DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

 

I know we like to think our nation was founded by political geniuses armed only with the best of intentions. But the truth is, if the vast majority of our founding fathers were to somehow magically reappear in today's political arena, they would probably be most comfortable as members of the Klu Klux Klan – being by current definition both sexists and white supremacists. 

Under the first constitution for South Carolina (signed in 1778) Catholics were not allowed to vote. Delaware's first constitution denied the vote to Jews, and Maryland did not permit the sons of Abraham to cast a ballot until 1828. And, of course, women and both sexes of African-American descent either were or would shortly be arrested if they tried to cast a ballot anywhere in America. But the most fundamental bigotry in America was and is not racial or religious. It is monetary. The most hated, despised and disenfranchised group in America has always been anyone who was “not rich”.

In ten of the 13 original United States you had to own at least 50 acres of land or $250 in property before you were judged qualified to vote. The official price for uncleared land along the frontier was set at just ten cents an acre, but usually sold in lots no smaller than a section of 640 acres. At the same time the average yearly income for a laborer was about ninety dollars (with the income level in slave states being even lower), meaning a section would cost a middle class worker over 8 months salary. 

Few working people could afford the investment. So the land speculators stepped in. They had the cash, or the credit, to acquire hundreds of sections of land at a time, survey, subdivide and resell the property in plots down to 40 acres each. It was a system rife with legal and illegal fraud. And the speculators' profit margins tripled or quadrupled the price per acre to the yeoman farmers who usually borrowed to buy the land, often then went bankrupt, lost their investment, and were forced to move even further west to try again, still without the right to vote on the legality of such monetary rules.

This explains why, forty years after the American revolution, only half a million out of the ten million Americans could qualify to vote, and why in 1824 less than 360,000 actually cast a ballot. The debacle of 1825, when the “corrupt bargain”,  and the earlier deadlocked election in 1800, led to the realization that the first objective of fair elections must be to keep the professional politicians from screwing the rest of the population and dictating the outcome. That was why, beginning in the new states beyond the Appalachian crest, the wealth restrictions on voting were dropped. And slowly this influenced the politics back in the original 13 colonies. Slowly.

On 7 October 1825, with John Quincy Adams ensconced in the White House for less than 8 months, Senator Andrew Jackson (above) rose in the Senate chamber. Nominally he was to comment on a proposed constitutional amendment to prevent another “corrupt bargain” from ever happening  It was something Jackson should be eager to support. But, “I could not”, Jackson assured his fellow politicians, “consent either to urge or to encourage a change which might wear the appearance of being ...a desire to advance my own views” (He meant unlike Henry Clay, and President Adams, of course.)  And reluctantly,  he said, “I hasten therefore to tender this my resignation.” 

It wasn't that Jackson was clearing his schedule for the upcoming 1828 rematch . Oh, no.  He was resigning so “my friends do not, and my enemies can not, charge me with...degrading the trust reposed in me by intriguing for the Presidential chair.” As he walked out of the Capital that afternoon, it's a wonder his trousers did not burst into flames. The proposed amendment was then quietly allowed to die.

On the same day, on the west fork of the Stones river, meeting in St. Paul's Episcopal Church on East Vine Street in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (where their capital had burned down two years earlier), the state legislature unanimously nominated Andrew Jackson to be the next President of the United States – three years hence. 

What a happy coincidence of timing, with those two events occurring over a thousand miles apart, and on the same day – proof positive that no one could accuse Andrew “Jackass” of “intriguing” to ride the wave of populism about to break over the electoral college. And if any of you reading this are offended by modern pundits theorizing about the next election almost before the last one is completed, welcome to the brave new world of 1825

Of course, if you were looking for more hard evidence of intrigue you might journey to the 9th Congressional District of Virginia, tucked away in the south-western corner of the Old Dominion. The two term representative for this last gasp of the Shenandoah Valley and its encroaching mountains was a transplanted Pennsylvanian, a graduate of William and Mary, and a Crawford-Republican named Andrew Stevenson (above). 

