Old-style politics and the death of Edgar Allan Poe.
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.