It is Valentine’s Day. And there’s not much love in the Missouri Senate.
I recently listened to the killing filibuster in the Senate on the confirmation of the state health director’s appointment. Afterwards I spent a couple of more rewarding hours watching some paint dry.
That was nothing, however, compared to the long-running tantrum that was started last week by a minority of the majority party who objected to a proposed congressional district map. It is still ongoing as this new week begins.
I am afraid that by the time it ends, three species will have gone extinct and become fossils.
I was reminded of an article in the Boonville Missouri Register of July 16, 1840 about a speech given in Jefferson City by A. G. Minor, a Whig—the newspaper leaned Democratic:
“He opened his speech with a flowery declamation…He then went on for quantity…It was one of those stereotyped editions of Whig oratory you may hear any time and place where a number of Whigs are congregated together…Thus he trudged along through a two hours and a half speech, and left us as wise as we were when we commenced.”
Been there. Know that, from many hours listening to filibusters in the State Senate. I always started legislative sessions with a new Filibuster Book, something to read while somebody exhausted themselves saying nothing worth remembering for hours on end—-which is okay as a tactic but makes one desperate for a newly-painted wall for sanity maintenance. Unless the one enduring the display has a good book. One way or another, I was determined to survive these events MORE than as wise as I was at the start.
Old-time speech-making was often colorful—and lengthy. Two-hour speeches from the stump were not rare. Two-hour sermons weren’t either. We have become significantly more sophisticated now. Our televangelists can take only about 18 minutes to convince us we’re all going to Hell although we might face better alternatives if we help them for their next executive jet.
We have examples of those sometimes more eloquent expositions because newspapers sometimes printed speeches in their entirety or printed lengthy excerpts. Representative John E. Pitt of Platte County introduced legislation in January1859 to print 100 handbills announcing the celebration of the Battle of New Orleans on January 8. He told his colleagues:
Gentlemen keep continually talking about economy. I, myself, do not believe in tying the public purse with cobweb strings, but when retrenchment comes in contact with patriotism, it assumes the form of “smallness.”
Such economy is like that of an old skinflint, who had a pair of boots made for his little boy, without soles, that they might last longer. (Laughter.)
I reverence “the day we celebrate.” It is fraught with reminiscences the most cheering; it brings to mind one of the grandest events ever recorded in letters of living fire upon the walls of the temple of time by the god of war!
On such occasions we should rise above party lines and political distinctions.
I never fought under the banner of “old Hickory,” but, “by the eternal” I wish I had. (Laughter and applause.) If the old war-horse was here now he would not know his own children from the side of Joseph’s coat of many colors—Whigs, Know-Nothings, Democrats, hard, soft, boiled, scrambled and fried Lincolnites, Douglasites, and blather-skites!
I belong to no party; I am free, unbridled, in the political pasture. Like a bob-tailed bull in fly time, I charge around in the high grass and fight my own flies. (Great laughter.)
Gentlemen, let us show our liberality on patriotic occasions. Why, some men have no more patriotism than you could stuff through the eye of a knitting needle. Let us not squeeze five cents till the eagle on it squeals like a locomotive or an old maid. Let us print the bills and inform the public that we are as full of patriotism as are the Illinois swamps of tad poles.
I don’t believe in doing things by halves. Permit me, Mr. Speaker, to make a poetical quotation from one of our noblest authors. “I love to see the grass among the red May roses, I love to see an old gray horse, for when he goes, he goeses.” (Convulsive laughter.)
The comments were reported in the Weekly California News, published in Moniteau County, on January 29, 1859.
John Brooks Henderson, seeking to be a state representative in his first try for public office, remarked at a July 4th event in Pike County in 1847:
Though all former governments have fallen and yielded to the corroding influences of time, and shared the fate of all other human concerns, yet there are principles, firm as the unchangeable rocks of Adamant, upon which the fabric of government will stand, until human affairs shall have ceased and Heaven’s Messiah shall fill the throne of peace. These principles are founded upon the equality of mankind, upon truth, reason and justice; and the government whose foundations rest upon these, and whose strength is dependent upon the free will of a virtuous people, will only fail when time shall grow hoary with age, and nature herself shall decay.
In the days long before audio and video recordings, the only way people could learn what was said in those patriotic speeches was to read them in newspapers such as the Democratic Banner, published in the Pike County seat of Louisiana, in this case, on August 16, 1847.
Henderson, by the way, became a Union Army officer whose troops “conquered” Callaway County early in the Civil War. Later, as a U.S. Senator, he was one of those who voted against impeaching President Andrew Johnson, a courageous step that cost him his senatorship.
One more example of rhetoric of the 19th century that puts speakers of today to shame. Walter B. Stevens, in his Centennial History of Missouri (The Center State), published in 1921, tells of an Ozarks preacher of the early 1800s who might have offered this prayer over a young man bitten by a rattlesnake:
We thank Thee, Almighty God, for Thy watchful care over us and for Thy goodness and tender mercy, and especially we thank Thee for rattlesnakes. Thou hast sent one to bite John Weaver. We pray Thee to send one to bite Jim, one to bite Henry, one to bite Sam, one to bite Bill; and we pray Thee to send the biggest kind of a rattlesnake to bite the old man, for nothing but rattlesnakes will ever bring the Weaver family to repentance. There are others in Missouri just as bad as the Weavers. We pray Thee to stir up Missouri, and, if nothing else will bring the people to repentance, we pray Thee to shower down more rattlesnakes. Amen!
We say “might have offered” because the story might be apocryphal. But it’s too good a story to go untold to future generations.
This prayer offers something to all of us who are tired of the obviating, posturing, and prevaricating in our political discourse. For those who do not consider being inspiring, humorous, and uplifting while they fill the air, instead, with boring verbosity, “we pray thee to shower down more rattlesnakes.”