v. to beat up a Congressman
—William Craigie’s
Dictionary of American English, 1940
(reference courtesy of Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English)
(reference courtesy of Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English)
Though this word does
not appear in most modern dictionaries, the story is simply too perfect to be
lost to etymological history. Thankfully, Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English rescued it from
obscurity. Usage lasted for about one hundred years after Sam Houston delivered
a bicameral beating to Representative William Stanbery in 1832.
Houston eventually married and became the governor of Tennessee in 1827 but
failed to serve even a single term before leaving his wife, becoming a drunk,
and returning to live with the Cherokee Nation. He bigamously married a
Cherokee widow and spent the next several years petitioning Washington to
improve the plight of his adoptive tribe. Houston’s noble cause and his
notorious temper entered the national spotlight when he decided to beat the
buckeyes out of Ohio congressman William Stanbery in 1832.
It all started with a contract to provide rations to the Native Americans
who were about to take a long and unpleasant walk along the Trail of Tears
thanks to President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. Houston, a friend
of Jackson’s but not always of his policies, was one of the bidders on the
contract, and Stanbery decided to attack him verbally on the floor of the House
of Representatives to indirectly incense Jackson, his political enemy. Full of
piss and vinegar (and, likely, whiskey), Houston waited for Stanbery on
Pennsylvania Avenue, pummeled him mercilessly with a stick in broad daylight,
and later pleaded not guilty to the assault, claiming he had acted in
“self-defense.”
The whole affair was a veritable cavalcade of American frontier folklore.
Davy “Killed Him a Bear When He Was Only Three” Crockett had joined Houston in
his opposition to Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson’s treatment of Native Americans.
Meanwhile, Francis Scott “Star-Spangled Banner” Key was Houston’s lawyer, and
future president James “Napoleon of the Stump” Polk helped reduce his sentence
after he was found guilty. After also losing a separate civil suit and being
fined $500, Houston did what any sensible convict would do and fled to the then
Mexican state of Texas.
Houston had an equally extraordinary second life in Texas. He was its first
and only president when it became an independent republic in 1836, its senator
after it joined the Union, and its governor until it tried to secede before the
Civil War (which he opposed). Houston finally died of pneumonia in 1863, and
despite Houstonize not surviving into
modern times, this frontier maverick is remembered through his namesake city,
countless streets, parks, and schools, and a slightly larger-than-life
sixty-seven-foot statue in Huntsville, Texas.
