Limits of political engagement in antebellum America: A new look at the golden age of participatory democracy

Journal of American History

Volumn 84, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 855-885

  Altschuler, Glenn C ^a   Blumin, Stuart M ^a  

^a Department of Obstetrics Gynecology   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33646173388     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2953083     Document Type: Article

References (142)

1. Jean H. Baker, Affairs of Party; The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1983), 23, 269, 271;
2. William E. Gienapp, "'Politics Seem to Enter into Everything': Political Culture in the North, 1840-1860," in Essayson American Antebellum Politics, 1840-1860, cd. Stephen E. MaizlishandJohnJ. Kushma (College Station, 1982), 66;
3. Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986), 13.
4. For Andrew Jackson's statement, see Joel H. Silbey, The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics before the Civil War (New York, 1985), 13.
5. Robert H. Wiebe, Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy (Chicago, 1995), 74, 81.
6. McGcrr, Decline of Popular Politics, 30-33, 17;
7. Wiebe, Self-Rule, 74;
8. Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, 1991), 48.
9. The ready acceptance by historians of the reality of this ideal is evident in unsubstantiated claims of widespread political participation and commitment. Phillip Shaw Paludan, for example, provides no evidence to support his view that "a high percentage of the eligible male population of any town was very likely to have been a member of the town council, commissioner of roads, mayor." Phillip Shaw Paludan, "A People's Contest": The Union and Civil War, 1861-1865 (New York, 1988), 10.
10. Similarly, William G. Shade asserts with no documentation that "over one-third of the white adult males took part in party organizations as members of county committees."
11. William G. Shade, Democratizing the OU Dominion: Virginia and the Second Party System, 1824-1861 (Charlottesville, 1996), 83.
12. William Gicnapp dismisses a contemporary complaint of "the mere chicanery of politics," sufficiently degrading "to drive every man of taste and feeling into deeper shades of private life," as something that "should not be taken at face value." Gienapp, '"Politics Seem to Enter into Everything,'" 43f4. Michael F. Holt recognizes political disaffection only in the early 1850s, when it contributed to the destruction of the second party system. He does not adequately explain the sudden appearance of such disaffection and clearly implies that an affirmative attitude toward politics was the norm among voters during most of the antebellum era. Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York, 1978), 6, 36.
13. Sec, for example, Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, 1966);
14. Silbey, American Political Nation;
15. William E. Gicnapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York, 1987);
16. Ronald P. Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s-1840s (New York, 1983);
17. Edward Pessen, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Homewood, 111., 1969);
18. Paul Bourke and Donald DcBats, Washington County: Politics and Community in Antebellum America (Baltimore, 1995);
19. Kenneth J. Winkle, The Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio (New York, 1988);
20. Thomas E. Jeffrey, State Parties and National Politics: North Carolina, 1815-1861 (Athens, Ga., 1989);
21. and Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power. The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 1990).
22. The best analysis, in our view, is Formisano's discussion of geopolitical cores and peripheries in The Transformation of Political Culture. Political scientists have on occasion probed variations in political engagement among electorates.
23. Sec, for example, Lester W. Milbrath, Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? (Chicago, 1965). Political historians do not ordinarily use the term "golden age" to describe electoral participation in this era, although it is often implied. Gienapp does observe that many post-Civil War Americans looked back on the antebellum decades as a "golden age." Gienapp, '"Politics Seem to Enter into Everything,'" 65.
24. We focus here on participation as a round of activities-organizing party affairs, attending nominating conventions and rallies, running for office, voting. On the cultural underpinnings of such activities, and of popular attitudes toward politics, see Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, '"Where Is the Real America?': Politics and Popular Consciousness in the Antebellum Era," American Quarterly, 49 (June 1997), 225-67. Our town selections were shaped in part by the availability of newspapers on microfilm. Although the degree of partisan competitiveness was not a factor in our selections, the towns provide a range of competitive situations. In none does it appear that one party's continuing dominance primarily shaped political engagement. By "election cycle" we mean the full range of local, state, and national elections carried out in any locality, which is observable in any three-year period that includes a presidential election. The three cycles we examine represent the beginning, middle, and end of the antebellum party era, provide a range of campaign intensities, and permit the most accurate and complete linkage of political and communal activists to the manuscript schedules of the federal population census.
25. The "party in the electorate" is defined and distinguished from the "organization proper" and the "party in office" in Frank J. Sorauf, "Political Parties and Political Analysis," in The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, ed. William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham (New York, 1967), 37-38.
26. Greenfield Gazette & Mercury, Oct. 19, 1841;
27. Kingston Democratic Journal, May 5, 1852, Aug. 10, 1859;
28. Franklin Democrat, Aug. 4, 1851. R>r a description of a "spirited" caucus, sec ibid., Sept. 22, 1851.
29. The exception was the Whig county convention of October 1840, when 23 towns were represented. However, the total vote at this convention was 47, which suggests that all or some towns were underreprescnted. See Greenfield Gazette & Mercury, Oct. 13, 1840.
30. Franklin Democrat, June 1, 8, I860.
31. Greenfield Gazette & Mercury, May 4, 1841;
32. Franklin Democrat, Oct. 14, 1850;
33. Greenfield Gazette & Courier, Oct. 12, 1858;
34. Kingston DemocraticJournal, Sept. 7, 1859. At the Democratic county convention of 1850, the towns of Kingston and Saugertics had their 3 delegates. But each town had selected 33.
35. Ulster Republican, Sept. 11, 1850. Some delegates may have been selected to honor or to cement potential activists to the party. But it is also possible that large numbers were selected in order to be sure that someone would attend.
36. Franklin Democrat, Aug. 10. 1860;
37. Greenfield Gazette & Mercury, Oct. 19, 1841;
38. Greenfield Gazette & Courier, Oct. 25, 1842;
39. Franklin Democrat, Oct. 25, 1842, Aug. 9, 1858;
40. Kingston Democratic Journal, Sept. 7, 1859, July 25, 1860;
41. Ulster Republican, Dec. 31, 1851.
42. Marietta Intelligencer, May 27, 1841;
43. Marion Buckeye Eagle, Aug. 2, 1850.
44. The Marion Democratic Mirror reported only 8 of 15 townships represented at a Whig county convention in 1852 and only 8 delegates at a similar convention in 1850. Marion Democratic Mirror, Sept. 17, 1852, Sept. 20, 1850. The Eagle reported 10 townships represented at the 1852 convention and remained silent about the 1850 convention.
45. Marion Buckeye Eagle, Sept. 16, 1852, Sept. 20, 1850.
46. Marion Democratic Mirror, July 2, Aug. 9, 1850, Sept. 19, 1851, Sept. 3, 1852; Marion .Mirror, Sept. 29, 1859. The Mirror was able to claim full township representation a year later. See ibid., Aug. 16, 1860. Both parties were having somewhat more success in assembling county conventions during these years, but the party papers made few claims about attendance at township caucuses. Marion Republican, March 1, I860, tor claims of full township representation at county conventions, see ibid., Sept. 30, 1858 (where the convention is described as "one of the fullest we have had for years"), Sept. 29, 1859, Sept. 13, I860.
47. Weekly Dubuque Tribune, April 30, 1851, May 8, 1850.
48. Dubtique Daily Times, June 5, 1858;
49. Dubuque Herald, May 12, 1860;
50. Dubuque Miners' Express, March 20, 1850;
51. Dubuque Daily Times, March 21, 1859-17
52. Augusta Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, March 5, 1850, July 23, Aug. 20, 1851;
53. ClarksvilleJeffersonian.Junz 11, July 16, Nov. 5, 1851, June 23, May 12, 1852.
54. Augusta Daily Constitutionalist, June 18, June 22, June 24, July 16, June 5, 1859.
55. Clarksvillejeffersonian,)i.n. 12, 1859;
56. Clarksville Chronicle, March 11, Feb. 11, 1859;
57. Clarksvillejeffersonian, June 8, 1859, Jan. 11, 25, July 18, 1860. The Opposition party here and in other southern states was the group of former Whigs, Know-Nothings, and others who continued to oppose the increasingly powerful Democrats.
58. Opeloitsas Courier, May 19, 1860.
59. Dubuque Daily Times, Aug. 25, 1859;
60. franklin Democrat, July 18, 1859;
61. Clurksville Chronicle, Oct. 1, 1858. Despotism is the central simile in this analysis of local caucuses by the New Orleans Picayune, reprinted in the Opelousas Courier, Oct. 2, 1858: "Primary assemblies are a mere blind for the eyes of the masses. They seem to rule, but like the Roman Senate in the time of the first Caesars, only record the edicts of masters. ... he who dreams the people had anything to do with the result, labors under a pleasant but irrational hallucination."
62. Ulster Republican, Dec. 31, 1851;
63. Augusta Daily Constitutionalist, March 1, 1860.
64. On conventions as open to debate, sec, for example, Silbey, American Political Nation, 60, 121, 221
65. ; and Silbey, Partisan Imperative, 65. Most historians pay no attention to the character of nominating caucuses and conventions.
