The Political Depravity of the Fathers

IN times like the present, when the boss is everywhere, and when the high places of many state and municipal governments are filled by men who have secured them by methods greatly to be condemned, it may afford the honest citizen some consolation to know that these evils have always existed. Whoever reads the magazines and newspapers, whoever listens to the oratory of the pulpit and the after-dinner speeches of political reformers, is well aware of the existence of a widespread belief that politicians and legislators and public men are more corrupt to-day than they were in the time of our ancestors three generations ago, and that the cause of our political debasement is a free and unrestricted ballot. This, most happily, is a pure delusion. A very little Study of long-forgotten politics will suffice to show that in filibustering and gerrymandering, in stealing governorships and legislatures, in using force at the polls, in colonizing and in distributing patronage to whom patronage is due, in all the frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form of practical politics, the men who founded our state and national governments were always our equals, and often our masters. Yet they lived in times when universal suffrage did not exist, and when the franchise was everywhere guarded by property and religious qualifications of the strictest kind. In New England, ninety years ago, a voter must have an annual income of three pounds, or a freehold estate worth sixty pounds. In New York he must be possessed of an estate worth twenty pounds York money, or rent a house for which he paid forty shillings annually. In New Jersey the qualification was real estate to the value of fifty pounds, in Maryland and South Carolina fifty acres of land, and in Georgia ten pounds of taxable property. But many a man who could vote was hopelessly debarred from ever holding office. No citizen could be a Governor in Massachusetts who did not own a thousand pounds of real estate, nor be a Senator unless he had a freehold worth three hundred. In North Carolina Senators must own three hundred acres of land, and a Governor lands and tenements to the value of a thousand pounds. Here the qualification for a Representative was one hundred pounds of real property ; there it was one hundred acres of land ; elsewhere it was two hundred and fifty acres of land, and open profession of the Protestant religion.

Religious restrictions were almost universal. In New Hampshire, in New Jersey, in North Carolina, in South Carolina and Georgia, the Governors, the members of legislatures, and the chief officers of state must all be Protestants. In Massachusetts and Maryland they must be Christians. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania they must believe in the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments, in South Carolina in a future state of rewards and punishments, and in Delaware in the doctrine of the Trinity.

From the standpoint of those who, in our day. disapprove of universal suffrage, this ought to have been a time of great political purity. The voters were taxpayers, Christians, and owners of property. The office-holders were men of substance, while the qualifications for holding office increased with the dignity of the place. Yet it was, in truth, a period of great political depravity. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether, in all our annals, there can be found a finer example of filibustering than that afforded by the Assembly of Pennsylvania in 1787.

The legislature of that State then consisted of one house, which met at Philadelphia, and at the session in the autumn of 1787 had resolved to adjourn, sine die, on the 29th of September. As the question of the day was the ratification of the Federal Constitution, just framed, a member of the Assembly, on the morning of the 28th, moved that a convention be called to consider the Constitution, and that a time be fixed for the choice of delegates. The enemies of the Constitution opposed the motion, and, in the midst of the debate which followed, the Assembly adjourned for dinner. The opponents of the call were in the minority ; but without the presence of at least three of them there would be no quorum. All resolved, therefore, to stay away, and when the Assembly met again, at four o’clock in the afternoon, and the clerk called the roll, no quorum was present. The sergeant-at-arms was thereupon sent to summon the absentees; but not one would obey, and the Assembly was forced to adjourn till the following morning. One of the reasons given for objecting to a call for a convention was that Congress, to which the Constitution had been transmitted by the framers, had not submitted it to the States, and that to act before it was sent out by Congress was indecent and disrespectful. It so happened, however, that Congress, then in session at New York, had submitted the Constitution to the States, and that an express, riding post haste, brought the resolution to a member of the Assembly early on the morning of the 29th.

When the Assembly met on that morning, the factious members being still absent and no quorum present, the sergeant and the clerk were again sent to bid them attend, and were ordered to show the resolution of Congress, in hope of removing their objections. But every one the Sergeant summoned replied, “ I will not attend.” Meantime a report of their conduct had spread abroad, and the people, hearing that there was no quorum, went to the tavern, seized two of the absentees, dragged them to the State House, thrust them into the Assembly Chamber, and blocked the doors. This completed a quorum, and the convention was called.

But it must not be supposed that all that was good was confined to one party, and all that was bad to the other. The convention then called met in the State House late in November, 1787, and took the Constitution into consideration. As the members would not bear the expense of employing an official stenographer, the labor of reporting the debate from day to day was undertaken by two young men. One, Alexander James Dallas, attended in behalf of the Pennsylvania Herald. The other, Thomas Lloyd, announced that he would take down the proceedings “ accurately in shorthand,” and when the convention had adjourned would publish them in one small octavo volume. But the debate had not gone on very long before the reports of Dallas in the Herald attracted attention, were copied far and wide, and furnished such material for opposition in States yet to consider the Constitution that the Federalists became alarmed and suppressed them. To do this it was necessary to buy the Pennsylvania Herald, which was done, and the report of the debate stops abruptly with November 30. The convention sat till December 15, but not another word of its proceedings nor a line of explanation appears in the Herald. It was necessary, in the next place, to dispose of Mr. Lloyd, who, though he had published nothing as yet, had promised to do so, and had secured subscriptions. But he too succumbed, and when, to satisfy his subscribers, he issued his book, in place of the debate accurately taken in shorthand, as he had promised, there appeared but two speeches, one by Thomas McKean and one by James Wilson, both ardent supporters of the Constitution. As a consequence, there does not exist to-day anything more than a fragment of the proceedings of the Pennsylvania convention which ratified the Constitution.

When ten other States had followed the example of Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress, sitting at New York, selected the first Wednesday in January, 1789, as the day when the electors of President should be chosen in the eleven ratifying States.

In most instances the business of choosing them was easily and rapidly transacted. But the legislature of New York was the scene of a bitter contest. The Assembly had passed a bill defining the manner of electing Senators and presidential electors, according to which each house was to nominate two men to be United States Senators, and then the houses were to meet in joint session and compare lists. If there was either complete or partial disagreement, a joint ballot was to be held on the names of the unsuccessful candidates. Now, in the Assembly, the Anti-Federalists had a great majority, while in the Senate the Federalists had a small majority. Had the bill passed the Senate and become a law, the nominees of each house would have been different, a joint session would have been necessary, and at that joint session the Anti-Federalists of the Assembly. greatly outnumbering the Federalists of the Senate, would have elected both Senators.

For this reason the Senate disliked the bill, and so amended it that, in case the nominees of the House were not those of the Senate, the House should choose one from the two offered by the Senate, and the Senate one from the two proposed by the House. To this the House refused to agree, and a conference followed ; but as neither would yield, New York had no Senators during the first session of the first Congress.

By another section of the same bill, provision was made for the choice of presidential electors in a manner similar to that for the election of Senators. Each house was to prepare a list of eight names, a joint session was to follow, the lists were to be compared, and men whose names were on both were to be declared elected. If the two lists were utterly different, — and they were absolutely certain to be so, —eight of the sixteen nominees were to be chosen by joint ballot, in which event the eight proposed by the Assembly would have been elected. The Senate, of course, refused to hear of such a plan; and as the Assembly would not yield, no electors were chosen, and New York east no vote for President in 1789.

This stubborn contest between the two houses over the choice of electors and Senators was followed, three years later, by the theft of the governorship. The candidates were, John Jay for the Federalists, and George Clinton for the Republicans. Each had been long in public life ; each had rendered many and distinguished services to the State; and, as a consequence, the election was close, — so close, indeed, that the loss of a few votes would decide it either way.