Like many converts, the dapper Stevenson was heavily financially and emotionally invested in the peculiar institution of slavery, and savvy about the politics of his adopted state. He had been the Speaker of the House of Burgess, where he was considered a member of the “Richmond Junta” which ran Virginia politics. So why would a member of the Richmond Junta decide to join forces with a Yankee from the Albany Regency, to support Andrew Jackson from Nashville, Tennessee, for President?

First, the south had something that New Yorker Martin Van Buren (above) wanted – electoral votes. The institution of slavery was indeed peculiar because although those humans treated as property had no rights, each slave did count as 3/5ths of a person for determining congressional districts which meant electoral votes. And the census of 1820 gave the south 22 additional congressional districts – and 22 additional electoral votes – which their white population alone did not entitle them too. This was the deal with Satan the founding fathers from New England had been forced to make in order to form a “more perfect union.” Those 22 electoral votes were more than enough to throw a close election in whatever direction Van Buren from New York, wanted.

What Stevenson and other Southerners wanted was a guarantee that the economy of the south would be protected from the growing wealth of the North.  Practically, this meant low tariffs. The slave states produced few of the machines that were increasingly vital to modern life,  largely because slaves were never allowed to share in their master's profits, and thus had no incentive to invent or invest of themselves any more sweat than was required. 

A little over two weeks after Jackson's resignation from the Senate, the Erie Canal (above) officially opened, connecting the produce of  Ohio to the markets of New York City. It was visible evidence of the economic giant the workers and consumers of the "Free States" were becoming.  But in a nation without an income or a sales tax, a tax levied on imported goods, or a tariff, was the only way to support projects like the canal, or the national highway..

The Bank of the United States was a vital part of the infrastructure which John Quincy Adams was advocating. He believed projects such as the National Road and canals connecting the great lakes with the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, would unite the nation both physically and economically. What Adams saw was government preforming the unprofitable investment in infrastructure so that business could use it as a base for their future profits. But Stevenson and his ilk saw “Big Government”, supported by tariffs, as a multi-head snake (above) designed primarily to choke off the South -  and thus a threat to slavery. And they were both right.

In 1831 (six years hence) a young French official, Alexis de Tocqueville, journeyed to America to observe the young nation's institutions and people. And in perhaps his most famous passage he touched upon this central issue. “The State of Ohio”, wrote de Tocquville,”is separated from Kentucky just by one river; on either side of it the soil is equally fertile, and the situation equally favorable, and yet everything is different...(In Ohio the population is) devoured by feverish activity, trying every means to make its fortune...There (in Kentucky) are people who make others work for them...a people without energy, mettle or the spirit of enterprise...These differences cannot be attributed to any other cause but slavery. It degrades the black population and... (saps the energy of) the white.”

This was a hundred years before the Republican Party adopted its infamous “Southern strategy” to convert segregationist “boil weevel” "Dixie-crats into a southern Republican block. But Northern Democrats, at very the moment of their party's birth, made a much more disgusting bargain – agreeing to protect real slavery in all its foul existence,  in exchange for gaining national power for themselves and their masters, the money classes.

Jackson was a slave owner, and his natural inclination would be to support slavery. He was opposed to the national bank, and Adam's program of “big government” investments. But was that because he saw them as a threat to the South, or because he saw Adams as cheating him out of the White House?, Whatever his priorities it is clear Jackson had no interest in the details of forming a political party. His only interest was in winning over those who “cheated” him. Forming the party that would carry him to victory could be left to his loyal followers, men like Van Buren and Stevenson, who were binding Northern bankers to the Southern slave owning ruling elite. And ensuring the bankers would own them. That accommodation would be the foundation of the Jackson Democratic Party.  And, in the twentieth century, in it's turn. the Republican party

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GREED

 

I cannot conceive of a worse possible moment for the young man to deliver his lie. Two weeks before, the 3 day battle of the Wilderness had killed 2,246 men and wounded some 12,000 more.  Three days ago,  in the Shenandoah Valley, yet another Federal Army had been ambushed at the Battle of New Market, where 96 federal soldiers were killed, 520 were wounded and 225 were captured - 13% of the Federal troops committed on that field.

