Who is Matthew Lyon?
Lyon D. Evans, Jr. (born 1947) is
a direct descendent of Matthew Lyon (1749-1822) and his son Chittenden
Lyon (1787-1842). Lyon Evans' lifelong fascination with history (reflected
in his journalism experiences and his B.A. and M.A. in History) and in
storytelling and mythmaking (M.A. and Ph.D. in English) began in childhood:
his great-grandmother, Frances Lyon Doughty (1866-1965), would tell stories
of their colorful ancestor (she was Matthew Lyon's great-granddaughter).
Some have claimed to discern a similarity or family resemblance in temperament
and career between Matthew Lyon and his great-great-great-great-grandson,
Lyon D. Evans, Jr. Both worked for a time in the newspaper trade.
Lyon Evans, Jr., however, never had Matthew Lyon's talent for making money.
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Born in County Wicklow, Ireland, Matthew
Lyon came to America as an indentured servant at age 14 in 1764, and by
hard work and thrift soon earned his freedom. During the Revolution,
Matthew Lyon fought with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and helped
capture Fort Ticonderoga. After Independence, he became wealthy through
his discovery that paper could be manufactured from wood pulp. Matthew
Lyon founded the village of Fair Haven, Vermont, in 1783, built the largest
mansion in Fair Haven, and established the Fair Haven Gazette,
a weekly newspaper, serving as publisher and editor and using the paper
to express his political opinions in the early years of the Republic. A
plaque honoring Matthew Lyon is displayed on the village green in Fair
Haven. In the 1790s, Lyon, a radical Jeffersonian Republican, earned
the ire of the rival Federalists by denouncing President John Adams for
alleged monarchist pretentions and conduct, in the Fair Haven Gazette
and
in his twice-a-month, 36-page periodical, The Scourge of Aristocracy
and Repository of Important Political Truth.
Elected to Congress in 1796, after
having served in the Vermont legislature, Lyon continued his tirades against
Adams and the Federalists in speeches from the House floor. On one
occasion he responded to insults hurled at him by Federalist Roger Griswold
of South Carolina by spitting on Griswold, thereby earning the nickname
"Spitting Lyon, the Wild Irishman from Vermont." Subsequently Griswold
attempted to rebuke Lyon by caning him on the floor of the House.
Lyon, however, managed to make his way to the House fireplace, grab a fireplace
tong, defend himself with the tong, and inflict severe injuries on Griswold.
A lithograph depicting this incident, widely circulated at the time (and
reprinted many times since), helped make Matthew Lyon a figure of national
celebrity and notoreity.
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In 1798, Matthew Lyon was arrested
for violating the Sedition Act, a controversial law opposed vehemently
by Lyon but passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress and signed by
President Adams, which prohibited any American citizen from making defamatory
statements about the President. The first person arrested for violating
the Sedition Act, Matthew Lyon was tried, by a jury Lyon charged was packed
against him, convicted, fined $1,060.96, and sentenced to four months in
jail.
As a result of his conviction and imprisonment,
Matthew Lyon became a political martyr and a national hero to many, and
he easily won re-election to Congress from his Vermont district, despite
being unable to campaign as he was incarcerated at the time. After
serving out his sentence in Vermont, Lyon made his way by carriage to Washington,
D.C., to take his seat in the House of Representatives. Thousands
of citizens lined his route from Vermont to Washington to give "Spitting
Lyon" a hero's welcome and cheer him on his way.
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The Sedition Act was declared unconstitutional
by the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures in 1799, the first invocation
of a principal later adopted by the United States Supreme Court and an
opening skirmish in the two-centuries'-long struggle between the Federal
government and "States' Rights." The overwhelming defeat of John
Adams in the presidential election of 1800 was due in no small part to
the furor that resulted from the arrest and conviction of Matthew Lyon.
Ironically, it was Matthew Lyon who cast the deciding vote in the House
of Representatives that elected his hero, Thomas Jefferson, as the nation's
third President. (The presidential election was thrown into the House
after the Electoral College deadlocked between Jefferson and Aaron Burr.)
When the Sedition Act came up for renewal in 1801, the House overwhelmingly
voted to allow the unpopular law to expire.
Declining to stand for re-election
to his Vermont House seat in 1800, Matthew Lyon removed with his second
wife (a daughter of Governor Chittenden of Vermont) and younger children
to Kentucky, where he settled in the newly-established village of Eddyville,
bought land for farming, and built a nail factory, a mill, and the Eddyville
shipyards on the Cumberland River. In 1801 Matthew Lyon was elected
to the Kentucky legislature and in 1802 he was elected to the U.S. House
of Representatives, becoming one of only three Americans elected to Congress
from two states. He was re-elected three times and served eight years.
