Election Shenanigans

Quill Pen

Contentious elections have always been a feature of American politics starting with the very first presidential and Congressional elections in 1789. The election almost didn’t happen because Rhode Island, North Carolina and New York had not yet ratified the brand new Constitution.

The Constitution was cooked up by the Continental Congress, a group of top 1% white men who owned real estate or businesses or both.  Fortunately for American democracy, these men were both pragmatic and visionary.  They aspired to create the most perfect democracy in the world.  But they pragmatically gave up on perfection by compromising on the issue of slavery in order to induce the slave owners from the southern states to support ratification. 

Even with the compromises, the new Constitution was controversial.  Many people feared that giving too much power to a central government would inevitably lead to dictatorship.  To win support for ratification, a public education campaign was implemented.  The Federalist Papers were op-ed pieces in which each installment explained the rationale behind the powers outlined in the Constitution.  The authors were Alexander Hamilton (1st Treasury secretary), James Madison (4th president), and John Jay (1st chief justice of the Supreme Court).

The Federalist Papers, edited by Clinton Rossiter

The Federalist Papers were published in newspapers, the 18th century version of CNN and Fox News.  But soon the op-ed campaign was jeopardized by a new post office regulation that slowed the distribution of newspapers across the country.  Federalists, including George Washington, cried foul play because they feared the slowdown would give the upper hand to anti-federalists.  

In the end, New York ratified the Constitution and the new government was secured.  But the federalists remained twitchy going into the first congressional elections. The country was evenly divided and federalists worried that Congress would be dominated by anti-federalists. If anti-federalists gained control of both houses of Congress, the new model of democracy would be killed off before it could take root. 

When the votes were counted, the House had a pro-federalist majority and the Senate was balanced between pro- and anti-federalists. Congress set to work on two important tasks.  The first task was to ensure that the Electoral College properly voted on a president.

Washington Monument

On February 4, 1789, the Electoral College unanimously elected George Washington as president.  Although Washington didn’t campaign to become president, he was the most widely respected man in the country and there was never any doubt he would be elected president.  He was officially notified on April 14, 1789.

The second task for the first term of Congress was to hash out the details of how the government would actually function.  Today, regulatory agencies handle the details. One hot topic was a Congressional veto. Half the Senate distrusted a powerful presidency and wanted the power to retain Cabinet members who opposed the president’s policies. The Senate vote was a tie, leaving Vice President John Adams to break the deadlock by voting “no”. The President continues to control the Cabinet.

John Adams

Having worked all summer, Congress adjourned on September 30, 1789. That’s when the politicking really took off.  The founders of the U.S. were avid letter writers, the social media of their day, and they exchanged lengthy letters seeking allies.  Before long, the members of Congress were self-selecting into groups based on their vision of the country.

Federalists wanted a strong central government and an economy based on industry while states-rights advocates wanted a weak central government and an economy based on agriculture.  Basically, that translated into northern states with factories against southern states with slave plantations.  That regional breakdown continues to influence elections today.

Polling Station

Washington retired in 1797 after his second presidential term. That was the cue for the new political parties to contest the presidential and Congressional election of September 1797.  Voting was a raucous affair. Most polling locations were taverns. The political candidates offered each voter free whiskey and empty political promises.  Voters publicly announced their choice then bellied up to the bar for another round on the house.  The candidate who supplied the most whiskey won.

Washington: The Indispensable Man, by Flexner

The Great Decision, by Sloan & McKean

If you would like a readable one volume biography of George Washington, see Washington: The Indispensable Man, by James Thomas Flexner (1974 edition).  For a description of whisky voting, see The Great Decision, by Cliff Sloan and David McKean (2009)   

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An American Tragedy

Early in the morning on December 29, 1890, cavalrymen from the U.S. Seventh Cavalry descended on a group of Lakota (Sioux) Indians camped in a ravine at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The cavalrymen had been ordered to confiscate all the weapons in the encampment.

The Lakota were Ghost Dancers, practitioners of a new religion sweeping through Indian Country. They were camped in the ravine because it offered shelter from the winter weather. The day before, they had surrendered to the cavalry troops after fleeing violence at a nearby reservation.

The cavalrymen upended the Lakota shelters and scattered the contents in their search for weapons much like a modern SWAT team searching the premises of suspected violent felons. As two cavalrymen tried to take a gun from an Indian, the gun fired. No one was hit.

But four Hotchkiss guns set up on the rim of the ravine, which fired one shell per second, opened fire at point-blank range. Most of the Lakota men died fighting a hopeless delaying action while their women and children tried to escape. Some Indians who escaped the bloodbath in the ravine were chased across the prairie and gunned down.

The cavalry lost 30 dead, and 18 soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Estimates of the Lakota dead vary from 150 - 300, mostly women and children. Most Americans were more proud of the fighting spirit of the cavalrymen than appalled at the death of Indians.

Why did the cavalry use excessive force against a group of half-starved Indians? Horrific violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum, so it helps to look at what was happening in America.

In 1890, the national census confirmed what many Americans already feared about the country’s demography. A third of the population consisted of Southern and Eastern European immigrants most of whom were Catholic. Adding these darker-skinned Europeans to the Hispanics in Western states and blacks in the South meant America was becoming browner—and less of the white Protestant country it identified as.

By 1890, more Americans were living in cities and working on the factory floor than living in the countryside working on farms, which challenged America’s identity as a society based on agriculture.

Most Americans were also poorer due to the Panic of 1873, a financial meltdown caused by corrupt Wall Street financiers. Indebted farmers screamed for relief from banks. Factory workers struggled to protect their jobs and wages. The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age used some of their obscenely huge profits to hire company thugs to kill union organizers and fixers to ensure politicians didn’t look too closely at their businesses. The Middle Class found their financial and social standing squeezed on all sides.

America was falling apart. Reform-minded Americans decided to save America by integrating all the disparate pieces. An example that still exists is the Pledge of Allegiance, which was created in 1891 to integrate immigrant children. Unfortunately, reformist zeal to assimilate the disparate pieces smacked into another American tradition: racism.

And that brings us back to the Lakota Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee. Reforming Americans had long since decided that Indians had to be assimilated because Indian culture was inferior to white culture. They were frustrated that it was taking so long. Then a new religion swept through Indian Country in 1889 – 1890.

The Ghost Dance emphasized peaceful relations with whites, working for wages, education, and a belief in a better world to come. Ghost Dancers mixed Christian practices with traditional beliefs. American reformers were appalled. The Indians weren’t assimilating; they were indulging in a religious cult and they needed to be stopped.

The military also had an agenda. By 1890, the Indian Wars were officially over and Congress was threatening to cut military appropriations. The Army needed to prove it was still needed, and a quick round-up of rebellious, non-assimilating Indians was the perfect opportunity. Racism, cultural chauvinism and religious freedom created an American tragedy.

There are many books on Indian-white conflicts. A perennial bestseller, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (1971), is credited with changing white Americans’ perception of Indians. A recent addition to discussions about the Ghost Dance is God’s Red Son by Louis S. Warren (2017).

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