PULASKI CO, AR - MATTHEW LYON - Bio ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont. Brattleboro, VT: Transcript Publishing Co., 1894. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free Information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- REPRESENTATIVES IN CONGRESS. Lyon, Matthew.-Elected to Congress from three states, the peppery, red-headed little Irishman, whose ups and downs in life with his big ideas and his untiring enterprise, made a career that can but kindle the admiration of the reader even as it did of some of his contemporaries, while it stirred the profound animosity of others. He came to this country a poor boy, indentured for his passage money, and touched, before he got through, most of the extremes of human experience. His apprenticeship indenture was transferred a few months after he reached here for a yoke of steers and his favorite oath in after years was "By the bulls that bought me." He was born in Wicklow, Ireland, about 1746; his parents were poor and his father died when he was a boy. He attended school at Dublin where he got an English education and a respectable smattering of Latin. He was then apprenticed to a printer and bookbinder, where he got a taste for the "art preservative" that followed him through life; but at the age of thirteen a sea captain, with glowing tales of America, induced him to run away and come here, even though it meant several years slavery to pay his passage. Lyon in after years would become sentimental instead of combative for a few moments whenever he recurred to this experience and his last visit to his mother's chamber to kiss her good-bye while she slept. On the sea voyage he was very sick and tenderly ministered to by some abandoned women on board who also supplied his necessities for new clothing, most of his old having been rendered unfit for use by his illness. This was one of the extremes of life which he touched, and perhaps it helped to give him the broad human sympathy that always accompanied his resolute aggressiveness. He never told, or if he did it is not remembered, of his first fifteen years in this country, the working out of his indenture and his struggles for a livelihood. But he was in Vermont in 1776, for he then held a lieutenant's commission under Captain Fassett and was stationed at Jericho with a squad of men to hold a post of observation there. The men refused to serve because of the unsupported position, and cleared out, leaving Lieutenant Lyon to report the facts. It was strongly surmised that the officers were as willing as the men to get away from the post and Lyon and the others were court martialed and cashiered for cowardice. The story, which his political enemies were careful to keep alive all through his career was that he was presented with a wooden sword, and made to ride about the camp, and he was called in derision the "Knight of the wooden sword." But General Schuyler reinstated him, and in July, 1777, appointed him paymaster of the Northern army. Before the end of that year and after the battle of Bennington, we find him in Arlington and a laborer on the farm of Governor Chittenden, with whom he had apparently come to take possession of the confiscated estates of the Tories and who made him also deputy secretary for the Governor, and clerk of the court of confiscation until 1780. He got himself into one of his scrapes in later years and suffered some opprobrium, because he refused to give up the records of this court. He married the widow Beulah Galusha, daughter of the Governor, an intelligent, warm-hearted and benevolent, though rather coarse woman, and was soon a rising man. He had before wedded a woman by the name of Hosford, who died after bearing him four children. He became a captain and colonel of the militia and served the state in its contests with New York. He represented Arlington in the Legislature in 1779-'82, serving on important committees. He was one of the original grantees of Fair Haven under the new state's authority and moved there in 1783, having already established a saw and grist mill there. He erected an iron mill in 1785 and a [p.131] paper mill soon after. He manufactured paper from bass wood, and with some success, long years before it was thought of anywhere else, and in his iron mill he turned out hoes, axes and various agricultural implements, but the business was mainly the making of iron, from the ore imported from abroad, into nail rods which were then manufactured into nails by hand. During the time of his prosperity he employed a large number of hands. He drew distinctions of honor between his business and his public relations that could well be emulated in these days of subsidy and special privileges. Once he endeavored to get a legislative act giving him the exclusive right of slitting iron in the state and he counted every member from Bennington county as a supporter of the bill because a political friend. But after hearing the arguments on both sides he refused to support the measure himself and when his name was reached in the roll call he asked to be excused, because his conscience would not permit him to so use the trust of the people for his private benefit. He was for years the king-bee of Fair Haven, was selectman in 1788, 1790, and 1791, the town's representative in the General Assembly ten years continuously from 1783 to 1796, except 1785, 1786 and 1789, and he gave most of his time to town affairs till the admission of the state to the Union. He was a man of multifarious activities. Besides all his other business enterprises he started in 1793 a newspaper called "The Farmers Library" and later through his son James, a political sheet, the "Fair Haven Gazette." In 1786 he was assistant judge of the county court. He plunged into politics as soon as the state was admitted to the Union, became a red- hot Democratic leader, and immediately a candidate for Congress. He contested the election with Israel Smith and Isaac Tichenor in 1791, '93, '95. Party lines had not been very clearly formed then, but Tichenor stood for the Federalist tendencies, and between Smith and Lyon who were in political sympathy, it was a matter of personal choice. Lyon announced his candidacy as that of the "commercial, agricultural and manufacturing interests in preference to any of the law characters." At the