And this very morning, 18 May, 1864, General Grant was leading his weary army once again into battle at Spotsylvania Courthouse, which would kill 2,725 men, including legendary General John Sedgwick,  and wound another 13,400 men. It seemed as if everything the Federal government attempted in this third spring of Civil War, was producing only more blood. And, at 3:30am that morning, a young man had arrived with a missive, to seemingly drop the other shoe. 

It purported to be a bulletin from the Associated Press, which had been in business since 1848, and contained the text of a White House Proclamation. The operative passage began in the third paragraph. 

“In view...of the situation in Virginia...and the general state of the country, I, Abraham Lincoln (above)...by virtue of the power vested in me by the Constitution...call forth the citizens of the United States, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, to the aggregate number of four hundred thousand, in order to suppress the existing rebellious combinations...”

The reaction to news of a new half million man draft, in the city which the year before had produced three days of rioting (above) in response to Lincoln's first call for a draft, was expected to be even more violence. One hundred twenty had died in the summer of 1863, at least eleven African-Americans had been lynched, untold numbers beaten, and fifty large buildings had been burned down. Many on Wall Street took this as a sign the Federal government was losing the war, and they expected investors  to dump their stocks for gold.

At first glance the notice seemed legitimate. It was written on the same cheap oily tissue paper used by the Associated Press. But it had not arrived in the usual fashion. Several editors were suspicious, but with only moments before the deadline to start the presses, and fearing hesitation would mean their papers would be scooped by the competition,  three Democratic leaning papers rushed the story into the print – The World, the Journal of Commerce, and the Brooklyn Eagle. 

But the night editor of the New York Times, a Republican paper, did not recognize the handwriting, and found it had not been delivered in an AP envelope. The editor held his own presses while he dispatched a messenger for confirmation from the Associated Press. The AP editor promptly replied , “The 'Proclamation' is false as hell and not promulgated through this office. The handwriting is not familiar.”

By 9:00am Wall Street was in an uproar, with investors and brokers crowding all the newspaper offices (above), demanding an answer. Was the proclamation real or not? When the markets opened, the price of gold rose about 10%, but quickly fell back after Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary-of-War Edward Stanton,  both telegraphed to all the New York papers that the report was  “an absolute forgery.” 

And if the Lincoln administration had stopped there everything would have been all right. But Lincoln himself ordered the Military commander in New York City,  General John Adams Dix (above), to seize the offices of the Journal of Commerce and the New York World, and to ”arrest and imprison...the Editors, proprietors, and publishers.” It seemed the bloody mess in Virginia was making everybody a little jumpy.

The Journal of Commerce was a small anti-slavery newspaper founded by Arthur Tappan and Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, and founder of the anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" party. That paper opposed using force to put down the rebellion. So the Postmaster General had refused to deliver the JOC via the mail, crippling the paper outside New York City, where most of its 35,000 readers lived. 

William Cowper Prime (above), a lawyer, an artist and author and "near east enthusiast" as well as business manager of the JOC, wrote to his wife that afternoon, “Found on coming down town that we, in common with the World...had been hoaxed by a most ingenious scoundrel.” That evening Federal soldiers arrived to close down the paper and arrest the guiltless Mr. Prime.

Considerably less innocent was the two cent per copy, “New York World”. The paper was owned by the Democratic National Committee, and directed by the DNC chairman, August Belmont. In its pages anything with a whiff of Lincoln or Republicanism about it was opposed. Every day the paper was filled with articles warning of the threat of the ballooning war debt, and criticism of the administration's military strategy. Its editorials called for repeal of the emancipation proclamation, and a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. It was the platform of the Democratic Party in 1864. But these were not  the position of the World's editor, Mr. Manton Malone Marble.

