Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

©rtstoolir
ship in the House without noticing how invariably he viewed every subject
brought up as it was affected by the fundamental law of the land, the
Constitution, and by constitutional interpretations.
As expressive of the trust reposed in him by others of the eminent
patriots of his day, a fact not generally known, perhaps, may be here
recorded—that some of the leading Federalists who met, after his death,
in the famous Hartford Convention, had had their attention turned to him
for President in the possible contingency of a separation of the New
Enoland States from the rest of the Union. This fact was communicated
o
to us by the late Mr. Frederick H. Wolcott of Astoria, L. I., as he heard
it from his father, a brother of Governor Oliver Wolcott, who often spoke
of Governor Griswold, says his son, "in terms of affection, and profound
respect for his eminent qualities," though he was not in sympathy with the
poHtical opinions of the Old Federalist leaders.
Here it is proper to speak of the personal violence committed on
Mr. Griswold by Matthew Lyon in 1798, and Mr. Griswold's resentment
of it. We relate the occurrence in the words of a son of a fellow Congress-
man and political as well as personal friend of Mr. Griswold, the late
Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts :
"In 1797 he [Lyon] went to Congress, where he inaugurated, in Jan. 1798, the
series of acts of personal insult and violence which have disgraced Congress, from
time to time, from that day to this, b}^ spitting in the face of Mr. Griswold of Con-
necticut, on some occasion of offense he took at him. The House refusing to expel
him by a strict party vote, Mr, Griswold took justice into his own hands, and caned
him in his seat a few days afterwards, for which singular process he too went scot-
free, also by a party vote, neither the Administration nor the Opposition commanding
the two-thirds requisite for the expulsion of a member." '"^
The motives which actuated Mr. Griswold in the course he took in
this affair will be best understood from a private letter to his wife, dated
Philadelphia, February 28, i 798, in which he says :
"' Life of Josiah Ouinc)' ... By his son Edmund Quincy. Boston, i868, p. 327.
84