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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2009
Early in 1839, a congressional investigation into campaign fund-raising at the U.S. customhouse in New York first brought to public attention a problem in democracy that we still are trying to solve: Who should pay for our politics? By 1839, the deferential political system of the colonial era, in which government was the almost exclusive province of the old mercantile and landed elites, was well on its way out, at least in the North. Under that system, the upper classes provided the great majority of candidates for elective office and candidates paid their own campaign expenses. The transition to a more democratic system—of broader suffrage, organized parties, and professional politicians who did not have personal or family wealth—required a new way of financing campaigns. As politicians were no longer people who had money, they had to raise money.
1. Senate Committee on Finance. 23d Cong., 1st sess., 1834, S.Rpt. 435, 1.
2. Derby, John Barton, Political Reminiscences (Boston, 1835), 93–97Google Scholar. The Wicasset customhouse may have been something of a pioneer in these efforts. That possibility is raised by an 1831 complaint to the U.S. House of Representatives about the customs collector there. The complaint was that the collector had dismissed one of his inspectors for refusing to turn over to him 25 percent of his income. The complaint alleged that others had held office under that inspector on the same terms. During the debate over whether to refer the complaint to the Treasury Department, at least one member raised the possibility that the money collected from officers went into a political fund. Register of Debates in Congress, 22d Cong., 1st sess., 2252–59, 3103–4.
3. Irvine Callender to Committee of Finance, Philadelphia, 28 September 1838, Martin Van Buren Papers, Library of Congress.
4. A Whig paper in Philadelphia reported that the administration had “brought the whole strength of party discipline” to bear in a failed attempt to get “a packed committee of six Loco Focos and three Whigs.” The committee finally chosen “consists of men a majority of whom will point out and expose … the rottenness of the system.” Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, 5 February 1839, 3.
5. Quotations from the House investigating committee will be cited in the text after the abbreviation HCI, for Report of the Committee of Investigation on the Subject of the Defalcations of Samuel Swartout and Others, 25th Cong., 3d sess., H.Rpt. 313, 462.
6. Congressional Globe, 24th Cong., 2d sess., 1837, 124. Bell had been an early supporter of Andrew Jackson, but by 1837 the two men were political enemies. The break began with Bell's opposition to administration policy on the Bank of the United States. However, Jackson still considered the congressman a friend even after Bell won election as speaker of the 23rd Congress with the votes of Jackson opponents. But Bell's outspoken opposition to Jackson's choice of Martin Van Buren as the Democratic party candidate for president in 1836 caused Jackson to “read … Bell out of the party.” (Parks, Joseph Howard, John Bell of Tennessee [Baton Rouge, 1950], 112.Google Scholar) Bell later became a Whig and in 1841 was appointed secretary of war by President William Henry Harrison. In 1860, he ran for president on the Constitutional Union ticket.
7. Congressional Globe, 24th Cong., 2d sess., 1837, 124.
8. Bell's first bill was not even sent to a committee, perhaps because it was introduced close to the end of the 24th Congress. Bell noted that objection, but said he believed his chosen time to be “the only period when it was possible that a subject of this description could receive an impartial investigation and decision.” Congressional Globe, 24th Cong. 2d sess., 1837, 127. The bill was referred to a select committee when Bell introduced it again a year later, but it still did not get to the floor for debate or vote. See ibid., 25th Cong., 2d sess., 1838, 190, 209, 224. The only debate on the second bill came in the form of incidental comments during the highly partisan exchange on the subject of President Van Buren's annual message for 1839. See, for example, the remarks of Michigan Representative Isaac E. Crary in ibid., 25th Cong., 3d sess., 1839, Appendix, 157.
9. Ibid., 26th Cong., 1st sess., 1840, Appendix, 832.
10. Ibid., 25th Cong., 3d sess., 1839, Appendix, 157. Crittenden made a long speech in support of his bill on 8 February, but the text is not in the Globe or in his personal papers.
11. Ibid., 343. It is interesting that, five years after Daniel Webster's reluctance to claim that government employees were in fact being assessed for political contributions, Senator Preston still was not ready to assert it. Preston made this speech on 13 February 1839, two weeks before the official date of the House report that published testimony about assessments.
