USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 12
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there were millions who themselves had been born in log cabins or still lived in them, and the sneer was interpreted as an insult to honest pov- erty. Thus the log cabin, the coon and the cider barrel were made the campaign insignia of the Whigs, and, with the military record and appealing personality of General Harrison, served to arouse a feeling on the part of the people generally that was sure to lead to victory. Every voter had his song book and political textbook. One of the songs of especial popularity ran that "Van might from his coolers of silver drink wine, and lounge on his cushioned settee," while Tippecanoe upon his buckeye bench was content with cider; and speakers pictured Var. Buren as using gold forks and spoons in a palace. Political meet- ings were attended by twenty thousand, sixty thousand, and even a hundred thousand people, drawn from a number of States, literally " acres of people assembled," and most of them camping for two or three days at a time in tents or hastily built cabins, though wherever such meetings were held it was the custom of every Whig in the place to fling flags from his windows or the roof, and to "hang the latch- string out," as proclamation that his house was open and free to those in want of lodgings. In many places cabins were erected in public parks or on street corners, to serve as club or committee rooms and rally- ing points, and always at the door was a cider barrel, and tacked on the wall a coon skin. Every town in Franklin county had its own Tippe- canoe Club, and Malone had also a Tippecanoe choir, which, like the modern glee club, rendered campaign songs at home, and occasionally in outlying places as well. Campaign meetings were held in pretty much every school district in the county, and more important rallies in the larger villages and hamlets. At a political dinner given in Plattsburgh a whole hogshead of hard cider stood at the head of the table. So deeply stirred were the Whigs of Franklin county, and so sincerely convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and that theirs was indisputably the party of patriotism, that they seized upon the Fourth of July for a political demonstration, and thus assumed to make celebration of the national holiday distinctively a partisan affair. Pro- cessions came to Malone from almost every town in the county, most of them accompanied by bands, and the attendance was estimated at between three and four thousand. The procession from Bellmont and Chateaugay alone was estimated to be a half a mile in length, and that made up from Bangor, Moira, Brandon and Dickinson at over a mile. That from Constable, Bombay, Fort Covington and Westville was
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equally large. In each there were log cabins on wagons drawn by either four or six horses gaily caparisoned, and in some were large canoes emblazoned with flags and the names of the party candidates, while the Bangor contingent had a liberty pole sixty-four feet high mounted on a wagon. Within the cabins or on their roofs were live coons. Each division was greeted upon arrival with the booming of cannon. Speeches were made during the day, and a dinner was served on Arsenal Green. The campaign on the part of the Democrats was equally active, but without attempt at spectacular effect.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 184.4
The campaign of 1844 promised at the making of the nominations to be even more demonstrative than had been that of 1840, for upon that occasion little was to be seen in the shops and stores in Baltimore except Clay portraits, banners, medals, ribbons, streamers and badges, Clay song books, Clay marches and quicksteps, Clay hats, Ashland coats, live coons and foxes. But these were not much in evidence after the cam- paign really opened, which nevertheless speedily became the most ardent and exciting that the country had ever witnessed. It was dis- tinctively a speaking campaign. The most eminent Whigs and the party's most famous orators undertook tours covering half of the country, and involving weeks of continuous travel and daily or nightly addresses. They worked as hard as the paid stump hacks of later years, who are indifferent to poor accommodations, fatigue and broken voices if only they can earn a dollar. The size and enthusiasm of the meetings were unparalleled. Henry Clay had been for years the leader and the idol of the Whigs, who held him in almost personal affection, but he made the mistake in the heat of the campaign, in the hope of placating sentiment in the South, of so modifying his position on the annexation of Texas as a slave State, that he antagonized the aboli- tionists and many of the " conscience Whigs " of the North : and, these deserting him and voting for the abolition candidate, he was defeated. " When the result was known," Carl Sehurz says in his biography of Clay, "the Whigs broke out in a wail of agony all over the land. 'It was,' says Nathan Sargent, 'as if the first born of every family had been stricken down.' The descriptions we have of the grief manifested are almost incredible. Tears flowed in abundance from the eyes of men and women. In the cities and villages business places were almost deserted for a day or two, the people gathering together in groups to
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discuss in low tones what had happened. * * Many despaired of the republic, sincerely believing that the experiment of popular govern- ment had failed forever." The number of abolition votes cast in Franklin county was eighty-six, whereas in 1840 there had not been one.
From 1843 to 1860 political conditions locally were mixed, and elec- tion results usually close, with the Democrats more often in the ascend- ancy than the Whigs. This change from Whig to Democratic supremacy I suppose to have been due, first, to the great influence exercised by Silas Wright throughout this northern section, and, second, to the large influx of foreign immigration. The largest majority or plurality obtained by any party in the county between 1843 and 1854 was two hundred and seventy-five, and in five of these years it was less than one hundred. In 1843 Francis D. Flanders was elected to the Assembly by twenty-nine majority, and was beaten for the same office in 1844 by twenty-six majority. The majority for Silas Wright for Governor the same year was only three. In 1847 the Whigs and Democrats united in nominating Joseph R. Flanders for county judge and William A. Wheeler for the Assembly, and both were elected practically without opposition. In 1849 and in 1850 the Democrats carried the county for their general ticket, but lost it on county offices. In the former year, S. C. F. Thorndike was elected County Clerk by only two majority, and in 1857 Charles Russell had only one majority over Albert Andrus for member of Assembly.
Conditions of this sort are not as conducive to the comfort and con- tent of the active partisan as a knowledge that sure and large majorities may always be counted upon ; but who shall say that they are not more wholesome and not calculated to promote a higher grade of public service ? Upon the whole, Franklin county's officials have been of a superior order, their average of intelligence, aptitude and integrity having been high, and yet is it not true that where the division of the people into parties is nearly equal, each party is constrained to name its very best men for candidates instead of passing out nominations at times when success is believed to be certain as rewards for mere partisan activity and efficiency, and without much regard for the question of fitness and conscientious devotion to the public welfare ?
THE DEMOCRACY DISRUPTED
The Democratic party was disrupted in 1847 by the slavery issue. For a generation it had been dominated by the pro-slavery interests,
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with their demand for the right to carry slavery into the Territories whether the inhabitants of these favored it or not, and Democrats who had tired of the South's truculent spirit, together with influential leaders who had private resentments to satisfy, organized a separate movement, and in 1847 nominated a ticket of their own in New York after having failed to control the regular party convention. In the next year Martin Van Buren, who had been elected President in 1836 as the political legatee of Andrew Jackson, became the candidate of the free-soilers for the same office, with John A. Dix for Governor, upon a platform of "no more slave States, and no more slave territory," with the result that the Democratic division gave the election to the Whigs. In Franklin county the Democrats divided almost equally between the regulars and the free-soilers, each polling between nine hundred and one thousand votes.
The leaders of the free-soilers generally were, however, without sincerity or abiding principle in their professions, and thus the organi- zation continued as a separate movement for only two or three years, the controlling participants in it being coaxed or bribed back into the regular ranks by Horatio Seymour, William L. Marcy and others upon terms that assigned them half of the places on the State ticket, and excused them from abjuring their alleged free-soil principles. They thus joined in fighting for the election of pro-slavery men to office, while " saving their face " by insisting that they expected to make the Democracy the great anti-slavery party of New York and the nation. But there was neither success nor evident effort for success in that direction.
This spirit of compromise and of killing the fatted calf for political prodigals angered those Democrats who professed to continue to adhere to the original party faith, and these then engaged in revolt and set up an organization of their own, arguing for a strict construc- tion of the constitution, contending for extreme State sovereignty, and denying that there was any legitimate power vested anywhere to pre- vent a slave-owner from taking his slaves wherever he chose. There thus developed a strife in the party as fierce as that of a generation later between the Republican "halfbreeds " and " stalwarts " which wasted the party's strength, so that its supremacy was not as unchal- lenged as otherwise it would have been. These factions were distin- guished by a variety of names, Jeffersonians, hardshells or adamantines, free-soilers, softshells, hunkers, barnburners and locofocoes, and they
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fought without quarter. Especially interesting is the fact that the brothers, Joseph R. Flanders and Francis D. Flanders, who had been associated as leading Democratic workers and as editors of the Franklin Gazette, quarreled over the situation, and the former established and. for two years edited a newspaper, called the Jeffersonian, to advocate his views and to fight for the cause of his faction. It was an able paper, but apparently it could not persuade a majority of Democrats- to follow its arguments and pleadings, as, except in 1848, the softshells always polled from three to four times as many votes in the county as the hards. In December, 1854, having formed a law partnership in New York, Mr. Flanders removed to that city, and the publication of the Jeffersonian was discontinued. William B. Earle and Carlos C. Keeler were associated with Mr. Flanders in the ownership of the paper, but had no part in editing it. The publisher was Warren Dow ..
