Today in United States History, February 15, 1798, a Congressman walked onto the House floor and beat his rival with a hickory cane. His opponent fought back with red-hot fire tongs. This really happened.

🧵 1/8 The setting was Congress Hall in Philadelphia, winter 1798. The young American republic, barely a decade old, was tearing itself apart. The infant nation faced an undeclared naval war with France, a Quasi-War that sent American ships to the bottom of the Atlantic and turned the political arena into a powder keg of fury and paranoia. Inside the elegant chambers where the Founders had imagined reasoned debate, a different reality was taking shape. The House of Representatives had become a battlefield where two emerging political factions: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, weren't just disagreeing, they were at each other's throats... literally.

This was a world where honor meant everything and insult meant war. Politicians were expected to be gentlemen, hypersensitive to their reputations, willing to defend their dignity with violence if necessary. The code of honor that governed early American politics made every slight a potential death sentence, every debate a challenge to one's very manhood. Formal political parties hadn't fully formed yet, but the factions were already hardening into tribal warfare. President John Adams, a Federalist, pushed for military buildup against France. His opponents saw tyranny. His supporters saw treason. And in this toxic atmosphere, two men, Representative Roger Griswold of Connecticut and Representative Matthew Lyon of Vermont, were about to make history in the most violent way imaginable.

But the seeds of the February 15 explosion had been planted weeks earlier, in an exchange so shocking that it scandalized a nation still trying to figure out what democracy actually looked like.

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