On March 4th, 1829, the old Federal rÉgime died with the departure of John Quincy Adams from the White House. The year 1828 is generally taken as the last full year of the old honorable and high-toned political system inaugurated by Washington; the last year at the Federal capitol of real statesmanship, of high ideals and of strict and uncompromising devotion to duty. Manhood suffrage had by this time become established and in operation in almost every state in the Union, and it had succeeded in electing as president of the United States a spoilsman, Andrew Jackson, the apostle of extreme democracy, by whom the former rule of appointments to public office for merit only, and the old doctrine of the continuance of faithful officials in their places were flung to the winds.

The change in the electorate effected by manhood suffrage was not merely superficial, it was radical; what then appeared to many a mere liberalizing of the franchise was in reality a breaking down of the guard wall which had hitherto kept the country from slipping down into the slough. It degraded the practice of American politics from an honorable exercise of patriotism to a sordid business employment; it created a class of professional politicians, self-seeking traffickers in office and the spoils of office; and transferred to them the political control which had theretofore rested in the hands of the gentlemen of the country. This unexpected result of manhood suffrage was due to the fact not sufficiently realized at the time, that it brought into American politics the important element of the controllable vote, to which was speedily applied by the politicians methods of organization, crude and makeshift at first, and afterwards thorough and scientific. The American people did not then foresee the existence of a proletariat city vote, nor the immense possibilities in the organization of floaters. The local politicians of the day, however, saw their chance and seized it; from amateurs they developed into professionals, and they speedily made these floaters the nucleus of a small well-disciplined regular army, by means whereof they seized the machinery of elections and of government, which they have ever since retained.

Let us here stop for a moment to consider and realize what the country lost at one stroke by manhood suffrage in its swift descent from the high character and traditions of that Federal government, the presidency of which, much against his will, John Quincy Adams transferred on March 4th, 1829, to Andrew Jackson. The administrations of Washington and the older Adams had been of rigid integrity; Jefferson, Madison and Monroe had followed in their footsteps. At the time therefore of the election of the second Adams in 1824, the nation had already acquired an established tradition of about as pure an administration of government as was humanly possible. The most valuable political asset of a people consists of its high political standards and traditions; established slowly and imperceptibly and by forces of subtle operation they are elements of the highest importance to its well being. They afford the explanation of many instances of the superior success of one country over another in operating the same political machinery. Already in the United States of 1824 there existed traditions and standards of this high character; among them a belief that men should enter politics if not solely from patriotic motives, then at least from a worthy ambition for honor and power, and in order to further ideas of public policy. This was undoubtedly the doctrine extant at that time; and men could not then as now live and flourish in political life under the scarce denied imputation of being in politics in order to gather political spoils, or for the mere sake of salary or from other sordid motives.

The high national traditions were well maintained and strengthened by John Quincy Adams during his four years’ term from 1825 to 1829. He represented the opposite of the manhood suffrage ideal, he was unflinchingly opposed to government by numbers; to the spoils system, to machine political methods and objects; he was a statesman rather than a politician, and an honest gentleman first of all. His lineage was of the best, his public experience great; his learning deep; his reputation unsullied; he was austere, just and high-minded; his public record was pure and honorable. He was the only president except Washington who obtained the office entirely on his merits, without having done anything to court political support. While president he made appointments to office solely on fitness, applying that test even to his political and personal opponents, keeping them in office provided they were qualified for its duties, and absolutely refusing to use in the slightest degree his executive power so as to procure his renomination. In 1868 a congressional committee reported that having consulted all accessible means of information, they had not learned of a single removal of a subordinate officer except for cause from the beginning of Washington’s administration to the close of that of John Quincy Adams. Under such management and prior to 1829 the average of office holders was generally fair; most of them were men who had led approved lives, had inherited or acquired a good standing in society, and had achieved a certain prominence by a combination of social and political qualities, and through the operation of a kind of civic evolution which had brought them forward in their respective localities. The effect of the property qualification laws, and of the traditionary respect for ability, property and social standing of which those laws were at once a cause and a symptom, was to tend to push such men to the front, and to make it a matter of course that they should be selected as members of Congress, judges, representatives in the legislature, and for similar high offices. They were not required to resort to trickery and intrigue to keep their places. It was by men of that type that the Revolution had been led to success. It was a fatal mistake of a later generation to suppose that a like class of men could be selected by a general vote, and that the good results of what had practically been a system of natural evolution and selection would be attained by an appeal to the suffrages of the unlettered and the unwise.