Marble  (above) was a newspaperman with printer's ink in his veins. Employed as the Night Editor, he had bought the bankrupt World in 1861, dreaming of a non-partisan fact based style of journalism. But after just six months he had been forced to seek new backers, and the Democratic Party had eagerly stepped in. Marble lost friends and staff members when he signed the deal. 

The joke among journalists in the city was that Marble was now little more than a conductor for the stories August Belmont (above) wanted in the paper day in and day out. But there was still a spark of independence in Marble, and when he learned from an alert staffer, before dawn on the morning of 18 May, 1864, that his paper had published the proclamation, he ordered all copies still unsold to be withdrawn from street vendors, and even dispatched a fast ship to stop and board the steamer “Nova Scotia”, carrying bundles of the newspaper bound for England. Marble even ordered the ship's captain to buy back the free copy provided to the Nova Scotia's purser. It made no difference. Marble was arrested the evening of 18 May, and the offices of “The World” padlocked shut.

That very night the member papers of the Associated Press telegraphed the President, strongly defending Prime and Marble. The next day several of the editors, including Horace Greeley, of the Republican leaning Tribune, joined the chorus of demands that Marble and Prime be released. And it began to occur to Lincoln, that he had stepped into something unpleasant. He also had the calming influence of General Dix, who seems to have quickly suspected, along with the members of the AP, that this was not a rebel plot, nor even a Democratic one.

 

At the same time he arrested Prime and Marble, Dix also ordered the arrest of Joseph Howard, jr.,  night editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, the only other paper to actually publish and distribute the false proclamation. 

Within a day Joe Howard (above) confessed. He assumed the false proclamation would drive up the price of gold, in preparation for which he had bought gold futures “short” -  meaning on credit. As one historian has noted, “Nothing worse was ever done for the purpose of speculation.” 

Two days later, on Saturday morning, 21 May,  police detectives stopped and arrested Francis Avery Mallson, a reporter for the Eagle, who had actually authored the fake telegram.  Francis had just been drafted into the army, and he had hoped profits from the scam would provide for his family while he was away at war. The next day, Sunday 22 May, military authorities released both Prime and Marble. But the damage had been done.

Marble was in a rage. He clearly felt betrayed and laid the blame for his arrest directly on Lincoln's head - where it belonged. On Monday, 23 May he unleashed his pen, in a letter that took up several columns of "The World".  “Not until today,” Marble wrote, “has The World been free to speak. But to those who have ears to hear, its absence has been more eloquent than its columns could ever be.” 

Lincoln had acted, wrote Marble (above), “for the purpose of gratifying an ignoble partisan resentment” He wondered “would you, Sir, have suppressed the Tribune and the Times as you suppressed the World and the Journal of Commerce?” He then answered the question for Mr. Lincoln. “You know you would not... Can you, whose eyes discern equality under every complexion, be blinded by the hue of partisanship.” George Templeton Strong, a diarist and observer of politics in New York, noted, “The martyred newspaper...vomits acid bile most copious.”

Marble now became the publicist for the Democratic Party, and its champion, General McClellan (above, center). He spent the next six months retelling every lie, and even creating a few new ones, about Lincoln, charging him with wanting to force "race mixing" on the public, and ignoring the pain and sacrifices of Union soldiers on the battlefield. 

And it might have cost Lincoln the election that November,  excerpt that on 2 September, 1864,  Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured the rail and industrial heart of the Confederacy - Atlanta, Georgia.  In that instant it was clear Lincoln was winning the war, and the Democrats were revealed as defeatists, with no answers, only protests. That November Lincoln received only 33% of the vote in New York City.  Despite that, he won the state, if barely, on his way to re-election, 55% of the popular vote, and 212 electoral votes to Democrat General George McClellan's 21

The World did not accept defeat, disparaging Lincoln's speech on the night of 13 April, 1865 - the day after Lee had surrendered - it described the President as groping “like a traveler in an unknown country, without a map.” 