In the House, Lyon became the leader of the Jeffersonian Republicans (the
forerunner of the modern Democratic party) and was the first to propose
that presidential candidates be nominated by national conventions rather
than by congressional caucus. He was defeated for re-election in
1810.
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In 1812, when war broke out with Great
Britain, Matthew Lyon expended most of his fortune building gunboats and
transports for the war effort at his Eddyville shipyard. He did so
on speculation, without first securing government contracts. The
boats were destroyed in a single storm prior to their engagement against
the British, and Lyon, never reimbursed for their cost, was financially
ruined. Matthew Lyon later removed to St. Louis and ran for Congress
to represent the new Territory of Missouri, but he was defeated by fewer
than a hundred votes.
In 1820, at age 70, Matthew Lyon was
appointed United States factor (or agent) for the Cherokee Nation in the
Territory of Arkansas by President James Monroe. Later that year,
Matthew Lyon ran for Congress from the Arkansas Territory but lost by 61
votes. (The plaque honoring Lyon on the village green in Fair Haven, Vermont,
erroneously states that Matthew Lyon is the only person elected to Congress
from three states. That would have been true, had he been elected
in Missouri or Arkansas.) On August 1, 1822 (the third birthday
of Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick), shortly after completing
an exhausting 3,000 mile, five-month round-trip journey by flatboat from
Arkansas to New Orleans to sell furs, pelts, and Indian commodities, Matthew
Lyon, age 73, died of a fever in Spadra Bluff, Arkansas. He was reburied
in Eddyville in 1833. In 1840, Congress voted to posthumously exonerate
Matthew Lyon for his 1798 conviction under the Sedition Act and to return
Lyon's fine of $1,060.96 (with interest) to his heirs.
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During his long life, Matthew Lyon
fathered twelve children by his two wives. (His first wife, the mother
of Lyon's four oldest children, died in 1782.) Matthew Lyon's fourth
child Laura died in Eddyville and her grave is the oldest in the Eddyville
cemetery. Lyon's sixth child and second son, Chittenden (1787-1842),
a four-term Congressman from Kentucky and the grandfather of Lyon Evans,
Jr.'s great-grandmother Frances Lyon Doughty, also is buried in the Eddyville
cemetery. (Much of the original settlement was abandoned and has been under
water since the Cumberland River was dammed to create Lake Barkley in the
1960s. The Eddyville cemetery, however, is on high ground and remains intact.)
Contrary to popular belief, Lyon County, Kentucky, formerly part of Caldwell
County, created in 1854, was named after Chittenden Lyon, not Matthew.
One of Matthew Lyon's grandsons, Hyland
B. Lyon (1836- ? ), a West Point graduate, was a decorated Confederate
general during the Civil War. Another Lyon grandson, Nathaniel Lyon
(1818-1861), also a graduate of West Point, was a Union general who became
a national hero and martyr after leading his outnumbered troops in battle
against Confederate forces at Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Missouri.
Of this Lyonian chip off the old block, who died with his boots on, Herman
Melville wrote in "Lyon" (in Battle-Pieces [1866]), discussed
in Lyon Evans Jr.'s doctoral dissertation:
Some hearts there are of deeper sort,
Prophetic, sad,
Which yet for cause are trebly clad;
Known death they fly on;
This wizard-heart and heart-of-oak had Lyon. [. . .]
This seer foresaw his soldier-doom,
Yet willed the fight,
He never turned; his only flight
Was up to Zion,
Where prophets now and armies greet pale Lyon.
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Sources:
Aleine Austin, Matthew Lyon:
"New Man" of the Democratic Revolution, 1749-1822.
(State College, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1981)
Tom W. Campbell,
Two Fighters
and Two Fines: Sketches of the Lives of Matthew Lyon and
Andrew Jackson. (Little Rock, Arkansas: The Pioneer Publishing
Co., 1941)
Howard P. Vincent, ed., Collected
Poems of Herman Melville. (Chicago: Hendricks House, 1947)
Return to Lyon
Evans, Jr.'s Home Page
links: Web site of Lyon
County, Kentucky
official Matthew
Lyon biography
official Chittenden
Lyon biography
Chittenden Lyon letter
General Hyland
B. Lyon biography
Hyland B. Lyon letters
Revised 8/11/99