Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/121

Rh wrote Niles in August, 1835. “A spirit of riot, and a disposition to take the law in their own hands, prevails in every quarter.” Mobs, riots, burnings, lynchings, shootings, tarrings, duels, and all sorts of violent excesses, perpetrated by all sorts of persons upon all sorts of occasions, seemed to be the order of the day. They occurred not only in the frontier districts of the West and South, but were reported from all quarters, mainly from the cities. Alarmingly great was the number of people who appeared to believe that they had a right to put down by force and violence all who displeased them by act or speech or belief, in politics, or religion, or business, or social life. It can unfortunately not be said that Jackson discountenanced this spirit of violence when it appeared in his immediate surroundings. Several members of Congress were, on the streets of Washington, “cruelly assaulted” and shot at for “words spoken in debate.” Such proceedings, when the victims were anti-Jackson men, found no disapproval at Jackson's hands, who, on one occasion in 1832, said that, “after a few more examples of the same kind, members of Congress would learn to keep civil tongues in their heads;” and who on another occasion, when the assailant was fined by a court, promptly pardoned him. The excitement in Washington was at one time so great that a committee of citizens waited upon the President, asking him to order out the troops for the purpose of putting down the rioters, — a request which he answered with an emphatic “No.”