In those days, when men were without the telegraph, the railroad, or the steamboat, and when the centre of New York State was the frontier, the counting and canvassing of a state vote was a slow and tedious matter. The law required that as soon as the vote of a town was counted the inspectors should send the ballots to the sheriff of the county, who should put them in a box, and, when every town in the county had been heard from, should carry the box to Albany and deliver it to the Secretary of State. As the votes in the eastern and southern counties were announced one by one, the majority for Clinton dwindled till it stood at one hundred and eight, with two strong Jay counties to be heard from. If Clinton was not to be defeated, it was clear that an excuse must be found for throwing out the returns of some Federalist county, and, happily for the Republicans, an opportunity to do so existed. The box from Tioga County, which contained a good majority for Jay, had been given by the sheriff to his deputy to carry to Albany. But the deputy fell sick by the way, and sent tbe box on by a sub-deputy of his own appointment. This the Clintonians decided was illegal, and insisted that the vote of Tioga should not be counted. But even with Tioga left out, Jay would have a majority if Otsego was counted.

Now, in Otsego, the sheriff had been appointed in February, 1791, to serve one year, and just before the close of his first term had written to the Council of Appointment declining a second. One month after the end of his year a successor was appointed, but had not qualified nor acted when the election took place. In this state of things the old sheriff continued to act, and, gathering up the ballots cast in the towns of his county, sent them by his deputy to Albany. Scarcely had he done this when he found that the ballots of one town had Been left out, and these he sent wrapped up in paper. The Clintonians, availing themselves of these irregularities, insisted that the returns of Otsego should not be counted. There was, in the first place, no sheriff. In the second place, the law required that the vote of every town should go in the box; but as one had not gone into it, all the others must be lost. To this the Federalists made an elaborate answer, and supported their reasoning by the published opinion of eight of the most distinguished lawyers then practicing in New York city.

The votes, after being received by the Secretary of State, were to be canvassed by a joint committee of six members of the Senate and six members of the Assembly. As some were Federalists and some Republicans, they very naturally differed as to receiving and canvassing the votes of Otsego and Tioga, and, after many stormy sessions, agreed to refer the whole matter to a commission consisting of the United State Senators from New York, Rufus King and Aaron Burr. Colonel Burr, knowing that the Clintonians had a majority of the canvassing board, proposed to give no opinion. But when King declared that he should advise the canvassers to count the votes of Tioga and Otsego. Burr immediately advised them not to do so. Thus left to themselves, the majority rejected the returns from the two counties as irregular, and declared Clinton governor.

A storm of indignation swept over the State. The Federalists, in their fury, held public meetings, denounced the Governor as a usurper, declared the board of canvassers was corrupt, and described the policy of the Republicans as Machiavellian. But when the next election gave them the House and Senate, they showed very quickly that they too could be Machiavellian when it was expedient. By the Constitution of New York as it then was, every office not expressly elective was filled by appointments made by a board of five men, known as the Council of Appointment. These five men were the Governor and four Senators chosen by the Assembly, one from each group of six Senators from the four senatorial districts into which New York was divided. As the elective offices were confined to the Governor, the LieutenantGovernor, State Treasurer, members of the legislature, and Congressmen, the list of appointments was a long one, and included the Secretary of State, the comptroller, the judges, the attorneygeneral, the clerks of the courts, the sheriffs of the counties, the coroners, the mayors of the cities, the county court judges, and the justices of the peace. In making these appointments the Governor had merely the casting vote; but as the law said he must “ with the advice and consent of the said Council appoint all the said officers,” the Governor had always held that he alone could nominate. While the Governor and the Council were of the same political stripe this claim was freely allowed. But in 1794 the revolt against Clinton made the Council a Federalist body, which naturally declined to put into office Republicans named by the Governor, and for the first time in its history the members asserted an equal right to nominate. Clinton protested, and the matter was dropped, to come up again during the administration of John Jay. In 1795, while Mr. Jay was in London, where he had just concluded the treaty that still bears his name, he was triumphantly elected Governor, without his consent, and almost without his knowledge, and was reëlected in 1798. But the Federalist success of this latter year was followed by the sweeping Democratic victory of 1800, and in 1801 Jay found himself in a condition similar to that of Clinton in 1794 : a majority of his Council of Appointment were Democratic.

