The House, the Beast, and the Bloody Shirt:
The Doorkeeper Controversy of 1878

Ed Bradley
Harpweek, LLC

On Friday, April 5, 1878, Benjamin F. Butler, a Republican from Massachusetts, arose in the U.S. House of Representatives and offered a resolution stating "that the true Union, maimed soldier, Brigadier-General James Shields" be chosen as doorkeeper of that body. Although a seemingly innocuous motion, Butler's resolution would spark a debate over the election of a doorkeeper that would last into the following week. That debate—and the reactions to it—are in turn quite revealing of the political environment of the time. Specifically, the "doorkeeper controversy" of 1878 symbolizes the persistence of sectionalism in the immediate post-Reconstruction years. It also provides yet another example of the turmoil and controversy that characterized Ben Butler's colorful political career.1	1
The role of sectionalism in the political discourse of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction years has been a subject of much dispute among historians. Writing on the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, Richard F. Bensel notes the "persistent impact of . . . sectional competition. . .in national political institutions," particularly in the House of Representatives. Joel H. Silbey agrees, asserting that in the post-Civil War years "sectional tensions became incorporated into the partisan imperative." Specifically, with the formation of the Solid South in the aftermath of the 1876 elections "sectionalism and partisan ship, intersected and came together within [the political] structure." The Republican party thus continued to depend upon the bloody shirt long after the war was over, with Lewis Gould noting that in the post-Recon- struction years sectionalism was "a genuine and continuing source of Republican strength."2	2
Yet other historians downplay the role of sectionalist rhetoric during these years. Thus Stanley P. Hirshson writes that while by 1878 "sectionalism was once again the official policy of a Republican administration," succeeding years saw business interests and other forces work toward reconciliation and a subsequent de-emphasis on black civil rights. Morton Keller asserts that in the 1870s the emphasis both parties placed on organization came at the expense of sectionalist rhetoric and other party ideologies. In The Romance of Reunion, Nina Silber studies postwar culture and concludes that northern anger with southern slaveholders for causing the war was transformed into an appreciation of the south's chivalric society, particularly as labor unrest, immigration, and black migration created a longing among many northerners for a less complex and more "traditional" culture. Through a process involving the romanticizing of southern society, antagonism between the two sections faded considerably.3	3
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