Word: cilley
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Congress has a proud history of conflict resolution. Lawmakers occasionally settled things at ten paces, until William Graves of Kentucky killed Jonathan Cilley of Maine in 1839, prompting Congress to pass an antidueling law. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, a master of invective, once derided a colleague as a "noisome, squat and nameless animal." In 1856 Preston Brooks, a South Carolina Congressman bent on avenging an insult to an infirm uncle in the Senate, came upon Sumner from behind and, guttapercha cane in hand, beat him senseless on the Senate floor. Brooks resigned but was immediately voted back into office...