Who Was the President in 2008 and Again in 1892
What'due south the Worst a Vengeful Lame-Duck Assistants Can Do?
Consider the entirely on purpose "Panic of 1893."
What'southward the worst that tin can happen during a transition betwixt two American presidents taking identify at a time of deep partisan sectionalization and nationwide unrest? You lot can find i historical respond by looking at the transition between James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln after the ballot of 1860: secession, soon to be followed by civil war. Another answer, historian Heather Cox Richardson argued when I reached her recently with this question, comes from the transition between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland subsequently the ballot of 1892: economic disaster, egged on by a vengeful lame-duck assistants willing to leave things a mess for its successor.
Richardson is the author of six books about 19th- and 20thursday-century American history—most recently, How The South Won The Civil War, and, perhaps nigh relevantly to this conversation, To Make Men Costless: A History of the Republican Political party. Her daily Substack newsletter, Letters From an American, has become essential for readers trying to keep rails of the news, in this year of too much of it.
Our chat was condensed and edited for clarity.
Rebecca Onion: What were the Republicans standing for, when Harrison was elected? I think of the centre of the 19th century as being a time when Republicans were "the Party of Lincoln"—the party of the abolitionists. And Harrison was a Marriage officer.
Heather Cox Richardson: James Garfield [elected, and assassinated, in 1881] was really the concluding Lincoln Republican. By the time you get to even 1884, let lonely 1892, the Republican Party had really wedded itself to big business organisation. What became the symbol of the difference between the ii parties, in the 1880s and 1890s, was the tariff. The argument was that the tariff protected corporations from foreign contest—that enabled them to collude to heighten prices.
Actually, all the late-19thursday-century political battles were fought over the issue of the tariff, kind of like taxes nowadays. The effect hit on something that was way bigger than the bodily tariff. Where y'all stood on the issue of the tariff became symbolic of beingness either pro-business organisation or pro–ordinary Americans.
What happened in the election of 1892 to set this bad transitional period and the panic that followed?
The election was between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland, and most people go to sleep when they hear those ii names, but that's in part because of the people who wrote about them afterwards. At that place was a very singled-out narrative that came out afterward that made you think that was non an important time. But it's actually crucially of import.
In 1884, Cleveland was elected president, the first Democrat to take the White House since the Civil War. The Republicans went bonkers because they believed that what he was going to do was what he ran on: lower the tariff. Republicans said, He'due south going to get rid of this tariff and the economic system is going to hell in a basket; the entire country is going to be destroyed.
But they didn't have to worry besides much in his first term considering they even so held the Senate, and so Cleveland couldn't actually get tariff reform through Congress. He tried. Information technology didn't work.
And so then, in the adjacent presidential election in 1888, the Republicans just pulled out all the stops. Some Republican employers told their workers that if Cleveland was reelected, they'd be fired. They papered the country with literature about how tariffs are the answer to the economy, how Democrats don't understand money—all the things you lot can imagine. They suppressed votes.
Yet in 1888, Cleveland won over again, by 100,000 votes—at to the lowest degree, he won the pop vote. Simply when it goes to the Electoral Higher, there'due south a funny piddling shift in the college that year that gave the election to Benjamin Harrison, the Republican candidate.
Harrison was a devoutly religious man. He said to his political director, Mark Hanna, "Providence has given us this victory." And Hanna grumbles after, to somebody else: "Providence hadn't a damn affair to practise with information technology. A number of men were compelled to arroyo the penitentiary to make him president."
Once Harrison was in part, he didn't act moderately. He thought that God gave him this victory, and so he needed to be an extremist. So he populated the government with pro-business people, forced a whole agglomeration of pro-business legislation. A agglomeration of his supporters bought one of the major media outlets in the country, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, and they turned information technology over to his son to edit. … They used these levers to try to push through all the big-business stuff they possibly can.
Equally before long equally he took office in 1889, Harrison's administrators insisted that the only way to guarantee that Republicans never again lose control of America was to add together six new states to the Union. So that's how we got North Dakota, Due south Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 1889. Then the following year, nosotros got Idaho and Wyoming. They were in such a hurry, they weren't going through normal channels—for i of those states, they had volunteers write a constitution.
