Stop the Steal, Vol. I (Philadelphia 1797)
In the late eighteenth century, a Philadelphia politician finally won an election to the state legislature on his third try. Until he didn't.
Trying out something new here, folks. The idea is to explore episodes from the history of Philadelphia and put them in dialogue with current events. Let’s see if a bitter controversy over an election in 1790s Philadelphia can help put the events of January 6th, and their fallout, into some sort of useful historical perspective.
The day democracy died. “What appears to one party differs from what appears to the other,” writes my friend Timothy Barr over at his Substack Occasional Hazards. He’s not talking about political parties. Tim is a rhetorician and the essay I pulled this quote from is a reflection on persuasion. His “parties” are hypothetical persons in disagreement with each other. He goes on to discuss this famous optical illusion, the Vexierbild, which can be seen variously as a duck or as a rabbit:
When seen as a duck, the protrusion in the top left is an open bill; when seen as a rabbit, “protrusion” becomes protrusions — bunny ears.
But let’s say that the parties in question are political — we’ll take MAGA Republicans, on the one hand, and Democrats on the other. And for the Vexierbild, we’ll substitute the following image:
MAGA Republicans see a heroic effort to Stop the Steal; Democrats see barbarians at the gates. Their interpretations could hardly be less alike.
David Remnick, writing for The New Yorker, offers some insight into the place that January 6 now holds in the Democratic mind:
When white supremacists, militia members, and MAGA faithful took inspiration from the President and stormed the Capitol in order to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election, leaving legislators and the Vice-President essentially held hostage, we ceased to be a full democracy. Instead, we now inhabit a liminal status that scholars call “anocracy.” That is, for the first time in two hundred years, we are suspended between democracy and autocracy. And that sense of uncertainty radically heightens the likelihood of episodic bloodletting in America, and even the risk of civil war.
Meanwhile, Eric Lendrum, a former intern for the Trump administration, takes us inside the mind of MAGA Republicans:
If [the left’s] aim is to make January 6 their Reichstag Fire, then we should go forward celebrating the events of that day as our Storming of the Bastille; a day where a symbol of the degeneration of our ruling class into total corruption and tyranny was challenged, and the elites were shown just what happens when millions of freedom-loving citizens finally grow sick and tired of a boot perpetually stomping on their necks.
Interestingly, in one sense, our parties are in agreement about the events that transpired on January 6: it was the day democracy died. For Democrats, it died because the barbarians stormed the gates, permanently compromised the integrity of our electoral process, and thereby sent us sliding down the path toward autocracy. For MAGA Republicans, it died because we were already living in an autocracy, and when the Capitol Riot was quelled, so were our hopes of escaping the Democrats’ despotic rule.
But the events of January 6, unlike the Vexierbild, lend themselves to more than just two interpretations. For Glenn Greenwald, a leftist dripping with contempt for mainstream Democrats, the storming of the capitol was a farce:
That the January 6 riot was some sort of serious attempted insurrection or “coup” was laughable from the start, and has become even more preposterous with the passage of time and the emergence of more facts. The United States is the most armed, militarized and powerful regime in the history of humanity. The idea that a thousand or so Trump supporters, largely composed of Gen X and Boomers, who had been locked in their homes during a pandemic—three of whom were so physically infirm that they dropped dead from the stress—posed anything approaching a serious threat to “overthrow” the federal government of the United States of America is such a self-evidently ludicrous assertion that any healthy political culture would instantly expel someone suggesting it with a straight face.
But plenty of people who disagree with both the MAGA Republican account and the Democratic account take the capitol riots more seriously than Greenwald. Conor Friedersdorf, writer for The Atlantic, resonates most closely with blogger Scott Greenfield’s perspective:
What we lost on January 6th was our national innocence, that we, as Americans, would somehow find a way to overcome all obstacles. Instead, what we saw was our national bond unravel, how a lie perpetrated by puny people undermined our faith in ourselves. There are no laws that can restore our faith in the integrity of our nation, our government, our purpose … Without trust, we will find ourselves mired in endless contention over who’s cheating whom, who’s manipulating what, how everything is dishonest and everyone is lying, how everything is awful and nothing is worth saving. If we can’t break out of this spiral of mistrust, then there is nothing to save. The fringes will point at each other, hurl accusations and do anything to create that plausible justification to lie, cheat and steal to win “at any cost” because the alternative is intolerable.
