A Capitol Tour, Part VIII: Blood Stains Marble
A trip down the main marble stairway between the second and first floors of the US Capitol's House side tells a story about an 1890 shooting. Meet Charles Kincaid, William P. Taulbee and "Miss Dodge"
Links to my previous tour segments can be found here.
I don’t remember when I first noticed the black splotches on the grand marble stairway descending from the House chamber’s second-floor entrance towards the Capitol’s first floor. I’ve hurriedly traversed it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times over the past 43 years, rarely giving it a second thought.
Not generally opened to the public, it is still well-traveled by dozens if not hundreds of Members of Congress, staff, lobbyists, and other visitors. At the bottom of the steps to the right is the House Members’ restaurant, which is not open to the public. To the left and around the corner is the “carriage entrance” on the House’s east front. The Wright Patman Federal Congressional Credit Union has a convenient branch office to the right.
I remember thinking that there was probably a story behind those splotches. I first guessed someone spilled red wine since it can stain the marble, and, well, this was Congress. Several years ago, while attending a family friend’s wedding reception at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s historic Constitutional Hall near the White House, red wine consumption was verboten for that reason, even outdoors on the marble patio.
When guiding my tours from the Speaker’s lobby just off the House Chamber, we retrace our steps toward the Statuary Hall before making a right turn down the marble steps. After passing the first landing, I direct my guests to line up on both sides of the lower part of the “Y” shaped stairway in full sight of the splotches.
They otherwise wouldn’t notice and miss out on history. Let’s set the stage, courtesy of Encyclopedia.com:
Both Congressman William P. Taulbee of Kentucky and news reporter Charles E. Kincaid were rising stars in 1887. The 36-year-old son of a state senator, Taulbee was an attorney and an ordained Methodist minister. First elected to Congress in 1884, he was already a respected member of the House of Representatives and was called the "Mountain Orator" because of his tall, lean build and his ability to sway listeners. Kincaid, age 32, was also from the Blue Grass State. Originally a lawyer, he was elected the municipal judge of Lawrenceburg in 1879 and edited a weekly newspaper before going to Washington, D.C. in 1885 as Senator John Williams's private secretary. Kincaid later became the Washington correspondent for a number of prominent newspapers, including the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times. However, in December 1887, bad blood arose between him and Taulbee.
Kincaid had written a series of scathing stories about how Taulbee was profiting from his office. But what did him in was a story, based on this Washington Post clip that didn’t mention Taulbee’s name but had enough information for Kincaid to follow up. He certainly knew where to go.
Who knew this kind of salacious behavior occurred in our nation’s capital?
Kincaid’s subsequent post at the Louisville Times, an afternoon newspaper, named Taulbee as the philanderer. In a special dispatch published on December 10, 1897, Kincaide wrote, “Wm. Preston Taulbee, the Kentucky Congressman from the Kentucky District, woke this morning to find himself, if not famous, as much talked about, at least, as the President’s message. He is the frontispiece of a scandal that will forever destroy his influence and standing in the nation’s capital.”
Taulbee was accused in the story of being “caught in a most compromising position in a secluded spot in the model room of the Patent Office with a young female clerk.”
Kincaid caught up with “Miss Dodge,” a patronage employee of Congressman Taulbee. “She is a little beauty, bright as a sunbeam and saucy as a bowl of jelly,” Kincaid wrote. “She is petite of figure but plump as a partridge. Her hair is brown, her eyes blue, cheeks like peaches, lips like rosebuds tipped with dew.
What a way with words.
“She is apparently not more than eighteen or twenty and has great self-possession and buoyancy of spirit, to say nothing of her fascinating face and winning ways.” Before closing the conversation, she admitted to knowing Taulbee, her sponsor. “Mr. Taulbee is a gentleman, and I am a lady. I will swear on a stack of Bibles that I have done nothing wrong,” Kincaid quoted Dodge.
“What a mess this is for the ex-Methodist minister and Congressman from the grand old Commonwealth of Kentucky,” Kincaid’s penultimate sentence blurted.
Damage done. Taulbee reportedly would not only lose his wife of 17 years (his descendants deny that) and the mother of his five sons but would not seek reelection to a third term. He stayed in Washington to practice law and lobby. But his anger at Kincaid never subsided.
The six-foot, two-inch Taulbee constantly tormented the diminutive, 5-foot-tall Kincaid, a slight and sickly man. Encyclopedia.com again:
Taulbee once tossed Kincaid across a hallway. On other occasions, the former congressman dashed the correspondent against an iron railing and jammed Kincaid against the door of a streetcar. When the two were in an elevator, Taulbee slammed his heel down on the reporter's foot and held it there while his victim screamed in pain. The ex-representative once cornered Kincaid and said, "I ought to cut your throat." The reporter also received warnings from friends and politicians that Taulbee threatened to kill him and had gone to the Capitol's Press Gallery in search of his prey. Every time he met the former congressman, Kincaid did not have the physical strength to resist and he offered apologies in the hope that the attacks would lessen. But it was to no avail.
This NPR report tells what happened next on February 28, 1890.
Earlier that day, as Taulbee entered the House chamber, he and Kincaid had exchanged insults. Taulbee had thrown Kincaid around by the collar. Kincaid went home for his pistol.
Around 1:30 that afternoon, Taulbee and a friend headed downstairs to lunch at the House dining room.
The stairway is in a "Y" shape — twin staircases from the second floor to a landing, and a single flight from the landing to the first floor.
Taulbee and his friend took one staircase, and reporter Kincaid took the other. Kincaid caught up to them just below the landing, says historian Donald Ritchie.
"Can you see me now?" Kincaid reportedly said to the congressman.
As Taulbee turned toward Kincaid, his friend fled, leaving no eyewitnesses.
The reporter fired. The bullet went in under the former congressman's eye.
According to Ritchie, Taulbee bled profusely on the stairs:
"A policeman came rushing up and said, 'Who is responsible for this?' Kincaid was still standing [on the steps] and said, 'I did it.'"
A stain survives to this day on the marble stairs at the place where Taulbee was shot. It is rumored to be the stain left by the former congressman's blood.
Taulbee went home after the shooting, not believing he was seriously injured. He would die at Providence Hospital 11 days later.
Kincaid was charged with murder. US Senator Daniel Vorhees of Indiana was initially Kincaid’s lawyer, and his legal team included Congressman Charles Grosvenor of Ohio. Kincaid pled self-defense. The jury agreed, taking only a few hours to exonerate the correspondent in 1891. Kincaid would write for other newspapers, including the Cincinnati Inquirer. Kincaid died in 1906 at age 51.
Some say Taulbee’s ghost still haunts the Capitol.
After I told a shorter version of that story to a group of legislators visiting from Pakistan several years ago, the group's leader said, “just like back home.”
Someone once asked why I “celebrate violence” during my tours. I don’t. But events like this are an undeniable part of the American story. Fortunately, a reporter shooting a former Congressman-turned-lobbyist - or vice versa - hasn’t happened again. Hopefully, it never will. The story made quite an impression on our Pakistani friends, who realize that we, too, have had our violent domestic events. Our nation progresses, nonetheless, undeterred. So can they.
Next post: a quick trip back to the Senate’s beautiful Brumidi Corridor via the Crypt and a special place where the Capitol’s architects unsuccessfully planned for George Washington to be interred. But not without stopping at the Hawaiian statue of Father Damien and that of US Sen. Edward Dickinson Baker (R-OR) for a quick Civil War story.
Thanks for sharing this story, what a fascinating piece of history I never knew about.