And so they really think they take it packed. I'g not making this upwardly. They say in Frank Leslie, The Senate's never going to go Democratic once again, because we've got all these new states, and we're but packed the Business firm with the Electoral Higher, which is never going to change.
But the economy was in existent problem in the middle '80s, especially in the American West, where the farmers were very poor, and the Republicans kept insisting the only reason it was and then bad was that the tariff wasn't high plenty. So they passed the McKinley Tariff in October 1890, raised tariff rates. Then in the midterms of 1890, they were completely blindsided. The Democrats, helped by the Populists and the Westward, took the House of Representatives by a margin of ii to 1.
The Republicans pulled out all the stops again for Harrison in 1892, simply this time information technology didn't piece of work because everyone hated Harrison, thought he'd gone besides far, and was packing the mechanics of the system to stay in ability. And so there was a huge backfire and in 1892, Cleveland was elected—winning the popular vote and the Balloter College. And the Democrats won the presidency, Business firm, and Senate for the first time since the Civil War.
Of course, at the fourth dimension we had a longer interregnum betwixt election and inauguration—from November to March—and during that time, the Harrison assistants deliberately ran the country into the footing. They deliberately did it! It'due south in the newspapers. They say to readers, OK, yous elected a Democrat. They don't know how to run the state. They don't know anything virtually money; all the coin is going to drain out of this country. At that place'south not going to exist anything left. Have your money out of the stock market place; we're headed for a terrible crash. They basically created this crash.
Foreign capital was going habitation at the same fourth dimension equally Republicans had really deliberately spent a ton of money on things like statues and courthouses and veterans benefits, because they'd been trying to become rid of what was at the time a surplus coming into the treasury, trying to prove that they needed a tariff to bring in more coin. They'd been running a surplus for years, and the Democrats kept going, We don't need all this money! Lower the damn tariffs!
So during the interregnum, as the panic developed, the financiers rushed to Washington and said, Practise something! And the secretary of the treasury, Charles Foster, and Harrison said, No, we're good. Foster actually said publicly that, equally he saw information technology, the administration was simply responsible for the economy up until March four, the day Cleveland took function. He didn't fifty-fifty manage it—the economy actually complanate 10 days earlier Harrison left role.
But if yous Google annihilation, it's going to say to you, It happened on Cleveland's watch. But no! It happened on Harrison's watch! But again—the Republicans wrote the history books.
OK, then in this between time, what things did the Republicans do to enable or facilitate this crash?
There's and then much in newspapers that [Republicans] run that enables the panic. The Chicago Tribune is a corking case. They tell readers that the easy money Democrats promised would destroy industry and throw people out of work—but, they say, that'southward fine. I'll read y'all a passage: "The working classes of the country need a lesson. … Information technology remains for the wise human to endeavour so to conform his personal affairs that he will suffer least from the threatened affliction." So basically, the Republicans will be passive spectators; it won't exist their funeral. It goes on and on similar this.
So the minute Cleveland is elected, the gold started flowing out of the state to Europe. And the outgoing Harrison administration refused to reassure investors. By February 1893, the stock market place was paralyzed and Eastern bankers begged for an issue of bonds to furnish the Treasury, but the administration announced at that place was no financial problem. J.P. Morgan went to Washington to urge Harrison to do something, but the assistants wasn't moved. That's when the secretary of the treasury fabricated that comment about Republicans simply existence responsible for the economy until March 4.
On Feb. 17, the marketplace collapsed. Panicked observers begged Harrison to salve the crisis, but with only 8 days left in his term, they maintained nothing was happening. The secretary of the treasury spent his concluding few days in office sitting for his portrait.
Wall Street watched the approachable administration in disgust. … I'll read you a quote from the New York Times: "If the national Treasury Section had been retained especially to industry anticipation and create disturbance, it could not accept done more than effective piece of work." Before handing the department over to his successor, Foster told the newspapers that "the treasury was down to bedrock."
