adams writes, today, henry weiss threatened to kill me in my sleep. -- seat.e took advantage of his reputation to defend the right of petition and against slavery. he was incredibly powerful. he also was a brilliant parliamentarian. he had a lifetime of experience and politics and he was fearless. you put that together and he was a force to be reckoned with. brian: would you describe the tobacco, the carpeting, the smoke, the dirt? joanne: yeah, the tobacco. i started out the book talking about tobacco stained rugs. because congress in this time, i think people think back to this time and they think of henry clay and daniel webster, people in frock coats with their finger in the air. some of that was going on, but particularly the house, it was crowded and stuffy. it did not small very good. it was much hotter than it was outside. and there were tobacco stains everywhere. people were spitting and not always hitting the target. the rugs were repulsive to the point that foreign visitors, i found a letter at one point from a reddish minister who is leaving and he

the dual breaks out, henry wise is at the heart of it, it breaks out because henry weiss stands up ands something nasty about the democratic party during a debate. the democrat stands up and defenses party, and in doing so, says something nasty about a new york newspaper editor. he asks great to deliver a letter. neither had any understanding of dueling culture. by the simple reason that graves delivers a letter on behalf of the editor, he is tangled in the affair of honor, and the two men, because they don't want to hurt the reputations or humiliate themselves in front of their constituents and the nation, and want to defend the honor of their state and region, they end up getting pulled into this dual that nobody wants to happen. there is a whole chapter on it for that reason. i call it the dual that no one wanted. it happened because it was so hard to pull out once that sort of thing goes into motion. the dual shows the power of violence in congress and around the nation, and the ways in which congressman, and particularly northern congressman who were not necessarily accustomed wit

one of them was henry weiss, and the other was john dawson, who had the bowie knife.y are the two foremost bullies. dickens goes to congress and says i know those are the troublemaking guys, what do they look like? and he writes, wise is a scary looking guy with a big ball of tobacco in his teeth. it is not as though this is invisible at the time. brian: what are the stories of the people that would do the violence out of the house of representatives, around town, and they would even ambush people? how much of that went on? joanne: some of that went on. one of the things about the fighting that is counterintuitive, despite all of the mayhem i am talking about, the people doing the fighting are not trying to destroy congress. they want to get what they want from congress, but they are not trying to destroy the institution. they are very focused on fair fighting. if they are in a fight, they wanted to be fair. for example, if two men are fighting, sometimes they will be allowed to continue the fight. if one is armed and the other isn't, they will be separated because it