This was no trifling matter, for in February, 1801, the civil commissions of the office-holders in eleven counties and of the mayors of four cities expired, and it may well be believed that the workers in the victorious party became clamorous for their rewards.

The Assembly having elected the Council, the Governor convened it in February to fill the vacancies, and, according to custom, asserted his sole right to nominate. But at the board sat De Witt Clinton, and, led on by him, the Republicans rejected in rapid succession eleven of the Governor’s nominations, refused to vote on several more, and then began to make nominations of their own. This was too much for Jay, who adjourned the Council, and, as it could not meet unless summoned by him, the places went unfilled. Jay then appealed to the legislature, which called a convention, that amended the Constitution and gave to each member a right to nominate. Thus was the spoils system introduced into New York, and from that day a change in the political complexion of the Council of Appointment was sure to be followed by a proscription of officeholders.

But it is to Massachusetts that we owe the introduction of the most infamous piece of party machinery this century has produced. In 1812 the Jeffersonian Republicans of that State elected not only a Governor and a majority of the House, but, after years of persistent effort, secured control of the Senate. By the Constitution of Massachusetts it was decreed that the Senate should consist of forty men, chosen annually from such districts as the General Court should mark out, and that until such districts were created the Senators should be chosen from the counties. But the General Court had never used this power, and the temporary provision that each county should be a senatorial district became in time an established usage, with all the force of law. This usage, however, the Republicans now laid violent hands on, rearranged the districts without regard to county lines, overcame Federalist strongholds by connecting them to Republican strongholds, cut Worcester County in two, joined Bristol and Norfolk, attached some of the towns of Suffolk to those of Essex, and in the next General Court had twenty-nine Senators out of forty.

The story is told that a map of the Essex senatorial district was hanging on the office wall of the editor of the Columbian Centinel, when the artist Stuart entered. Struck by the peculiar outline of the towns forming the district, he added a head, wings, and claws with his pencil, and, turning to the editor, said, “ There, that will do for a salamander.” ” Better say a Gerrymander,” returned the editor, alluding to Elbridge Gerry, the Republican Governor who had signed the districting act. However this may be, it is certain that the name “ gerrymander ” was first applied to the odious law in the columns of the Centinel, that it came rapidly into use, and has remained in our political nomenclature ever since. Indeed, a huge cut of the monster was prepared, and the next year was scattered as a broadside over the Commonwealth, and so aroused the people that in the spring of 1813, despite the gerrymander, the Federalists recovered control of the Senate and repealed the law ; but not before the progeny of the monster had sprung up in New Jersey.

At the October elections in 1812, the Federalists, with the aid of the peace party, elected a majority of both branches of the legislature. This success was quite unexpected, and, greatly elated over their victory, they proceeded to gather its fruits when the legislature met, a few weeks later. As the law then stood, it would become the duty of the people of New Jersey, early in November, to choose eight presidential electors by a general ticket, a manner of election which would surely end in a Republican triumph, for the party majority on a state vote was twenty-five hundred. But the Federalists were determined that their opponents should not triumph, and six days before the election was to take place they repealed the old law, deprived the people of a vote, gave the choice of presidential electors to the legislature, and, when the time came, chose eight Federalist electors.

Their next act was to gerrymander the congressional districts. The custom so familiar to us, the custom of having in each State as many districts as the State has members of the House of Representatives, was not then in general use, and the six Representatives from New Jersey were elected by a general ticket. Here again the Republican majority in the State insured a Republican delegation ; but it was overcome on the eve of election by a bill which established three congressional districts, with boundaries so carefully marked out that four of the six Representatives were secured by the Federalists.

In New York the district system had long been in use. But the apportionment of representation, under the census of 1810, made a redistricting act necessary, and the Republicans gladly seized the opportunity to apply the gerrymander. Two wards of New York city were joined to Long Island. The towns of Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and Clinton were taken out of Dutchess County, and attached to the county of Columbia, and a number of long, rambling, irregular districts were laid out.

The bad example set by Massachusetts. New York, and New Jersey was soon imitated by Maryland. The opportunities for the use of the gerrymander were very limited, for the House of Delegates was composed of four men from each county and two from Annapolis and Baltimore, while the Senate was elected, not by the people, but by a body of electors chosen in each county for that particular purpose. Presidential electors, however, were chosen in districts, and to these, in order to get a Republican elector, the gerrymander was most shamefully applied. Montgomery County, which lay on the Potomac River and touched the District of Columbia, was cut in twain, and the piece which was strongly Federalist was joined to the city of Baltimore, which was strongly Republican, by a long and narrow strip of territory running the whole length of the county of Anne Arundel.

We have said that Maryland could not then have been gerrymandered for the purpose of securing state Senators; but the Federalists now proved that they might be elected by a judicious planting of colonies. Once in every five years, the voters of each county met and elected two men to be electors of the Senate. The inhabitants of Baltimore and Annapolis chose one for each city. The men so selected then assembled, and proceeded to elect by ballot, either from their own body or from the people at large, fifteen Senators. Now, it so happened that in 1816 the Federalists needed but one elector in order to control the college, and so secure a Federalist state Senate. As Annapolis sent one elector, and was Republican by about thirty majority, they decided to colonize the city, and for this purpose, during the last days of February and the first weeks of March, 1816, they hurried in bands of laborers and mechanics, till forty men in all had arrived, and put up at the lodging-houses and the tavern. The new-comers said they were in search of work. But when it was observed that, although no work was to be had, they still lingered, paying their bills and showing little concern that none were busy, the party leaders of the Republicans began to suspect that it was politics, and not work, that had caused this singular migration, and soon unearthed the plot. Indeed, they proved that the pretended laborers were hired, for twenty dollars a month and their board, to go to Annapolis, acquire residence, and vote the Federalist ticket. Such an outburst of indignation followed this discovery that the men were discharged, and the attempt was abandoned.

In New York, meantime, the Republicans had stolen the Assembly. There were, in 1815, one hundred and twentysix members of the Assembly ; but so close had the election been that each party secured sixty-three. Before the meeting of the Assembly, one Republican died, another went abroad for his health, and as one Federalist was too sick to attend, the numbers of the two parties became, Federalists sixty-two, Republicans sixtyone. It happened, however, that Mr. Henry Fellows, a Federalist of Ontario County, who had received seven votes more than Mr. Allen, had been refused a certificate of election by the county clerk, because in the town of Pennington fortynine ballots were cast for “ Hen. fellows ” when they should have been cast for “ Henry Fellows.” This gave the Republicans a majority of one, and they openly declared that, when the Assembly met, they would elect a Speaker and Council of Appointment, and secure the patronage of the State ; an announcement which so incensed the Federalists that on the first day of the session they refused to attend, stayed out in a body, and prevented a quorum. On the second day, fearing their constituents would not approve such conduct, all were present; but, despite every effort and argument they could make, the certificate of Allen was recognized, and a Republican Speaker and clerk were elected. It was then moved to expel Mr. Allen instanter. But the Republicans defeated the motion, and, with the aid of Mr. Allen’s vote and the casting vote of the Speaker, chose a Republican Council of Appointment. Having thus secured the patronage of the State, they consented to examine into Mr. Allen’s right to a seat, and in time, by a unanimous vote, unseated him and gave his place to Mr. Fellows. The Federalist members of the Assembly now addressed the voters, and called on them to drive from power the party which had been guilty of so gross a fraud. The voters, unhappily, were as depraved as their representatives, and in 1816 the Republicans carried the Assembly by a large majority.

John Bach Mc-Master.