They crashed the economy! And so, for the midterms in 1894, they went and told people, We told you the Democrats would crash the economy; reelect the Republicans and we'll be fine. So the Republicans won, in what was the biggest landslide midterm election in American history, and they said, Everything's going to be fine at present.
Was there anyone inside the Harrison administration who might have been a countervoice to that, who might take said, People are going to suffer if this happens? Anyone with a sense of social responsibility?
You really don't get that sense in reading the Harrison papers. You lot really don't come across people saying that. Where you got some sense of social responsibleness, it was from people in the Army, stationed out in the Plains, who knew just how bad things were. The Harrison administration, when [Harrison] was in office, was always saying, At that place really isn't a problem in the country. Farmers were caught in these terrible conditions on the Plains in those years, but the Republican line was, Farmers are spending besides much money on fancy nutrient and putting carpets in their homes, really, there's no problem. And you've got Army officers looking around out in that location, proverb, You know, actually, people are dying.
Harrison, who really was kind of a dull tool in some ways, actually believed the party line. When his party got shellacked in 1890—and they got shellacked—he wandered effectually the garden, existence like, "What happened?" In that location'southward a letter from somebody who goes to visit him, and the letter reports him just wandering around, saying, I have no thought what happened, I just know information technology wasn't my mistake. Ha!
During the transition period, he wasn't going to be the one to say, No, we can't just tank this on purpose. For one thing, he was very religious. He believed Providence had a hand in so much. … Permit'southward say, he was always handled. He wasn't a handler.
Who did the public blame, in this case?
If the 1894 midterms are anything to go by, the arraign was not properly assigned. Ane thing I always say is, until the Keen Depression, it's easier to exist sympathetic to people who don't understand how economic depressions happen because they didn't understand Keynesian economics. In the nineteenth century, they don't sympathise how a national economic system works.
So how do people take the Panic of 1893? All they see is, the first homo down is ane of the railroad corporations [Reading Railroad Company]. So they blame the railroads. Just there's no sense all the same that it'southward possible to create a panic psychologically, which, information technology's pretty clear that's what was happening.
If you actually wait at the literature on the Panic of 1893, the economic historians who look at it—and there are not a lot of them—don't actually have an explanation for why it happened. If yous look at 1873 or 1929, y'all can say, "Information technology'southward clear, we've got an overcapitalization over hither, an issue over there"—but the numbers in '93 were keen. I hateful, they weren't great, only there was no reason for at that place to exist a panic. So I contend it really was a psychological panic. And at the time the public certainly wasn't prepared to understand why that was happening.
I recollect the people who did understand it were on Wall Street. They understood exactly what was happening, and they were furious most it, considering even though they might have really liked Harrison, what they didn't like was watching their investments evaporate into fume.
What were the other lasting furnishings of this transition? What did anyone learn?
Interestingly enough, when the Great Depression came in '29, Andrew Mellon advocated to Herbert Hoover merely letting information technology run its course. The instance he used was the Panic of '93. He said, Wait, the Panic of '93 was a good affair because information technology sort of knocked the wind out of the poor people, and they all went home to their parents' farms and got their human action together and voted for Republicans in the midterms. And to Hoover's credit, he said, No, the world has inverse, people tin can't go home to their farms. I've just fed Belgium during World War I. I'm not going to let Americans starve.
Really, [the Panic of 1893] locked into the American psyche the idea that Democrats can't handle money. You lot should read those newspapers from back then; they all say, We told you, as soon as Democrats got into power, they would destroy the economy.
Of form, we're living with this at present. And you tell me that that'southward not going to happen, the minute that Biden, if he gets elected, gets in there. The same style people blame Obama for the crash of 2008. I mean, if Biden is selected, in January, when he takes over, the economic system is going to be in the toilet. We have debts like nobody's concern, and they're going to insist that there's no money to practice anything. It could exist but horrible, and that'southward exactly what happened later on Cleveland was elected in 1892.
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/worst-presidential-transition-1892-harrison-cleveland.html
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