and courtesy,
over heated passions of the fiercest conflicting character. When
he was transferred from the Speaker's chair to the Court of St.
James, John Bell, of Tennessee, an old supporter of General Jackson,
became his successor for the remainder of that session, but at the
commencement of the next Congress Mr. Van Buren secured the election
of James K. Polk. Mr. Bell, on his next visit to Nashville, threw
down the gauntlet, in an able speech, and nominated Judge White.
This was the foundation of the White party, which had, as its
editorial henchman, the Rev. Mr. Brownlow, known as "the fighting
Parson," who soon acquired a national reputation by his defiant
personalities in debate and by his trenchant editorial articles in
the newspapers of East Tennessee. Mr. Brownlow was at that time
a tall, spare man, with long, black hair, black eyes, and a sallow
complexion. He was devoted to the Methodist Church and to the
White--afterward the Whig--party, and the denominational doctrines
of immersion and the political dogmas of emancipation from slavery
were objects of his intense hatred.

While Mr. Stevenson was Speaker, General Samuel Houston, who had
been residing among the Indians on the Southwestern frontier for
several years, came to Washington. Taking offense at some remarks
made in debate by Mr. Vance, a representative from Ohio, Houston
assaulted and severely pounded him. The House voted that Houston
should be brought before the bar and reprimanded by the Speaker,
which was done, although Mr. Stevenson's reprimand was really
complimentary. That night a friend of General Houston, with a
bludgeon and a pistol, attacked Mr. Arnold, of Tennessee, who had
been active in securing the reprimand, but the latter soon got the
best of the encounter.

The first man elected to Congress as a representative of the rights
of the laboring classes was Eli Moore, a New York journeyman printer,
who had organized trades unions and successfully engineered several
strikes by mechanics against their employers. He was a thin,
nervous man, with keen, dark hazel eyes, long black hair brushed
back behind his ears, and a strong, clear voice which rang through
the hall like the sound of a trumpet. He especially distinguished
himself in a reply to General Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina,
who had denounced the mechanics of the North as willing tools of
the Abolitionists. With impetuous force and in tones tremulous
with emotion, he