I, for my part, find myself in agreement with the New York Times editorial board, which has written that, because of ongoing efforts by MAGA Republicans to undermine election integrity:
Jan. 6 is not in the past; it is every day… the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy.
Yep, I think that every day is January 6, because every day the integrity of our institutions is at stake. Except I don’t mean by that quite what the Times editorial board meant. I’m saying something more like this, from a prior essay of mine:
Everyone seems so certain the sky is falling, and maybe everyone is right.
On second thought, of course they’re right. In fact, they’re not only right in 2021. The sky is now, always has been, and always will be falling. We’ve just been lulled by the incredibly functional systems we’ve inherited into the delusional belief that the default state of the world is one in which the sky simply stays put. Allow me to offer a friendly reminder of a simple truth we’ve all known all along: that sky-fall is chronic to the human condition, that we’re fated to run around frantically picking up the fallen pieces and putting them back in place...
Scott Greenfield’s contention that “what we saw [on January 6] was our national bond unravel” brings to mind a speech given in 1838. So, let’s travel back nearly 200 years to what was, perhaps, a simpler time, but still one in which the sky was falling.
January 27, 1838. A lanky man just a few weeks shy of his 29th birthday stands behind a podium at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois. He’s delivering a speech titled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” Dismissing the possibility that forces from abroad pose a serious threat to the United States, he declares:
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
The young Abraham Lincoln continues:
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to the feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny.
Granted, Lincoln was, as Scott Greenfield suggests, optimistic that he and his fellow Americans would overcome any obstacles posed by this “increasing disregard for law” — but was his optimism rooted in some sort of American innocence that remained intact from Lincoln’s time right on down to the storming of the capitol on January 6, 2021? Or have Americans always been anxious about the fate of their republic, fearful that we’ll “die by suicide” at the hands of the worst among us?
Surely there was once a time when Americans were just optimistic, right? A time when our innocence was still intact, some sort of national paradise lost? In a way, Lincoln seemed to think as much of the founding era. But, ironically, a crucial element of that national paradise was, in his account, a different sort of anxiety about the fate of the republic. For the revolutionary generation, the American experiment was utterly undecided. It was up to them to “display before an admiring world… the capability of a people to govern themselves.” This challenge served as a binding force for the members of the fledgling United States. Lincoln conceived of the revolutionary generation as fortified against death-by-suicide, in part, because of this binding force. Another fortification was the channeling of negative energy outwards: “the deep rooted principle of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation.”
By 1838, Lincoln was lamenting the loss of these cohesive forces, fearing the consequences of the loss, and pleading his fellow citizens to act accordingly:
They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars…
But let’s take a closer look at life in Lincoln’s “temple of liberty.”
Philadelphia, 1797. I came across the story of Israel Israel (yes, that’s his real name) in an essay called “Poverty, Fear, and Continuity,” written by historian John K. Alexander as the first chapter of The Peoples of Philadelphia: A History of Ethnic Groups and Lower-Class Life, 1790—1940. Alexander tells the whole story in only a few pages, so I’ll just give you his version, which is available for free on Google Books:
Some condensed highlights:
Morgan’s supporters were not to be done in so easily. They petitioned the state senate, claiming Israel’s election was illegal… The senate committee agreed, and ordered a new election… The press was filled with charges and counter-charges. Both sides claimed the opposition would use fraud, intimidation, and “dark schemes” to win… the pro-Israel group hammered home the theme that the rights of the common people had been taken away when he was denied the senate seat… The pro-Morgan newspapers carried dire predictions of what an Israel victory would mean. They warned that “the hour of danger is come— … our country is struggling in the deadily gripe of disorder and rapine, and the contest is doubtful. Our government and laws totter under the unremitting exertions of ruffians panting for tumult, plunder, and bloodshed… and in hellish anticipation [they] view your property as already their own.” Other Morgan backers urged all to vote for Morgan lest “the lawless sons of anarchy and misrule” steal the people’s property.
