indignant language with some expressions of former
regard to Mr. Tyler. He had no design or object in embarrassing him.
No whig had. And they all had a life and death interest (political) in
conciliating him, and getting him to sign: and did their best to do so.
The only design was to get him to sign his own bill—the fiscal
corporation bill—which he had fixed up himself, title and all—sent
out his cabinet to press upon Congress—and desired to have it back
in three days, that he might sign it in twenty-four hours. The only
solution is, that he did not expect it to come back—that he counted
on getting some whigs turned against it, as tried without avail on
Messrs. Choate and Bates; and that he could appease the whig
storm by sending in the bill, and escape the performance of his
promise by getting it defeated. This is the only solution; and the fact
is that he would have signed no bank bill, under any name, after the
eighth or ninth day of the session—from the day that he gave into
the scheme for the third party, himself its head, and settling back
upon his ci-devant democratic character. From that day a national
bank of any kind was the Jonas of his political ship—to be thrown
overboard to save the vessel and crew.
And this is the secret history of the birth, life and death of the
second fiscal bank, called fiscal corporation—doomed from the first
to be vetoed—brought forward to appease a whig storm—sometimes
to be postponed—commended to the nursing care of some—
consigned to the strangling arts of others: but doomed to be vetoed
when it came to the point as being the corner-stone in the edifice of
the new party, and the democratic baptismal regeneration of Mr.
Tyler himself.
 CHAPTER LXXXIII.
THE VETO MESSAGE HISSED IN THE SENATE
GALLERIES.
The Senate chamber, and its galleries, were crowded to their
utmost capacity to hear the reading of the veto message, and to
witness the proceedings to which it would give rise. The moment the
reading was finished hisses broke forth, followed by applauses. Both
were breaches of order, and contempts of the Senate; but the hisses
most so, as being contemptuous in themselves, independent of the
rule which forbids them, and as being also the causes of the
applauses, which are only contemptuous by virtue of the rule which
forbids manifestations of satisfaction as well as of dissatisfaction at
any thing done in the Senate: and because a right to applaud would
involve a right to judge; and, by implication, to condemn as well as
to approve. The President of the Senate heard a disturbance, and
gave the raps on the table to restore order: but Mr. Benton, who was
on the look-out for the outrage, was determined that it should not
go off with raps upon the table: he thought there ought to be raps
on the offenders, and immediately stood up and addressed the
Chair.

"Mr. President, there were hisses here, at the reading of the

presidential message. I heard them, sir, and I feel indignant that
the American President shall be insulted. I have been insulted
by the hisses of ruffians in this gallery, when opposing the old
Bank of the United States. While I am here, the President shall
never be insulted by hisses in this hall. I ask for no such thing
as clearing the galleries, but let those who have made the
disturbance be pointed out to the sergeant-at-arms, and be
turned out from the galleries. Those who have dared to insult
 our form of government—for in insulting this message they have
insulted the President and our form of government—those
ruffians who would not have dared to insult the King,
surrounded by his guard, have dared to insult the American
President in the American Senate; and I move that the
sergeant-at-arms be directed to take them into custody."

This motion of Mr. Benton was opposed by several senators, some

because they did not hear the disturbance, some because it was
balanced, being as much clapping as hissing; some because they
were in doubt about the power to punish for a contempt; and some
from an amiable indisposition to disturb the people who had
disturbed the Senate, and who had only yielded to an ebullition of
feeling. This sort of temporizing with an outrage to the Senate only
stimulated Mr. Benton to persevere in his motion; which he did until
the object was accomplished. The Register of Debates shows the
following remarks and replies; which are given here to show the
value of perseverance in such a case, and to do justice to the Senate
which protected itself:

"Mr. Rives regretted that any disturbance had taken place. He

doubted not but the senator thought he heard it, but must say,
in all sincerity, he did not hear the hiss. At all events, it was so
slight and of short duration, that the majority of the Senate
scarcely heard it. He hoped that no proceedings of this kind
would take place, and that this manifestation of disturbance,
when so deep an interest was felt, and which was so
immediately quieted, would be passed over. The general opinion
of the senators around him was, that the honorable senator was
mistaken.
"Mr. Benton. I am not mistaken—I am not.
"Mr. Rives. He hoped they would pass it by, as one of those
little ebullitions of excitement which were unavoidable, and
which was not offered to insult this body, or the President of the
United States.
 "Mr. Benton heard the hisses, and heard them distinctly; if a
doubt was raised on it, he would bring the matter to a question
of fact, 'true or not true.' No man should doubt whether he
heard them or not. He came here this day prepared to see the
American President insulted by bank bullies; and he told his
friends that it had been done, and that they never could
proceed in action on a bank, when the American Senate would
not be insulted, either by hissing on one side, or clapping on the
other. He told them, if it was done, as sure as the American
President should be insulted this day, by bank ruffians, just so
sure he should rise in his place and move to have those
disturbers of the honor and dignity of the Senate brought to the
bar of the Senate. He would not move to clear the galleries, for
a thousand orderly people were there, who were not to be
turned out for the disturbance of a few ruffians. He would tell
the senator from Virginia that he (the senator) should hang no
doubt on his declaration; and if it were doubted, he would
appeal to senators near him. [Mr. Walker. I will answer, most
directly, that I heard it, and I believe the same bully is going on
now.] A national bank (continued Mr. B.) is not, as yet, our
master, and shall not be; and he would undertake to vindicate
the honor of the Senate, from the outrages perpetrated on it by
the myrmidons of a national bank. Were the slaves of a national
bank to have the privilege of insulting the Senate, just as often
as a vote passed contrary to their wishes? It was an audacity
that must be checked—and checked before they went with arms
in their hands to fire on those who gave votes contrary to their
wishes, or assassinate them on their way home. He put the
whole at defiance—the entire bank, and its myrmidons.
"Mr. Preston said if any thing had occurred in the gallery out
of order, it should be strictly inquired into and punished. He
himself did not hear the manifestations of disapprobation,
alluded to by the senators on the other side; but it was
sufficient for him that the senators heard it, or supposed that
they heard it. [Mr. Benton. We did not suppose we heard it; we
knew it.] In this case (continued Mr. P.), a formal investigation
should take place. It was a contempt of the Senate, and, as a
member of the Senate, he desired to see an investigation—to
see the charge fixed on some person, and if properly sustained,
to see punishment awarded. Manifestations of praise or censure
were eminently wrong, and eminently dangerous; and it was
due to every member of the Senate that they should preserve
the dignity of the body by checking it. He hoped, therefore, if a
formal motion was made, it would be discovered who had
caused the disturbance, and that they would be properly
punished.
"Mr. Buchanan said this was a very solemn and momentous
occasion, which would form a crisis, perhaps, in the politics of
the country; and he should hope, as he believed that every
American citizen present in the galleries would feel the
importance of this crisis, and feel deeply sensible of the high
character to which every man, blessed with birth in this free
country, should aim. He heard, distinctly heard, the hiss referred
to by the senator from Missouri [Mr. Benton], but he was bound
to say it was not loud and prolonged, but was arrested in a
moment, he believed partly from the senator rising, and partly
from the good sense and good feeling of the people in the
galleries. Under these circumstances, as it only commenced and
did not proceed, if he had the power of persuasion, he would
ask the senator from Missouri to withdraw his motion.
"[Mr. Benton. I never will, so help me God.]
"He thought it better, far better, that they proceed to the
important business before them, under the consideration that
they should not be disturbed hereafter; and if they were, he
would go as far as the senator from Missouri in immediately
arresting it. He would much rather go on with the business in
hand.
"Mr. Linn reminded the Senate that when the bank bill had
passed the Senate there was a loud manifestation of
approbation in the gallery, of which no notice was taken. He
believed on the present occasion there was approbation as well
as hisses; but both were instantly suppressed. He had distinctly
heard both. No doubt it was the promptness with which his
colleague had got up to check the disturbance, which had
prevented it from going further. He had no doubt some law
ought to be passed making it punishable to commit any outrage
of this kind on either House of Congress.
"Mr. Merrick thought with the senator from Pennsylvania, that
this was a very solemn occasion. There had been tokens of
