"Scene in Uncle Sam's Senate. 17th April 1850"

Cartoon drawing of fight between Senators Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Henry Foote of Mississippi on the Senate floor.

A somewhat tongue-in-cheek dramatization of the moment during the heated debate in the Senate over the admission of California as a free state when Mississippi senator Henry S. Foote drew a pistol on Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri.
credit: Library of Congress

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