No doubt there were instances of corruption in American public life long before manhood suffrage was established; bank scandals for instance. Banks are now chartered under a general act. A century ago, however, they were created by special acts of the legislature, and the granting of their charters was sometimes attended with charges of legislative corruption. As early as 1805 at the passage of the New York Merchants Bank charter, in 1812 at the granting of the charter of the New York Bank of America, and again in 1824 when the New York Chemical Bank was organized, such charges were made. Such disclosures were plain warnings of the dangers of laxity in public affairs.

Population and wealth were increasing and so was governmental expenditure. Even as early as 1820 there began to appear in the larger cities a class of idle, vicious, ignorant and therefore purchasable men. The possible means of political corruption and the temptations thereto were therefore all in plain sight; and wisdom would have suggested, especially in view of the continued flood of immigration, that the greatest care be taken to make the source of government in the electorate as pure and efficient as possible. The electorate is the foundation of a free republic, whose political destiny clearly depends on laying well that foundation. Instead of leaving the choice of its materials to hazard and caprice it should have been the subject of conferences of the very wisest among the American statesmen of those days; the silly twaddle of the extremists of the French Revolution about a natural right to vote should have been publicly and systematically discredited; the doctrine that suffrage is not a right but a function should have been formally stated and promulgated with all the authority and prestige of our ablest and most prominent men. The people of the older states should have been warned and warned again by assiduous propaganda against the danger of permitting ignorance and incapacity to lodge at the very bottom of the structure of our government. The people of the newer states should also have been instructed that however permissible as a temporary measure designed to attract settlers to their vacant lands, the practice of universal suffrage is dangerous and should be abolished as soon as society was settled down upon a permanent foundation. Nothing of the kind was done; on the contrary, it was at this critical time, just when in view of the changing conditions active means should have been taken to preserve the purity of politics, that the very opposite course was taken, and the scheme of suffrage extension was put into effect by a heedless majority led by politicians who overruled the wise and disinterested counsels of such able, experienced and far-seeing men as the venerable John Adams of Massachusetts and Chancellor Kent of New York.

The really important result of manhood suffrage and one which was entirely unforeseen and unexpected by most people of the time was the introduction into American politics of the purchasable or controllable element as a permanent feature of the electorate, and the tremendous power thereby acquired by the politicians; and the great defect in the manhood suffrage doctrine lay in its completely ignoring the sinister possibilities of suffrage extension in this direction. The floater or controllable vote speedily became and still is the main reliance of the political oligarchy. Prior to 1828 the activities of politicians had been mostly local. In every village and small town where offices are filled by election there is a field for the political activity of small men of a well known and inferior type, lazy, vociferous and more or less unscrupulous. Under the system of property qualification their activities were much restrained; most of the rabble whom they were able to influence had no votes. With the subsequent growth of the country in wealth and population, the creation of cities of say over thirty thousand inhabitants, and the increasing devotion of industrious citizens to their own affairs, the field for the labors of these political gentry perceptibly widened; but it was manhood suffrage and the election of Jackson which gave them their final triumph and placed them in power all over the land. The secret of this power lies in the organization of this floater vote into small local political societies which combined form at least the nucleus of a species of political army ready to do the bidding of its officers. It consists principally of that considerable body of men who have no political principles and no appreciable pecuniary interest in the community. As they pay no taxes they are quite willing that the government outlay be increased provided that they get a share of the plunder. They include the worthless classes, the very ignorant, the needy and shiftless, drunkards, petty criminals, fools, and loafers. Men with small political ambitions, men who are business failures, men too lazy to work, are attracted to these organizations by hopes of political office or other sinecure employment. In this way, a fairly sufficient nucleus of controllables is obtained. To these may be joined a class of thriftless partisans or followers of the bosses; frequenters of saloons and small local political clubrooms; such men as seek political advantage by cheap means or have a taste for low politics. Bribes are distributed, sometimes in the shape of small loans, sometimes as small jobs or employments for themselves, their relatives, or friends. Their careless habits and want of principle and of fixed belief in anything, their small cynicism and their ignorance of public affairs, make such men easily manageable by certain politicians who are not above dealings of that character. The vote of every man jack of them is as effective as that of a bishop or publicist, and any score of them are much more easily managed and reliable than twenty bishops and publicists would be. The local organization thus formed lives off a traffic in votes and offices; it buys votes, works them up into elective offices and resells them with its trade mark to the highest bidder.

It was the chiefs of such an organized rabble who seizing the electoral machinery rejected Adams in 1828, crying “Away with him, give us Barabas!” and made Jackson, the illiterate spoilsman, President of the United States. Adams’ defeat ended the epoch of high-minded, disinterested statesmanship in the White House. “His retirement” (says Morse) “brought to a close a list of Presidents who deserved to be called statesmen in the highest sense of that term, honorable men, pure patriots, and with perhaps one exception all of the first order of ability in public affairs.” (Life of Adams, p. 214.) But manhood suffrage did more by that stroke than oust Adams; it destroyed the pure political system which he represented, the noble traditions of forty years, and deprived the nation of all future hope of seeing as long as manhood suffrage endures a Washington, a Hamilton or an Adams in high office in this country. “It was” (says Merriam) “by far the most important change made during the Jackson epoch, for it radically altered the foundation of the Republic.” (American Political Theories, p. 193.)

Some of the mischief attendant upon the institution of manhood suffrage must have been apparent to the discerning eye wherever and as soon as it was adopted, but not its full extent. Time was required to get rid of competent and honorable leaders, traditions and standards, to replace them by new ones, and to invent catch words and war cries. But as time went on this downward movement became accelerated. Facilis descensus Averno. At first, little by little, afterwards more rapidly, the ambitions and creeds of the early Republic were everywhere replaced by the sordid cravings and sham sentimentalities of the rabble. In a surprisingly short time we got down into the political mire, where we now miserably splash about making a stench with every effort to escape.

The inauguration of Jackson brought the new maleficent forces into full play. Jackson was the embodiment of the manhood suffrage ideal, and of the growing revolt against the government of intelligence. Lecky says that he “deserves to be remembered as the founder of the most stupendous system of political corruption in modern history.” The following, from the pen of Roosevelt, throws light on the situation:

President Jackson’s administration speedily gave discerning men an opportunity to measure the standards and ideals of the newly enfranchised voters. He and they considered the public offices as loot to be distributed among party workers. With the cry of “To the victors belong the spoils” the beneficiaries of universal suffrage began the work of plunder and misrule which they have ever since continued. Jackson and Van Buren—a slick politician—became the leaders of the mobocratic movement, which they called “democratic,” and the demand for offices became its war cry. In his first presidential message Jackson proclaimed “that every citizen has a right to share in the emoluments of the public service,” an ardent bid for the support of the worthless class of men recently granted the vote. We can easily imagine what creatures they were. In that early time in a new country, with opportunity knocking at every man’s door, work to be had for the asking, large farms given by the government free to settlers, with every inducement to an honest man to follow an industrious calling, they preferred to loaf around corners, to infest barrooms, to become members of gangs of political rowdies, to beg, bully and coax for petty offices. Too lazy or incompetent, or both, to accumulate or even to retain the small amount of property needed to qualify them as voters, their only ambition was by fair or foul means to live off the community with the least possible exertion. After Jackson’s inauguration in March 1829, as we are told by Ostrogorski:

Prior to Jackson’s time only seventy-four Federal officials had been removed from office in the entire history of the government. In the first year of his administration he dismissed or caused to be dismissed more than two thousand, and all for political reasons. The number of persons employed by the Federal Government in the first year of John Quincy Adams’ administration was about 55,000; under Jackson it was increased to over 100,000. In his eight-year term he no doubt doubled the number of Federal officials.

In a speech in the House of Representatives in 1834 Henry Clay referred to “the ravenous pursuit after public situations not for the sake of the honors and the performance of their public duties but as a means of private subsistence.” He said that the office hunters were so greedy that they watched with eagerness the dying bed of an actual incumbent. Daniel Webster, about the time of Jackson’s election said: “As far as I know there is no civilized country on earth in which, under change of rulers, there is such an inquisition of spoils as we have witnessed in this free republic.” From this time forward this degenerate type of office seekers became an important factor in every American election. The victory of Jackson, says Farrand,

It is really astonishing to note how speedily manhood suffrage developed its appropriate mischiefs. Soon, with the increase of a purchasable constituency the traffic in votes became more easy and common, and the struggle for the spoils grew rapidly in intensity. The policy then put into play of making the offices the spoils of politics produced in a comparatively few years the beginnings of the political machine.

About 1830 a new flood of immigration set in and the politicians made it their business to win the favor of the immigrants and to organize the great foreign vote and especially the Irish vote in New York City and elsewhere. This was not difficult as there was neither opposition nor competition. In New York they seized Tammany Hall, and perfected and employed its organization and similar organizations elsewhere; they developed and enthroned political bosses, and established and operated political machines. The growth of this class is thus described by Ostrogorski:

And further:

Jackson was followed in 1837 by his lieutenant, Van Buren, who was the first machine-made President, and the situation is thus described by Roosevelt:

Towards the close of Van Buren’s administration, complaint was made of waste of public money.

In 1841 Harrison succeeded Van Buren; there was a change of parties; the Democrats went out, and the Whigs, who had inveighed against the spoils system, took their places. But the expected reform did not come off; it was no longer a question of parties or policies; the electorate itself had been hopelessly degraded by manhood suffrage, and the leaders of both parties were unable, if they wished, to purify politics; they were obliged either to adopt manhood suffrage low methods, or go out of public life. In vain Clay, the great Whig leader, thundered in Congress against the spoils system.

Clay’s influence in Congress was enormous, but he was powerless to cure the inherent rottenness of a manhood suffrage constituency. The pressure of the spoilsmen upon the Whig Harrison’s administration equalled or surpassed that upon the Democrat Jackson, and is said to have caused Harrison’s death. It is thus described by Ostrogorski:

Schurz thus describes the operation of the manhood suffrage spoils system as it had developed in ten or twelve years after its introduction in 1829:

This from Roosevelt referring to 1838:

Some writers put all the blame on Jackson for the overthrow of the old lofty ideals and standards of Federal politics, which occurred in his presidency. But Jackson, though coarse and ignorant, was not evil-minded nor intentionally unpatriotic; nor was he, even if so disposed, gifted with the power of corrupting the entire politics of the country. The mischiefs which broke out in his time were nation-wide and must have been due to a nation-wide cause. The fact is that the party of which Jackson happened to be the leader was caught in a movement, the full meaning and effect of which was unsuspected by everybody. The wash of the French Revolution had reached us and had swept manhood suffrage into our boat. Schurz says that in Jackson’s administration there was infused into the government and the whole body politic a spirit of lawlessness which outlived Jackson, and of which the demoralizing influence is felt to this day; that barbarous habits were then first introduced into the field of national affairs, and selfishness made a ruling motive in politics, resulting in a crop of corruption which startled the country. All this is true; the mistake is in ascribing to Jackson or to any one person a widespread deterioration no one man could possibly have accomplished. For such a far-reaching effect, a universal cause was needed; and that that cause was manhood suffrage no candid investigator can possibly doubt. McLaughlin in his Life of Cass (p. 136) recognizes that the introduction of the spoils system in 1829 cannot be solely charged to Jackson or to Van Buren; that they were the mere conduits through which was conducted into federal politics the flood of corruption produced by other causes. But those causes he fails to specify. “It came by natural evolution ... the offices of trust were handed over to the men who brought the greatest pressure to bear, and could make plain their political influences to the scullions of the kitchen cabinet. If the student of American politics is to understand the place which the spoils system holds he must see that its introduction was a natural phase in our national development.” And he describes the brutality of “the scrambling, punch-drinking mob which invaded Washington at Jackson’s inauguration.” It needs no Sherlock Holmes, however, to tell us that the advent of this mob and their possession of the administration would not have been “a natural phase in our national development” had it not been for the specific operation of the new institution of manhood suffrage. The influences which it introduced in our political structure were favorable to the spoils system, which was popularly felt to be a proper result of the filling of all offices by vote of the masses. The Cyclopedia of American Government states that the people favored the introduction of the spoils system. As Marcy said in a speech about that time, “They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy.” In a word the Democratic spirit ignored efficiency in office as well as in the voter; and the office became what it still continues to be, a reward, a token of gratitude for political activity.

