The stain is still there. Or so they say.
Go to the east staircase of the House Wing of the U.S. Capitol, and the marble will show you a dark discoloration that cleaning crews have been unable to remove for more than a century. Capitol staff long ago stopped trying. The blood of William Preston Taulbee, a former Kentucky congressman turned lobbyist, soaked into the porous stone on February 28, 1890, and apparently it is staying.
Taulbee was shot by Charles E. Kincaid, a Louisville journalist barely five feet tall and weighing less than one hundred pounds. Taulbee was the Mountain Orator of eastern Kentucky, tall and lean, physically imposing in every room he entered. The physical mismatch between them was almost comic. The backstory was not.
The Mountain Orator
William Preston Taulbee was born October 22, 1851, near Mount Sterling in Morgan County, Kentucky. He was ordained as a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and had a gift for oratory that earned him a nickname he would carry all the way to Congress. In 1884, running as a Democrat representing Kentucky’s 10th district, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He won re-election in 1886. By 1887, he was a respected member of the House, well liked, considered a rising figure in the party.
Then came December 1887.
The Louisville Times Headline
The headline in the Louisville Times did not bury the lede: “Kentucky’s Silver-Tongued Taulbee Caught in Flagrante, or Thereabouts, with Brown-Haired Miss Dodge.”
The reporter was Charles E. Kincaid. He had located Taulbee inside the Patent Office model room, a space packed with thousands of miniature patent models that created conveniently secluded corners throughout the building. With him was Miss Dodge, a seventeen-year-old government clerk. Kincaid described her in print as “lovely, small, plump as a partridge, intense as sunshine and as saucy as a bowl of jelly.”
That is a remarkable thing to put in a newspaper.
Taulbee’s wife of seventeen years left him. His reputation did not recover. He chose not to seek re-election in 1888, and when he departed Congress in March 1889, he stayed in Washington and took up work as a lobbyist, still moving through the Capitol halls daily, still running into the man who had ruined him.
The Man with the Pen
Charles Euston Kincaid was born March 18, 1855, in Kentucky. He trained as a lawyer, served as municipal judge of Lawrenceburg in 1879, and edited a weekly newspaper before arriving in Washington in 1885 as the private secretary to Senator John Williams. He then became the Washington correspondent for the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, building a solid reputation in the capital press corps.
He was also, physically, a small man. Barely five feet tall. Under a hundred pounds.
Taulbee stood in sharp contrast. The New York Times described him as “of tall figure, with a frame sinewy and strong, but lean.” Every account of the two men together emphasizes the disparity. It made the eventual outcome all the more striking.
February 28, 1890
On February 28, 1890, they met twice inside the Capitol Building.
The first encounter was in the House corridor near the east door. According to a 1936 retrospective in the Evening Star, Kincaid had come to send a card to a member on the floor. Taulbee was nearby.
“Taulbee, so an account states, was near the door and accosted Kincaid, calling him vile names and refusing any communication with him, and Taulbee seized him by the ear.”
Evening Star, 1936 retrospective
Samuel Donaldson, the Doorkeeper of the House, stepped in. He defused the situation. Temporarily.
About twenty minutes before 2 o’clock, they crossed paths again near the southeastern entrance. This time it did not end with an argument.
“This time Kincaid pulled out a revolver and shot Taulbee in the head, the bullet striking in the vicinity of the left temple and coming out at the eye.”
Evening Star
The Evening Journal of Wilmington, Delaware described the scene:
“A pistol shot that echoed through the lofty corridors of the Capitol; a man staggering down the marble steps, his face covered with blood…”
Kincaid made no attempt to flee. He stood where he was and admitted to the shooting.
Eleven Days
Taulbee was carried first to his residence, then transferred to Providence Hospital on Capitol Hill. His wound was severe but not immediately fatal. He lingered for eleven days.
Dr. Coomes, the house physician at Providence Hospital, was with him through his final night. His account, printed in the Evening Star: “The dying man was delirious during the entire night and seemingly suffering intensely.”
“His suffering had been something terrible during this time; delirium, however, mercifully took away the consciousness of pain.”
Evening Star
William Preston Taulbee died on March 11, 1890, surrounded by his brother Dr. Taulbee, his son James, and Major Blackburn. He was thirty-eight years old. His death made this the first fatal shooting of a current or former congressman inside the U.S. Capitol.
The Trial
Kincaid was charged with murder. His trial opened in the District of Columbia Criminal Court on March 23, 1891, before Judge Andrew C. Bradley. The prosecution, led by Charles C. Cole and Howard C. Clagett, argued that the shooting was deliberate revenge, not self-defense. Kincaid had come to the Capitol armed. He had shot Taulbee in the head. The prosecution’s theory was simple: this was premeditated.
The defense, led by Charles H. Grosvenor and Jeremiah M. Wilson, argued the opposite. Kincaid took the stand in his own defense and described the moment before the shot:
“As soon as we recognized each other, Taulbee came toward me… I said: ‘You are going to kill me, are you?'”
Charles E. Kincaid, trial testimony, 1891
W. E. Curtis, a respected Washington correspondent, testified that Kincaid was “an amiable, peaceful, and quiet man.” A witness from Allegheny County placed Taulbee as the aggressor in the final confrontation. The jury also heard about the ear-grabbing attack from earlier that same morning.
On April 8, 1891, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
Kincaid personally thanked each juror. His sister, who had been in the courtroom every single day of the trial, wept with relief.
What Happened to Kincaid
After the acquittal, Kincaid returned to Kentucky with his sister and nephew. He served on the Kentucky Railroad Commission and worked for a time as an American diplomat. By 1896, he was back in the newspaper business, reporting for the Cincinnati Enquirer.
He died in 1906, at fifty-one years old.
He was remembered, at the time of his death, as the man who shot Congressman Taulbee.
The Stain
Capitol staff point visitors to a dark discoloration on the marble stairs of the east staircase in the House Wing. It has been there since at least the 1890s. Cleaning crews have not been able to remove it. At some point, apparently, they stopped trying.
Marble is highly porous. Blood that soaked into the stone in February 1890 could have stained it permanently, stubborn and real and entirely natural. Folklorists note that the “ineradicable bloodstain” is one of the oldest motifs in legend, the kind of detail that attaches to any violent death in a significant place. That does not make this one false. It just means the physical mark and the story around it have been reinforcing each other for 135 years, and there is no way to separate them now.
The stain is still there. Draw your own conclusions.