The Battle of the Reed Rules

garzabird:

historical-nonfiction:

Until 1890, the minority party in the U.S. House of Representatives could block a vote by “disappearing.” A minority party member would demand a roll call, all the minority party members would remain silent when their name was called, and then the minority party would declare that too few members were “present” for the House to conduct its business. To incoming Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, who was the head of the majority party, this was a “tyranny of the minority.“ Within the first month of his term, on January 28th, he resolved to break it. When Democrats demanded a roll call and refused to answer to their names, Reed marked them present anyway. When Kentucky representative James B. McCreary objected, Reed said sweetly, “The Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman from Kentucky is present. Does he deny it?”

There followed a sort of ontological shooting gallery. Democrats hid under their desks and behind screens to avoid being observed to exist. When they tried to flee the chamber entirely, Reed ordered the doors locked, which started a scramble to get out before the next vote. Representative Kilgore of Texas had to kick open a locked door to escape. Amid the howled objections, Confederate general “Fighting Joe” Wheeler came down from the rear “leaping from desk to desk as an ibex leaps from crag to crag,” and one unnamed Texas Democrat “sat in his seat significantly whetting a bowie knife on his boot.” Finally the Republicans mustered a majority even with the Democrats entirely absent, and the battle was over: Reed’s new rules were adopted on February 14.

#okay but i just looked this up on wikipedia because i couldn’t believe it was real#and this doesn’t include the best epilogue ever#‘cause apparently reed put rules in place to make this stop happening#and then the democrats got the majority and immediately got rid of his rules#but he was minority leader now#and he totally used the roll call thing against them so effectively#that they put his rules back in place#just to stop him (tags via alternatez)