When, in 1838, Abraham Lincoln asked his audience at the Young Men’s Lyceum “at what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?” who knew that the “hour of danger” had already come and passed, 40 years prior, in Philadelphia!
Lincoln’s temple of liberty, his imagined paradise in which the founding generation’s hate was directed only toward the British, turns out to be a myth. In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love and the nation’s first capitol, the revolutionary generation was every bit as much at each other’s throats as was Lincoln’s, as is ours. Already, in 1797, Americans were accusing each other of lawlessness, alleging election fraud, trying (successfully!) to overturn election outcomes, lamenting the loss of sacred rights. Already we were entertaining the idea that the very fate of the republic depended on the outcome of the next election — if we win, the experiment lives on; if they win, we’re doomed.
And can you not imagine Trump on stage at a MAGA rally, delivering the anecdote about the Quaker to a standing ovation? Seriously, I’ll swap out some names and translate the anecdote into Trump-speak, and you read it in his voice:
I have a story for you. It’s a good one. Do you want to hear it? (*Cheering*) Yes? Okay. One of my supporters — great people, all of you — was driving to the polls to vote for me, and he saw someone walking down the street, and he asked the person, he said, “do you want a ride?” Because that’s what we do, we’re kind people. But before the guy — my supporter — let the person get in his truck, he asked them, he said: “who are you voting for?” Because, you know, we’re kind, but we’re not dummies. And the loser said “Joe Biden!” (*Booooo!*) I know, I know, but it’s true! It’s a true story. So, anyway, you know what our guy did? He told the loser to walk. (*Wooooo!*) And I’ll tell you, he did the right thing. I would’ve done the same thing myself. That’s right, I say let ‘em walk! I don’t care of it’s raining, if they’re a Democrat, let ‘em get wet. (*Standing ovation*)
Alright, I spent way too long writing that, but the point is that there’s nothing new about bitter partisanship, dirty politics, and anxiety about the destruction of America. These forces been with us from the start, and they’ll be with us for as long as any semblance of self-government hovers overhead. In 1797, Philadelphians feared that the end was nigh, and that the cause of death would be suicide. In 1837, Lincoln feared the same, and so do all of us in 2022. And like Lincoln, we’ve convinced ourselves that our predicament is unprecedented, which, in some ways, it is — what isn’t is how we feel about our fellow citizens and about the future.
America, 2022. What to make of all this? Well, I’m not sure, exactly. But here are some more resources to help you along in your efforts to grapple with January 6:
First, an episode of the Fifth Column podcast in which “New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, who was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and could definitely kick your ass, joins the Fifth to reflect on the riot, coup, insurrection, revolution, putsch, mass hate crime...whatever you want to call it.” You’ll need to carve out some time for this one, because the Fifth Column fellas can’t help but churn out marathon after marathon, and this one runs well over two hours:
Next, a mercifully short episode of a podcast called This Day In Esoteric Political History, in which the hosts talk about January 6 from a historical perspective:
And finally, Andrew Callaghan doing a phone interview with Jake Angeli, better known by the notorious name “Q Shaman,” who called in from the prison where he’s serving a term of 41 months for his role in the events of January 6:
All I’m really confident in saying is that there’s a hell of a lot more to all of this than the accounts offered by the New York Times, or American Greatness, or any individual Substack newsletter or podcast episode. And grappling with the nuances requires a clear head. While it’s not exactly reassuring to note that civic mistrust and election shenanigans are far from new — that, on the contrary, they’re common themes running throughout the whole of American history — I do find it grounding to step back and see that these problems have always haunted us, and we’ve always managed to plod along in spite of them.
I walk away from this little episode of local history feeling concerned about January 6, but not panicked by it. And maybe level-headed concern from active citizens is a big reason why the United States is still standing after nearly 250 years of constant worry that “the opposition would use fraud, intimidation, and ‘dark schemes’ to win,” and that their victory would mean “tumult, plunder, and bloodshed.”
And on that grim-but-hopefully-sorta-inspiring note, I’ll leave you with this Matthew McConaughey-Woody Harrelson gold, which contains a cosmic version of the Vexierbild with which we started: