NEVERMORE
The
whole campaign was a sham. It pitted a well-known Washington insider,
an incumbent too smart for his own good, against a candidate from
the Western boondocks whom many felt was simply not up to the
job, and whom others suspected of having used mind-altering substances.
Both candidates tried to hide their shortcomings behind empty
slogans and even emptier spectacles. It was, as one of its chroniclers
dubbed it, “the
Great Image Campaign.”
I'm
referring, of course, to the presidential campaign of 1840, between
Democratic President Martin Van Buren and his Whig challenger,
William Henry Harrison. Van Buren, the “red fox” of
Kinderhook, was considered a political wizard, but in the wake
of a devastating national depression he was hard-pressed to keep
hold of the populist mantle inherited from Andrew Jackson.
Harrison,
Matty Van's operatives whispered, was a dessicated old war hero,
interested in the presidency only for the pension it would bring.
Otherwise, he would be just as glad to retire to some frontier
cabin and drink hard cider for the rest of his days.
In
fact, before he became a national hero fighting the British and
Tecumseh's Indian federation during the War of 1812, Harrison
had hailed from a Virginia mansion. He had served ably as governor
of the Indiana Territory, and he and his Whig handlers knew something
about politics—as they were then rapidly evolving. They quickly
turned the Democrats' jabs against them, running parade after
parade in which floats depicted Harrison's alleged cabin, complete
with homey cider barrel, woodpile, and coonskin cap. (Not incidentally,
campaign workers on the float also handed out free whiskey and
hard cider in bottles shaped like log cabins.)
By
1840 politics was already well on its way to becoming mass entertainment,
as the masses got the vote. Jackson, the champion of the popular
franchise—at least for white males—had presided over
campaigns featuring gigantic barbecues, cannonades, sing-alongs,
and the erection of “hickory poles” on countless street
corners. Harrison's campaign augmented its libacious parades with
such gimmicks as rolling an enormous paper ball from town to town,
inscribed with anti-administration slogans and designed to advertise
their intention to “Keep the ball rolling” all the way
to the White House.
Both
major parties “could muster a political drill that matched
or overmatched the uniformed militia of the time,” writes
historian William Nisbet Chambers, while a contemporary observer
wrote that “Processions—standards—transparencies—bands
of music—thundering artillery—burning tar barrels—and
all the other paraphernalia of electioneering warfare are in active
requisition.”
Today,
in our infinite wisdom, such base appeals to the public taste
would be dismissed as cheap stunts—more reasons why so many
Americans are disgusted with politics, and will stay away from
the election booths this month. Americans certainly do seem to
be disgusted; this year, as in most recent elections, it is likely
that almost one in every two voters will find it an intolerable
burden to take five minutes to go to their local polling place
and decide who will fill the most powerful political office in
the world. (No, not the chairmanship of the Fed.) The 1840 race,
by contrast, drew some 80 percent of eligible voters—a turnout
equalled or bettered in presidential voting only in 1860 and 1876.
Certainly,
as we have been told over and over again, much of this disgust
and indifference can be attributed to negative ads, too much media
attention on process, and too much money flooding our political
process. These are all valid problems that deserve our real attention—instead
of just another public television forum. Yet could the greater
problem be that the process has simply receded too far from most
of us, trapped in ever briefer reports on the evening news? Could
it have more to do with the death of political culture in the
United States?
It's
hard to adequately describe how much more exciting, even frenzied,
election day used to be in America. On the Lower East Side of
New York, children would tie brooms to their tenement stoops,
hoping for a clean sweep by Tammany Hall. Their parents would
crowd the streets after work, following the results projected
by magic lanterns from the upper windows of newspaper offices.
William Randolph Hearst's New York Journalonce sent aloft
two balloons full of fireworks. They filled the sky with green
stars when the Democratic candidate moved into the lead, and gold
when the Republican surged ahead.
Such
revelry might be attributed solely to the absence of TV—to
a more attentive, less entertainment-saturated age. Yet the television
era, too, once had its own magic. Before the perfection of the
exit poll, TV served as a great, unifying medium on election night.
Three different times over the course of sixteen years—in
1960, 1968, and again in 1976—presidential races were not
decided until the wee hours of the morning. Americans sat spellbound,
drawn into the drama and majesty of the contest as it rolled slowly
west across the nation. The current rush by the networks to identify
a winner does not simply discourage voting in western time zones,
as many once feared. Much worse is how instant results erase the
sense of what a vast, collective endeavor we are engaged in.
Of
course, the old election-day rituals were not simply grand theatre.
They were also wild, roiling brawls, punctuated by plenty of chicanery
and even murder, and fueled by the copious amounts of alcohol
consumed on such occasions. The writer Luc Sante's description
of “...political victories... celebrated with torchlight
parades and bonfires that suggest a lynching rather than an enthronement”
provides an uglier snapshot of the old political culture.
Corruption
was commonplace, especially on the part of the nation's big-city
political machines. Even New York's enduring emblem of reform
politics, Fiorello La Guardia, was forced to fight fire with fire,
organizing his “Ghibboni,” flying columns of supporters
who took on Tammany's men mano-a-mano during his first successful
run for mayor. The Little Flower himself marched into a polling
place on East 113th Street, tore a poll-watcher badge off a Tammany
brave's coat, and told him, “You're a thug. Now get out of
here and keep away.”
One
of the more enduring machine tactics was voting “repeaters,”
that is, voting the same individuals over and over again. Back
in the days when voting lists were a good deal more elastic, names
could always be obtained from such sources as, say, the local
graveyard.
But
what about those pesky bodies opposition poll-watchers insisted
they must set eyes upon? Such men could be obtained in a variety
of ways, often with the aid of a few dollars or a little whiskey.
Winoes and other denizens of the streets were often prized candidates
for this line of work; “Bathhouse John” Coughlin of
Chicago even earned his sobriquet by keeping bathhouses the down-and-out
could frequent, before being marched out to do their patriotic
duty at the polls.
Indeed,
the practice of using repeaters became so widespread—and
so blatant—that it led to a sardonic rally cry—“Vote
early and often!”—and an even better vaudeville routine:
Election official: “Come off it, you ain't Bishop Doane."
Voter: “The hell I ain't, you son of a bitch.”
One
of America's first and foremost literary lights may even have
fallen victim to this tactic. By the fall of 1849, Edgar Allan
Poe was in the midst of a long, downhill slide. His cousin and
child-bride, Virginia, a perennial invalid, had finally succumbed
to tuberculosis in early 1847. Since then his behavior and general
mental state—always erratic—had deteriorated noticeably.
For over two years, he had lived a peripatetic existence, searching
constantly, in no particular order, for work, backers for a literary
journal he hoped would make him the arbiter of all American letters,
and a new wife. His adventures along these lines tended to be
pathetic when they weren't simply ludicrous. For such an adamantly
melancholic poet, Poe managed to find himself an enormous amount
of mischief. He floundered in and out of engagements to one wealthy
widow after another, exchanged regular insults and dueling challenges
with other writers and editors, and fell into extended drunks
and laudanum binges. He also churned out some of his best short
stories and poems, delivered lectures on just about everything,
and recited The Raven in many an obliging barroom.
The
exact events of Poe's last days remain obscure even now, but it
seems that he probably arrived at Baltimore, by ferry from Richmond,
on September 29, 1849. He had managed to make another engagement,
and had lined up a promising backer for his new journal.
All
of which seems to have left Poe more morose than ever. As his
biographer Hervey Allen writes, “like all his great dreams,
he preferred to have [them] remain where they could be perfect,
i.e, in the realms of the imagination.” He had come to the
wrong place—a city where men of a more pragmatic nature were
hoping to immediately realize their dreams concerning an election
for the U.S. Congress and the Maryland state legislature. Baltimore
at the time had as rowdy and lawless a political culture as any
place in America at the time, and while no one knows for sure
just what happened, many have speculated that Poe—already
a few sheets to the wind—wandered into the vicinity of the
Whig Fourth Ward Club.
The
club was located in a fire station—volunteer fire companies
then commonly serving at the time as the nucleus of political
organizations. This particular engine house seems to have served
as a Whig “coop”; that is, a place where men were lured
or dragooned by the fire laddies. There they were held for days
at a time—with the aid of drugs and liquor—until they
could be voted as repeaters.
This
particular coop was estimated at the time to have held 130-140
electoral pigeons. We cannot be sure that Poe was among them but,
as a slight man, in poor health and easily overmatched by the
drink, he would have been easy pickings. All we know for sure
is that Poe was found on election day, October 3rd, in a nearby
tavern that also served as a polling place, all but unable to
move from his chair and “surrounded by ruffians.” Attempts
to find out from the poet himself what had happened were useless.
When discovered by an old friend he was incoherent and all but
immobilized, his body unwashed and his whole appearance disheveled.
He may even have been robbed of his original clothes. Poe was
rushed to a nearby hospital, but only intermittently regained
consciousness and reason. Tormented by dreams, visions, and possibly
delirium tremens, he passed away early in the morning of Sunday,
October 7, 1849. The inventor of the murder mystery had left a
dandy mystery of his own demise—though most clues pointed
to Baltimore's firemen.
Well,
all right—maybe that's a little too much election-day fun.
But marauding fire companies, the practice of drugging voters
with whiskey, and even the Whigs have long since followed Edgar
Allan Poe to their reward. This means you no longer have any excuse
not to get down to your local polling place and vote, even if
you do need to stop for a drink afterwards.
©
2000 Copyright Forbes Inc.
