Most congressmen came armed to the sessions; the sole exception seemed to be a former New England clergyman who finally gave in and bought a pistol for self-defense. Partisans in the galleries also carried weapons. One southerner reported that a good many slave-state congressmen expected and wanted a shootout on the House floor: they “are willing to fight the question out, and to settle it right there. . . . I can’t help wishing the Union were dissolved and we had a Southern confederacy.” The governor of South Carolina informed one of his state’s congressmen on December 20, 1859: “If . . . you
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