Basically, these days we have this idea with all the crazy politics swirling around, the nastiness, negativity, anger, etc, that somehow things are totally out of control and more importantly, that this represents some kind of debacle, end of days, etc. What the piece points out is that going back to a time of the founding and the first century of the founding of this country, that the myth we have created of the founders all harmoniously coming together to create this country, that the early years of the republic saw all going to the common good and whatnot, that politics was somehow purer back then, is exactly that, a myth, that things were just as dirty and angry, if perhaps even moreso, in an era some people almost worship.
However, a big difference back then was that news and information were much slower and more expensive to propogate. That presumably meant that getting reliable news and information from distant locations was much more difficult. An example was the fighting of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 because none of the forces involved realized that a peace treaty had been signed a few weeks before.
Similarly, news and information that can affect voters’ choices in elections may not reach the voters until after the election, or even at all. That can result in voters voting on the basis of inaccurate or outdated information.
Today, we have a 24/7 news cycle where there is a blizzard of news and information. But it may be hard for voters to sift through all of that to find what they really care about. And some voters retreat into news and information echo chambers that heavily slant the coverage to match and reinforce their left or right wing world views. Such echo chamber news may not be especially accurate either.
I am painfully aware of the political and societal reality we live in, but I willingly submerge myself into the belief that Aaron Burr really did just want to be in the room where it happened!
One good refutation of that myth is the dueling culture among social and political elites which practically mandated deadly duels if someone said something which the larger society felt one “should” take offense. This included political differences/negative campaigning of sorts. The Hamilton-Burr duel of 1804 was one great example of this which ended with Hamilton’s death. A duel which started because Burr suspected that Hamilton was carrying a secret “poison-letter campaign” to torpedo his political ambitions to becoming governor of NY.
President Andrew Jackson was involved in several such duels in his life. In the course of those duels, he killed at least one person for saying something he deemed offensive to himself or his family.
This culture and mentality was so ingrained and pervasive that if someone said something bad about you, letting it go by turning the other cheek would not only be taken as a sign the negative commentary was true, but also fatally undermined one’s social standing with one’s social/political elite peers with attendant negative social networking and political consequences.
This dueling culture continued in varying forms well into the late 19th and even early 20th century in a few areas.
It’s also a refutation to the mythical idea of how an expansive idea of “free speech” was honored much more in the distant past.
@cobrat:
The article mentioned about the dueling culture, the idea apparently was not to kill (there is a lot of evidence that Burr did not intend to kill Hamilton, might even have been a ricochet). We have mythologized a lot of times in US history and I think it hurts us, the idea that the founders were like prophets or something distorts what they were, human beings with passions and pride and biases and so forth, and it shadows us to this day, ideas like the Constitution as this perfect document created by perfect men is one of those myths as is the idea that everyone in the colonies supported the revolution (it was actually about 35%, another 30 or so would welcome independence but thought it was too dangerous to pursue, about 35% were loyalist). Personally, the reality is a lot more powerful than the myth, that the people who founded the country, despite being bickering, often angry, people, managed to fight through it and leave something behind:).
MODERATOR’S NOTE: As long as you stick to history, we will allow the thread to continue. I already had to delete one political post. Any more of those, and this thread is history (sorry, couldn’t resist).
I had heard before that the political climate back then was quite vicious. As bad as we are, they were worse, etc., as if that makes this viciousness OK or gives it a stamp of approval since our Founding Fathers participated in a climate like that.
Not good enough. There is such a thing as evolution of personal and political consciousness and if we’ve evolved past approving of bear baitings, public executions, dueling, and slavery, surely we can evolve away from a vicious political climate.
The political climate has almost always been vicious. It’s not that viciousness was okay but that it is human nature to use smears and gossip to attack a political opponent.
James Callendar accused Thomas Jefferson of having a slave mistress (turned out to be true). Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel was called a bigamist (her divorce had not been granted when she married Andrew). Abraham Lincoln was caricatured as a gorilla and was said to have sneaked into Washington for the inauguration wearing women’s clothes.
A viscous political climate is the result of strong difference of opinion. The complexity of our political system makes it difficult to definitively prove one side as being right or wrong on certain issues, therefore each side takes to superficial attacks on the other side, using the media as an amplifier, in order to persuade weaker voters.
For example, both sides have their own arguments on how to create the strongest economy but since neither side is in complete control of the economy, it becomes difficult to prove that one side was right and the other side was wrong. Adding to that is the fact that the economy works in cycles, so if the end of the cycle coincides with another party coming into office, the general public associates the downfall with the policies of the new party. It is very complicated. As such, we only have theories to point to as the basis of supporting arguments regarding the effectiveness of political parties, and unproven theories are why strong differences of opinion still exist.
The other thing that 's not new: in the past private correspondence was circulated to people other than the recipient for political purposes. And like today, newspapers had political points of view. Unlike today, they didn’t pretend otherwise.
A real difference is that in the past, people running for the presidency were not in it to become rich. Harry Truman retired back to a modest house in Independence. Since then it seems that presidents leave office vastly richer than when they entered (and I don’t mean the pension).
Not always. For some individuals like President Andrew Jackson, he went into many of his duels with the full intention of killing his opponent…and did so at least once.
Related to the issue of duels was also the idea that a man from the social/economic elite had the “right” to shoot someone dead for uttering an offensive word or committing an offensive undermining deed.
