SIYSPHUS ON THE WABASH

 

I want to take you back to a time when there were just two million Hoosiers in the whole wide world, and yet Indiana had 13 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 15 electoral votes.  And there arose upon that mole hill an ego determined to push those 15 votes up Mount Olympus and to sacrifice his reputation and the sanity and security of the entire state in the effort.

Indiana was and is the smallest state west of the Allegheny mountains but was also a crucial "battleground" state, oscillating like a bell clapper, clanging first Republican and then ringing Democratic, flipping six times between 1876 and 1888, swinging each time at the whim of some 6,000  fickle independent voters. And upon that oscillating foundation stood our anti-hero.

The impeller of these rhythmic revolutions came in the winter of 1885 when the dynamic Democratic Governor Isaac Gray (above), dreamed of becoming President of the whole United States. Now, such ambition was not an impossible dream, as another Hoosier politician would shortly prove – Republican Benjamin Harrison.  First step for both men was  to become a United States Senator.   And since at the time Senators were elected by the state legislature, which was split pretty evenly along party lines, Governor Gray came up with a clever plan to ensure himself  the initial stepping stone of U.S. Senator. 

First the Democratic Governor jammed through a gerrymander redistricting of the state legislative offices, re-designing ten traditionally Republican state assembly seats so they would more likely elect Democrats instead. This would prove to be such an outrageous power grab, a Federal court would finally declare it unconstitutional in 1892.  But Gray's knew the voters would take their revenge far sooner than the courts.

So, in the summer of 1886, Grey convinced his Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Mahlon Manson (above) to take early retirement. Then Grey scheduled a special election to refill the post that fall, along with the General Assembly election, 

And as Gray had expected, the Republican base was so energized by the Democratic gerrymander, that their party was swept back into power that November with a 10,000 vote majority, recapturing seven of those redistricted Assembly seats that were supposed to go Democrats.  (The state Senate, remained unchanged at  31 Democrats and 19 Republicans.)  

But more importantly for Governor Gray, the newly elected Lieutenant Governor was a Republican, Robert Robertson (above).  Thus, should Democrat Gray offer his resignation as Governor in exchange for his election as U.S. Senator, the Republican dominated General Assembly would probably go along because that would make the Republican Robertson the new Governor. Clever. Complicated, but clever.

Yes, Grey (above) was clever enough to be worthy of Machiavelli. But his plan faced one insurmountable hurdle. Governor Isaac Grey was without doubt the most hated Democratic governor among Democrats, in the entire history of the state of Indiana. He was the original DINO -  a Democrat in Name Only.

Twenty years earlier, at the close of the Civil War, this same Isaac Grey,  had been the Republican Speaker of the state Assembly (above).  To pass the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, making ex-slaves American citizens, and giving black males the right to vote,

Speaker Grey (above) had literally locked the doors, preventing Democrats from bolting the building and thus denying a quorum to the Republican majority. While the trapped Democrats sulked in the cloak room, Speaker Grey staged successful votes for the three Constitutional Amendments. It had been a brutal scheme, again worthy of Machiavelli, - much like Gray's latest plot. 

But the Democrats never forgot Grey had counted them as "present but not voting",  even after he had switched to the Democrats and gave them the Governorship.  And as the Assembly session for 1887 opened, these hard liners were willing to set the state on fire if they could also burn up their Governor's Presidential dream boat.

The Indiana State Senate (above)  was about to come into session at  9:35 on the morning of Saturday 24 February, 1887, when Republican Lt. Governor Robertson entered the second floor chambers to take his seat as the new President pro tempore of the Senate.  But a flying squad of Democrats physically blocked him from reaching the dais. He shouted from the floor, "Gentlemen of the Senate, I have been by force excluded from the position to which the people of this state elected me.” 

But at this point the out going President pro tempore, Democratic State Senator Alonzo Smith, ordered doorkeeper Frank Pritchett, to remove the Lt. Governor, “...if he don't stop speaking.”

