During its more than 200 year history, the United States Capitol has been the primary place where the Senate and House of Representatives pass the laws of the land and where Presidents are inaugurated and deliver their annual speeches on the state of the ‘Union. But while the Capitol was built to house legislative governance, it has also been the scene of violence in the form of fires, break-ins, brawls and shootings.
Fire damages the United States Capitol during the War of 1812
The ruins of the US Capitol following British attempts to burn the building; includes fire damage to the wings of the Senate and the House, the damaged colonnade of the House of Representatives propped up with firewood to prevent collapse, and the rotunda shell with the facade and roof missing.
VCG Wilson / Corbis / Getty Images
Construction on the Capitol officially began on September 18, 1793, when President George Washington laid the cornerstone. Blacks reduced to slavery carried out the actual construction of the Capitol. Congress began using the building in 1800, the year the federal government moved its operations from Philadelphia to Washington, DC Like many of DC’s early federal buildings, the design of the Capitol was based on the 19th century neoclassical style. , inspired by ancient Greek and Roman. architecture.
The construction of the Capitol continued until the War of 1812, when the mobilization of the country in time of war forced it to stop. A year after the start of the conflict between the United States and the British Empire, American troops burned down a capital of colonial Canada. In retaliation, British troops set fire to federal buildings in Washington, DC in 1814, including the White House and the Capitol.
The fire didn’t completely destroy the Capitol, but it did damage enough that some members of Congress suggested moving the federal government to Philadelphia or finding another city. Instead, workers rebuilt the Capitol and continued to expand it as the number of states – and their representatives in Congress – increased (today it covers over 1.5 million feet square and has more than 600 rooms). Over the following decades, interactions between these members of Congress became increasingly tense and violent.
READ MORE: Why isn’t Washington a state?
Violence in Congress erupts in the lead-up to the Civil War
Preston Smith Brooks, a strong advocate of slavery, assaulted Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist, with a cane on the floor of the United States Senate on May 22, 1856. Brooks attacked Sumner following a Sumner’s anti-slavery speech.
Universal History Archive / Getty Images
The pre-war period in America was characterized by violence against enslaved blacks, free blacks, and abolitionists. It was a time when anti-slavery newspapers faced mob violence, and the issue of slavery caused members of Congress to attack each other.
One of the most famous incidents of violence in Congress is the caning of Charles Sumner. In 1856, pro-slavery representative Preston Brooks beat the almost unconscious anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor. Brooks said he chose to attack Sumner in this way because he did not want to break an 1839 congressional dueling law, passed a year after one congressman killed another in a duel in Maryland.
Sumner’s caning was not an isolated incident. Historian Joanne B. Freeman identified more than 70 violent events between members of Congress while researching her book, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. In 1858, a scuffle between around 30 members of Congress broke out in the House of Representatives at 2 a.m. when a southerner grabbed a northerner by the throat. In 1860, pro-slavery members of Congress threatened an anti-slavery congressman with pistols and canes as he spoke against slavery in the House.
READ MORE: Violence in Congress before Civil War: From cannon shots and stabs to murder
When Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in 1860, the southern states responded by seceding and waging war on the Union. Southern Congressmen who had previously worked in the Capitol began to fight against the Union he represented – although during the Civil War the Confederate Army never captured DC.
Shootings and attacks on the Capitol
U.S. Capitol Police officers greet the coffins of Special Agent John Gibson (L-front) and Officer Jacob Chestnut as they stand in the Rotunda at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on July 28 1998. Gibson and Chestnut were killed on July 24 when Russell E. Weston Jr. opened fire inside the building after going through metal detectors at the door.
Joyce Naltchayan / AFP / Getty Images
In addition to duels and physical fights between members of Congress, non-members of Congress fired weapons or planted bombs on Capitol grounds. In 1954, four Puerto Rican Americans fired guns in the House of Representatives, injuring five members of Congress. The attackers said they acted to demand independence for U.S. territory from Puerto Rico. (Puerto Ricans have U.S. citizenship but cannot vote for president and do not have voting representatives in Congress.) The injured members of Congress survived, and all four shooters were sentenced to prison terms. President Jimmy Carter commuted one of their sentences in 1977 and granted clemency to the other three in 1979.
On March 1, 1971, a bomb exploded in the Capitol building. While the explosion did not injure anyone, it caused damage of some $ 300,000. A group calling themselves the Weather Underground claimed to be behind the bombing and said it was a protest against the US-backed bombing in Laos.
Thirteen years later, on November 7, 1983, a bomb ripped through the second floor of the Senate wing of the Capitol. The aircraft exploded late that evening and no one was injured, but it caused damage estimated at $ 250,000. A group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit later claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for military actions in Grenada and Lebanon. Seven people were eventually arrested in connection with the attack.
Political causes aside, individuals have committed or threatened violence on Capitol Hill lands over the decades. These incidents include a fatal shooting in 1890 triggered by a feud between a journalist and a congressman, a fatal 1998 shooting of two Capitol Hill police officers in 1998 by a mentally unstable man, and a 2016 episode in which the police of the Capitol shot and injured a mentally unstable man as he brandished a BB pistol at the Capitol Visitor Center.
On January 6, 2021, a day when representatives gathered to formalize the results of the presidential election, hundreds of rioters supporting President Donald Trump and seeking to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory pushed through the police barricades and stormed the Capitol, some smashing windows to enter its rooms. A woman was fatally struck by police gunfire inside the Capitol during the chaos.
