opinion | If history is any guide, McCarthy’s tumultuous House Speaker victory is just the beginning.

But the battle of 1855-56 differed from the present battle in an important way. Although it was motivated by fractious parties, it was grounded in an important policy difference: the fate of slavery, which was at the heart of the politics of the period, was not inevitable, becoming more and more heated at this point and entangled with American fundamentals like the economy, faction, and citizenship.

For good reason, congressmen want to know who they are dealing with in the coming struggle. Once installed, the speaker will be the staffing committee, essentially shaping Congress in the process.

The 1849 speaker election – second longest – ended after 63 votes, the 1859-60 election (third longest) after 44; both also focus on slavery. In the second case, the struggle over the fate of slavery reached its climax. Instead of two sides, there were departmental blocks that were in direct confrontation, with Southern extremists – the so-called cannibals – more willing to resort to violence than to yield to an anti-government speaker. slavery.

And indeed, there was violence. During the election of 1859-1860, during the first eight weeks of the first session, there were nine fights and many nonviolent confrontations. A fight broke out in the street. During the debate, Republican John Hickman mocked that the ardent abolitionist John Brown of the famous Harpers Ferry raid had terrified the entire state of Virginia with a handful of men. When Virginia Democrat Henry Edmundson happened to pass Hickman on the street, he lunged at him, but was pulled away by Representative Laurence Keitt of South Carolina.

This is not the character of the fire eater Keitt. When South Carolina governor William Gist told his state’s congressional delegation that if a Republican was elected as a speaker he should be expelled by force if necessary, Keitt followed his suggestion. . Not long after, he and a group of Southerners planned an attack. At the opening of Parliament in December 1859, his wife, Susanna, wrote to her brother in a panic. Her husband and three armed Southerners had just left her living room, vowing to “fight with knives on the floor of Congress” if a Republican was elected, and “either take possession of the Capitol or lose it.” guard.”

In the end, there was no bloody assault, although the passion of the moment was felt on the floor. When a Republican mocked the South’s threats of violence in the midst of a speaker campaign, a Southerner lunged at him with swinging fists, sending a wave of Republicans and Southern Democrats woke him up, some of them reaching for guns.

This was not the first such rumble on the floor of the House of Commons, but amid the raging storms of the 1859-60s, it seemed to promise worse things to come. In the end, a freshman, William Pennington of the Republican Party of New Jersey, won the speaker spot as a compromise candidate, though the compromise was minimal. Every Northerner in the House voted for him, and every Southerner except one voted against him.