As the doorkeeper and his assistants advanced on Roberts, the duly elected president pro tempo announced, “They may remove me. I am here, unarmed.” Smith testily responded, “We are all unarmed. We are fore-armed, though.” 

That belligerent mood was now general in the chamber. Lawyer, and founder of a law school, Republican State Senator Mark Lindsey De Motte (above) from Porter county shouted something from the floor, and acting President Smith ordered him to take his seat. Responded DeMotte, “When he gets ready, he will.”

Doorkeeper Bulger caught Robertson "...by the throat, and with the other hand by the shoulder" and threw him, "...some fifteen (or) twenty feet from the steps of the chamber's dais"  As he did a Republican State Senator shouted that if he went, all the Republicans were going with him. Past and current Rebel President Pro tem Smith shouted back, “They can go if they want to. They will be back, ” he predicted. 

At this point Republican State Senator Henry Underwood Johnson (above) challenged the chair directly, telling him, “No man will be scared by you.” “You're awfully scared now, “ said the Democrat. “Not by you”, answered Johnson. It sounded like children had taken over the state senate.

A general fight now broke out in the Senate chamber, with the outnumbered Republicans giving such a good account of themselves that one Democrat drew a pistol and – BANG! - shot a hole in the brand new ceiling of the still unfinished statehouse. Into the acrid gun smoke and sudden silence this unnamed Democrat announced that he was prepared to start killing Republicans if they kept fighting.

With that, Lt. Governor Robertson was thrown out of the Senate and the doors were locked and bolted behind him. As the official record notes those were “...the last words spoken by a Republican Senator in the 55th General Assembly.” The Indiana Senate then tried to get back to business, appropriately taking up Senate bill 61, setting aside $100,000 for three new hospitals for the mentally insane. It was decided it was self evident the state was going to need them, and the measure was approved by a vote officially recorded as 31 Ayes, 0 nays and 18 “present but not voting”. Ah, revenge must have seemed sweet for the Democrats – for about half an hour.

Outside in the central atrium (above), the gunshot had attracted a crowd, mostly from the Republican controlled House on the East side of the capital. Faced with a bruised and enraged Robertson, the Republicans caught his anger. Similar fights sparked to life in the chamber of the General Assembly  and a “mob” of 600 angry Republicans descended upon every wayward Democrat in the building, punching and kicking them, and, if they resisted, beating them down to the marble floors of the brand new “people's house”.

Eventually, the pandemonium returned to its source; the Republicans laid siege to the Senate chamber. They beat against the doors, and smashed open a transom. Vengeful Republicans poured in and the haughty Democrats were assaulted in their own chamber and thrown out of it. 

By now Democrat Governor Grey (above), down in his offices on the first floor, had heard the ruckus upstairs, and had called in the Indianapolis Police. Four hours after the legislative riot had begun, order was restored to the capital of Hoosier democracy. History and many newspapers would record it as the “Black Day of the Indiana Assembly.”

The following Monday the triumphant Republican dominated Assembly dispatched a note to the battered Democratically controlled Senate, that the Repubs would have no further correspondence with the Dems. Snap of finger dismissal. The Senate counter-informed the lower house, ditto, and same to you.. State government in Indiana ground to a halt. Lt. Governor Robertson never presided over the Senate, and Governor Gray never served as a Untied States Senator. 

He came to be known as the “Sisyphus of the Wabash”, after the legendary Greek king, renown for his avariciousness and deceit, punished by the gods with pushing a rock up a hill he never summited.  A few years later Hoosiers elected to choose their Senators by popular vote,  I suppose under the theory that the general population of drunks and lunatics could do no worse then the professional politicians had already done.  And they were most certainly correct.

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THE SPITTING LYON

 

I can prove the regularity of Senator William Blount's lower intestinal functions, because his enemies in the U.S. Senate depended upon it. Their trap was sprung on Monday, 3 July, 1797, while Blount was visiting “The Necessity” behind Philadelphia's “Congress  Hall” (above).  

The arrogant and regular Mister Blount had to go downstairs and out the back of the building to the "Little Shed" in the walled garden (above, far right).  But the Federalists need not rush because Blount took his time – such things should never be hurried.  By the time he returned to his seat,  the letter had been read and William Blount's political career was in the toilet.  I'll bet even Matthew Lyon, the “Spitting Beast of Vermont”, was pleased with this toilet revolt.

“Dear Cary”, the letter began, “I wished to have seen you before I returned to Philadelphia,...I believe  the plan...will be attempted this fall...(and) in a much larger way then we talked about....I shall probably be at the head of the business on the part of the British...You must take care...not to let the plan be discovered by...any other person in the interest of the United States or Spain.. signed, William Blount.”

The plan was the invention of John Chisholm, who owned a tavern (above) across the street from Senator Blount's Knoxville, Tennessee mansion. Chisholm figured it was only a matter of time before Spain would be forced to sell their American colonies to France. And if France controlled Louisiana and Florida, they might deny American ships access to New Orleans. That would bankrupt all the western farmers in Tennessee and Kentucky.  So Chisholm planned was to use local militia and Creek Indians to capture Pensacola and New Orleans, in the name of the British Empire - who would then promise to allow Americans to use New Orleans as if they owned it.

It was a fantasy of course, but sitting his heavily mortgaged Knoxville mansion (above) Senator Blount thought this was a great idea. And the more he thought, the more he thought it was his idea - particularly after he had improved it by creating a well paid job for himself as the British agent running New Orleans. So Blount wrote this letter to James Cary, who was a translator with the Creek Indian nation in eastern Tennessee.  Senator Blount expected Cary to convince the Creeks to supply most of the manpower for this conspiracy.  

Instead, Cary shared the letter with his bosses in the War Department, who immediately shared it with President John Adams (above).  Now, Adams was a Federalist and he saw a chance to embarrass his own Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, who presided over the Senate and was also the leader of the opposition party, the Democrat-Republicans - of whom Senator William Blount was an important member.

So Adams sent a copy of the "Dear Cary" letter to Federalists in the Senate (above), but insisted it be kept secret until Senator Blount could do nothing to stop the reading of the letter in public. Blount's regular morning toilet trip provided that opportunity.

By noon half of Philadelphia (above) wanted to hang Blount as a traitor, and the other half was trying to deny they had ever met him.  The President's wife even said it was too bad America did not have the guillotine. Senator Blount was arrested trying to slip out of town. Dragged in front of the Senate he denied writing the letter, despite everyone in the room recognizing his handwriting. He was arrested at once, but then allowed to post bail. And once free he hightailed it back to Knoxville – where being part of an anti-government conspiracy had made him something of a hero.  

A week later the Senate voted 25 to 1 to impeach and expel him (above), making him the first politician to be impeached in the new republic.  For the next six months both parties downstairs in the House of Representatives, Federalists and Democrat-Republicans, tried to make the impeachment of Senator Blount work for them in the upcoming 1798 Congressional elections. And that is how our story came to involve an expectorant infused Congressman from the Green Mountain State.

His name was Matthew Lyon, and he had been a Second Lieutenant in the Green Mountain Boys when they captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1776. The next year General Horatio Gates ordered Captain Lyon to take 60 men north to the Onion River, on the Canadian border. And just as they arrived, they heard rumors of  500 Indians coming to attack them. Lyon said later, “The soldiers considered themselves sacrificed”, and they decided to retreat.  Despite Lyon trying to convince his independent minded soldiers to stay, they high tailed it for safer climes. 

The prickly General Gates (above) ordered Lyon arrested and tried before a military court. Convicted of failing to maintain discipline among his men, Matthew lost his command. However he was not reduced in rank. Captain Lyon later fought bravely in the battles of Bennington and at Saratoga, rising to the rank of colonel. After the war the Vermont hero twice ran for election to Congress as a Democratic Republican. Both times the Federalists used the court martial to imply he was a coward. However, third time was the charm, and in 1796 he finally won election.  Two years later he was even re-elected.

And that was how Lyon ended up delivering a speech from the well of the House chamber (above) on Tuesday, 30 January, 1798. In his speech Lyon chastised the Connecticut Federalists for not defending the honor of their citizens by backing the impeachment of Senator Blount. That suggestion brought Federalist Connecticut Congressman Roger Griswald to his feet. As Lyon stepped away from the podium, Griswald, in his best snarky voice, asked if Lyon would be defending the people of Connecticut with his wooden sword.

Now, Lyon never had a wooden sword. Occasionally, an officer convicted of cowardice would be required to wear a wooden sword, as a way of embarrassing him before the army. That had not happened in Lyon's case, because he was not accused of running from the enemy. General Gates' later career provided ample evidence of the General's cowardice and incompetence, as Lyon's later career provided evidence of his courage and brains. But that was reality, and politics is about image - just ask John Kerry who was Swift Boat'ed over 200 years later.

Well, Lyon had been hearing this Federalist taunt for twenty years.  And hit in the back of the head with it, the Green Mountain boy in Lyon reacted instinctively. He spun on Roger Griswald, and spit in his face. We can assume it was pretty disgusting logy. The forty year old Lyon was a tobacco user, and mouth wash and dentistry were still in their infancy.  And then, having expectorated his piece, Lyon turned his back on Griswald again.  In the words of an historian, from that moment “No man in the whole Republican party...(not even) Thomas Jefferson...was so hated and despised (by the Federalists) as Matthew Lyon.”  Griswald went ape and charged at Lyon.

Cooler heads from both sides rushed to separate the two combatants.  And then, this being Congress, the argument about the traitor Senator Blount became about the “spitting Lyon” and the hot head Griswald.  Federalists wanted Lyon impeached for “gross indecency” - for spitting on a college - making him the first Congressman honored with an ethics charge.  Democrat-Republicans wanted Griswald censured for the insult,  making him the second Congressman so honored. In the end, both charges were dropped. So two weeks later, it got worse.

On Thursday 15 February, Roger Griswold entered the house chamber carrying a cane he had been loaned by a friend. He walked directly to Matthew Lyon's desk, and without warning began beating the Democrat-Republican with the stick. Covering his head, Lyon struggled to his feet, and retreated toward the fire pit, meant to take the morning chill off the chamber. He grabbed a pair of tongs from the wood pile, and began an insane fencing duel with his attacker (above). Again, cooler heads separated the two.

The spitting only made the attacks on Matthew Lyon's honor louder. One bad Federalist poet even managed to include the insult into an ode to a theatrical Boston pig. “You boast your little pig can spell the hardest word; But did your little pig ever wear a wooden sword?....Though your piggy screws his snout in such learned grimaces, I defy the squeaking lout to spit in Christians’ faces...,Then tell us no more of your little grunting creature, But confess that the LION is the GREATEST BEAST in nature.”  As I said, he was a bad poet.

The Spitting Lyon so angered the Federalists members of Congress,  it made it easier for them to pass both the Alien and the Sedition Acts, the second of which was signed on 14 July, 1798, six months after the assault by and on the “Spitting Lyon.”  It's actual title was “An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes” (above), the crimes being writing or publishing anything false or malicious against members of the government.  It also forbid the defendant from pleading the truth of their writing as a defense. Three months later, on 10 October, The Democratic Republican Matthew Lyons was convicted under the Sedition Act, and sentenced to four months in jail.

But Representative Lyon had the last laugh.  Twice.  First he was re-elected from his jail cell, with 55% of the vote. Then, the Presidential election of 1800 was a tie, and thrown into the House of Representatives. The contest became a 35 ballot knock down drag out between Democratic Republicans Jefferson and Democratic Republican Aron Burr, all engineered by the lame duck Federalist Congressional majority.  The issue was finally settled on the 36^th ballot, when the Federalist Representative from Vermont abstained. This allowed Matthew Lyon, the Democrat-Republican from Vermont, to cast the deciding ballot making Thomas Jefferson the third President of the United States.