The following night, 15 April, 1865,  John Wilkes Booth murdered the President, transforming Abraham Lincoln into a martyr, and the The New York World and it's editor into a petty, vindictive and racist party mouthpiece.  History does that every kind of thing every once in awhile.

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FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT!

 

I wonder why so many people keep complaining about politicians.  Check my math, please: politicians say stupid, outlandish things, like "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!", or" Segregation Now, Segregation Forever!", or "I will build a beautiful wall!". and politicians get elected. Could there be a connection?  Let me give you some examples from ancient history, so no living voters feel insulted.

James Knox Polk (above) was America's eleventh President, serving a single term from 1845 to 1849. He was, until Richard Nixon, our most secretive President. He often did not even tell his own cabinet members what he was thinking. He had been Speaker of the House of Representatives and most recently the Democratic Governor of Tennessee.  But no matter what your history books tell you Polk did not campaign on the phrase "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight" – that came up later. 

The actual 1844 campaign centered on the divisive issue of Texas (above). Recently declared to be a slave republic, Democrats favored it's admission into the union because it would strengthen their hold on the Senate, and weaken Wig control of the House. It also extended slavery westward, toward the Pacific.  

The Wigs opposed Texas admission for the same reasons, but they preferred talking about high tariff's, which raised prices for all consumers. So their candidate, Henry Clay (above),  merely issued a few confusing statements about Texas. And then, abruptly, in August,  the Wigs decided to claim that Polk was unfit to be President because he branded his slaves. And trust me, this smear was so good they still haven’t figured out who exactly was behind it.

The story was first published in the 21 August, 1844 edition of the Ithaca New York "Chronicle". It was a Whig Party newspaper. And the story claimed to be a letter to the editor, quoting a three paragraph extract from an unpublished book, titled “Roorback’s Tour Through the Western and Southern States…” 

The extract claimed to detail Baron Von Roorback's conversations with a group of slave traders on the Duck River in Tennessee. “Forty of these unfortunate beings had been purchased, I was informed, by the Honorable J.K. Polk…; the mark of a branding iron, with the initials of his name on their shoulders, distinguishing them from the rest.”  Now, even in 1844 the idea of branding human beings, even those treated as slaves, was appalling to many people...most Whigs and even some Democrats, of whom, remember, James K. Polk was the leading candidate for President.

Which was why the story was picked up by the "Albany Evening Journal", and other Whig newspapers, particularly in the 1844 “battleground states” of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Many voters in those swing states were outraged that a man standing for President would do something so despicable as to brand human beings the same way you brand cattle. 

To Whig politicians the story from "Roorback’s Tour" was almost too good to be true.  And almost instantly the Democratic press discovered there was no such book and no such Baron. 

The details claiming to be about Polk had been lifted from a real travel book, of a run in with some slave traders on Virginia’s New River. Polk’s plantation was in Tennessee, so the inventor of the smear had shifted the scene to where it would be easier to tie the branded humans to Governor Polk. Besides, it was not common practice to brand slaves.  Like whipping scars, branding tended to reduce their value as property, since it indicated this slave had a tendency to escape. Slaves were certainly whipped and branded because in 1844, most Americans, even most Whigs, still believed black slaves were property and would have been equally offended if some government official tried to tell them how to treat their horses or how to slaughter their hogs.

So now, embarrassed at repeating what was so obviously a fabrication, the Whigs pinned the whole thing on William Linn, a lawyer and a Democratic operative in Ithaca, New York.  But why would a Democrat smear his own candidate? Well, if I were a believer in conspiracy theories, I might say that this kind of allegation against Polk was actually a fairly safe charge to make. 