12. Ibid., 27 February 1839, 213.
13. Ibid., Appendix, 157.
14. Ibid., 204.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., Appendix, 412.
18. Ibid., 27 February 1839, 213.
19. Ibid., 24th Cong., 1st sess., 1836, Appendix, 751. The statute was 22 George III, C. 41.
20. Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 3d sess., 1791, 1924–25.
21. Ibid., 1925–27. Representatives Vining and Ames's references to the Constitution were not to the First Amendment, which had not yet been ratified and was not added to the Constitution until 15 December 1791. Most of those who voted for Jackson's amendment were later identified with Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, and most who voted against it were later identified as Federalists. However, most members who had been delegates to the Constitutional Convention, including Virginia Representative James Madison, voted against the amendment.
22. See Mutch, Robert E., “Three Centuries of Campaign Finance Law,” in Lubenow, Jerold, ed., A User's Guide to Campaign Finance Reform (Lanham, Md., 2001).Google Scholar
23. Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 3d sess., 1791, 1927.
24. Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 1826, 133, 136.
25. Ibid., 20th Cong., 1st sess., 1828, 1374.
26. Congressional Globe, 24th Cong., 2d sess., 1837, 124.
27. Ibid., 128.
28. Ibid., 25th Cong., 3d sess., Appendix, 410, 411. He quoted Tocqueville's comment that because “American functionaries” were “protected by the opinion, and backed by the cooperation, of the majority, they venture upon such manifestations of their power as astonish an European. By this means habits are formed in the heart of a free country which may some day prove fatal to its liberties.” Democracy in America, chap. 15, “Effects of the Unlimited Power of the Majority upon the Arbitrary Authority of the American Public Officers.” Senator Preston also cited this passage. The John Locke quote is from The Second Treatise on Government, chap. 19, ¶222.
29. Ibid., 24th Cong., 2d sess., Appendix, 317–18.
30. Ibid., 25th Cong., 3d sess., Appendix, 158–59.
31. Ibid., 407, 409, 412.
32. Ibid., 26th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 833, 834.
33. Ibid., 207–8.
34. Ibid., 182.
35. Ibid., 188, 191, 205, 210.
36. Ibid., 158, 160.
37. Ibid., 186.
38. Ibid., 26th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 370.
39. Martin Van Buren to Andrew Jackson, 16 November 1838. Martin Van Buren Papers, Library of Congress.
40. “The New York Election,” United States Democratic Review, January 1839, 4.
41. Smith, F. O. J., “The Post-Office Department,” Hunt's Merchants Magazine, 12 1844, 530–531.Google Scholar
42. In the Post Office Act of 1792, Congress expanded the frank, building on colonial custom by allowing newspapers to be mailed anywhere in the postal system for a nominal fee. By 1800, observers already were commenting on how the newspaper subsidy was spreading the “rage of party.” John, Richard R., Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 40.Google Scholar
43. Congressional Globe, 25th Cong., 3d sess., 1839, 213, 151.
44. Ibid., Appendix, 407.
45. Ibid., 26th Cong., 1st sess., Appendix, 832.
46. Smith, “Post-Office Department,” 530–31. In his 1835 book, Derby called Smith, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts, an “excrescence of party,” presumably because newspapers Smith published vigorously disputed Derby's accounts of events at the Boston customhouse. (Derby, Reminiscences, 95.) Four years later, though, as a member of the House committee investigating the New York customhouse, Smith was silent on the matter of assessments and did not sign the minority report. An earlier contributor to Hunt's wanted to abolish the frank for much the same reason that Smith wanted to keep it: “The present system, let it be conducted as it may, can never, in the nature of things, be wholly free from political abuses, and is always in danger of being converted into a mere political machine.” Bates, B., “Post-Office Reform—Cheap Postage,” Hunt's Merchants Magazine, 02 1840, 266.Google Scholar
47. Remini, Robert V., The Election of Andrew Jackson (Philadelphia, 1963), 80–86.Google Scholar
