The House of Representatives

When the members of the federal government arrived in Washington, D.C., in November 1800, the city was barely ready for them to get to work. Of the major buildings needed for running the country, only one was even close to completed. The White House, for instance, would remain uninhabitable for a number of weeks, during which time President John Adams found himself in one of the rough-hewn boardinghouses that had sprung up around the Capitol.

From his new digs, Adams could watch builders under the direction of James Hoban add the finishing touches to the new home of Congress — or at least a part of it.

Looking at the outside of the Capitol today, there are five major sections to the building: two large wings north and south, which house the Senate and House, respectively; then the central section surmounted by its grand dome; and finally, two small connecting pieces between the wings and the center.

Of these five, only one was ready by the time the Sixth Congress arrived in D.C. to take up its second session. What is today the connector between the central dome and the northern, Senate, wing had been completed to the point where the Senate could begin its work.

It could have, that is, had they had a quorum. As it was, only fifteen of the thirty-two members had arrived by November 17, the date that their work was to begin, and it would be another four days before there were enough senators there so that they could get to work.

Life was considerably more difficult for their colleagues in the lower house. As the wing of the Capitol planned for their use had not yet even been begun, they had to beg the Senate for space. Fortunately, the Capitol had been designed with future expansion in mind, so there was a room within the Senate wing that was as yet unused, and so the 106 members of the House of Representatives were able to get to work themselves — in fact, they managed to have a quorum three days before the Senate.

During 1801, Hoban recommended that a temporary structure be erected to give the representatives their own home. President Jefferson concurred, and during the summer recess of 1801, a building was quickly slapped together on the ground planned for the House of Representatives.

When the representatives of the Seventh Congress convened, they must have thought they were the butt of a fairly bad joke. The building they were expected to convene in was a single-story round wooden structure of such rickety construction that it required struts all the way around to keep it from collapsing. A 1914 history of the Capitol summed it up: "The House of Representatives sat in some peril of their lives, for had not the walls been strongly shored up from without, the structure would have crumbled to pieces."

For the next three years, as they discussed the Louisiana Purchase, reorganized the federal courts and recognized the state of Ohio, the representatives survived in this temporary structure, which they gave the name "The Oven," both for its shape as well as the temperatures that reigned within during the D.C. summers.

Finally, in 1804, they were allowed to move again — back to the same room in the Senate wing that they had abandoned three years earlier. While they continued their work crammed into this ever-tighter space — there were now 139 congressmen — work proceeded on their permanent home. Finally, on October 26, 1807, when the Tenth Congress convened, its 142 members found themselves in their own marble-clad halls.

Their relief was short-lived. On August 24, 1814, during the occupation of Washington by British troops, the Capitol was burned down. Fighting against the tide of opinion that would have sent the government elsewhere, D.C. residents banded together and built a temporary brick Capitol that was used for the next five years while the Capitol was rebuilt.

If the representatives were pleased and relieved that the Capitol was finally accessible to them again when they moved into it in 1819, they certainly had an odd way of showing it. A visitor to the United States who observed life in Washington, D.C., had the following to say about the state of its furnishings:

Both houses are handsomely carpeted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon with which every honourable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account.

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to see so many honourable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough too, to see an honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient "plug" with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth, as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place.

The author was Charles Dickens, who visited the United States in 1842, and the book, American Notes for General Circulation, which included the above quote, was published on his return to England. British readers may well have been appalled by this description, but for Americans, it was just another day. It took more than a few globs of spit to discomfit them.

Another American custom that, much like spitting, gradually disappeared in the nineteenth century was dueling. Though it took until late in the century to finally disappear from public life, dueling was already being banned in many places when one of the most famous duels, and the only to feature two sitting congressmen, was fought on February 24, 1838, between Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William Jordan Graves of Kentucky.

The root of the quarrel had been in a speech given by Cilley on February 20 of that year, in which he had said — among a number of other things — "It ... must be remembered that the newspapers charge that General James Watson Webb, editor of the Courier and Enquirer, of New York received a bribe of $52,000 for his advocacy of the re- chartering of the bank of the United States."

Webb had accused numerous congressmen of corruption, and it was to this charge that Cilley was responding. The editor was, understandably, extremely annoyed at this and jumped on a train to Washington to demand satisfaction. He had William J. Graves, congressman from Kentucky and a personal friend of Webb's, deliver a note expressing his dissatisfaction. Cilley refused to accept the note on the grounds that he was not personally acquainted with Webb. When Henry Clay, elder statesman, senator from Kentucky and, like Graves, a member of the Whig Party, heard of this refusal, he told Graves, "Go back and tell the --- Yankee that it isn't a challenge, that it is merely a note of inquiry."

After Cilley refused the note a second time, Clay told Graves that this was a personal insult and thus grounds for Graves to demand a duel with Cilley. This was perhaps the best outcome for Webb, not only because he would not personally be at risk during the duel but also because Graves was a well-known marksman and far more likely to prevail over Cilley.

Cilley, whose upbringing in Maine, study of law and subsequent newspaper and political career had done little to teach him about guns, was facing a man who was well versed with firearms. Furthermore, though both combatants had agreed to using rifles, Cilley's weapon was of small bore, while Graves had the use of a powerful weapon.

The next morning, the two parties and their seconds — friends of the duelists who were along to ensure that the agreed-upon rules of the duel were adhered to — set out for Maryland, as dueling had been forbidden in the District of Columbia. On a frozen field just outside the district limits, the seconds paced off eighty paces and the duelists took their places and fired. Graves's first shot went wide, while Cilley purposefully shot into the ground not ten feet from where he stood. This would have, under ordinary circumstances, been the end of it, but Graves insisted on shooting again and, when this still left both combatants standing, a third shot. Graves's final shot hit Cilley in the leg, and he went down. He was dead before his second could reach him.

There was one positive result from this tragedy. The next year, Congress passed "an Act to prohibit the giving or accepting, within the District of Columbia, of a challenge to fight a duel." Although this did not entirely stop dueling — as late as 1859, a U.S. senator was killed in a duel — it did make it less socially acceptable and helped the practice die out.

Washington's position as a new city had more effects on Congress than simply failing to provide accommodation for the congressmen when they arrived. There was also a shortage of infrastructural institutions, such as banks. In order to receive their salaries, congressmen were forced to go the mile and a half down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Treasury Department and have their tellers pay out cash. Given the state of the roads at the time, this was far more arduous than necessary, and furthermore, since all members of Congress had to make the same trek, it made sense to delegate this job to someone else.

For the House of Representatives, this task fell to the Sergeant at Arms. The Sergeant at Arms was originally hired to be the law enforcement officer for the House and to ensure the safety of all those who worked and visited the House side of the Capitol. As his jobs multiplied, the Sergeant at Arms hired on a cashier to take over his role of treasurer to the congressmen.

This system worked fine until November 30, 1889. On that day, the Sergeant at Arms's cashier, a man with the name Craven E. Silcott, went — as always — to the Treasury with a set of certificates on which each member's salary was noted. The certificates had been signed by the clerk of the House. Attached to each certificate was a receipt signed by the member, indicating that the money had been received. Silcott was given some $ 133,000 in cash, as well as a few Treasury checks. He then distributed some of it, left some in the safe in his office and helped himself to the $10,000 he owned in this safe, as well as the same sum belonging to the Sergeant at Arms, one John P. Leedom. Silcott then announced that he needed to go to New York to have some papers signed. The last communication from him was a pair of telegrams to his wife and to Leedom stating that he had been unexpectedly detained.

And with that, Silcott disappeared. Reaction was swift and furious, with the National Tribune's article titled "A Public Thief and Great Scoundrel" leading the way. Silcott was, according to the Tribune, "a man of somewhat shady reputation" who had nonetheless managed to convince Sergeant at Arms Leedom of his honesty.

Silcott was married and had a child, and all three lived together just four blocks from the Capitol. In spite of this domesticity, Silcott had taken up with "a disreputable woman whom he had taken from a bagnio south of the Avenue," and it was with her that he was presumed to have scarpered. It furthermore turned out that Silcott was known to frequent "pool-rooms, houses of ill repute and race-tracks, and has been known to wager large sums of money on horses and various games of chance."

Silcott presumably timed his disappearance knowing that Leedom's term as Sergeant at Arms — and thus presumably his own as cashier — was about to come to an end. Leedom stepped down on December 2, just before the new Republican majority elected one of its own to oversee the security of the chamber.

Where Silcott was now remained a matter of speculation, though the most common guess was Canada, as that would have left him well out of the reach of the long arm of the law. The New York Herald published a story on January 31 of the next year claiming it had interviewed Silcott and that he was staying with his paramour's father, a Mr. Thibault, in Terrebonne, Quebec. Silcott denied all wrongdoing, insisting that he had not actually stolen any money and that he had passed on all the money to House members in New York. Furthermore, he claimed that he had not actually won any money on horse races but rather had lost quite a bit. In fact, he claimed that he had only gone to the races to be with those members of Congress who were now accusing him of theft. How these last two statements were likely to make him appear less guilty was not explained.

Finally, Silcott insisted, "The day will come when I will not appear as black as I am now painted." Nonetheless, he showed no interest in returning to Washington to explain in person how innocent he, in fact, was.

A month later, the New York Times reported that Silcott had been captured in southwestern Washington State, but that appears to have been a false report. In truth, neither Silcott nor Ms. Thibault was ever seen again. After much discussion and hand-wringing — as well as the revelation that a large number of representatives had no interest in finding Silcott, as they owed him large sums that they were not going to have to return, under the circumstances — the House voted to make good the money that Silcott had stolen.

The House had done far too little to prevent the repeat of such a scandal, and this was made abundantly clear in 1947. As the Republicans prepared to take over the House for the first time since 1930, they elected a new Sergeant at Arms, one William F. Russell, whose first job was to look into the finances of the office he was taking over. The previous Sergeant at Arms, Kenneth Romney, was to be appointed Assistant Sergeant at Arms, but this nomination was held up when Russell discovered massive irregularities in the books. Most egregious were a number of checks written by John H. Smithwick, who had been a congressman from 1919 until 1927. In spite of Smithwick having been voted out of office, Romney had cashed a number of checks for him in 1930 and 1931, none of which had ever been redeemed. As far as Romney's accounting was concerned, the checks themselves were assets of the Sergeant at Arms and thus his books were in order.

Russell, unsurprisingly, did not agree. Romney was indicted for fraud to the tune of $143,863. During the trial, it came out that Romney had been trying for years to pay off Smithwick's bounced checks, as well as $25,000 stolen by another cashier. His method was simple: hire friends and have them kick back part of their salary, which would then be used to gradually reduce the missing funds. Unfortunately for Romney, the missing sums were so large that it would have taken many more years to actually cover all the losses.

The judge in his case eventually came to the conclusion that Romney had simply been a patsy for Smithwick and sentenced him to one to three years in jail. After his appeal failed, Romney served only one year. He died three years after being released.

Forty years after Romney's death, it became clear that, once again, the House of Representatives was failing to adequately police itself. The banking scandal of 1992 revolved around the enormous number of checks that members had written that were not covered.

Not all scandals were as dramatic. Some of them turned on something as simple as a letter.

Stephen Joseph Kubel was happy in the spring of 1911. A grand house at 10 and East Capitol Streets, a wife with whom he had recently celebrated his silver anniversary, a daughter in her last year at Eastern High School, a son currently at sea after rounding out his studies in Germany, numerous investment properties and twenty years as chief engraver at the U.S. Geological Survey gave him every reason to be content. It was, therefore, quite a shock when his daughter showed him a letter sent to her from a strange man stating, "I hope I will get to meet you some time."

The letter further stated that it was her picture in the paper that had prompted his writing. From today's perspective, the missive is hardly scandalous. However, this was 1911 D.C., and writing to a young woman to whom you had not been properly introduced was simply not done, even if you were — as he also stated in his letter — "a bachelor without any family of my own." And this was particularly not done if you were a member of the House of Representatives: the author of the letter, Abraham Walter Lafferty, had been representing Oregon's Second District for just over two months when he sent the incriminating letter.