Death of a President: the popular myth about William Henry Harrison

William Henry Harrison was elected as the 9th President of the United States in the 1840 Presidential Election. Harrison was a well-known and popular figure both in American political life as well as outside it: he served a brief career as a Representative and Senator from Ohio, and previously as a territorial governor in Ohio, Indiana and the Northwest Territory, the pre-statehood American territory covering parts of the Midwest. However, he was best remembered as a military leader, leading American campaigns in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 (from which he earned the nicknames “The Hero of Tippecanoe” and “Old Tippecanoe”), as well as in the War of 1812. Given that the United States of America was still in its infancy, someone like Harrison would be an ideal candidate for President.

There are some notable facts about President Harrison: he was the first President elected from the Whig Party, and at 67 years old was, at the time, the oldest man to be elected President, a title he would hold for 140 years. He was also the last elected president to be born a British subject. However, perhaps the most notable fact about Harrison is that, at just 31 days, he has had the shortest term of any President; Harrison died on April 4th, 1841, just a month after taking office.

While these facts about William Henry Harrison are true, there is also a famous and enduring myth about him: one that concerns the manner in which he died. The popular theory is that, while giving his two-hour inauguration speech on a cold, rainy day on March 4th, 1841 without wearing an overcoat or hat, Harrison caught a cold. The cold lingered and developed into pneumonia, and the President languished, and ultimately died of the illness. At least, this is how the story goes.

A daguerreotype of William Henry Harrison taken on his Inauguration Day on March 4th, 1841, the only known photograph of the President to exist

It is certainly true that President Harrison’s inauguration speech – at over 8,000 words – is the longest presidential inauguration speech in American history. And with a reputation as a great military leader to uphold, it is possible that Harrison decided to forego an overcoat and hat on his inauguration day in order to show his hardiness despite his age: arriving at the United States Capitol on horseback for his inauguration, the incoming president must have cut a swashbuckling image for a man of 67 years of age. However, the remaining element of the story – that Harrison got sick on this day, and that this led to his death – is likely untrue.

There are reasons to doubt the suggestion that the cold that Harrison caught ultimately killed him. According to the medical report from April 4, 1841 by Thomas Miller, the President’s attending physician, Harrison did not initially get sick until March 27th, more than three weeks after his inauguration. On this day, Dr Miller reported that the President “was seized with a chill and other symptoms of fever”, which progressed to “pneumonia, with congestion of the liver and derangement of the stomach and bowels” the following day. Whilst Harrison was reported to have taken a walk in the morning on March 24, during which he is again said to have been caught in a rainstorm, it is unlikely for this to have developed into pneumonia in just three days. The President was known for taking daily walks from the White House to get newspapers, to go to the market, and to attend church, and so would have been fairly fit and active for a man of his age. It is unlikely, given this, that he would have succumbed to any chill he got from being in the rain.

In 2014, Jane McHugh and Philip A. Mackowiak of the University of Maryland School of Medicine re-examined the reports and accounts of William Henry Harrison’s death. McHugh and Mackowiack highlighted that Miller was “not…entirely comfortable with the diagnosis” of pneumonia that he had made for the President[1]. Indeed, symptoms of fever and chills, whilst common with such illnesses, are not exclusive to respiratory illnesses such as colds and flu and are common symptoms with all manner of infections. By comparison, McHugh and Mackowiack say, “[Harrison’s] gastrointestinal complaints…began on the third day of the illness and were relentless as well as progressive”. Indeed, McHugh and Mackowiak point to Harrison’s gastrointestinal complaints as being the cause of his death, saying that the symptoms “were typical of “enteric fever,” a severe systemic illness caused by disseminated infection with Salmonella typhi or S. paratyphi”; in other words, President Harrison’s symptoms indicate a case of typhoid or paratyphoid fever, which then turned to septic shock.

While McHugh and Mackowiak acknowledge that pneumonia may still have been present, it would have been a secondary problem and not a major contributing factor to Harrison’s death. However, given that typhoid and paratyphoid fever are water-bourne diseases, and the illness appeared to be mainly centred in Harrison’s gastrointestinal system, it is therefore more likely that Harrison died after contracting an infection – namely typhoid – from drinking bad water, rather than from pneumonia as a result of catching a chill.

There is a reasonable explanation for how President Harrison was able to contract an infection such as typhoid: Having been built on swampland, Washington D.C. would not have had a good water supply to begin with. However, during the middle of 19th Century, Washington D.C. – like many US cities – lacked a sufficient sanitation system. “Until 1850”, McHugh and Mackowiak point out, “sewage from nearby buildings simply flowed onto public grounds a short distance from the White House, where it stagnated and formed a marsh”. Given that the White House at the time collected its water from a spring in what is today Franklin Park merely a few blocks from this outlet, as well as an area where public waste was deposited, it is not difficult to understand how exactly the drinking water supply to the White House could become contaminated.

Through the remainder of the 19th century, construction of different city-wide sewer systems in Washington took place, but these were inadequate and did little to prevent disease; outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid and even malaria would kill thousands of people during the Civil War. It is also known that the two subsequent elected presidents – James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor – also suffered from similar gastrointestinal complaints while in the White House (Polk would die of cholera at the age of 53 in 1849, barely three months after the end of his Presidency, while Taylor himself would also die of gastrointestinal disease the following year at the age of 65); both of these could also be linked to the District of Columbia’s water supply. It wouldn’t be until the 1890s under President Benjamin Harrison – William Henry Harrison’s grandson – that a board of engineers would be appointed to oversee the development of a functional sewer system in Washington DC; it is this same sewer system that serves the city today.

