The forcible mode in which debates are conducted in the parliament of
the United States, and the personal encounters which sometimes follow
them, are believed by the present generation, to be novelties and only
recently brought to a culminating point by the Honourable Preston
S. Brooks’s life-preserver, upon the head, face, eyes, and body of
Senator Charles Sumner. This is a mistake. Fifty years ago, exciting
debates often ended in a regular stand-up fight in the lobby of the
House of Representatives. The combatants stripped, a ring was formed,
bottle-holders appointed, and the battle fought and reported quite in
the style of Moulsey Hurst and Bell’s Life in London.
In corroboration of this statement we present to our readers the
following paragraph copied from the New York Evening Post of December
the thirteenth, eighteen hundred and five, into the Annual Register for
eighteen hundred and six:--
On Friday last, the well-known Leib, one of the representatives
of Pennsylvania, and the leader of the Duane party, and Joseph H.
Nicholson, one of the representatives of Maryland, met in the Congress
lobby about one o’clock, when Leib immediately called Nicholson
a liar; and, thereupon, commenced one of the best fought battles
recorded in the annals of congressional pugilism. The fight continued
till the sixty-fourth round, when Leib had received such blows as
deterred him from again facing his man. He protracted the fight;
falling after making a feeble hit. In the round which ended the fight,
those who backed him advised him to resign; which he did after a
combat of one hour and seventeen minutes. The combatants were both
very much beaten.