The lamentable effects of manhood suffrage continued in full sweep after the death of Harrison and the return of the Jackson Democracy to power under Polk in 1845. The resultant flagrant misgovernment caused growing popular resentment which might have produced valuable results had it not been for the slavery agitation which soon drove all other political questions into the background. Already in 1843 the dissatisfaction of large numbers was displayed by the organization of the American or Knownothing party, which born in New York and baptized with blood in Philadelphia rapidly spread through the country. Formed ostensibly to check the growing power of Irish Roman Catholic politicians, its real grievance was manhood suffrage misrule. Its leaders mistook the cause of the new political scandals. They wrongly attributed them exclusively to the Irish; they were really due to the effect of the voting power of the newly enfranchised and organized political floaters, both foreign and American. Polk’s election was secured by the machine in 1844:

Meantime the bribery of voters and of legislatures rapidly grew more common and shameless, and about this time the purchase of legislation began to be a scandal. Referring to this period, Prof. Reinsch says:

And Farrand writes, referring to the same period:

Under the united influence of manhood suffrage and its offspring the spoils system, corruption, rascality and official incapacity increased enormously as time went on. The historian Rhodes writing of the decade from 1850 to 1860 says that “plentiful evidence of the popular opinion that dishonesty prevailed may be found in the literature of the time.” And that, “the executive and legislative departments of the national government were undoubtedly as much tainted with corruption between 1850-60 as they are at the present time.” (1904.) Senator Benton of Missouri writing in 1850 said:

And further: (p. 163).

About this time public officials were assessed for political contributions; afterwards the offices were put on sale. “Under Buchanan (1857-1861) was established the practice of taxing federal office holders. The politicians after the war carried it to perfection. There were five categories of assessments on salaries; federal, state, municipal, ward and district.” (Ostrogorski; Democracy, p. 68.)

The politicians under Lincoln were no whit behind their predecessors. The new administration machine went merrily to work right after March 4, 1861. Then followed such scandals as might naturally be expected from the appointment as Secretary of War of Simon Cameron, the rapacious and corrupt Pennsylvania boss. Carbines were sold by the Government at $3.50 each and repurchased at $15, and the contract repeated, the second purchase being at $22. Large sums were spent without accounting in violation of law. Brothers-in-law were in luck. Cameron’s brother-in-law was president of a railroad which in one year exacted from the Government a million or more for excessive transportation charges. One Morgan, the brother-in-law of the Secretary of the Navy, was made purchasing agent for railroad supplies, although he was absolutely without experience in that line. Other politicians received similar favors. A great scandal was caused by the issuing of permits for trading with the enemy under which supplies to numerous amounts sufficient to furnish whole armies were sent through the rebel lines. The machine was able to obtain the signature of Lincoln himself to these permits. Foreign affairs were neglected in order that the offices might be distributed. (Stickney; Organized Democracy, Chap. III.)

Coming to the next decade we find a systematic corruption of the electorate, a large part whereof was willing no doubt to be corrupted. Ostrogorski says that “after the (Civil) War the exasperation of party spirit and the extraordinary development of the spoils system led to bribery being used as a regular weapon.... The parties often secure, in much the same way, the votes of the members of the labor unions; the leaders ‘sell them out’ to the parties without the workmen having a suspicion of it. The voters who deliberately sell themselves belong in the cities, mostly to the dregs of the population.”

And also referring to states where the vote was close:

During all this period and down to the present time, the spoils system built on manhood suffrage has been the dominant force in our public life.

