Tag: Politics

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19th Century

The U.S. Capitol

Have a drink with: You. Just have a drink.
2021’s off to a start, huh?

Talk about: What wine goes with an attempted coup?

U.S. Capitol after burning by the British, 1814
U.S. Capitol after burning by the British, 1814 (Library of Congress)

Yesterday’s breach of the United States Capitol by a shaggy horde of insurrectionists egged on by the President of the United States was a historical anomaly of the worst kind: the first intrusion into the Capitol by an unwelcome force since the British invasion of Washington during the War of 1812. In the late summer of 1814, British forces tore through the District and laid waste to government buildings, including a fiery effort against the still-incomplete Capitol building.

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19th Century 20th Century

Democracy!

Raise a glass to: Democracy
Vote! Vote! Vote!

Look. A lot of people are saying a lot of things about Election Day. The results may take too long. Is absentee balloting trustworthy? And what the hell is up with the Electoral College? It is all very stressful. But these questions are not new, and there are some historical precedents we can lean our tired selves on:

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19th Century 20th Century

Postal Inspectors

Have a drink with: Postal Inspectors
Don’t mess with the postal service.

Ask them about: Snow, rain, gloom of night, Tommy guns

When former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was arrested recently on charges of defrauding donors to an online fundraising campaign known as “We Build the Wall,” it was by agents of the United States Postal Inspection Service. This may seem surprising to many of us, who typically think of the postal service as consisting of affable, hardworking people who look unusually good in shorts and the occasional pith helmet, but for most of American history, the Post Office has been home to the nation’s most powerful federal law enforcement.

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19th Century

The Flour Riots

The Flour Rioters of 1837
Bread, meat, rent and fuel

Ask them about: sourdough starter?

In the pandemic months of 2020, one of the most initially surprising facts of life was the desolation of the supermarket baking aisle, with flour in desperately short supply as we all stress-baked our way through isolation. It isn’t the first time flour availability has been top-line American news, either. New Yorkers were obsessed with rising prices and short supply of flour in 1837, too – and that time, it led to a very contentious, very powdery riot.

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18th Century 19th Century 20th Century

Black Historians

Have a drink with: Black Historians

Ask them about: Maybe just listen.

Here’s something I found while I was researching this week. It’s a column from a September 1863 issue of Scientific American:


Part of the process of researching a subject is looking at all the adjacent issues that you encounter along the way, building a sense of daily consciousness and public culture in a given era. And I was still shocked – and absolutely should not have been – at the clinical distance with which the authors talk about black soldiers in the Civil War, and the suggestion that even the Union army thought of black men as such commodities that they’d rather send them in than risk white soldiers dying of malaria.

So it’s time to sit in that discomfort, and recommend that we all do more to understand America’s history of inequality. There are a lot of titles here, and this is just a small selection. I’m not going to link them – you can choose where you’d like to purchase (but bookshop.org and indiebound.org are cool because they help you support your favorite local bookstores).

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20th Century

Election Day 2018

Have a drink with: The American Voter
A high and important duty to perform.

Ask: what’s your plan for voting?

Poster, “Don’t Talk Politics in Here if You Are Not Registered.” 1986.0534.23.

We’re not alone among the world’s democracies in this fact, but Americans don’t have a great record on voter turnout, particularly when midterm elections are involved. This is not unique to the modern era, either: back in 1803, when Connecticut was considering the sort of structural political change that would lead to the passage of our 1818 Constitution, fusty Federalist judge David Daggett, writing under a pseudonym in a political pamphlet called “Facts Are Stubborn Things,” (no kidding, dude) encouraged his readers to avoid Election Day laziness:

“[G]ive your suffrages for those whom your consciences approve. Let no federalist say my town will do right without me, or my vote will not oppose the triumph of democracy. Each freeman should feel that he has a high and important duty to perform, and that in neglecting it, he is inexcusable.”

But more to the point: a reminder from the past, courtesy the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of October 10, 1905, that there are lots of ways to remind yourself to go vote tomorrow:

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19th Century

John Tyler

Have a drink with: John Tyler
His Accidency

Ask him about: Sick of that song yet?