66. Augusta Daily Chronicle & Sentinel, April 23, 1840.
67. Franklin Democrat, Oct. 18, 1858.
68. Manuscript Population Schedules, Richmond County, Georgia, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 (microfilm: reel 135, M 653), Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29 (National Archives, Washington, D.C.); U.S. Department of Interior, Census Office, Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, 1864), 60-61. Southern counties were not ordinarily divided into towns or townships. In Richmond County, as in most of the South, the county convention served as the primary, grass-roots party caucus. Hence, the county, not the town, is the proper unit for analysis. The city of Augusta had its own government and was divided into wards that sometimes organized for municipal elections. These organizations, however, did not caucus to send delegates to county conventions. Occasional efforts to organize the county by city wards and rural militia districts did not succeed. Paul Bourkc and Donald DeBats observe a political elite in Washington County, Oregon, where the party organizers, delegates, and nominees "accounted for much of the wealth, professional skill, and experience to which the county could lay claim."
69. Bourke and DeBats, Washington County, 149.
70. Sec also Winkle, Politics of Community.
71. Manuscript Population Schedules, Richmond County, Georgia, Eighth Census of the United States, I860. Of the 110 participants, 3 men were listed in the census with artisanal occupational titles, but their reported wealth strongly suggests that these men were in reality manufacturers, retailers, or nonmanual businessmen of some sort. The men were a "carriage maker" whose property placed him in the top 5% in the distribution of wealth among adult white males; a "butcher" who placed in the top 10%; and a "gunsmith" in the top 20%. For a discussion of manufacturing or retailing "artisans" and the sometimes misleading nature of artisanal labels in historical sources, see Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Clan: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York, 1989), 68-73.
72. Manuscript Population Schedules, Marion County, Ohio, Eighth Census of the United States, I860 (microfilm: reel 1006, M 653), Records of the Bureau of the Census.
73. Political historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to the nomination process. For comparison, see Silbey, Partisan Imperative, 65-66;
74. and Silbey, American Political Nation, 46-71, 115-24.
75. Rondout Courier, Oct. 31, 1851.
76. Marion Republican, May 24, 31, June 30, 1860;
77. Marion Mirror, Nov. 1, 1860.
78. Greenfield Gazette & Courier, June 28, Aug. 2, Sept. 6, 1852;
79. Franklin Democrat, Oct. 18, 1852.
80. Greenfield Gazette & Courier, Sept. 15, 22, Oct. 13, 27, Nov. 3, 1851;
81. Rone/out Courier, June 27, Sept. 12, 1851;
82. Augusta Daily Constitutionalist, Sept. 21, 1859.
83. The best of the recent descriptions of antebellum campaign spectacles incorporates only presidential campaigns. Sec McGerr, Decline of Popular Politics, 22-99.
84. Marion Mirror, Aug. 16, I860.
85. Dubuque Herald, Oct. 9, 1860.
86. Ibid., Oct. 2, 1860. Campaign clubs in towns outside the county seat were generally founded later in the campaign, and peripheral towns were less likely to have clubs.
87. Gustave Koerner, Memoirs of Gustave Koemer, 1809-1896: Life Sketches Written at the Suggestion of His Children, ed. Thomas J. McCormack (2 vols.. Cedar Rapids, 1909), II, 434-35. This incident underscores Michael Schudson's argument that the partisan campaign spectacle of this era failed to develop an adequate sphere for serious public discourse. Referring to an incident that has been mythologized in ways suggestive of a "golden age" of discourse and popular engagement, he writes that "to infer nineteenth-century politics from the Lincoln-Douglas debates would be something like characterizing American politics of the 1970s by the fact that the impeachment debates in the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 were broadcast live on television and discussed widely and fervently among people of all walks of life. All these events were extraordinary; none of them represents the normal political discourse of its era."
88. Michael Schudson, "Was There Ever a Public Sphere? If So, When? Reflections on the American Case," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 160.
89. Marion Republican, Aug. 23, June 30, I860;
90. Dubuque Herald, Sept. 15, 1860.
91. Manon Mirror, Aug. 16, 1860;
92. Marion Republican, Sept. 20, 1860;
93. Franklin Democrat, July 7, 1840;
94. Marion Mirror, May 24, July 19, 1860;
95. Marion Republican, July 12, 1860.
96. Greenfield'Gazette & Courier, June 25, 1860;
97. Ulster Republican, Jan. 26, 1859;
98. Kingston DemocraticJournal, Aug. 25, 1858.
99. Bar an example of fairs taking precedence over politics in the news, see Greenfield Gazette & Courier, Oct. 11, 1858.
100. franklin Democrat, May 4, 1860. This event provides perspective on Andrew W. Robertson's observation that in the nineteenth century an "attentive national audience" followed congressional debates "the way succeeding generations follow sports playoffs."
101. Andrew W. Robertson, The language of Democracy: Political Rhetoric in the United States and Britain, 1790-1900 (Ithaca, 1995), 15.
102. Greenfield Gazette & Mercury, Nov. 2, 1841;
103. Augusta Daily Chronicle & Sentinel, Oct. 30, Nov. 4, 1860;
104. Clarksville Chronicle, Nov. 2, 1860;
105. Kingston Democratic journal, Oct. 27, 1858.
106. We have been unable to determine how many people in the towns we selected wotkcd at the polls on election day. The above example makes it clear, however, that only a small number, fewer than any local party's activist core, was required to contact and transport all reluctant voters. Workers, including teenage boys, were sometimes hired to perform these tasks.
107. Marion Republican, Oct. 13, 1859;
108. Dubuque Daily Times, Aug. 19, 1859;
109. franklin Democrat, Nov. 23, 1860.
110. See also Gicnapp, '"Politics Seem to Enter into Everything,'" 32.
111. Marietta Intelligencer, Oct. 8, 1840;
112. GreenfieId Gazette & Courier, Nov. 1, 1858;
113. Augusta Daily Constitutionalist, Nov. 6, 1852. We cannot determine the numbers of voters who split their tickets through ignorance, indifference, or deliberate choice. Ticket splitting operated in both directions; hence, its full dimensions are not revealed in aggregate voting returns.
114. Clarksville Jeffersonian, Nov. 10, 1858.
115. Joel Silbcy comes closest to this recognition in asserting that "patty leaders worked assiduously to stimulate and reinforce what might otherwise have remained inert." Silbcy, American Political Nation, 170. Unlike Silbey, however, we place the emphasis in the phrase "partisan imperative" on the second word rather than the first, and we believe that political historians need to recognize more fully the potential and actual resistance to organizing efforts by political parties.
116. On the institutionalization of city government, seejon C. Teaford, The Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1825 (Chicago, 1975). Judith N. Shklar has argued that voting in America has been pursued by previously excluded groups as an end in itself, "an effort to break down excluding barriers to recognition, rather than an aspiration to civic participation as a deeply involving activity."
117. Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 3.
118. Manuscript Population Schedules, Franklin County, Massachusetts, Eighth Census of the United States, I860 (microfilm: reel 501, M 653), Records of the Bureau of the Census. Gerard W. Gawalt observes that there were 16 lawyers among the 18 congressmen from Massachusetts in 1839 and estimates that in this era at least half of the lawyers in Massachusetts had sought elective office during their careers. Gerard W. Gawalt, The Promise of Power: The Emergence of the Legal Profession in Massachusetts, 1760-1840 (Westport, 1979), 85, 68.
119. This argument builds on that of the seminal essay by Ronald P. rormisano, "Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789-1840," American Political Science Review, 68 (June 1974), 473-87.
120. Richard L. McCormick, The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986), 204;
121. Formisano, Transformation of Political Culture, 22.
122. Scba Smith's highly influential Jack Downing "letters" appeared first in his newspaper, the Portland Courier, before being collected as The Select Letters ofMajorJack Downing, of the Downingville Militia, Away Down East, in the State of Maine. Written by Himself (Philadelphia, 1834). Smith's satiric sketches of political venality, and those of countless imitators, appeared throughout the antebellum era in party newspapers all over America.
123. See, for example, demon's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Oct. 23, Dec. 4, 1852, Dec. 3, 1853;
124. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, July 12, 1856, Nov. 13, 1858;
125. Clarksville Chronicle, Aug. 12, 1859;
126. RonJout Courier, Nov. 8, 1850;
127. and Grcenfield Gazette & Mercury, Nov. 10, 1840.
128. See also Altschuler and Blumin, "'Where Is the Real America?'" James Vernon describes party development in England in similar terms and provides useful ideas for the study of American politics during the same era.
129. James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, t. 1813-1867 (New York, 1993).
130. Clarksville Jeffersonian, Nov. 11, 1860.
131. Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley, 1994). T. J. Jackson Lcais discusses a pervasive "problem of influence" in nineteenth-century America and notes increasingly shrill warnings against duplicity in major American magazines during the 1840s and 1850s.
132. T. J. Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1994).
133. Ncil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Bamum (Boston, 1973), 61-62;
134. Ulster Republican, Dec. 4, 1850.
135. Maurice Duverger long ago distinguished the party from other organizations. Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modem State, trans. Barbara North and Richard North (New York, 1954). Philip J. Ethington has more recently pointed to the distinction between ordinary party "members" and the activist core, as well as to the "hibernation" of the party between campaigns.
136. Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1830-1900 (New York, 1994), 70-71.
137. Franklin Democrat, Sept. 21, 1860.
138. Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968), esp. 124-61;
139. Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967).
140. Sec also Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976).
141. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992). By stressing the sudden and (to the second party system) destructive surge of political disaffection in the early 1850s, Michael Holt is in no small degree providing evidence of the fragility of parties and of popular commitment to political affairs.
142. Holt, Political Crisis of the 1850s.