THE KNOWNOTHING PARTY
In 1853 the American or Knownothing party, with its platform of " put none but Americans on guard," and political proscription of all citizens of foreign birth, began to be a factor in elections in this section, though in some localities it had appeared as early as 1837. For a time it was a secret organization, each locality having its own separate " lodge," and the members professing ignorance concerning their asso- ciates and as to what was done or contemplated by the organization. Hence the appellation " knownothing." In 1854 in Franklin county the. Knownothings gave their votes generally to the Whig candidates, but in 1855 the party had become so formidable that it put a county ticket of its own in the field, and elected it by about four hundred plurality. George S. Adams was its candidate for county judge, Albert Hobbs for the Assembly, and Edgar S. Whitney for county clerk. The organiza- tion continued in existence for four or five years, showing in 1856 a strength approximating that of the Republican party. In 1857 the- Knownothings and the Republicans in Franklin county agreed upon a union local ticket, each party taking an equal number of nominees. But several of the leaders among the Knownothings were dissatisfied with the arrangement, and, refusing to support it, the Democrats won by a narrow majority except on Assembly, which they lost by a single. vote to the fusion candidate, a Knownothing. The first man to carry the county as a distinctively Republican candidate, without any other party backing, was William A. Wheeler that same year. He was the
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nominee for State Senator, and had fifty plurality in Franklin county. A fusion on a county ticket was effected again in 1858, and this time it was completely successful - the majorities ranging from about 80 to 240, though by reason of the Knownothings and the Republicans having separate State tickets the Democrats obtained a plurality of 520 on Governor. Whereas the Republican and Knownothing vote in the county in 1857 had been practically equal, the former became in 1858 twice as large as the latter - the vote having been for State officers : Republican, 1,621, and Knownothing, 782.
The Knownothings nominated county candidates in 1859, but so hopeless was their cause seen to be that all of them withdrew, and the absorption of the party by the Republicans became practically com- plete. The result in the county on State officers in that year was divided, the Democrats having two majority on Secretary of State, and the Republicans having registered larger, but still small, majorities for most of the other offices. The entire Republican county ticket was elected by majorities varying between twenty-five and two hundred. Never since then have the Democrats succeeded in electing any man to any county office in Franklin county.
The only enduring consequences of the Knownothing movement were that through sympathy and association with it a large number of men who had theretofore acted uniformly with the Democracy passed under its cover to affiliation with the Republican party; and also it was doubtless because of the prominence of former well known Know- nothings as Republican leaders that the Irish vote was bound still more firmly to the Democrats. Most of the Democrats who became Republi- cans through having first attached themselves to the Knownothings could not possibly have been induced to make the change directly, but found transition by a side route easy and agreeable. Otherwise it is extremely doubtful if Republicanism in Franklin county could so soon have gained ascendancy, or held it so surely and strongly.
1
POLITICAL RANCOR
The foregoing reference to adherence by Irishmen to the Demo- cratic party makes it pertinent at this point to recall the fact that until about 1884 any Irishman in this section who voted the Republican ticket was deemed by his fellows to have been disloyal to his race and religion, and to merit punishment - so harsh was political intolerance in that period. Among Republicans, though manifested in milder form
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generally, a like spirit prevailed. In Number Nine of Malone, peopled almost altogether by Irishmen, there were years when any man of that extraction resident there who was known to be a Republican, or to have supported Republican candidates in a single instance, was not safe as to his person or property. Cases of serious assault and even of burn- ing buildings or of maiming animals for such offending occurred more than once. Conditions have changed marvelously in this regard within the past generation, and the Republican party in this county counts among its staunchest members a considerable percentage of Irishmen without their having incited any particular resentment on the part of other Irishmen because of their political defection. Rather curiously, while the Irish are so generally Democrats, the large pre- ponderance of the French have been Republicans.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
The Republican party had its birth July 4, 1854, at Jackson, Mich., as a conscience movement. The struggle for the extension of slavery that had persisted, now quietly and then furiously, through more than a third of a century, with the slavery interests repudiating solemn com- promise and compact over and over again, and invariably carrying their points, had at length inflamed public opinion in the North to the degree that it was ripe for uncompromising and resolute resistance to further aggressions looking to the imposition of slavery wherever slaveholders might choose to carry it into any region anywhere which had not been organized into States. Congress, the President and the courts were all subservient to the truculency of the slave power, which was united and defiant in its claim of constitutional rights and privileges ; and withal sincerely convinced that it was contending only for that to which it was entitled, and which was vital to the prosperity of the South. Con- viction of necessity and that its demands were within constitutional guaranties were thus set on the one hand against an equal conscien- tiousness and an abiding devotion to righteousness on the other hand, together with entire persuasion that further encroachment by slavery must not only involve dishonor, but actually imperil the public safety. Soon came the famous or infamous Dred Scott decision by the supreme court, upholding nearly every contention that had been advanced by the slavery interest, and then followed the fierce struggle for determination of whether Kansas should come into the group of States free or slave. Events moved swiftly, passions were kindled to fierceness. and the
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struggle culminated in civil war through the refusal of the South in 1860 to accept an election result that had been reached strictly within the forms and requirements of law and the constitution.
