February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Edward T. O’Donnell
Two hundred four years ago this week, on Jan. 30, 1798, Rep. Matthew Lyon let loose in the House of Representatives. The object of his scorn were the Federalists, whom he considered elitists bent on rolling back the democratic principles of the Revolution. One Federalist in particular, Rep. Roger Griswold of Connecticut, took exception to Lyon’s harsh words. Publicly humiliating him, he called him a coward, dredging up a story of Lyon’s temporary dishonorable discharge from the Continental Army (a decision that had been quickly overturned). Enraged, Lyon spit in Griswold’s face. It was the first of several clashes that would make Lyon one of the best-known political figures of his day.
Matthew Lyon was born in County Wicklow in 1750. He immigrated to America at the age of 14 as an indentured servant. He earned his freedom by the early 1770s and later fought for American independence as a member of Ethan Allen’s legendary Green Mountain Boys. After the war, Lyon grew rich after discovering a process that made paper from wood pulp. In 1783, he established the village of Fair Haven, Vt., where he began publishing the weekly Fair Haven Gazette. The paper reflected Lyon’s staunch Jeffersonian principles.
Lyon won election to the House in 1796 and quickly earned a reputation as a fiery orator and bitter foe of the Federalist Party. In that decade, American public opinion was sharply divided over the French Revolution. Jeffersonians (soon to be called Republicans) like Lyon supported the Revolution, seeing it as an event in step with spread of republican government begun in America in 1776. Those who identified with the Federalist Party, however, expressed horror at the radicalism and savagery of the revolution. Consequently, men like Griswold sided with England in its war with France (and later with England in its repression of the French-assisted uprising of the United Irishmen in 1798).
Federalists and Jeffersonians also clashed over domestic policy. Led by the brilliant Alexander Hamilton, Federalists pushed for a strong central government and policies like the Bank of the United States that promoted a commercial economy. Jeffersonians prized states’ rights over federal authority and favored an agrarian economy. Each camp accused the other of seeking to destroy the young republic through misguided policy.
So when Lyon attacked the Federalists on Jan. 30, he hit a raw nerve. In the days that followed the spitting incident, they denounced him as the “Spitting Lyon” and made moves to have him expelled from the House. They also harped on his Irish heritage. A letter written by a Federalist to a Connecticut newspaper noted with disdain that, “Mr. Lyon was not born in America, but in Ireland!” A like-minded Federalist declared that Irishmen like Lyon were “the most ruffian-like, dirty, and blackguard, of all the creation.” Harrison Gray Otis, a prominent Federalist congressman from Massachusetts, “grieved that the saliva of an Irishman should be left upon the face of an American.”
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Not content to see Lyon trashed in the papers, Griswold decided to exact his own revenge. On Feb. 15 he crept up behind Lyon in the House chamber and beat him with his cane. Chaos broke out as fellow representatives struggled to separate the combatants. Lyon recovered his wits and grabbed a set of tongs from a nearby fireplace and attacked Griswold. Eventually calm was restored, but tensions remained near the breaking point for the rest of the year.
The next chapter in the Lyon saga began only months later in the summer of 1798. Federalists were growing ever more alarmed at the sudden influx that year of French and Irish refugees, whom they viewed as wild radicals. “If some means are not adopted to prevent the indiscriminate admission of wild Irishmen and others to the right of suffrage,” warned Harrison Gray Otis, “there will soon be an end to liberty & property.” In response, the Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. These were designed to discourage further French and Irish immigration by increasing the waiting period for naturalization from 5 to 14 years, legalizing detention of subjects of enemy countries, allowing the expulsion of any “dangerous” alien, and by making it a crime to write or utter anything “with the intent to defame” the government.
More than two dozen people were prosecuted under this last provision — all Jeffersonian newspaper editors who were “guilty” of criticizing the Adams administration. Not surprisingly, the first was Matthew Lyon. After the Griswold affair, Federalists were intent on bringing down the irrepressible Irishman from Vermont. So when he denounced from the pages of his Fair Haven Gazette President John Adams as a closet monarchist, Lyon was arrested for sedition. Convicted by a pro-Federalist jury, Lyon was sentenced to 4 months in jail and fined $1,000 — no small sum in 1798.
To the horror of his Federalist foes, Lyon emerged from the incident a political martyr, a victim of Federalist repression. Even while still languishing in prison, Lyon won reelection to Congress.
In 1801, with Jefferson now in the White House, the Alien and Sedition Acts were allowed to expire. Many historians point to this episode of Federalist-inspired anti-Irish hostility as the beginning of the Irish-American identification with the Democratic Party.
Lyon soon moved to Kentucky, where he was again elected to the House of Representatives. He lost much of his fortune in the War of 1812 and eventually moved on to Arkansas, where he died in 1822, at the age of 72.
But Lyon’s reputation lived on for decades. In 1840, Congress approved a resolution that posthumously exonerated Matthew Lyon for his 1798 conviction under the Sedition Act and to returned his fine of $1,000 with interest to his heirs.
HIBERNIAN HISTORY WEEK
Feb. 1, 1796: Theobald Wolfe Tone arrives in France to gain French assistance for United Irishmen.
Feb. 2, 1880: Charles Stuart Parnell, on a fund-raising tour of the U.S. for the Land League, addresses the U.S. Congress.
Feb. 2, 1972: In response to the Bloody Sunday massacre three days earlier, an enraged mob burns the British Embassy in Dublin.
Feb. 3, 1919: Eamon DeValera is sprung from jail by Michael Collins and Harry Boland.
HIBERNIAN BIRTHDATES
Jan. 31, 1947: Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan is born in Refugio, Texas.
Feb. 1, 1859: Cellist and conductor Victor Herbert is born in Dublin.
Feb. 2, 1882: Author James Joyce is born in Dublin.
Feb. 4, 1775: Patriot Robert Emmet is born in Dublin.
Readers may contact Edward T. O’Donnell at >odonnell@EdwardTODonnell.com.