Meantime the politicians, not content with the original operation of manhood suffrage on the spoils of office, have bethought them of adding to the fruits of these operations by increasing still further the number of elective offices. It has been easy to persuade to this move many of that small number of intelligent voters who trouble themselves about such matters. The pretence of extending the sway of democracy and liberty which has always been used to cover schemes of public plunder was found sufficient once more. On this pretence the administrative and judicial offices of various states were made elective instead of appointive as formerly. As Ostrogorski says (Idem, p. 25):

Under this system which still obtains in many states, scores of state, county and municipal offices are offered at every election to the choice of the mass of electors who on approaching the polls find themselves called on to select in addition to the members of the state legislature and Congress and state governors, a dozen or a score of administrative officials and judges. Sometimes they are invited to vote for an attorney-general, a state engineer and surveyor, a state treasurer, a state comptroller, half a dozen judges and justices, a district attorney, a sheriff, a mayor, a city treasurer, a couple of coroners, besides a governor, a state senator, and assemblymen and aldermen, say twenty in all. Sometimes as at an election in St. Louis, the list contains thirteen city officials to be elected, besides state officers and congressmen. In the cities of Ohio it sometimes includes an average of twenty-two officers at each yearly election. In a small town near New York there are about fifteen local offices to be filled at an election besides a dozen or two state and federal offices and so on throughout the Union. “Let the people rule,” say the politicians, because when the people attempt to rule by choosing administrative officials, it is really the politicians who make the choice. It is doubtful if there ever was a voter, even a professional politician, who was sufficiently well acquainted with each of the candidates on such a ticket and with his duties to enable him to decide intelligently upon his merits as compared with his rivals. Certainly not one in a hundred is competent to do so. Remember, too, that the voter has no real choice in the original selection of these candidates; that they are all chosen before the election by party managers in secret conclave, and forced through the primaries by the power of the machine; that if the voter rejects one rogue or incapable whom he happens to know or has heard of, he can do no more after all than to vote for the other party candidate who is quite likely to be likewise of the same evil stripe. The reader can see that manhood suffrage applied in this way is an infallible method of making easy and safe the selection of incompetent rascals for public office. For what the voter usually does in such case is to vote the whole party ticket, rogues, fools and all, realizing that if he fails to do so the rival set of scamps and incompetents will be the sole gainers.

Subsequent to 1850 and by degrees the army of American politicians became more and more skilled and specialized in their craft; they became highly organized and disciplined; having leaders, officers, rules and traditions. Men went into politics in youth as a profession, grew old and rich in its practice, and trained up their deputies and successors. The political leader became known as the Boss; a group of Bosses as a Ring; a combination of Rings as the Machine whose power is sometimes irresistible. Especially after the Civil War (1865) the power of the bosses increased, and they habitually after that time distributed nominations, collected assessments, and gave orders to state legislatures. The system thus perfected has continued to the present day and is everywhere working smoothly. The American people have now practically ceased resistance to the bosses. In a letter addressed to Francis A. Walker signed by William Cullen Bryant, Carl Schurz and others, dated April 6, 1876, reference is made to “the widespread corruption in our public servants which has disgraced the republic in the eyes of the world and threatens to poison the vitality of our institutions.” On March 31, 1876, Schurz writes to Bristow: “We have been so deeply disgraced in the estimation of mankind by the exposures of corruption in our public servants, and the faith of many of our people in our institutions has been so dangerously shaken.” David Dudley Field of New York, writing in 1877, says:

“The corruption of American politics is a phrase in everybody’s mouth, not only in this country, but in others.... We see offices claimed and bestowed not for merit but for party work, and as a natural consequence we see the public service inefficient and disordered. We see venal legislatures and executive officers receiving gifts.... We see legislatures, state and federal, guaranteeing monopolies to corporations and individuals, making gifts of the public lands and bestowing subsidies from the public treasury; we see the plunder of local communities by what is called local taxation, and we see demagogues clamoring for largesses under pretense, perhaps, of equalizing bounties, or other equally dishonest pretenses.... The condition of our civil service is a scandal to the country.... Taking the country together two-thirds of the present official force would do all the work needed and do it better than it is now done.”