About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
Last week “Connections” compared the 1856 election to Election 2016. Readers asked to be told what happened next.
Be careful what you wish for: what happened next was civil war. The election of 1856 exposed the underlying socio-cultural condition that produces a critical election: an extreme and irresolvable division. In 1856 it was over slavery.
The extreme division was not along party lines but along geographic lines. Because an irresolvable polarization ran along geographic lines, the perfect condition existed for secession. The South seceded from the Union. The country did not survive – literally.
When political scientist Walter Dean Burnham selected 1856 as the most like 2016, he was not predicting what would happen next. He was merely characterizing what was happening now during the election.
Today, the issues and the conditions are different. In 2016 the issue is the economy coupled with the inability or unwillingness of elected officials to fix it. Today, those who are content and those who are discontent with current economic conditions do not divide geographically. The discontent is nation-wide, therefore the country might see a great political realignment during the 2016 campaign season but not dissolution of the Union after.
A better “connection” with what might happen post-election is 1892 – 1896.
During the election of 1892, as in 2016, there was a rich mix of hyper-nationalism and anger over an inequitable economy. Similarly, there was no love lost between the Republican Party and its candidate, Benjamin Harrison. President Harrison was running for a second term against former President Grover Cleveland (1884 – 1888) the Democrat, and the Populist (or People’s Party) candidate General James Weaver.
Cleveland ran a subdued campaign. It was considered beneath the dignity of the office to “run” for the presidency. Furthermore, Harrison’s wife was very ill – she died weeks after the election – and Cleveland was reserved out of respect. Not so the Populists. Somewhat like Bernie Sanders today, the Populists were running aggressively against both parties.
Their platform read in part “We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people.”
The platform went on to accuse both parties of being in the pockets of “the millionaires” and called for reforms. While the Populist Party candidate lost, many of the party’s suggested reforms were eventually adopted: it wanted direct election of senators, a graduated income tax by which individuals earning a higher income paid a higher percentage of taxes, the referendum that would allow citizens to vote on a bill or proposed legislation, and term limits.
Cleveland won, and perhaps he walked the halls of the White House muttering “be careful what you wish for.”
The election of 1892 was followed by the Panic of 1893. Banks closed, railroads failed, the stock market tumbled, and the nation’s gold reserves fell to a dangerously low level. Cleveland was blamed.
Jacob Coxey marched into Washington, D.C. with his “army” demanding change and everyone thought there would be a second revolution.
No one is predicting that will follow the 2016 election; it could be argued it preceded it. Any comparison with post-election events is about what happened next. The election of 1892 set the stage for a brand new approach to presidential politics. In fact, the next presidential election, because of all that had just preceded it, ushered in the modern age of presidential politics.
In 1896 things changed and, as of 2016, they have never changed back. From 1896 on money controlled presidential politics, presidential candidates campaigned nation-wide, the process was dominated by two parties, and those two parties were the Democrats and the Republicans.
Money and politics
“There are two things that are important in politics: the first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.”
The speaker was Mark Hanna, considered the first American political strategist. Hanna was the man who fashioned the successful presidential campaigns of William McKinley and the defeat of William Jennings Bryan not once but twice, in 1896 and 1900.
Mark Hanna (1837-1904) was a Cleveland industrialist who made his fortune in coal and iron. Convinced that the welfare of big business depended on the success of the Republican Party, in the 1880s Hanna began to organize financial support for promising Republican candidates.
Hanna raised an election fund for McKinley from wealthy individuals and corporations and orchestrated the most expensive campaign to date. The huge campaign war chest was spent on hired orators and a flood of literature promising prosperity – today’s surrogates and media ads.
McKinley was dubbed the “stay at home” candidate. In the approved 19th century fashion, McKinley stayed out of, and perhaps above, the fray, while Hanna’s strategy and huge pile of money easily defeated the grassroots campaign of William Jennings Bryan.
(Mark Hanna, by the way, has a Berkshire connection. His son Dan purchased a Berkshire cottage named Bonnie Briar in Stockbridge. Bonnie Briar was the site of the first Berkshire Symphonic Festival — Tanglewood. Sadly, today it is one of the few Berkshire cottages that is vacant and dilapidated.)
The Two-Party System
In 1896 the Chicago Record reported that Bryan was campaigning on both the Democratic and the Populist Party platforms.
From 1892 to 1896, the Populist Party gained strength and appeared to be a viable third party. Weaver did well in 1892, and Populist ideas were becoming main stream. The Panic of 1893, the worst financial crisis to date, created long soup lines and deep anger. Coxey and his 200 supporters appeared to be the advance guard of a revolution. All that the Populists needed to take control in 1896 was a candidate.
Bryan, the great commoner, was a Democrat and no dummy. He became that candidate, and shouted “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
By adopting the Populist platform, Bryan, the Democrat, co-opted the Populist Party.
Running for Office
Bryan changed the face of presidential politics: he ran for office. Bryan fashioned a nation-wide campaign giving 20 or more speeches a day at “whistle stops.”
McKinley beat Bryan by an electoral vote of 271 to 176. However, Bryan left an indelible mark. He reshaped presidential elections in two ways: solidifying the two party system and shaping the nationwide campaign. McKinley’s campaign manager Hanna had also left his mark. He defined the Republican Party as the party of big business and showed what money could buy.
