Today, caches of official documents in private homes, contested elections, threats of jail for political opponents and charges of a weaponized judiciary can make it seem that everything is falling to pieces.
Well, maybe; but like every other quirk of our federal Union, this has all been going on since the beginning. In fact, one Founding Father racked up the first occurrence of practically every shocker you see in the headlines today.
Back in 1785 Matthew Lyon, a self-made real-estate millionaire and Democratic-Republican from Vermont, was working as a clerk in the state’s Court of Confiscation (they had one, back then). He somehow failed to turn over certain public documents to the state’s Council of Censors (they had one of those too), so the Censors impeached him. Tried and found guilty, he requested a new trial and was found guilty again, then hit with a massive fine. Which he didn’t pay.
But he still got elected as a judge, then as a state representative, and then as a Congressman (though only after losing several races and contesting his opponent’s victory). In 1798 he gained the further distinction of getting into the first knock-down drag-out fight on the floor of the House of Representatives.
It started with Sen. William Blount of Tennessee. He had quite the list of firsts, himself: a signer of the Constitution who’d opened land west of the Appalachians to settlement, led Tennessee to statehood and helped found Nashville and Knoxville. But Sen. Blount’s chief claim to fame is that he was the very first U.S. official to be impeached. That’s all the more distinctive because he’s still the first and only senator to be tried for treason, having brokered a deal for Great Britain to take the Louisiana Territory from Spain ― this was three years before Napoleon got Louisiana and sold it to Thomas Jefferson, but still.
Well, on Jan. 30, 1789, the House was debating Blount’s treason. Lyon refused to yield when Roger Griswold, Federalist of Connecticut (Yale, class of ’80) rose to be recognized. Griswold lost his temper and shouted a profanity at Lyon (“scoundrel” ― it was obscene in those days). Lyon spat tobacco juice on Griswold, who spat back even more insults.
When they were called to order, Lyon apologized to the House. He didn’t realize that the House was in session, he said, and so figured that screaming and spitting wouldn’t violate official decorum.
Griswold wasn’t buying it. So he waited two weeks before sneaking up behind Lyon and whacking his head with a good stout cane. Repeatedly.
Lyon grabbed a pair of fire tongs, and the fight was on. Other representatives grabbed Griswold’s legs to pull him off of Lyon and finally got them both under control.
Anyway, in 1798 the Federalists had won the presidency and secured control of Congress, too, but they’d never been able to hold power for more than one term against the more popular Democratic-Republicans or even independents. So they passed the Sedition Act, which made it a federal crime to even intend “to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States” or to “counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy … shall have the proposed effect or not.” They even made it a crime to bring “the said Congress, or the said President … into contempt or disrepute.”
And guess who was the first person prosecuted under that law: Matthew Lyon, still a good Democratic-Republican and now owner of a newspaper or two. He’d simply written some editorials critical of Federalist President John Adams.
The Federalists arrested him and assigned his trial to Judge William Paterson ― another signer of the Constitution, former Senator from New Jersey, former governor of that state, and at the time an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
But, no matter what office he held, above all else Paterson was a party loyalist. He swept aside the facts that Lyon’s editorials had been published before the Sedition Act had been passed, that Article I Section 9 of the very Constitution he helped craft says plainly that no ex post facto law shall be passed, and that the Sedition Act itself was unconstitutional to begin with, as it plainly violated the First Amendment.
Judge Paterson shoved Lyon through a show trial, imposed a heavy fine, and locked him up for four months in a tiny cell with common criminals. The Federalists were doing this sort of thing all over the Union, so confident they could silence opposition that Paterson actually complained about being unable to impose a harsher sentence, presumably something like a public hanging.
Lyon’s supporters rallied, ready to tear down the jail, but he ordered them to resist lawfully. Then he made his cell into his campaign headquarters and won re-election to Congress with twice as many votes as his Federalist opponent got.
This time, Lyon served with proper decorum. He even scored another first by casting the deciding vote to elect Jefferson as president during the disputed election of 1800, effectively foiling the Federalists’ attempt at a coup d’état and ultimately breaking their power.
At the end of his term he moved to Kentucky with a War Department government contract to build gunboats. The government defaulted on that contract for some reason, but you can probably guess that, too. Bankrupted, Lyon ran for Congress again, and again populism triumphed, carrying him for four successive terms. After he lost his bid for a fifth term, Democratic-Republican President Monroe appointed him to a position in the Arkansas Territory, but he left politics after losing an election for that territory’s delegate seat in Congress and claiming, once again, that the election was stolen.
Everybody else in this saga went off on tangents setting lots of other precedents. Blount had fled to Knoxville as soon as he’d heard about his impeachment and flatly refused to return for the trial. The Senate dismissed the treason charge on a technicality, which pleased nobody but Blount ― General Washington called on all Americans to detest Blount, and Abigail Adams complained that there’s never a guillotine around when you need one.
No harm done, though. Spain peacefully transferred Louisiana to France, and Jefferson bought it from them in 1803. Upon which Lyon’s old sparring partner Roger Griswold resigned from Congress and, with his Federalist cronies, started planning New England’s secession from the Union. They tried it again in 1814, but could never get enough popular votes to see it through.
The Sedition Act simply expired under its own sunset clause, but Lyon’s descendants petitioned the government for reparations for nearly half a century. Finally in 1840 Congress granted them a refund of those heavy fines, plus interest and compensatory damages for his losses during imprisonment. As far as one can tell, that would seem to be Lyon’s best and final first.
Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D., is author of “The Lincolns in the White House: Slanders, Scandals, and Lincoln’s Slave Trading Revealed,” available at better bookstores everywhere and at www.pangaeus.com for fast direct delivery.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.