The Republican party made its first campaign in Franklin county in 1855, and polled one hundred and seventy-seven votes for the head of its tieket, Preston King, who had formerly been a prominent Democrat, and thus commanded some Democratic support. The candidates for county offices received from eighty-four to one hundred and sixteen votes each. This record of the beginning of the party which has never failed in any year since 1860 to eleet its entire county ticket in Franklin county deserves to be preserved, and therefore the vote by towns for King is herewith given: Bangor 24, Bellmont 4, Bombay 12, Brandon 1, Burke 4, Chateaugay 2, Constable 7, Dickinson 16, Duane 3, Fort Covington 21, Franklin 3, Harrietstown 2, Malone 52, Moira 25 and Westville 1.
INTRIGUE AND CORRUPTION
That trieks, intrigue and corruption in politics are not altogether of modern origin and employment becomes evident upon consulting news- paper files of the long ago. Thus the Plattsburgh Republican in 1818 charged that the leaders in both parties in Franklin county had bar- gained the year before with Ebenezer Brownson to support him for the Assembly in 1818 as the price of treachery by him to his party in 1817, and that accordingly three men met here in 1818, as if in convention, and assumed to nominate him. At that time Franklin and Clinton had only one Assemblyman between them, and, the former voting for Mr. Brownson by two to one for his Republican opponent, he was elected as a Clintonian or Federalist, notwithstanding there was a considerable majority against him in Clinton. It is noteworthy in passing that Mr. Brownson was an office-holder to an extent that would not now be tolerated, having been first judge of the court of common pleas from 1809 to 1814, and again from 1823 to 1825; also surrogate from 1816 to 1828 and county elerk from 1821 to 1823, as well as member of Assembly in 1819.
In the Franklin Telegraph, Malone's first newspaper, there appeared an item in 1824 that is really refreshing to any one who has wearied of the cry of " Malone ring," for it is evidence that the ring of which so much has been heard, and which some may have believed to be pre- historie, was not always existent, or at least not always dominant. In 1824, it seems from the Telegraph's item, the popular complaint was
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against "the Fort Covington junta," and it was suggested that the combination so described was generally able to exercise control. But the real significance of the paragraph is that even ninety years ago there was a "machine " in politics and " bosses " and a "ring," as well as at present, and that the fellow who got licked was prone to howl about it.
To determine when the buying of votes began I suspect that we would need go back to a time before the county was erected. Indefinite allusions in the newspapers as early as 1835 indicate very plainly that the practice prevailed even then to some extent, and men still living are able to recall here and there the names of political leaders or large employers of labor in different towns who were reputed to visit Malone always just before an election, and dicker there for the delivery in mass of the votes of all of the men whom they controlled, or claimed to be able to handle. There were allegations, too, that the federal office- holders practically dictated party management and the naming of can- didates for office in the county, as well as attended to negotiating with individual voters to give their ballots for a consideration, either cash or the promise of "recognition " or reward by way of some ,appoint- ment or nomination to be conferred in the future.
The Franklin Telegraph in 1828 declared that the Jacksonians had sent one thousand dollars as a campaign fund into the Congressional district of which Franklin county was a part, and that this county received its share of the fund, with ten dollars over paid to Malone by mistake. The amount was certainly generous for that period for such a purpose. If the right records were accessible, I should doubtless be able to show that the Whigs also practiced similar methods.
In 1853, according to both the Palladium and the Jeffersonian, the saloons in Malone were run openly by the softshell Democrats for several days preceding the election, and whiskey was free in them then, and also on election day, while votes were bought by the same party in large numbers. One worker in an adjoining town was said to have received twenty-five dollars to use in getting out the vote, but applied it instead to purchase his supply of wheat for the winter, and did not even himself vote.
In the same year disgruntled Democrats caused Democratic ballots to be printed on which appeared the names of some of the Whig candi- dates for county offices, and circulated these with advice to their friends to cast them. At another time the other faction of the Democrats
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worked the same game, with the result that the Whigs had them to thank for the election of a part of their local ticket. The ballots used in early times have since come to be known as of the " vest-pocket " order, each party furnishing its own and distributing them itself through its local committees or individual workers. Ordinarily it was a matter of honor with the printer who supplied them to get the names exactly right, and not to suffer any one outside of the office even to have a glimpse of them. This was the rule so that the printer for the opposing party should not be able to counterfeit their appearance, or to reproduce them so " doctored " that the name of a Whig candidate should appear in place of a Democrat, or vice versa. It would have been no violation of party ethics for Whigs or Democrats to attempt trickery of the sort indicated against each other, but for a partisan printing office to participate in such a fraud upon its own candidates was deemed disgraceful in the extreme. In Presidential years electoral tickets were sometimes printed with an engraved or lithographed back as a guard against counterfeiting. In the day of " vest-pocket " ballots, too, attempts were commonly made by the workers of one party to steal the votes of the other or to coax them or buy them from the man to whom they had been intrusted for safekeeping until election day. It is within the recollection of the writer that one year all of the Demo- cratic ballots for one of the " south towns " were obtained by Republi- cans, and Democrats there had to vote the Republican ticket, write their own ballots, or not vote at all.
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