Rehearsing for the Great Debate of 1850: The Controversy over Seating Father Theobald Mathew on the Floor of the Senate

Just after the first session of the 31st Congress convened in December 1849, and before the sectional issues that would preoccupy it for the next nine months as it debated the Compromise of 1850 were even raised, the Senate confronted an apparently unrelated question. Democratic senator Isaac Walker of Wisconsin asked his colleagues to extend to Irish temperance reformer Father Theobald Mathew the honor of being seated on the floor of the Senate. Father Mathew was in the midst of a journey that was taking him across the United States advocating total abstinence. His visit had proved to be a phenomenon of truly impressive dimensions. It coincided with a growing religious and increasingly political movement to limit drink in the United States that was furthered by a surge in nativism. This movement no doubt contributed to his success. By the end of his travels, the charismatic organizer had gained a pledge of teetotalism from over five hundred thousand Americans. As he passed through Washington, several senators believed that his "humanitarian" achievement was worthy of a show of respect. President Zachary Taylor invited Father Mathew to dine with him at the White House, where iced water replaced alcohol as the drink of choice, and he briefly visited the House floor at the request of its members. Now it was the Senate's turn to offer the popular advocate recognition for his good work.¹

Fig 1.

The very revd. Theobald Mathew. (New York: Published and printed by Th. Kelly, 1874; courtesy Library of Congress)

The Senate took up the question of Mathew's seating just as a furious and seemingly endless, paralyzing conflict in the House was taking place over the selection of a Speaker. Perhaps it was because the House was so preoccupied with its own very real internal divisions that it had quickly and without debate agreed to ask Father Mathew to come onto its floor to witness its proceedings, such as they were. But whatever the reason for this uncontested invitation, the hospitality the House showed Mathew did not signify the absence of a deep sectional crisis within its ranks. Holding the balance of power in the House, Free Soil Party representatives refused to give their support to the Whig candidate for the speakership, former Speaker Robert Winthrop of Massachusetts, arguing that his endorsement of the Wilmot Proviso ban on slavery in the territories was too weak. They were even more adamant in their opposition to the slaveholding Democratic candidate Howell Cobb of Georgia. Without their votes, neither candidate could gain the majority necessary to be elected Speaker. The House was deadlocked, casting sixty-two ballots over a three-week period without a successful result. Bitterness on all sides intensified, and senators looked on with horror at what this impasse foreshadowed for their future efforts to resolve the sectional issues that they would soon confront in the session of Congress that had just gotten underway.²

It was in the charged atmosphere created by this lengthy House dispute that the seemingly innocent gesture of seating Father Mathew on the Senate floor would become so deeply divisive. The House was already experiencing a growing sectional rift as it dealt with its organizational tasks, and now the Senate would discover the depth of its own sectional divisions in its debate over Father Mathew. The controversy in the Senate surrounding this relatively minor matter would reveal the same fundamental schisms that would soon dominate the nine-month congressional battle over the Compromise itself. Many of the underlying assumptions of the confrontation to come first exploded onto the Senate floor in this intense conflict over the seating of Father Mathew. The dispute that ensued offers an opportunity to examine some of the arguments of the larger sectional debate detached from a direct link to the intractable slavery expansion issue that had so preoccupied the country in the aftermath of the Mexican War and would dominate the coming congressional debate over the fruits of that conflict...