In my most recent column for the Disunion series in the New York Times, I tell the following story about a wedding that was held in Washington in December 1860 that was interrupted by a bombastic guest, Lawrence Keitt, buoyantly booming out the news that South Carolina had seceded from the union.
Well, I was pretty happy that on a blog run by the estimable economist Brad DeLong, he quoted a blog called Lawyers, Guns and Money where a writer named Dave Noon called my little anecdote “one of the great wedding-crasher stories in US history, featuring one of the least remembered Worst Americans Ever.” Noon then goes on to tell us that the creepy Keitt “ranked among the finer B-list Slave Power deacons of his era. When Preston Brooks was clubbing Charles Sumner half to death in early May 1856, it was a liquor-fortified Keitt who — wielding a pistol or a cane of his own, depending on the account — helped prevent anyone from intervening on behalf of the Massachusetts Senator. After being censured by the House for his role in the assault, Keitt resigned and immediately stood for re-election; two years after being returned to his seat, he initiated a brawl on the House floor when he attacked Pennsylvania congressman Galusha Grow, a former free-soil Democrat who had joined the Republican party at roughly the same moment that Keitt was abetting the attack on Sumner. When the party of Grow and Sumner elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860s, Keitt joined the congressional fire-eaters and abandoned his office for the second time in five years. His wife Susanna — also a piece of work — justified her husband’s (and her state’s) disunionism by characterizing the “Black Republicans” as “a motley throng of Sans culottes and Dames de Halles, Infidels and freelovers, interspersed by Bloomer women, fugitive slaves, and amalgamationists.”
Keitt, Noon tells us, organized the 20th South Carolina Infantry Regiment, which he led on a disastrous charge across an open field near Beulah Church in Virginia on May 31, 1864. His men were shredded and Keitt himself mortally wounded.
Also, a shout out to blogger John K. of the website J’s Theater, who today expressed at length his enthusiasm for the Disunion series: “I’m going to sing the praises of The New York Times today, and note that since October 30, 2010, it has been publishing one of the best and most informative series of articles, mini-essays, and nonfiction stories (tales, in the older sense), under the title “Disunion,” that I have read in any newspaper, journal or other periodical anywhere, ever.” To repeat: Best…Ever!
One more time for Susaana Keitt: “A motley throng of Sans culottes and Dames de Halles, Infidels and freelovers, interspersed by Bloomer women, fugitive slaves, and amalgamationists.” Can I get an Amen?