We can only speculate what kind of president William Henry Harrison might have been had he lived longer; given that the United States was only 20 years away from Civil War, any actions he may have taken – as with any president – could have had a pivotal impact on future events. This speculation could easily become the subject of a future post here. In any case, while myths such as the one detailing President Harrison’s death from a cold are fascinating, I find learning the truth behind them to be just as interesting.

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[1] McHugh, Jane and Mackowiak, Philip A., “Death in the White House: President William Henry Harrison’s Atypical Pneumonia” in Clinical Infectious Diseases, October 2014, Volume 59, Issue 7, p990–995. Available at https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciu470

Is this the most underrated President of the United States?

Over the last 70 years, numerous scholarly surveys have been conducted to identify the best and worst Presidents of the United States. Oftentimes the same names appear at the top of the list: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, to name a few. Meanwhile, the bottom of the list has its own usual suspects, including Warren Harding, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Presidential greatness is commonly thought of as being defined by aspects such as crisis management and leadership, rousing rhetoric and vision, significant achievement and sticking power in the public memory. Meanwhile, the lowest-ranked presidents usually share scandals, crises happening on their watch and poor leadership as common factors.

But how suitable are these frameworks really for “ranking” Presidents? Is it fair to deem a president as mediocre on the grounds that he didn’t lead the nation through a major crisis, such as a war? Criticizing the notion of presidential rankings, Curtis Amlund says that “to say…that a president was average or near-great does not tell us much about anything”.[1] In the same way that you cannot always compare the crises of the past to today’s challenges, you cannot necessarily compare one President to another operating in a different time, as you will only get a partial picture.

Today I would like to discuss a particular President whom is often considered mediocre, but whom I feel is very much underrated. I will be considering his Presidency, his legacy, and what we could possibly learn from him. But not only is this President underrated, he is also oft-forgotten; a 2014 study found him to be the least-memorable President. And yet, Mark Twain is quoted as having said “it would be hard to better President Arthur’s administration”.

^{Chester A. Arthur, 21st President of the United States, 1881-1885}

Chester Alan Arthur is a difficult man to biographise, on account of the fact he ordered his personal and official papers be burned on his death. However, I will attempt to discuss his background, presidency and legacy here. Chester A. Arthur ascended to the Presidency on September 19th, 1881 following the death of President James Garfield, 79 days after Garfield had been shot by Charles Guiteau. Arthur was not really a politician; rather, he was a career civil servant, and by all accounts was an able administrator.[2] If we exclude serving as Garfield’s Vice President for a whole 199 days and a brief stint as Chairman of the New York Republican Party, the only real political office Arthur had held was Collector of Customs at the Port of New York. It was the civil service ladder, rather than the political ladder, that Arthur climbed to the Presidency.

In the approach to the 1880 Presidential Election, the Republican Party was divided between two factions: the Stalwarts, led by New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, opposed civil service reform, generally preferring they system of political patronage (the act of rewarding people, either financially or with things like political positions or government contracts, for their electoral support). Meanwhile, the Half-Breeds favoured reform, looking to build the civil service upon a merit system, as opposed to a spoils system, which was essentially patronage or cronyism. Stalwarts had opposed the attempts at reform made by Rutherford B. Hayes, and sought to re-nominate former President Ulysses S Grant for an unprecedented third term, while Half-Breeds supported Maine Senator James G Blaine’s campaign for the nomination.

During America’s Gilded Age – the term given to the period of rapid economic growth, increased immigration and expanding industrialisation in the later part of the 19th Century – corruption was a part of American political life, and the spoils system was openly advocated by some of the political establishment. As Port Collector, Arthur himself was not immune: “Back in the days before income tax”, Sybil Schwartz writes, “the customs provided the federal government’s chief source of revenue. As collector in New York, Arthur presided over an “industry” that grossed five times more than the nation’s largest corporations”. Customs House employees under Arthur were encouraged to make “voluntary” pro bono nostro (“for the common good”) contributions “to the Stalwart cause”; this practice was perfectly legal until it was outlawed in 1872.[3] Arthur was ultimately removed from his position in 1878 by President Hayes, a reformer who had the support of the Half-Breeds, on the grounds that reform of the Customs House would be impossible as long as Arthur was in post.[4] Who better then than Arthur to champion Conkling’s cause?

^{An October 1881 Puck Magazine cartoon showing President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) booting Chester A. Arthur (who had recently become President) from the New York Custom House as part of his attempts at reform; however, a path leads straight from the Customs House to Washington DC. The cartoon references Arthur’s ascent, saying “From the Toe-Path to the White House.” (Library of Congress)}

After thirty-five ballots between Grant and Blaine, the longest-ever Republican National Convention finally concluded on June 8th, 1880, after six days. With both the Stalwarts and Half-Breeds accepting that neither of their candidates would win, the convention ended in a compromise: a Half-Breed, Ohio Representative James Garfield, was nominated for President, with Arthur, a Stalwart now serving as chair of the New York Republican Party, for Vice President. While Garfield supported civil service reform, the Stalwarts had hoped that, by putting Arthur on the ticket, he would temper or moderate any attempt by Garfield to enact any reforms. Indeed, part of Guiteau’s motive in assassinating President Garfield was that his successor would appoint him to a consular position through the spoils system (Guiteau lived under the delusion that he had aided Garfield’s victory in the 1880 Presidential Election, and was therefore owed a position). Or so the Stalwarts had hoped, when Arthur was sworn in as the 21st President of the United States in the early hours of September 19, 1881.

Early on in his presidency, Arthur appointed Stalwart figures to his Cabinet, including Frederick Frelinghuysen replacing James G Blaine as Secretary of State. However, to the surprise of the Stalwarts, the reform-supporting staff at the Post Office and Customs House were largely left as they were. In fact, beyond surprising the Stalwarts, Arthur made it clear he was cutting ties with his previous cronies: indeed, the President’s refusal to replace the then-incumbent Collector of the Port of New York, the reformer William H. Robertson, with a Stalwart candidate carved a deep rift between Arthur and Conkling which would never heal.

Aside from simply falling out with his former friend and mentor, however, as President, Arthur had become committed to the cause of civil service reform. When news of the Star Route Scandal broke during Garfield’s presidency in April 1881, some thought that Arthur, the friend of the Stalwarts, would sweep the scandal under the rug. The Star Route Scandal was a scam whereby contractors looking to operate inland mail routes (or star routes) would, usually in collaboration with Post Office officials, look to artificially drive the price of the mail contract beyond the price that the US Treasury would normally pay contractors for the route. Having overcharged the Treasury, the contractors and Post Office officials would then pocket the “profits” between them. However, once in office Arthur pushed ahead with the investigation begun by the Garfield administration, which resulted in the resignations of some of his former allies, including Thomas Brady, the Assistant Postmaster General.

Beyond scandals within the Post Office, however, the achievement for which Arthur is probably best remembered during his presidency is the signing of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883. While the Act, named for its author, Ohio Democratic Senator George H. Pendleton, began under President Garfield, Arthur – against the wishes of the Republican Congressional majority – sought $25,000 in order to fund the Civil Service Commission which would advise on reform (Congress would ultimately agree to provide $15,000).[5] Furthermore, Arthur appointed reformers to the seats on the Commission, and by 1884 the spoils system began to disappear from the civil service, with half of Post Office employees and three quarters of Customs House jobs being awarded based on merit.[6]

Arthur also had notable accomplishments outside the realms of civil service reform: aside from rejuvenating the US Navy, Arthur was also a proponent of racial equality, calling for increased federal funding for education among black and Native American communities (although his efforts did not gain ground with Southern whites). Arthur was also critical of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Civil Rights Act of 1875; while Arthur favoured replacement Civil Rights legislation, he was not able to get anything through Congress.[7] While Arthur’s personal feelings on these issues are largely unknown due to the burning of his personal papers, he demonstrated a definite commitment to racial equality at a time where the United States were still healing and deeply divided following the Civil War and failed reconstruction attempts. One negative point from Arthur’s presidency is the Chinese Exclusion Act, which placed a ban on the immigration of Chinese labourers for a period of 10 years. However, in truth Congress forced Arthur’s hand on the issue with a veto-proof majority, but not before Arthur had managed to veto the previous attempt to get the Act passed, which sought to establish a 20-year exclusion period.

^{Official White House portrait of President Chester A. Arthur, Daniel Huntington, 1885}

Ultimately, despite his attempts at reform being well-received, his change in stance came at a cost: as the 1884 Presidential Election neared, Arthur found himself rejected by the former allies among the Stalwarts, while Half-Breeds and reformers were turning towards James G. Blaine for the Republican nomination. With little support from anywhere in the Republican Party, President Arthur bowed out of the running for a full term as President, congratulating Blaine but not playing an active role in the campaign after that. Arthur’s health began to decline towards the end of his Presidency, and he died on November 18th, 1886, less than two years after leaving office.

The Presidency of Chester A. Arthur was not the most illustrious, but he is definitely a woefully underrated and under-discussed President. Thomas C Sutton argues that, as President, Arthur “focused on maintaining stability rather than on launching his own ambitious program”.[8] But does a President really need to have an ambitious program to enable him to get on with the job? Is it not enough that, immediately following the assassination of a President and during a period of rampant corruption, Arthur provided some much-needed stability and reform? Amlund argues that Presidents in office at significant periods in US history, or “great times” are unfairly judged using the same criteria as Presidents who served during quiet periods. “The term “great times”…”, Amlund writes, “implies ordinarily the existence of a war, or an economic depression of considerable magnitude; it most definitely suggests a crisis period of some kind”.[9] Therein, for me, lies the barrier between Arthur and the perceived notion of “greatness”: Arthur’s presidency was one with fairly modest but reasonably consistent achievement, one free of drama or scandal, and – perhaps as a result – one which quietly slipped from public memory.

Chester A Arthur may not be a memorable – or even a “great” – President, but he certainly deserves praise and a reputation beyond that which he usually gets. The Arthur presidency saw no new major scandals, wars or crises; instead, Arthur simply got on with the job he never really wanted in the first place. Despite his career being built through patronage, and despite being seen as a man who was made by – and who could have championed – the corrupt civil service spoils system, President Arthur turned his back on the system, becoming an advocate for reform, a fighter of corruption, a man committed to racial justice and running an honest administration. He left office with a reputation as an honest and decent man.

And in our present era of stark partisanship, media soundbites and the notion of the “celebrity president”, are those not good characteristics to have in a President?

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[1] Amlund, Curtis Arthur, “President-Ranking: A Criticism” in The Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 8, No. 3, August 1964, p309-315, p311

[2] Newcomer, Lee. “Chester A. Arthur: The factors involved in his removal from the New York Customhouse” in New York History, vol. 18, no. 4, 1937, p401–410, p403

[3] Schwartz, Sybil. “In Defense of Chester Arthur” in The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 4, 1978, p180–184, p182

[4] Newcomer, p407

[5] Theriault, Sean M. “Patronage, the Pendleton Act, and the Power of the People.” In The Journal of Politics, vol. 65, no. 1, 2003, p50–68, p56

[6] Howe, George F, Chester A. Arthur, A Quarter-Century of Machine Politics, 1966: New York: F. Ungar Publishing Company, p209-210

[7] Sutton, Thomas C. “Chester A. Arthur” in Gormley, Ken ed., The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History, 2016, New York: New York University Press, p276-287, p279

[8] Schwartz, p183

[9] Amlund, p310

How did Walter Mondale transform the office of Vice President?

Walter Mondale, Vice President under Jimmy Carter from 1977 until 1981, has died at the age of 93. A longstanding and recognisable figure in American politics, he served as a Senator from Minnesota before joining Carter’s ticket, and later served as Ambassador to Japan.

Carter’s single-term presidency was not the most successful, being beleaguered by a poor economy and the Iran Hostage Crisis, as well as questions about Carter’s ability as President. Carter and Mondale were roundly defeated for re-election in 1980 by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and Mondale would then go on to lose the 1984 Presidential Election to Reagan by a landslide, winning just his home state of Minnesota – and then by just over 3,000 votes – and the District of Columbia.

However, for the lack of success he had as a candidate on Presidential tickets, Mondale’s successes lay elsewhere, namely in how he transformed the very office of Vice President of the United States.

When Carter selected Mondale as his running mate, Mondale sent Carter a seven-page document outlining what he hoped his role as Vice President might look like. In it, he highlighted some key areas in which he felt he could be of greatest help to the would-be President: firstly, as a general advisor to the President. Mondale felt that previous administrations had been let down by “the failure of the President to be exposed to independent analysis not conditioned by what it is thought he wants to hear or often what others want him to hear”. Mondale, using his experience in government and politics, felt would be the best-placed person to offer Carter impartial advice. In order to achieve this, he required access to the same intelligence information as the President, a role in key meetings, and access to the President, including an office of his own in the West Wing of the White House and weekly lunches with the President – a tradition that continues today. Secondly, the Vice President would be a troubleshooter, as well as play a role in foreign relations. Overall, Mondale placed a greater importance on his re-imagined role than his duties as President of the Senate, a role which he viewed as “ceremonial with the exception of casting tie-breaking votes”, and one demanding “a minimum amount of time”.

It was Mondale’s eagerness to be of as great a practical use to the President as possible which was the key to the success of the re-imagined office; the Vice President was to be the President’s right-hand man and most trusted confidant, rather than – as Paul Light described – “errand-boys, political hitmen, professional mourners and incidental commission chairmen”.[1] While many Vice Presidents have used the office as a stepping stone into the presidency (Danny M. Adkison in 1983 suggested the Vice Presidency was “a kind of internship or apprenticeship” for future presidents[2]), Mondale developed a Vice Presidency which existed to support the President in his work. Indeed, Vice President Mondale set to work in his new role during the transition period, and travelled the world extensively during their four year term, playing a part in defining issues of the Carter Presidency, including the Camp David Accords and addressing racial discrimination in Southern Africa, as well as, domestically, the Chrysler bailout. However, despite selling Carter the advantage of having him on hand to advise, Mondale never tried to unduly influence Carter beyond his provision of advice and support.

While subsequent Vice Presidents have varied in their deference to the ‘Mondale model’, the impact of the changes Mondale made to the Vice Presidency have been carried by subsequent administrations; Al Gore and Joe Biden served as close personal confidants to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, George H. W. Bush provided Reagan with a solid résumé of government experience, and Mike Pence played a sizeable role in foreign relations in the Trump Administration. All have enjoyed offices close to the President, weekly lunches and greater access, all thanks to Mondale. Joel K Goldstein agrees that “[t]he Mondale tenure made the vice presidency a far more significant institution”, adding that it is thanks to him that subsequent Vice Presidents have enjoyed an office in the West Wing, increased access to the President and his classified information, and a role in the executive decision-making process.[3] Beyond this, the Mondale model has lead to greater attention being paid to Presidential running mates due to the level of influence the office now holds.

The modern Vice Presidency is Mondale’s success, and his enduring legacy. Reflecting on her 2018 book, First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power, Kate Andersen Brower said “every former vice president [since Mondale]…rhapsodized about the partnership between Carter and Mondale. That is because Mondale made the vice presidency — an oft-maligned position — into an actual job.”

Walter Mondale was probably the person who best understood the needs required by the office of the President, despite never having served in it himself. Marie D. Natoli wrote in 1977 – within the first few months of Mondale’s Vice Presidency – that “no matter how inept any President might be, he will be remembered while even the most brilliant occupants of the second office are dim shadows from the presidential administration of which they were part”.[4] Not so for Walter Mondale; he re-imagined the office of the Vice President into a dynamic, influential and engaged one, the model of which has continued to be embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike.

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[1] Light, Paul. “Vice-Presidential Influence under Rockefeller and Mondale.” Political Science Quarterly 98, no. 4 (1983): 617-40.

[2] Adkison, Danny M. “The Vice Presidency as Apprenticeship.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1983): 212-18.

[3] Goldstein, Joel K. “The Rising Power of the Modern Vice Presidency.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 38, no. 3 (2008): 374-89

[4] Natoli, Marie D. “The Mondale Vice Presidency: Is the Die Cast?”, in Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 2/3, 1977, p101–108. 

Donald Trump will go down as the worst President in American history

I am writing this post having spent some time reflecting on yesterday’s scenes at the US Capitol Building in Washington DC: a militia – some armed – in support of President Donald Trump stormed and ransacked Congress, forcing elected representatives into hiding, threatening congressional aides and staff, and declaring President Trump the rightful winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. This attempted coup was staged on the day that Congress met to ratify the results of the November election, as is required of the Congressional representatives by the US Constitution.

The militia – or thugs, traitors, rioters, and so forth, as they have alternatively been named – are clinging to baseless conspiracy theories of voter fraud: that there was foul play during the recent Presidential Election that caused the President to lose his re-election bid in states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia – states which narrowly flipped to Democrat Joe Biden – as well as the campaign as a whole. It is not enough that several officials, both elected and appointed – including former Attorney General William Barr and numerous Republican Secretaries of State throughout the individual states – have said that there is no proof of any voter fraud, however: even Trump has been promoting these very conspiracy theories himself.

All of this came to a head yesterday with the traitors’ attack on the Capitol. As I write this, one person has been killed, and a Confederate flag has been paraded through the halls of the Capitol, something not even seen during the Civil War.

Yesterday, many Republican politicians were seemingly lining up en masse to turn their fire on the occupant of the White House, pinning much of the blame on him for inciting the violence, including telling the so-called “Proud Boys” – one such group of far-right Trump supporters – to “stand back and stand by”. During the day yesterday, it also appeared that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence’s partnership all but dissolved: Trump threw his Vice President under the bus, saying in a now-deleted tweet that the Vice President lacked courage for refusing to block the ratification of the election results. For himself, Trump said in another now-deleted tweet (social media giants have banned Trump for at least the remainder of his term): “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

It is quite possible that Donald Trump will go down as the worst President in US History, and what is alarming is that it would largely be based on his actions and words since losing the 2020 Presidential Election. To evaluate this, let us consider three other Presidents who vie for the not-so-coveted spot of worst President in History.

Going chronologically, we have Franklin Pierce, the 14th President who served from 1853 to 1857. Pierce, a Democrat from New Hampshire and a popular general in the Mexican-American War, helped to contribute to the events that led to the Civil War. Pierce, who was an anti-abolitionist, is perhaps most infamous for his signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Act, which created the states of Nebraska and Kansas, also overturned the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery anywhere north of the 36°30′ Parallel (the Arkansas-Missouri border), except for the state of Missouri itself. Pierce also enforced the Fugitive Slave Act from 1850, which forced free states to return escaped slaves to their masters. Pierce is noted for his pro-South bias during the lead-up to the Civil War (Pierce was “always looking to placate the South”, writes Paul Finkelman[1]), and appointed would-be secessionists to his cabinet, including future Confederate President Jefferson Davis as his Secretary of War. Throughout his single term as President, and while he ultimately opposed the Civil War and acted in the interest of preserving the Union, Pierce was known as a President who was on the side of slave-owning factions.

Franklin Pierce failed to receive re-nomination for a second term, and the Democrats nominated James Buchanan in his place; Buchanan served as the 15th President from 1857 to 1861. Buchanan had a respectable political career behind him, both as a Senator and Representative from Pennsylvania, as Secretary of State under James K Polk, and as Minister to the United Kingdom; there is no reason why Buchanan should not have been a good President. However, he is the President most blamed for the nation’s spiral into civil war, and this blame is not misplaced: it was largely through his own incompetence and failure to act that this happened. Buchanan set the Southern states on the route to secession by allowing Southern influencers who wanted Kansas to be a slave state to walk over him. What’s worse, Buchanan, in an address to Congress in 1860, blamed “the agitation at the North against slavery” for the events leading to the secession of South Carolina from the Union in December of that year. As a President, James Buchanan simply failed.

The third President I am going to consider is Andrew Johnson. Johnson was a Democrat from Tennessee who was elected on the National Unity ticket with Abraham Lincoln in 1864, and became the 17th President after Lincoln’s assassination on April 15, 1865. Johnson, a former slave owner, was a defender of slavery and largely botched reconstruction efforts through both his leniency towards and eagerness to re-admit former Confederate states to the Union. Andrew Johnson was also known to be a difficult character with whom people struggled to work. Johnson was also the first President to be impeached: in 1868, Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by firing his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, without Congressional approval, such was the law at the time. However, despite the law of the day, in hindsight it seems unfair that dismissing a Cabinet Secretary should have been an impeachable offense, considering how many cabinet members Trump has dismissed. Overall, Johnson put his entire life and career at stake in the name of national unity, which is why I consider him the most unfairly included of the three Presidents here mentioned. However, his general racism and leniency towards the South made him the architect of his own downfall.

So what sets Donald Trump apart from Pierce, Buchanan and Johnson? Ignoring the poor decisions and character flaws of these men, their main concern was preserving the Union and avoiding war, or a return to war in Johnson’s case. Their failure to adequately stand up to racism and slavery is a shame on their legacies, but never once did any of them – not even Andrew Johnson – seek to manipulate or overturn the result of any election once it had happened (although Johnson – when he lost the 1864 Democratic primary to Horatio Seymour – perhaps did not accept the results of the primary or subsequent Presidential Election gracefully, he did at least accept them, or rather did not object to them). Whatever their incompetencies were while in office, they never sought to undermine democratic elections in order to hold on to power for themselves. Donald Trump, in shouting baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud and inciting protest against Congress ratifying the results of the Electoral College, and in seeking to undermine the American democratic process, and calling on thuggish traitors loyal to his cult of personality to keep him in power, has surpassed all the worst mistakes and poor decisions these three men made. In my opinion, Donald Trump is the worst President in American history.

Some of Donald Trump’s supporters – both current and previous – have expressed admiration for some of his policies, including delivering promised tax cuts, for not entering in to any new wars, for his input in the de-escalation of tensions in the Middle East, and for being a voice for those left behind and ignored by the coastal elites. Many good people voted for Trump in November – as well as in 2016 – in good faith. However, is there any policy or position – no matter how successful or admirable – which can subtract from the inciting of anti-American and anti-democratic violence and overthrow?

As a historian, I generally feel that you cannot make a true assessment of a President’s tenure or legacy so close to the end of a President’s term, much less so when that President is still in office. However, I struggle to fathom any circumstance in which future historians can rehabilitate the act encouraging overthrow of a nation’s democratic institutions. As it stands now, with less than two weeks of his Presidential term remaining, it is not certain whether Trump will survive even that: articles of impeachment are already being drawn up against Mr Trump – for the second time in his Presidency. If it comes to another impeachment vote, or Vice President Mike Pence invoking the 25th Amendment against his former boss, his removal from office will be perfectly valid.

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[1] Finkelman, Paul, ‘Franklin Pierce’, in Gormley, Ken, ed., The Presidents and the Constitution, Volume One From the Founding Fathers to the Progressive Era, 2020, New York: NYU Press, p181-193     

When the Guardian tried to influence the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio

The clock tower at Clark County Heritage Center is a recognisable landmark in Springfield, Ohio

Sixteen years ago, in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential Election – when George W Bush was running for re-election for a second term as President of the United States – Ohio was widely seen as the state which would decide the election. After all, Ohio at the time was still considered to be a bellwether state, having voted for the eventual President in every election since 1964.

Clark County, Ohio was likely to be a key battleground which would determine the result of the election in Ohio. Four years earlier, Vice President Al Gore beat then-Texas Governor Bush in Clark County by just 324 votes, despite losing Ohio to Bush by 165,000 votes overall. The characteristics of Clark County have always made for interesting elections: the county seat and largest city, Springfield, with a metro area home to 138,000 people, has historically been a hive of blue-collar industry, and the patent for the airplane was written in Springfield. However, along with much of the Midwest, Springfield saw a decline in its industrial base during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Anticipating that the voters of Clark County could play a pivotal role in swaying the 2004 election result, the UK’s Guardian newspaper decided to launch a campaign – entitled Operation Clark County – to try and influence the outcome of the election in Clark County, and therefore the result in Ohio – and thus the 2004 Presidential election. Ian Katz, editor of the Guardian’s supplementary G2 feature, had an idea: readers of the newspaper who wished to participate in the campaign would be given the name and address of an undecided voter in Clark County (taken from a county voting list Katz had purchased for $25), and they would write to them to persuade them how to vote in the election. If that wasn’t enough, the Guardian would then offer to send four lucky winners – letter senders picked at random – out to Clark County in order to see the campaign and meet some of the voters they had written to.

To paraphrase the Guardian’s rationale for running the campaign, the newspaper felt that US foreign policy would influence UK government policy. For example, the Iraq War had proved unpopular in the UK, despite then-Prime Minister Tony Blair putting the UK at a central role in the war, and this was a major catalyst which helped bring the campaign about. Despite this huge influence, Katz thought, British citizens weren’t in turn able to vote in the Presidential Election. Thus, the Guardian aimed to encourage its readers to play their part in influencing voting behaviour in Clark County by having them write to Independent and undecided voters. While the Guardian never explicitly stated at the launch of the campaign that it was a pro-Kerry campaign, the newspaper made little effort to hide the fact that their preference – and that of their readers – was for John Kerry and the Democrats to oust President Bush (the Guardian formally endorsed Kerry a few days before the election). Ultimately, around 14,000 Guardian readers – including notable figures such as Richard Dawkins, John Le Carré and Antonia Fraser – would send letters to Clark County residents. What could go wrong?

So a large number of letters were sent out, but how successful was the campaign? Put simply – and as one could probably imagine of a campaign involving Guardian readers trying to persuade voters in Ohio to vote for John Kerry – Operation Clark County bombed. A variety of responses – some more colourful than others – were sent back to the Guardian, and the newspaper withdrew the campaign after just a week due to the overwhelmingly negative reception from voters in Clark County and elsewhere (although the Guardian would claim their campaign was compromised by hackers). If the negative campaign reception wasn’t enough, the result of the 2004 Presidential Election in Clark County was ultimately a swing away from the Democrats, with George W Bush finishing 1,400 votes clear of John Kerry: Bush took 50.8% of the Clark County vote to Kerry’s 48.7%. Fascinatingly, these shares were almost identical to their statewide vote shares in Ohio; Bush ultimately carried Ohio with 50.8% of the vote – marginally up from the 49.97% he took four years previously – compared to Kerry’s 48.7%.

So the election clearly didn’t deliver the result the Guardian was hoping for. But why did the campaign fail so badly? It would seem that reception for the campaign in Ohio was tepid at best, and interpreted as interfering arrogance at worst. It would also appear that, by and large, voters in Clark County didn’t hugely appreciate receiving letters from British strangers who were trying to explain their own politics to them while encouraging them to vote for John Kerry. Even Sharon Manitta, the chair of the UK branch of Democrats Abroad, knew that the stunt would only help Bush to win votes.

So while the campaign didn’t work, a glaring question still remains: why did The Guardian think this campaign would work? Why did Katz, The Guardian, and its readers who wrote letters expect that voters in Clark County would listen to them?

Katz wrote in an editorial after the campaign’s closure that he thought “a letter from a concerned Brit [to a Clark County voter] would be received more like a plea from an old friend”, later dismissing the campaign’s failure by saying that “parts of America have become so isolationist that even the idea of individuals receiving letters from foreigners is enough to give politicians the collywobbles”. However, it is both possible and extremely likely that Katz and the Guardian – as well as some of their readers who took part in the campaign – simply did not sufficiently understand the demographic of the voters they were trying to speak to. As it is, The Guardian is known for its left-leaning and liberal slant, and the term “Guardian Readers” is often used pejoratively to refer to someone of a certain class or circumstance who is overly liberal or politically correct: the Collins English Dictionary defines the term “Guardian readers” as “a reader of the Guardian newspaper, seen as being typically left-wing, liberal, and politically correct”. Indeed, stereotypical Guardian readers in the UK are often synonymously compared to the oft-mentioned and so-named metropolitan liberal elite.

The term “metropolitan liberal elite” is not a term I nor many academics enjoy using, but the phenomenon is real. David Morgan, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester, describes the “Metropolitan Liberal Elite” in the British context as “includ[ing], among others, pro-European politicians, sections of the media (especially the BBC and the Guardian), people living in London, some professionals and many academics, and generally people with large amounts of economic, social and cultural capitals.”[1] Indeed, according to the Guardian’s own data from 2013, 59% of its readers identified as the AB social class – more than twice the UK average – with 86% identifying as ABC1 class. Meanwhile, 65% of the Guardian’s readers are degree educated or higher, nearly three times the national average for the UK, compared to fewer than one-in-five Clark County residents. In 2005, more than 80% of the Guardian’s readers identified as Labour or Liberal Democrat voters. There is also a sizeable income disparity between the Guardian’s readership and the population of Clark County: the average Guardian reader’s individual income in 2013 was £31,385 (nearly $41,000 in 2020), while the average household income was £59,764 (nearly $78,000 in 2020 money). Conversely, the average Clark County resident earns $25948 (just under £20,000 in 2020) while the average household in 2018 saw an income of $48,502 (just over £37,000).

Given this information, I am not certain why the Guardian felt that their army of largely metropolitan, comfortable, well-meaning but oh-so-very-concerned British liberals were the best-placed to initiate a one-sided conversation on how blue collar Ohioans should vote, much less why they felt they would or should be listened to. Life in refined suburbs and gentrified areas of London is perfectly good for university-educated Guardian readers, but Clark County is a clearly hugely different place to Highgate or Islington (and one which I would wager few of the Guardian’s letter writers truly understood). Imagine a similar campaign in which wealthier Democrats from San Francisco, Los Angeles or the suburbs of New York and Washington DC wrote to rural voters in Ohio advising them on how to vote; the reaction you would get would most likely be the same.

Katz himself said that he “didn’t believe” cautions against the campaign from Democratic strategists, believing that the campaign “would [not] ever reach a scale that would have any real impact on the election”. Indeed, we will never know for certain what, if any, impact Operation Clark County really had on the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio, or if the campaign contributed to the county’s ultimate swing towards Bush. However, the one of the main achievements of Operation Clark County is that the reputation of so-called “Guardian readers” was reinforced; if anything, with a growing urban-rural divide in America, it is more important than ever to use effective dialogue to bridge the growing gap between urban and rural voters, and to promote and seek out a deeper understanding of each other’s position. In assuming that a largely blue collar voter population of Clark County would be keen to hear from and take voting advice from middle-class, urban and suburban British liberals whom they had never met, Katz and The Guardian demonstrated the very lack of understanding which has helped to drive this divide.

Ohio as a state has moved further towards the Republicans since 2004, and Clark County has voted Republican in every election since. I would not recommend that The Guardian tries a similar stunt again in Clark County: Donald Trump won in the county by 12,000 votes in 2016.

[1] Morgan, David, Snobbery: The Practices of Distinction, 2018, Bristol: Bristol University Press, p111

Is trust-busting Elizabeth Warren the new Teddy Roosevelt? The answer is no

You may have noticed last week that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren penned a campaign letter, published on Medium, announcing that her administration would break up big tech giants including Amazon, Facebook and Google. Warren, who is running for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020, wrote that big technology companies have “too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.” Warren further extended her attack on tech giants, saying that they have “bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation”. Warren’s plans to break up tech giants include breaking Apple apart from its App Store and separating Amazon from its Marketplace, undoing Facebook’s purchases of WhatsApp and Instagram and Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods, and separating Google’s search facility from the rest of the company.

This may appear to us to be an extreme anti-business move. However, by suggesting a break-up of tech giants by enforcing anti-monopoly laws, Warren may have sought to align herself with 26^th President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican who later founded the Progressive – or “Bull Moose” – Party and who was known for taking on the huge monopolies of his day. Paul Krugman in the New York Times had already likened Warren to Roosevelt with regards to her proposal for a wealth tax. In fact, when asked who she would choose as her ideal running mate, Warren named Roosevelt as the ideal candidate, citing his courage in taking on the monopolies. According to the Washington Examiner, Warren said of Roosevelt that “It was that [the monopolies] had too much political power…that caused Teddy Roosevelt to say I’m going to be a trust buster. Man, I’d like to have that guy at my side.”

Of course, there are some parallels which can be drawn between Warren’s plans and Roosevelt’s approach: Roosevelt also sought to regulate big monopolies in the public interest, which it could be argued is Warren’s aim. Warren, for her part, also authored the Accountable Capitalism Act, which she introduced to the Senate in August 2018. Among other things, the Act stated that “American corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue must obtain a federal charter” which “obligates company directors to consider the interests of all corporate stakeholders – including employees, customers, shareholders, and the communities in which the company operates”. Similarly, Roosevelt supported federal incorporation of big businesses (at a time where charters were issued by individual states), and expressed similar views in a 1910 speech entitled “The New Nationalism”.

However, despite these parallels, it’s important to remember that Warren and Roosevelt are two different people from different times, facing different challenges and with different aims. When Roosevelt came to office upon the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, various Presidents had been taking the fight to government corruption, crony capitalism was still rife, business was conducted opaquely, and corporate law and labour relations in the United States were simply not of the standard they are today. Furthermore, Roosevelt’s reputation as a trust-buster is somewhat misplaced to begin with: Roosevelt was more of a trust regulator than a trust buster, seeking more transparency in business practice rather than seeking to simply limit the size of corporations and to break up trusts if they got too large.

Consider, for example, the case of the Northern Securities Company, a railroad monopoly from Roosevelt’s time. In Theodore Rex, the second volume in Edmund Morris’s excellent three-part biography of Theodore Roosevelt, Morris describes the formation of the company through a merger of James J. Hill’s Great Northern, E. H. Harriman’s Union Pacific and J. P. Morgan’s Northern Pacific Railroad Company. Morris describes how meetings, conducted in secret and often late at night, were held between the three men to create a trust which would have effective control over and ownership of the US’s rail network and, through the men’s other business connections, other parts of the world. The issue with the Northern Securities Company was that the “settlement” – as the men tried to pass it off as – was not only conducted in secret, but the announcement of the Trust’s formation was delayed in order that the New York Stock Exchange wouldn’t notice.[1]

Hill, Harriman and Morgan’s conspiracy was in violation of the Sherman Act, introduced during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison in 1890 which prohibited this kind of conspiracy in the formation of trusts.  The Act stated that “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal”, and so gave the Supreme Court cause to rule against the Northern Securities Company. Roosevelt also viewed that no private corporation should be more powerful than the Presidency (Roosevelt was also known for increasing the power of the Executive branch), and sought to remind big businesses that they could not themselves engage in any dealings which would not be acceptable from governments. Beyond this, however, Roosevelt was a supporter of free markets and believed big business was an integral part of twentieth-century America, and allowed it to operate freely provided is did not impede on the public welfare. He did not actively seek to control the way the companies conducted their business, provided business was being conducted fairly, and did not generally seek to influence the boardrooms of companies.

Roosevelt took on the monopolies in order to free the market and to provide a greater ground for more competition, and Warren would likely say that this is her aim, too. However, there is, I think, key difference between Warren and Roosevelt, and it almost seems like an ideological difference: Theodore Roosevelt went after monopolies which were bad or illegal. Elizabeth Warren is going after monopolies which she deems as too powerful. Roosevelt was looking for transparency within big business, rather than simply breaking it up for its own sake: “We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public”, Roosevelt said in his New Nationalism speech.

We have considered the activity of the Northern Securities Company. By comparison, despite the size of today’s tech giants, their operations today are very different to the operating of the bad trusts of Roosevelt’s day. As far as I am aware, Facebook did not purchase Instagram or WhatsApp secretly or illegally. Amazon is not engaging in cronyism by operating a marketplace for private sellers. It does not amount to an unfair quashing of competition when Google promotes its own services ahead of others; after all, that is what companies do with their own products. Without getting into too much of a discussion on the pros and cons of how the tech giants operate, these companies, despite the size of their platforms, are not actively seeking to stifle competition as J. P. Morgan et al were. If Amazon, Google and Facebook all conspired secretly to take over control of the internet itself, then that would be a different matter. But as it is, Warren is fighting a different battle today to the one Roosevelt fought over a century ago.

Ultimately, whether or not you agree with Elizabeth Warren’s aims to break up tech giants or her aims to bring private companies under more democratic control, or whether or not you think Theodore Roosevelt went too far or not far enough in his anti-trust efforts, or indeed whatever your general view of government interference in private business is, the fact remains that Warren and Roosevelt are two different people operating in different times and with different circumstances. Their approaches might appear similar on the surface, but in reality the battlefields they fought on were different, and I feel it would be premature to suggest that Warren and Roosevelt essentially share the same mission.

There is not enough room to compare all the aspects of Roosevelt’s political style to Warren’s; after all, one area of similarity does not amount to a reflection of that figure. I am not certain, for example, how much Warren would reflect Roosevelt in areas such as foreign policy and promoting American Imperialism. I feel that, with deeper comparison between the two figures, particularly in these areas, we might see even greater differences. Warren may have taken inspiration from Roosevelt – and I would be pleased that she is; he is also one of my favourite Presidents – but to suggest that she is the new Teddy Roosevelt simply on the basis of her “trust-busting” proposal is simply too much of a generalisation.

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[1] Morris, Edmund, Theodore Rex, 2001 (paperback edition 2010), New York: Random House, p59-61