Alcohol and Congress have gotten along just fine since the earliest days on the Hill, when the preferred meeting places for one and all were the local taverns. For some, heading across the street was apparently too much of a hassle, and thus they wanted more convenient places to tipple. They did not want anyone to know what they were up to, either. Thus were born the bars in the Capitol.
The earliest reference I have been able to find to these watering holes was in an article I found by chance in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch of February 22, 1863. According to them, there had been until recently, “three drinking bars where they could obtain liquor.” Vice President Hamlin had closed one of these due to the “shameful Saulsbury exhibit.”
Senator Willard Saulsbury [pictured] of Delaware had, indeed, acted in a most shameful manner. After giving a speech in which he called President Lincoln “the weakest man ever placed in high office” and saying that if he “wanted to paint a despot, he would paint the hideous form of Abraham Lincoln,” Hannibal Hamlin told the Sergeant-at-Arms George T. Brown to take the Senator into custody. After a short discussion, during which Saulsbury pulled a revolver out of his pocket and played with it for a time, the Sergeant-at-Arms managed to get Saulsbury to leave the chamber. A half hour later, Saulsbury returned and was again ejected. After returning one last time, was he finally removed.
Other accounts indicate that Saulsbury went so far as to hold the revolver to the Sergeant-at-Arms’s head, though contemporary newspapers seem to have glossed over this extreme breach of decorum.
The general opinion was that Saulsbury had been drunk, and this is why Hamlin shut down the one bar under his control.
However, stated the Dispatch, this was not the end of the story:
Senators, by walking a little further to a place nearly under the room of the Supreme Court of the United States, known as “The Hole in the Wall,” can be supplied with the ardent to their utmost desire.
Later accounts indicate that the name was far from misleading, though, beyond its name, there was little consensus on the facts surrounding it. All agreed that The Hole in the Wall was small, being only 10 feet in diameter. Whether the room was round or octagonal room was subject to debate, as well as when it had opened. Some said that it had been around for 20 years, while others gave its start as only 10 years prior. No references seem to exist before the article in the Dispatch, so for most of its existence, it was unknown but to the Senators who imbibed there. Even afterwards, when public attention caused it to be closed, not much was written. It apparently sported a sign over its entrance that stated that it was “Exclusively for Senators.” The Alexandria Gazette mentioned that it was “accessible in the rear of the old Senate post office,” and added the following intriguing tidbit:
Within a loyal American of African descent dispensed Senatorial inspiration for twenty years.
Detail of a plan of the Capitol showing the old Supreme Court chamber and the possible location of The Hole in the Wall. The room is indeed almost exactly 10 feet in diameter, according to the scale elsewhere on the drawing. (LOC)
None of the floor plans of the Capitol from this time indicate where the Hole in the Wall once was – nor is there an indication of where the “old Senate post office” might have been. In a plan of the Capitol from the time before the 1850s expansion, a round room can be seen directly next to the old Supreme Court chamber, and thus under the Supreme Court chamber that was being used in 1863. There are further four round rooms surrounding the crypt, but it is much less likely that any of these is the room in question.
Next week: The closing of The Hole in the Wall.