John Tyler

In the anonymous New York Times opinion essay about staff dissent within the White House published earlier this month, the author mentioned (among many other things) deliberation over use of the 25th Amendment in response to perceived presidential instability.

To be fair, this is not a new topic: the the 25th Amendment has been a common topic in shouts and whispers over the past two years as pundits consider whether its terms would or wouldn’t realistically attach to the current occupant of the White House.

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 1967 in direct response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the questions involved had well predated the 25th Amendment even if they had not been presented so directly: what to do when the Presidency changes fundamentally and irrevocably, due to death, removal, resignation, or disability?

Dealing with matters of succession and power transfer, the 25th was invoked in the 1970s around the Nixon administration, and is occasionally put into action when a sitting President is temporarily incapacitated (despite the promise of intrigue and drama inherent in the amendment, in reality it’s been used, for example, to cover the duration of each of the Bush presidents’ colonoscopies).

But for the first word on the matter of presidential succession, you’ll need to go back to 1840 and then-Vice President John Tyler, who set up a century-long American precedent on succession that boils down to a very Trumpy word: MINE.

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18th Century

The Proprietors

Have a drink with: The Committee of the Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands at New Haven
Say that one five times fast.

Ask them about: Food trucks, church buildings and underground parking structures

The New Haven Green

There are situations in which you are pleased to find your hometown has made national news. A horrific instance of mass overdose is emphatically not one of them. And as news coverage has attempted to understand and respond to a public health crisis of this particular impact, all but the most local coverage has overlooked one idiosyncratic fact about the administration of the space in question: the city of New Haven, Connecticut is not the owner of the New Haven Green.

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19th Century 20th Century

Presidential Hats

Have a drink with: Presidential Hats
Come at me, bro.

Ask them about: how buff was Teddy Roosevelt?

Hat in the Ring

With the collective American mind very much on upcoming midterm elections, and with a host of new and nontraditional contenders running for office, one phrase pops up perhaps a little more than usual: the announcement that one candidate or another has tossed his or her hat in the proverbial ring.

It’s a common, casual phrase in American English – but where does all this hat-throwing come from?

Perhaps the first public use of the phrase was on November 30, 1804, when the London Morning Post recapped a boxing match between fighters Tom Belcher and Bill Ryan. The sports reporter set the stage for the bout by writing:

“The parties arrived at Wilson Green, soon after ten o’clock, where a ring was formed by the spectators, who anxiously waited the event of the fight. Belcher appeared confident of success, and threw his hat into the ring, as an act of defiance to his antagonist, who entertained the same confidence of success, and received this bravado with a smile.”

(FYI: Belcher was favored in pre-fight betting with 6:4 odds, but went down in the 37th round on a knockout. )

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19th Century

Daniel Sickles

Have a drink with: Daniel Sickles
Once I was the King of Spain…

Ask him about: What’s the name of his other leg?

Daniel Sickles

Daniel Sickles sat weeping in a Washington, D.C. jail in 1859. The young, charismatic New York Congressman was an up-and-coming star in American politics – a favorite of President James Buchanan, in fact – and he was sitting in a dirty jail cell, heartbroken and awaiting trial for murdering his wife’s lover.

But before you feel too sorry for him, consider this: Daniel Sickles was a tool. How much of a tool?

He robbed the mail to take a political adversary’s advertisements out of circulation.

He was indicted for various financial schemes, including selling fake news subscriptions so he could drink the $1,000 profit at an upscale bar.

He took campaign contributions from his favorite prostitute, whom he also brought along as his companion and introduced to Queen Victoria while on assignment as James Buchanan’s secretary in London. While his pregnant wife was at home.

Whom he’d seduced, knocked up and married when she was sixteen.

After sleeping with her mother.

So his jailhouse blubbering is really a matter of the pot calling the kettle slutty, but you can thank Sickles for creating something we still use today: temporary insanity.

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