Polk did own slaves. But his Whig opponent in the 1844 election, Henry Clay (above), owned even more slaves than Polk did.  And it has been suggested by some historians that the “Roorback” story was a case of nineteenth century “wedge” politics. 

Abolitionism was still a minor issue in 1844, but abolitionists formed a solid voting block in certain sections of New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, those key battleground states. Convince enough abolitionists in those states that the Whigs were lying to them, and they just might choose the Democrat Polk over the Whig Clay as the lesser of two evils.  Or they just might stay home and not vote at all. It was the same game later used by Republicans to prop up "liberal" candidates to siphon votes away from Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.  And the letter to the Ithaca Chronicle had been signed, “An Abolitionist”, thus adding insult to the injury.

Well, maybe....And maybe that theory implies a level of sophisticated conspiracy that did not exist in the simpler culture and times of 1844 –

...and certainly would not have existed in Athens in 415 B.C., when Alcibiades was accused of vandalizing statues of the god Hermes.

You see Hermes (above) was the mythical inventor of fire, who "...protects and takes care of all travelers...".  Each Greek home had an anatomically correct statue of Hermes standing on its front lawn, and it was common practice for visitors to pause at the stature and stroke his stone phallus for good luck before knocking on the front door. 

And when the owner left the house, they would also give the phallus a tug for a safe return.  And that was why it was so shocking that on the morning that Athens was launching a massive naval assault on Sicily, the city awoke to discover that during the night many home statues of Hermes had their phallus' knocked.

It sounds to my modern ears as if the neighborhood kids had been drinking sour wine on the street corner and started smashing phalluses as a prank. But to the devout in Athens (and there were many who believed in the gods) it was also sacrilege. And rumors began almost immediately that the person responsible for the damaged statues was the golden boy politician who had conceived of the Sicilian expedition, and was known for his past sacrilegious opinions, Alcibiades (above). 

Of course Alcibiades had his own theory. He thought it had been the work of his chief political opponent and co-commander of the Sicilian expedition, Nicias (above).  Two thousand five hundred years later, it is impossible to know who the phallus whackers really were or why they were whacking off in the dark.. But whether the politicians planned it all or just took advantage of the situation, the one thing we know for certain is, that the people spewing hot air over both sides of this scandal were politicians.

The point is, politicians have been gaming voters since voting was invented. And voters have been playing along, else the game would not have remained so popular. Like claiming to build a wall to nowhere.  And that is why when a politician tells me he is selling something, especially when it is something I want to believe  my first reaction should be,  “Pull the other one.,”  When the American political system works  (which it has not been doing for a generation)  it is been based upon pragmatism, not hysteria.  When it gets hysterical, it's usually when the politicians want to distract you.

And the election of 1844 is a perfect example.  Polk won 49.5% of the popular vote to Clay’s 48.1 %, and part of that razor thin margin were victories in New York and Pennsylvania - by less than 6,000 votes in both states.  Those two states gave Polk 62 Electoral Votes, out of his sixty-five vote margin of victory (170 to 105). It seems that if the Roorback story was a double blind trick, it damn well worked.

Oh,... and remember the phrase “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!”?  Well, that was actually invented by Ohio Senator William “Earthquake” Allen (above), known for his thundering speeches, and he used it after the 1844 election. 

The number was  the Southern border (54 degrees & 40 minutes of latitude) claimed by Russia when they owned Alaska, before 1867.  Radical Democrats were demanding the U.S. insist on that line for our northern border with Canada, and Polk seemed to back that position.  He might have even have supported starting a shooting war over it.  However,  simple glance at a map will confirm the modern border,  agreed upon by President Polk, was (and is) the 49th parallel. 

So much for the “…Or fight!” part of the slogan.  Have you noticed how often politicians don’t actually mean what they seem to say? Like they are going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it? Or how they say Democrats want to leave our southern boarder wide open?  You might say many of them make a career out of hysteria.  And always have.  And voters keep buying the horse manure they keep dropping all over the place.  And whose fault is that?

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