So it turned out, Senator Blount's act of betrayal did not end up preventing Jefferson from winning the White House. The arrogant and ambitious Blount did not witness the victory, having died in his home (above) during an epidemic in March of 1800. The next year Matthew Lyon moved to Kentucky, and won election to Congress from that new state six times, finally retiring in 1811, and dying in 1822. The Spitting Lyon, the Green Mountain Beast, was then buried in the Blue Grass state (below). And what a shame we have allowed his memory to fade, in part because we insist upon neutering our "founding fathers" - denying,  them and us, our shared humanity, warts and all. The valuable lessons are usually in the warts, you know.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT VOTER FRAUD

 

I don't think JFK walked on water, but it is true that John Fitzgerald Kennedy played a crucial role in the formation of two American political myths. On the Democratic side, there is the myth of Camelot. And on the Republican side there is the myth of the stolen election. To put it bluntly, J.F. K. did not steal the Presidential election of 1960. But Republicans would rather believe that he did.

The foundation of the “bought election” is the autobiography “Just Good Politics, the Life of Raymond Chafin, Appalachian Boss”, published in 1994 (but the story had been around for 30 years before that).

Raymond Chafin (above) was Chairman of the Logan county, West Virginia, Democratic Party Executive Committee. He was also known as "The King of Logan County".  In 1960 he was working for Democratic Presidential candidate Herbert Humphrey.  Chafin's story, as described by reviewer Joe Savage in the December 1994 Washington Monthly, was that Chafin “received $35,000 cash in two briefcases at the Logan County airport from Kennedy operatives the week before the primary. While he says the amount was "a mistake"--he'd only asked for $3,500--Chafin reassures his readers that he spent it all on election activity, including illegal vote-buying, and did not pocket any of the cash himself.” But the only way to believe that story, is to ignore reality.

It was clear four years in advance of 1960  the battleground for Democratic Presidential want-a-be's would be the 16 scheduled primaries. In those ancient days, when politics was merely tainted with money, none of the five leading Democratic candidates could afford to compete in all the primaries, not even the two strongest candidates; the liberal junior Senator from Minnesota, Herbert Humphrey, and the conservative junior Senator from Massachusetts, John (Jack) Kennedy. As early as January 1957, the Jack Pack, as the Kennedy team was called, had decided on a strategy.

It was assumed by the pundits that Humphrey would win the 5 April primary in his neighboring state of Wisconsin.  But Wisconsin had a large Catholic population, and if the Catholic Kennedy came in a close second in the cheese state, he could count that as a win. Beyond Wisconsin, the “Jack Pack” knew he would need a primary win in a strongly Protestant state. So early in 1958 pollster Louis Harris was hired to find a possible target state.

His polls in West Virginia found Kennedy beating his probable Republican opponent Richard Nixon, by 14 points. And a full year before the primary, Kennedy had campaign chairmen in 39 of the state's 59 counties. Claude Ellis was named Kennedy chairman of Logan County.

Ellis told a 2002 interviewer, “First he sent (his) brother Ted and others - like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. - in here to try to help,”  He added that Teddy Kennedy (above), “spent several months traveling between Wisconsin and West Virginia campaigning...Logan county people liked Teddy and (we) wanted to keep him here as long as he could stay.”  A late 1959 Harris poll found JFK leading Humphrey by forty points in West Virginia, and the Kennedy team began to shift resources to Wisconsin, which produced JFK' surprise victory in the 5 April 1960 primary with 56% of the vote.

Humphrey (above, center) was now desperate to stop Kennedy in West Virginia, relying on his Logan county chairman, Raymomd Chafin, to use the party machinery to help. That help included a local poll (not a Harris poll) which claimed Humphrey had jumped out to a 20 point lead. No other polls hinted at such a shift, but with little questioning, the press attributed Humphrey's “surge” to local suspicion of Kennedy's Catholicism. Logan county was so poor, went the local joke, the schools only taught the three R's – Reading, R'writing and Route 23 to Columbus, Ohio”. Winning the support of those bigoted anti-Catholic hillbillies could only be explained by a corrupt Kennedy machine.

