In 1847, the unrepentant 29th American Congress voted to repeal a piece of legislation, enacted in 1812, that forbade “public procreation and all acts of a carnal nature” from “finding roost within the civic eye.” This repeal caused an outcry at the time, particularly in the then-fledgling Western states. One Oklahoma columnist expressed her outrage in a church circular: “Damnation shall rain like fire upon the heads of our deeply misguided congressmen.” This prophetic conjecture was wrong in its particulars, but correct in its general thrust. Four days after that circular went to press, Democratic Speaker of the House, John Wesley Davis of Indiana, was vaulted into a fiery fissure that split open the floor of the Capitol building.