In 1824, Andrew Jackson lost the presidential election and immediately claimed the election was stolen from him. Plenty of people believed him. Political parties bribed voters with free booze (easier to obtain than cash), and when that didn’t work, voter intimidation usually ensured the outcome.
By 1828, the election rules had changed to allow white males who owned little or no property to vote. These working-class white voters were the core group supporting Jackson. They loved his rants against the wealthy, big banks, and immigrants. Jackson was elected as the first populist president.
Jackson’s presidency coincided with two major changes in American society, which is why his message resonated with so many. The first change was an influx of economic refugees from Ireland and the German states. These refugees were mostly Catholics, allowing preachers seeking their 15 minutes of fame to proclaim that the Protestant foundation of our country was endangered.
Poor whites who supported Jackson had moved from the poverty of the countryside to the city slums in hopes of finding jobs to support their families. Now they found themselves competing for jobs against people who didn’t speak American English.
The other major change in American society during Jackson’s presidency was a shift in attitude about slavery. Americans were split on the morality of owning another human being. From the founding of the country, politicians had punted the issue into the future to avoid losing their next election.
These changes underpinned a rise in violence. In 1834 and 1835, there were 50 major riots, most of them rooted in fears of economic loss to new immigrants and freed slaves. The riots were lubricated by alcohol. It has been estimated that each American consumed five gallons of spirits (whiskey, rum, gin, or brandy) each year in the 1830s.
The shift in attitude about slavery gained speed in 1833, when slavery was abolished in England. England’s new law emboldened the American abolitionists. Of course, this being America, the abolitionists couldn’t agree among themselves. One segment, called the Colonizers, wanted to round up every black person in America and deport them to Africa. (Liberia was created by the U.S. for this purpose.) The other segment of abolitionists wanted to free the slaves and allow them to stay in the U.S. but wanted the races to remain separate on the grounds that blacks were inferior to whites.
The Colonizers were supported by James Watson Webb, publisher of the Courier and Enquirer. It had the widest circulation and therefore was the most powerful newspaper in the country. Webb was a master manipulator who would love today’s social media algorithms.
James Watson Webb
A typical story involved a group of white vigilantes who attacked a meeting of black abolitionists in New York City. The abolitionists were chased through the streets, fearing for their lives. Under the headline, “Black Riot!”, Webb ignored what really happened and created alternative facts about black aggression in breathless prose guaranteed to outrage his readers.
The other segment of abolitionists read The Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison, who harangued his enemies in terms guaranteed to evoke a violent response. Garrison spent most of his time scrounging for donations to keep his paper afloat while dodging mobs wanting to tar and feather him before hanging him from the nearest lamppost.
The unprincipled rhetoric in the rival newspapers fed the hysterical hate bubbling through society. The political catchphrase for all these fears was “amalgamation” or racial mixing. Amalgamation meant educating white kids and black kids together. It meant blacks and whites marrying and having children (as opposed to miscegenation, where white slave owners fathered children with their black slave women). Webb and his supporters implied that free black men were a threat to the purity and decency of white women.
When all this encouragement to ignorance, stupidity, and bigotry combined with alcohol and readily available guns, violence became inevitable. In every society, there is always a small group of individuals, usually poorly educated with lousy job prospects, who like to get drunk and fight. The bully boys of New York got their chance in 1834, egged on by Webb who routinely called for violence against anyone he didn’t like.
That year, New York City held elections for local offices. Webb organized a private militia (think Proud Boys and similar groups) to attack his political enemies and threaten voters brave enough to show up at the polls. Thanks to populist control of the city’s election commission, white males didn’t have to register to vote or show identification before voting.
Black men could vote if they could prove they owned $250 in property, but they were too intimidated (and too smart to identify their property for a future mob) to vote. The populists blatantly stole the election, all the while accusing their political enemies of trying to steal the election.
After stealing an election, the mob wasn’t ready to go home. On July 9, 1834, the mob attacked the home and business of prominent abolitionist, Arthur Tappan. Eyewitness accounts stated that “respectable” men stood on the sidewalks watching the mob with approval. The police were noted for their absence.
Arthur Tappan
After trashing Tappan’s home and looting his business, the mob moved into the Five Points slum, home to poor whites, immigrants, and most of New York’s free blacks. The mob was organized into gangs of thugs who approached their targets in small groups from various points. There is evidence that Webb engineered the violence, although this was never investigated or proven.
The rioting continued for a week, until the mob drifted out of the Five Points area toward respectable neighborhoods near Wall Street. At that point, populist Mayor Andrew Lawrence called in the National Guard to protect the Wall Street banks and the homes of wealthy New Yorkers. Having lost everything but his life, Arthur Tappan issued a pamphlet, Disclaimer, in which he said he would continue to fight for abolition of slavery but would oppose amalgamation.
The fear of amalgamation no longer sways most Americans. Animosity against new immigrants continues. Bribery with booze has been replaced with gerrymandered voting districts. But the threat of political violence remains. It is still the first option among populists.
This account of populism and political violence is based on The Republic of Violence, by J.D. Dickey (2022), a fascinating look at America in the 1830s and 1840s. Everything feels remarkably contemporary despite the passage of almost 200 years.