Except...Chafin himself remembered the situation differently in a 1964 interview with William Young. Just four years after the election Chafin recalled, “In my traveling around (and) over the county, I could see that the Kennedy forces were gaining strength, and they had more young people, and they had a good organization.”  On Monday, 25 April,  Kennedy himself made a well attended speech in Logan (above), followed by a crowded parade through the center of town. Dan Dahill, a local pol, remembered, “It was a carnival atmosphere. Everyone came together—except for Raymond Chafin’s faction, that is. Raymond and his candidates were all brooding up in their Aracoma Hotel headquarters that day,”

Monday 25 April was two weeks before the primary, and one week before the alleged pay off. Why would Kennedy buy an election which every indicator, save for one errant poll, said he was already winning? Kennedy had already invested three yeas of time, money and effort in West Virginia. And while cash payments to political bosses might buy a close election, Kennedy would win the West Virginia primary on 19 May by 23 points – 61% to 39% for Humphrey. That was a landslide. And you don't buy those with one week's work or one pay off.

We also have two versions of a phone conversation between Claude Ellis and Chafin in the first week of May, 1960, after the parade in Logan County and about the time of the alleged payoff. Both men agree on what was said, but Chafin's version – again from 1964 – was that Ellis asked, “Are we working on you, Chafin?” And I said, “Yeah, you’re working on us pretty rough. Looks like that some of our group would like to go along with you on this Kennedy thing.”

In other words, the experienced politician Chafin had followed the public, once he was convinced they were not following him. And the story he manufactured thirty-four years later was another example of the same thing. The public of 1994 – the year of Newt Gingrich's Republican “Contract With America” - wanted proof that a Kennedy conspiracy had stolen the West Virginia primary. But in fact, that had not happened, as Chafin admitted at the time. 

The general election on Tuesday, 8 November, 1960 produced a Kennedy victory in the popular vote by 1/10 of 1%, - a margin so thin the news organizations did not confirm the results until Wednesday afternoon, 9 November.

On 11 November, 1960 - three days after the election, Republican National Committee Chairman, Senator Thurston Morton filed suits demanding recounts in eleven states.  The most extensive recount demanded was in Richard J. Daley's Cook County, Illinois. Kennedy had carried the state by just 9,000 votes out of 4,750,000 votes cast.

The results from the recount of 863 precincts in the city of Chicago, reported on 9 December, 1960, showed errors in almost every single percent.  But not a single outcome was changed. Over all Nixon gained just 943 votes, and in 40% of the precincts the recount showed errors had been made in favor of the Republicans. In other words, the recount uncovered not fraud but the mistakes you would expect to see when any large bureaucracy periodically makes a maximum effort - every line on every ballot was another opportunity for error, rules were misinterpreted and every confusion was magnified.

Still the National Republican Party appealed to the Illinois State Board of Elections, chaired by two term Republican governor William “Billy the Kid” Startton. The four Republican and one Democratic board members rejected that appeal – unanimously. So the NRC filed a Federal lawsuit. That judge (a Democrat) ruled that based on the appeal filed, he did not have jurisdiction. The RNC could have refiled, choosing different legal grounds which might have given the judge grounds to consider the election, but they did not.

There were also issues in Texas, but Kennedy's margin of victory was even larger there, than in Illinois. And in Texas the political machinery was even more heavily tilted toward the party in power, which in 1960 was the Democratic party. In the short run, Kennedy won victory by a razor thin majority, winning legally and morally. But the Republican Party stewed over the perceived injustice of the myth, which beget the 21^st century voter suppression I.D. Laws, created to correct the myth of the stolen election of 1960.

If the Republican Party is to have a future in America, they need to surrender their myths, and begin reaching for tomorrow's voters,  instead of feeding the conservative myth of stolen elections.  If not their myths will consume them, as it is currently happening.

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