For instance, Confederate General Earl Van Dorn was shot dead by a doctor who felt his honor was besmirched by Dorn’s having an affair with his wife. No charges were ever brought against the doctor despite it being quite apparent that he murdered Dorn in his headquarters.
There were a few other instances of military officers within the same side who fought duels and even killed each other in both the Union and Confederate sides with few serious consequences as those duels were considered an acceptable way of settling disputes…whether personal or political.
@greenwitch:
It isn’t about condoning the viciousness and such, it is putting it into context, that instead of despairing that the country is falling apart because “unlike the founding, when everyone was together, today we are all split apart, fighting, etc” (that is a direct quote from a comment I read online). It is very hard to look at the current climate and despair or think like the world is coming to an end, when this kind of thing went on back then and likely after most of us are gone.
When Washington was president, and continuing on into Adam’s administration, Jefferson, though he was in both administrations (as Adams VP, cabinet under Washington as treasury), wrote horrible things in broadsides and as editorials in newspapers under a pseudonym , backstabbing both men (him being VP under washington was a factor of there not being formal parties then, the vp was the runner up in the electoral college vote for president), undercutting them and accusing them of many things (the Alien and Sedition acts Adams rammed through were in some ways a direct result of some of these if I remember correctly).
@jonri:
Without going into detail, there was a lot of that, neutrals were often viewed as being loyalists and were ‘strongly encouraged’ to joing the fighting, not to mention that after the revolution there was a lot of violence aimed not only at loyalists, but between people who supported the revolution but who had some kind of feud.
The point of this isn’t that today’s climate is okay or wonderful or acceptable, it is that politics seems always to have been like this, but today of course it is worse because of the media and internet and so forth magnifies the ugliness. When Cleveland ran for president, hecklers at campaign stops and such would yell “where’s my Daaady”, a reference to Cleveland supposedly fathering a kid out of wedlock, and when FDR was president detractors, including the right wing oriented press, called him names like rubber legs, openly.
Well, looking at the glass as half full, political smears and other dirty tactics are no worse today than in the past. Some things, ie dueling, no longer exist, obviously an improvement. The upshot being that the country isn’t headed into the crapper anymore today than in the past. It also shows that the people who shake their heads and mutter how this is the worst campaign EVER, don’t know their history.
@tating:
Sadly, that is true of a lot of things when it comes to politics and other things, the view of history people have has been tainted by crappy history teaching in schools that relies on dates being more important than the concepts behind what happened, and self interest mythologizing, and a lot of deliberate falsifying of ‘historical facts’, especially on the Internet.
It was why Santayana wrote his famous words, that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, we don’t always learn from the past because we don’t really know what it was. Truman said that when it came to history there was nothing new under the sun (something to the tune that the only thing seeming to be new is that someone not knowing history). Truman knew that when you understood history the perspective it gave allowed understanding what you face today.
In all fairness to people, what makes this campaign look like the worst in history is unlike prior campaigns, nothing here is hidden. If a candidate called FDR rubber legs back in the 30’s, a pro FDR paper might pick it up, but most of the media would shrug it off, these days it would become topic du jour for days on the 24 hour news cycle, it is just in our faces more. On the other hand, barring some of what some people might think happen, we haven’t had the kind of politically inspired violence that once happened (I am not talking a pro or anti spectator getting roughed up these days, I am talking things like riots in NYC between nativist and immigrants that killed people, shootouts, you name it). It is funny, for years we have been told that people say they want an end to negative campaigning, dirt, the like, yet it seems like elections can’t get out of the ooze.
Voter intimidation and violence were ever present in the 19th century not only with the first KKK and pro-Confederate southern Whites shown towards recently freed ex-slaves and free Blacks and pro-Unionists in the Reconstruction south, but also in many parts of the antebellum US.
Read of many accounts of voters being threatened with violence and/or violently attacked for even being suspected of leanings towards the political opponent of the candidate favored by the intimidator/attacker(s).
This wasn’t helped by the fact that elections and political rallies in the 18th and early-mid 19th century tended to be regarded as occasions for wild partying and heavy drinking which would make modern heavy campus drinking cultures seem like the models of extreme genteel propriety.
@cobrat:
Yeah, read up on Andy Jackson and his supporters, it is a pretty fun read. In terms of drinking (not to derail this thread), it reminds me of the writings of HL Mencken, who as I get older I share his cynicism more and more, when he went to the political conventions in the 1920’s, he said unfailingly that the best booze and the best parties were thrown by the congressman and senators who were often the most vocal of the ‘dry’ politicians, while those promoting repeal of the 18th amendment often didn’t drink much:)
A large often unacknowledged part of the “not running for the presidency to get rich” was that politics, especially in the first 50 or so years of the Republic was dominated by the SES elite so there was no real need to get into politics to “get rich” for most. They were already rich before entering politics. And even then. several ended up in dire financial straits afterwards.
This was not only underscored by the fact all presidents up until Andrew Jackson came from prominent families of the time, but also by the fact for the first few decades, only those who OWNED A CERTAIN MINIMUM AMOUNT OF TAXABLE LAND had the franchise.
And speaking of Harry Truman, his constrained financial state upon leaving office was one of the factors in the creation and passage of a bill providing for pension and other privileges for former presidents:
