Judge Halliburton of Nova Scotia, thus explains this very useful and expressive word, which is ]iow as well understood as any word in our language:
"----All over America, every place likes to hear of its members of Congress, and see their speeches; and if they don't, they send a piece to the paper, enquirin' if their member died a natural death, or was skivered with a bowie knife, for they hante seen his speeches lately, and his friends are anxious to know his fate. Our free and enlightened citizens don't approbate silent members; it don't seem to them as if Squashville, or Punkinsville, or Lumbertown was right represented, unless Squashville, or Punkinsville, or Lumbertown makes itself heard and known, ay, and feared too. So every feller in bounden duty, talks, and talks big too, and the smaller the State, the louder, bigger, and fiercer its members talk.
"Well, when a critter talks for talk sake, jist to have a speech in the paper to send to home, and not for any other airthly puppus but electioneering, our folks call it Bunkum. Now the State of Maine is a great place for Bunkum--its members for years threatened to run foul of England, with all steam on, and sink her about the boundary line; voted a million of dollers, payable in pine logs and spruce boards, up to Bangor mills; and called out a hundred thousand militia (only they never come), to captur a saw mill to New Brunswick. That's Bunkum--all that flourish about Right o' Search was Bunkum--all that brag about hangin' your Canada sheriff was Bunkum--all the speeches about the Caroline, and Creole, and Right of Sarch, was Bunkum. In short, almost all that's said in Congress, in the Colonies, (for we set the fashions to them, as Paris gals do to our milliners,) and all over America, is Bunkum.
"Well, they talk Bunkum here, too, as well as there. Slavery speeches are all Bunkum; so are reform speeches, too," etc.
The origin of the phrase, as I have read it, is somehow so: A tedious speaker in Congress being interrupted and told it was no use to go on, for the members were all leaving the house, replied, "Never mind; I'm talking to Buncombe." Buncombe, in North Carolina, was the place he represented.
Washington is the theatre of the worst passions in our nature: chicanery lurks within the cabinet, distrust and envy without, while fawning sycophancy environs it round about. To sum it up, it is a little of government--a great deal of bumcum, sprinkled with a high seasoning of political juggling, with but one end and aim--the spoils of Uncle Sam.--Robb, Squatter Life, p. 17.