A constituent grabbed Congressman Myer Strouse by the throat in an Ashland, PA barroom during the fall 1864 campaign.
Strouse, a German immigrant from Pottsville, won his seat in the 1862 midterms on an anti-war, anti-Lincoln, anti-emancipation platform. In 1864, the Democratic incumbent faced Howell Fisher of the “Union Party,” the name Republicans adopted amid the political chaos of the Civil War.
Strouse laid out his explicitly racist views (even at the time) on the floor of the House of Representatives in May 1864:
“We are opposed to waging war for the purpose of equalizing the negro with the white man, and we are opposed to shedding the white man’s blood, beggar and devastate the country to satisfy the insane and unnatural demands of the abolition hypocrites of New England or the humanitarian bigots and fanatics of old England.
We deprecate the abolition idea of negro equality and the consequent commingling of the Ethiopian with the pure Saxon and Celtic blood…”
Not every Democrat in Schuylkill County stood behind him. The Miners’ Journal, a Republican-aligned newspaper in Pottsville, reported the Ashland confrontation and turned it into a partisan attack:
On Monday evening last while Myer Strouse… was electioneering in Ashland, he entered a lager beer saloon, and encountering a prominent Democrat supposed to be disaffected, said, ‘so you belong to that son of a bitch party?’ meaning the Republican.
The gentleman to whom this coarse, brutal and vulgar speech was addressed, said nothing, but simply took [Strouse] by the throat, and choaked him so badly that his tongue took an airing.
An Irishman named Dougherty, attempted to interfere to save his representative, when the now thoroughly roused gentleman seized him by his collar and the seat of his pantaloons, and shied him across the room, the body in its progress knocking down a German partizan of Strouse.
The German gathered himself up as best he could, and rushed frantically from the place, exclaiming ‘Mien Gott in Himmel, vot a countries!’
We note the incident to show how unfit Strouse is morally as well as intellectually, to represent this District in Congress.
We understand that he is weakening himself considerably by the nonsensical and lying speeches he is delivering throughout the County.
We hope that he will continue speaking until the election, for every speech he delivers is a nail in his political coffin. Hundreds of respectable Democrats are disgusted with the man and will not vote for him at the approaching election.
Strouse beat Fisher anyway, 51% to 49%, and returned to Congress for a second term. In January 1865, he voted against the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, a vote depicted in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film “Lincoln.”
Read more about Myer Strouse and politics in the Coal Region during the Civil War era
Schuylkill County representative voted against the 13th amendment | January 1865
An election night murder in Tremont, Pennsylvania | 1864
Representative Galusha Grow and the Congressional Brawl | February 1858
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