assent and dissent. The President of the Senate at the moment
rapped very hard till order was restored. The disorder was but
momentary. He trusted some allowance would be made for the
excitement so natural on the occasion.
"Mr. King suggested the difficulty that might arise out of
pursuing the matter further. He had witnessed something of the
kind once before, and when the offender was brought to the
bar, great embarrassment was created by not knowing how to
get rid of him. He thought it would be better to pass over the
matter and proceed to the consideration of the message, or to
the appointment of a time for its consideration.
"The Chair explained that having heard some noise, without
considering whether it was approbation or disapprobation, he
had called the Senate to order; but could not say that he had or
had not heard hisses.
"Mr. Rives explained that he did not mean to say the senator
from Missouri did not hear the hisses, but that he himself did
not hear them, and he believed many gentlemen around him
did not hear any. But as the senator from Missouri had avowedly
come prepared to hear them, no doubt he did, more sensitively
than others. He would ask the senator to be satisfied with the
crush which the mother of monsters had got, and not to bear
too hard on the solitary bank ruffian, to use his own expression,
who had disapproved of the monster's fate. He hoped the
senator would withdraw the motion.
"Mr. Linn observed that the senator from Virginia, by his own
remarks, doubting that there were any hisses, had forced the
senator from Missouri to persist in having the proof. However,
he now understood that point was settled; and the object being
accomplished, he hoped his colleague would withdraw the
motion.
"Mr. Preston again expressed his concurrence in the propriety
of the motion, and hoped effectual steps would be taken to
prevent the recurrence of such a scene.
"Mr. Allen made some appropriate remarks, and concluded by
stating that he understood the offender was in custody, and
expressed his sorrow for having done what he was not at the
time aware was an offence; as, therefore, all the ends had been
accomplished which his friend had in view when he refused to
withdraw his motion, he hoped he would now withdraw it.
"Mr. Walker said, when the senator from Missouri [Mr. Benton]
pledged himself not to withdraw his motion to arrest the
individual who had insulted the Senate and the country by
hissing the message of the President of the United States, that
pledge arose from the doubt expressed by the senator from
Virginia [Mr. Rives] whether the hissing had taken place. That
doubt was now solved. When the senator from Missouri
appealed to his friends as to the truth of the fact stated by him,
he [Mr. Walker] had risen, and pointed to that portion of the
gallery from which the hissing proceeded. Our assistant
Sergeant-at-Arms had proceeded to that quarter of the gallery
designated by him [Mr. W.], and this officer had now in his
possession one of the offenders, who acknowledged his
indecent conduct, and who was prepared to point out many of
those who had joined him. The object of the senator was,
therefore, now accomplished; the fact of the indecorum was
established, and the offender, as moved by the senator from
Missouri, was now in custody. This, Mr. W. hoped, would be
sufficient punishment, especially as Mr. W. understood the
offender expressed his penitence for the act, as one of sudden
impulse. As, then, the formal trial of this individual would
occupy much time, Mr. W. hoped the matter would be dropped
here, and let us proceed, as required by the Constitution, to
consider the message of the President returning the bank bill,
with his objections. This message, Mr. W. said, he regarded as
the most important which ever emanated from an American
President, and under circumstances the most solemn and
imposing. The President, in perfect and glorious consistency
with a long life of usefulness and honor, has placed his veto
upon the charter of a National Bank, and, Mr. W. said, his heart
was too full of gratitude to the Giver of all good for this
salvation of the country, and rescue of the Constitution, to
engage in the business of inflicting punishment upon an
individual, said to be respectable, and who had in part atoned
for his offence by the expression of his repentance. Let him go,
then, and sin no more, and let us proceed to the consideration
of that Veto Message, which he, Mr. W. had confidently
predicted at the very commencement of this session, and
recorded that opinion at its date in the journals of the day. Many
then doubted the correctness of this prediction, but, he, Mr. W.
whilst he stated at the time that he was not authorized to speak
for the President of the United States, based his conviction upon
his knowledge of Mr. Tyler as a man and a senator, and upon his
long and consistent opposition to the creation of any such bank,
as was now proposed to be established.
"Mr. Benton said he had been informed by one of the officers
of the Senate [Mr. Beale] that one of the persons who made the
disorder in the gallery had been seized by him, and was now in
custody and in the room of the Sergeant-at-Arms. This the
officers had very properly done of their own motion, and
without waiting for the Senate's order. They had done their
duty, and his motion had thus been executed. His motion was to
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com