first election, in August, 1791, he had a plurality-597 votes to 513 for Smith and 473 for Tichenor; but at the second trial Tichenor withdrew and Smith was elected by a majority of 391 over Lyon. The next election, in January, 1793, also required two trials, but Smith was elected. Lyon's remarkable strength among his neighbors was shown by the fact that in 1793 he got 355 of the 376 votes cast in Fair Haven. In 1795 he was elected in a close contest in which he and Smith were the only candidates, the vote being 1,804 to 1,783, and he took his seat in 1797, having grown steadily in the violence of his hatred of the Federalists. His first appearance in debate was in a long speech replying to the President's message. He and Andrew Jackson in the Senate had the distinction of being the two most rabid anti-Washington men in Congress. In January, 1798, he had a personal fray with Roger Griswold of Connecticutt that ruined his position in that body. In the course of a debate Griswold twitted him with the "wooden sword" story. Lyon spit in his face. Griswold started to give him a thrashing, but was prevented by his colleagues. A motion of expulsion against both was lost by a less than two-thirds vote, though it had a majority. In an address to his constituents the February following justifying his conduct, Lyon said that if he had borne the insult he should have been "bandied about in all the newspapers on the continent, which are supported by British money and federal patronage, as a mean poltroon. The district which sent me would have been scandalized." But perhaps the thing with which Lyon's name is most strikingly linked in history is his martyrdom to the alien and sedition law. At the October term of the United States court at Rutland in 1798 he was indicted for "scurrilous, scandalous, malicious, and defamatory language" about President Adams, written in June, fourteen days before the passage of the law, but published in the Windsor Journal the last of July. The language, though Lyonesque decidedly, was no worse than has been used thousands of times in every political campaign without other effect than an amused pity that men will so lose their heads, and the prosecution was an illustration of the dangerous and vicious tendency which Federalist ideas had taken after their great service in consolidating the Union. The article was about appointments and removals and the use of religion to make men hate each other-all legitimate though exaggerated argument-and the offensive words about President Adams were these: "Every consideration of public welfare swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation or selfish avarice." He was also accused of having "maliciously" procured the publication of a letter from France which reflected somewhat severely on the government. Lyon pleaded his own case at the trial, but was convicted and sentenced to four months imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. He was committed to jail at Vergennes and treated with inexcusable hardship. But the prosecution only increased his popularity. While in the jail, he was re-elected to Congress by five hundred majority. [p.132] The sentence expired in February, 1799, and he only saved himself from rearrest by proclaiming that he was on the way to Philadelphia, as a member of Congress. His journey was one of triumph in a coach and four under the American flag and with a succession of fetes along the way, especially at Bennington. He was for the time being a party and popular hero. Another effort was made to expel him, but without success. In the prolonged contest over the presidential election of 1800, he became prominent by finally casting the vote of the state, which had been divided in the House, for Jefferson, and in after years when out of temper with that great leader, he said, "I made him, and can unmake him." This was of course an exaggeration, as Bayard, of Delaware, also cast the vote of that state for Jefferson, while Maryland voted blank, and Jefferson had nine of the sixteen states, without Vermont. But his neglect of his extensive business while in jail and so immersed in politics, with the bitter antagonisms engendered by the prosecution, had ruined him financially and he determined to quit Vermont and start anew in life. So putting his affairs into liquidation, and settling his debts as best he could, on the expiration of his term in Congress he moved to Kentucky, established the first printing office in the state at what is now Eddyville, and again engaged in extensive business operations and was again elected to Congress in 1804, serving until 1810. He again fell into business disaster, owing to his failure during the war of 1812, to deliver to the government in season some ships he had contracted to construct, and he again struck out to new fields, going to Arkansas, whence he was, in 1820, chosen the first delegate to Congress, but died at Little Rock, August 1, before taking his seat. One of his sons, Chittenden Lyon, was also afterward a member of Congress. Another, Matthew, was a man of considerable business prominence in Kentucky, and a Jackson elector. General H. B. Lyon of Kentucky was also the latter's son. That this "ardent, combative, rough and ready Irishman" as Pliney H. White characterizes him, this "rough and wilful man" as A. N. Adams, the historian of Fair Haven, styles him, was a man of extraordinary qualities as his career sufficiently attests. Among the men with whom he came into friendly contact he was wonderfully popular. He was a forceful writer, an independent thinker, full of moral courage, and physical also, notwithstanding the episode of 1776. He dispensed a generous hospitality always. He was a business genius, and unsuccessful mainly because instead of looking out for himself alone he was always ambitious to build up prosperity around him. Perhaps the personal ugliness that so often appeared in him was due to the fact that like Ethan Allen he was often a deep drinker. One of the traditions still preserved at Arlington, where perhaps much of the old Tory feeling is handed down, is that of often seeing Allen, Lyon and most of the old Vermont heroes staggering drunk through the streets in squads after their meetings of state. In 1840, Congress refunded to Colonel Lyon's heirs the fine that he paid under the sedition law.