If contemporary voters sometimes lose patience with the dirty tricks politics and "negative campaigning" said to characterize our age, perhaps a look at the way it used to be can offer a bit of perspective. Hard-fought as they may be, the battles these days are confined to verbal thrusts and parries and our politicians have taken a giant step toward civil electioneering when compared to their nineteenth century counterparts.
In those good old days, the record makes clear, threats, beatings and even the occasional murder were included in the campaign arsenals that aspiring public servants unleashed in their efforts to turn out-or turn away-the vote.
In the 1840s and 1850s, it was to one Michael Brennan, the premier "polling place goon" of the day, that many of the strong-arm responsibilities fell. The 200-pound street fighter, described by area history chronicler William Rowley as the "archetype of the Irish bully in Albany," was charged with the task of maintaining the political bosses' version of order on election days. In return, his frequent arrests for non-political brawling resulted in only the mildest punishments, or none at all. Brennan's sanctioned reign of terror ended on November 6, 1855, when he was shot to death by one of his long-suffering victims.
Earlier in the century, too, Albany's growing Irish immigrant community had been involved in election day violence. In the 1830s two "gentlemen" were severely beaten by a "pack of savages" on the steps of "a respectable Broadway business house." The gentlemen were Whigs, part of the conservative power structure, and the savages were Irish Democrats charging interference at the polling place.
But the most notable political violence in Albany history involved not the lower classes struggling for a foothold on the economic and social ladder, but the gentry themselves-and a lot of them.
On April 21, 1807, General Solomon Van Rensselaer, a prominent Federalist, responded promptly and personally to the inflammatory, published rhetoric of the local Republicans, who had passed a resolution questioning Van Rensselaer's honesty. The general proceeded to assault his accuser when he and Republican recording secretary Elisha Jenkins (later an Albany mayor) met on State Street. In turn, and before the day was over, Republican leader John Taylor (who in his long career served as first judge of the Court of Common Pleas, lieutenant governor and acting governor of the state) accosted Van Rensselaer and the two statesmen squared off in downtown Albany.
They were reinforced by scores of partisans and within minutes what was long remembered as "The Battle of State Street" was well under way. Before it ended, writers of the day claimed, about half of the men in Albany had taken part in the vicious hand-to-hand combat that turned the broad street into a mass of brawlers from Pearl Street to Broadway. Among the wounded was Solomon Van Rensselaer, the victim of Jenkins's cane-wielding nephew, Francis Bloodgood (yet another future mayor).
In the aftermath of the battle, a complex series of suits and countersuits resulted in numerous awards for damages from the many assaults committed and injuries sustained.
Ironically, General Van Rensselaer, who had landed the first blow, made a $400 profit in the courts, despite numerous judgments against him, thanks to the nasty gash Bloodgood gave him in the back of his head. Van Rensselaer recovered, and he went on to further prominence as not only a general but a member of Congress and a postmaster. Another Federalist dignitary was not as fortunate, however. William Cooper, the father of author James Fenimore Cooper, was the founder of Cooperstown, and held office as a judge and a congressman. By the time he wound up on the short end of the stick, he was also a veteran of some partisan scuffles in which he had emerged as a winner. A notable instance of that comes from an affidavit among the court records of Otsego County, which details the attempt by his defeated opponent in a congressional election to exact some physical retribution. ". . .the said James Cochran confessed to the said William Cooper these words: 'I acknowledge you are too much of a buffer for me,'" the affidavit reads in part.
That wasn't the case some ten years later, however, when Cooper was set upon by a political opponent outside of Albany's famous Lewis's Tavern. That December 1809 attack, or complications from it, proved fatal. More than a century later, one of Cooper's descendants, another James Fenimore, wrote of the judge's death:
"William Cooper, the runaway Quaker boy, died with his political boots on and in the Federalist cause. He was killed by a blow on the head, struck from behind as he was leaving a political meeting in Albany where he had made a speech in a heated debate. In those days, murder and death in the cause of one's political party, were looked upon as among the fortunes of political warfare. No punishment followed such assaults and no legal investigations were made. His assailant was known to all."
Kenneth Salzmann is a freelance writer whose Albany history columns originally appeared in the magazine, Albany, New York, in the 1980s.
www.literaryenterprises.com
http://www.albanyscrapbook.blogspot.com
Source: www.articlealley.com
