Latest / Ridiculous History / Kidnapping, Binge Drinking and Costumes: Voter Fraud in the 1800s

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Kidnapping, Binge Drinking and Costumes: Voter Fraud in the 1800s · Ridiculous History

0:12
Speaker 1: Yea. Let's begin with a hypothetical scenario. Friends and neighbors.
0:27
Speaker 1: Imagine that you are in the eighteen hundreds. You're walking
0:32
Speaker 1: down the street, minding your own weather business or pleasure it,
0:36
Speaker 1: and you are kidnapped. You are accosted by a gang
0:41
Speaker 1: of ruffians. You were taken to a room where there
0:44
Speaker 1: are other hapless people like you. But instead of demanding
0:48
Speaker 1: a ransom from your loved ones or immediately torturing you
0:52
Speaker 1: or something like that, the kidnappers the first move is
0:56
Speaker 1: to attempt to get you drunk, booze you up, to
0:59
Speaker 1: booze you up. Uh. And we'll continue this story, but
1:02
Speaker 1: first let's pause for the introduction. Hello, I'm Ben, I'm
1:05
Speaker 1: no one. You know. The second thing they might have done, Ben,
1:07
Speaker 1: is maybe put on a false mustache upon your face,
1:12
Speaker 1: or perhaps a a straw hat, top hat, any kind
1:16
Speaker 1: of hat, a funny nose, maybe because they were trying
1:19
Speaker 1: to uh disguise you right against your will for the
1:23
Speaker 1: purposes of perpetrating voter fraud. I feel like the badger
1:28
Speaker 1: could have stayed the bag for a second. But you
1:30
Speaker 1: are spot on, and how ridiculous is this? Oh, we
1:34
Speaker 1: have to remember to say hello, won't you join us,
1:37
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors, fellow ridiculous historians in tilting your hat
1:41
Speaker 1: to our super producer Casey Pegro. You're right, no, it
1:46
Speaker 1: seems strange to think of it, because nowadays, when we
1:50
Speaker 1: think of kidnapping, we think of you know, nefarious crime, right, yeah,
1:55
Speaker 1: we think of you know, uh, wealthy or dare we say,
1:59
Speaker 1: even middle class Americans traveling abroad in certain countries. Um,
2:03
Speaker 1: Columbia got a pretty bad rap for this in years past,
2:06
Speaker 1: um and getting nabbed you know, from tourist destinations and
2:11
Speaker 1: held ransom for the wealthy or middle class families back
2:16
Speaker 1: in America to send forth money for the release of
2:19
Speaker 1: said hapless adult relatives who probably should have had their
2:23
Speaker 1: wits more about it. Now I'm victim blaming. What a
2:26
Speaker 1: way to start the episode. No, no, no, no, no.
2:28
Speaker 1: I think I think this is a good place for
2:31
Speaker 1: us to carve out a distinction, because you're absolutely right. Nowadays,
2:35
Speaker 1: the first thing you think of when you hear kidnapping
2:39
Speaker 1: is likely going to be one of two things. You're
2:41
Speaker 1: going to think that someone is after money. Well, you're
2:43
Speaker 1: going to think it maybe some creep with seedy or
2:48
Speaker 1: sleazy intentions, pervy preoccupations. There we go, and I like
2:52
Speaker 1: the alliteration, but let's not forget Ben, that there is
2:55
Speaker 1: also political capital right right, And this is apropos in
3:01
Speaker 1: this day and age, because regardless of where you find
3:05
Speaker 1: yourself falling on either side of the false dichotomy known
3:09
Speaker 1: as political parties here in the US, or whether you
3:12
Speaker 1: are not in the US and you're afford observer, one
3:15
Speaker 1: thing you've probably noticed is that the concept of voter
3:19
Speaker 1: fraud has been making the headlines for the past few years.
3:22
Speaker 1: It really has. Our current president made quite a to
3:26
Speaker 1: do about it when it was looking like he wasn't
3:30
Speaker 1: as much of a shoe in for the presidency as
3:33
Speaker 1: he might have liked to believe um, and he started
3:35
Speaker 1: planting the seeds of widespread voter fraud illegals, unregistered, undocumented immigrants,
3:44
Speaker 1: or corruption at the local level going to the polls
3:46
Speaker 1: and droves, or like you said, corruption at the local level.
3:49
Speaker 1: Now we have largely electronic voter machine that there was
3:52
Speaker 1: even talk of hackery of of voting machine right right
3:57
Speaker 1: through the de bolt connection exactly. So there were a
3:59
Speaker 1: lot of red flags at least as far as d J.
4:03
Speaker 1: T Right was concerned. That's Donald J. Trump. That's how
4:06
Speaker 1: I'm going to refer to him, the commander in chief. Yeah.
4:09
Speaker 1: And what's important to note here is that allegations a
4:13
Speaker 1: possible voter fraud came from all directions recently, but primarily
4:18
Speaker 1: from President Trump's crew or supporters, and for people who
4:23
Speaker 1: were critics of these allegations or accusations, this seemed like
4:29
Speaker 1: an unfounded worldview or conclusion. But regardless of what we
4:35
Speaker 1: think about the sanctity or the infallibility of the voting
4:40
Speaker 1: process today, whether you think it's rigged, whether you think
4:43
Speaker 1: it works okay, or whatever, the true and strange fact
4:48
Speaker 1: of the matter is that back in the eighteen hundreds,
4:51
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, voter fraud was a huge thing.
4:55
Speaker 1: As I like to say, Actually, my friend Frank likes
4:57
Speaker 1: to say wide rife. We stole that from a British
5:00
Speaker 1: television program, so that's you know, three degrees of catchphrase thievery.
5:04
Speaker 1: But yes, just widespread all over the place, to the
5:07
Speaker 1: point where it was like a joke right right. The
5:12
Speaker 1: kidnapping that we described for you at the beginning of
5:15
Speaker 1: the show, were you to encounter that, you would be
5:18
Speaker 1: taken in uh in a practice called cooping, and this
5:23
Speaker 1: would be exactly what we described. A group of people
5:26
Speaker 1: kidnap you and several other folks attempt to get you
5:30
Speaker 1: drunk and then convince you verbally to go cast your
5:33
Speaker 1: vote for a certain political candidate. And the thing was
5:36
Speaker 1: ben that wasn't even like the full scenario. There were
5:39
Speaker 1: there was another group involved in this process, and they
5:42
Speaker 1: were the ones who had already had their votes like
5:44
Speaker 1: bought and paid for by these different groups and the
5:47
Speaker 1: whole like boozing and food situation. They just kind of
5:51
Speaker 1: got that as a as a perk. Yeah, like when
5:53
Speaker 1: you get the cheese, it's and a little bit of
5:56
Speaker 1: juice after you give blood. It's just a sort of
5:58
Speaker 1: a spoils a political war. But I'm wondering if these
6:00
Speaker 1: were like combined into a single event. Sometimes they were, Yeah,
6:04
Speaker 1: sometimes they were. And the weird thing is when we
6:07
Speaker 1: describe it immediately without context, to me personally, the idea
6:12
Speaker 1: of being kidnapped, given free booze, and then being told
6:17
Speaker 1: that I should go out and vote multiple times in
6:21
Speaker 1: an assortment of disguises, ridiculous disguises, sounds fantastic. I mean, yeah, dude,
6:27
Speaker 1: I'm a master disguise, I look like several different people.
6:30
Speaker 1: You left that ofmercial detail. You might have also been beaten.
6:33
Speaker 1: That's true. We do have to examine that part because
6:39
Speaker 1: this was all this was all drunken, boozy funding games
6:44
Speaker 1: and political crime. If the people who were being cooped
6:49
Speaker 1: agreed to play along, if they did not play ball,
6:52
Speaker 1: they were, as you said, no old beaten and in
6:54
Speaker 1: some cases they were killed. Now, man, let's go back
6:58
Speaker 1: to the origins of this kind of behavior. Something we
7:00
Speaker 1: like to refer to in history as political machines. Yeah,
7:05
Speaker 1: political machines. So you've probably heard this term before. You've
7:10
Speaker 1: heard it alluded to, at least in some very popular
7:13
Speaker 1: works of historical fiction and film and in novels. And
7:18
Speaker 1: political machine is an organization that exists, typically on a
7:25
Speaker 1: city or state level, to maintain its own power and
7:30
Speaker 1: pursue its own interest which are often going to be corrupt.
7:33
Speaker 1: For instance, a member of political machine a own stock
7:37
Speaker 1: or has invested in a certain construction company. Then under
7:41
Speaker 1: this political machine, that construction company is going to get
7:45
Speaker 1: every bid, even if they are not as qualified, even
7:48
Speaker 1: if they're more expensive, even if they're more expensive on
7:52
Speaker 1: purpose that you know, and then that allows the machine
7:55
Speaker 1: to skim some graft off and off air. You and
7:58
Speaker 1: I have been talking about one of the most famous
8:01
Speaker 1: political machines in United States history. Yeah, most famous largely
8:07
Speaker 1: because it was one of the most effective and had
8:09
Speaker 1: one of the longest reigns, and that was um Tammany Hall,
8:15
Speaker 1: which I'm sure many of you have heard of, the
8:17
Speaker 1: infamous Tammany Hall Boss pit Boss I guess William M.
8:22
Speaker 1: Boss Tweed was his name, um, And they held sway,
8:26
Speaker 1: this organization over New York City politics for decades. It
8:31
Speaker 1: was formed in seventeen eighty nine and wasn't even fully
8:35
Speaker 1: dismantled until nineteen sixty six. That was when John V. Lindsay,
8:42
Speaker 1: who was the final mayor that had had enough of this.
8:45
Speaker 1: He beat me, essentially rendered them kind of newtered them
8:49
Speaker 1: right um. Another famous New York City mayor, Fiarello LaGuardia,
8:53
Speaker 1: also put a stop to them between thirty four and
8:55
Speaker 1: forty five. But then they kind of had a bit
8:58
Speaker 1: of a resurgence until Lindsay came him. And the closest
9:01
Speaker 1: thing that I can compare these political machines too, and
9:04
Speaker 1: this one in particular, is the way the bad rap
9:07
Speaker 1: we see unions getting Whereas obviously a union is a
9:10
Speaker 1: functional thing. Obviously a political activist group has the potential
9:15
Speaker 1: to be a functional, positive thing, mobilizes support for certain
9:19
Speaker 1: candidates or certain causes that are would benefit the community.
9:22
Speaker 1: But as we know with unions the history, there was
9:25
Speaker 1: a lot of corruption there too that benefited particular stakeholders
9:29
Speaker 1: that had a lot to gain. Yeah, And one of
9:32
Speaker 1: the big differences that we need to demarcate here is
9:35
Speaker 1: that in the case of activist groups, in the case
9:39
Speaker 1: of community organization, those voting blocks typically are going to
9:45
Speaker 1: be operating consensually with the support of the voters. And
9:49
Speaker 1: in comparison, though cooping, this particular type of ridiculous voter fraud.
9:57
Speaker 1: Cooping was inherent he associated with obviously political corruption, but
10:03
Speaker 1: also with these political machines and they themselves, if we
10:07
Speaker 1: returned to the Tammany Hall example, were intimately connected with
10:12
Speaker 1: on the street crime. You've seen gangs of New York,
10:15
Speaker 1: absolutely and one thing Tammany Hall did, and the reason
10:17
Speaker 1: they were able to kind of persevere for so long
10:20
Speaker 1: as they reached out to the most impoverished in the community,
10:25
Speaker 1: including immigrants, Irish immigrants in particular, and That's how the
10:30
Speaker 1: Irish got such a foothold in New York City politics
10:34
Speaker 1: over the years is because of this Tammany Hall machine
10:36
Speaker 1: that elevated them to positions of prominence through their control
10:40
Speaker 1: of the electoral process right, and that also just gave
10:44
Speaker 1: them a ground swell of political support because there were
10:46
Speaker 1: a lot of immigrants coming into New York City all
10:49
Speaker 1: the time. And you get off the boat, Tammany Hall
10:52
Speaker 1: reaches out a helping hand, says, hey, we got you.
10:54
Speaker 1: If you got us, all of a sudden, you own
10:56
Speaker 1: the vote, right because who gave you the job, who
10:59
Speaker 1: gave you the place to stay, who set you up
11:01
Speaker 1: once you got off Ellis Island. There's a fantastic article
11:05
Speaker 1: we'd like to recommend from Atlas Obscura called election fraud
11:08
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds involved kidnapping and forced the drinking,
11:12
Speaker 1: by author Natalie Zarelli. And in this article she includes
11:17
Speaker 1: a quote from a New York City gang leader named
11:22
Speaker 1: mon Eastman m o n. He said, I make half
11:25
Speaker 1: a big politicians, meaning that he was publicly acknowledging that
11:31
Speaker 1: he was. He and his gang were working for Tammany Hall,
11:35
Speaker 1: taking people by hook or by crook, make them like
11:37
Speaker 1: I'm a bookmaker, like that that that I did that right,
11:41
Speaker 1: taking them by hook or by crook, and cajoling them
11:45
Speaker 1: to vote multiple times. I keep going back to the costumes.
11:50
Speaker 1: I wonder if the costumes were any good, because at
11:52
Speaker 1: this level of coruption, the people manning the polls, and
11:55
Speaker 1: you can see some of these pictures, I think the
11:56
Speaker 1: people manning the polls were also in on the game
12:00
Speaker 1: to get get a kick out of this. Then Ben
12:01
Speaker 1: in a in an article for Mental Flaws, Democracy's Dirty History,
12:05
Speaker 1: um one of the coop bosses. I guess this is
12:09
Speaker 1: the term that was used here of Tammany hall Um.
12:11
Speaker 1: He described the smartest way to get the most bang
12:14
Speaker 1: for your buck in terms of, you know, kidnapping these folks.
12:18
Speaker 1: He could get four votes out of one human person.
12:21
Speaker 1: Um he vote, had him vote one time with a
12:23
Speaker 1: full beard, then again with some take off the beard
12:26
Speaker 1: mutton chops, you know, maybe keep the beard on, I'm
12:28
Speaker 1: not sure, unclear, and then a third time only a mustache,
12:31
Speaker 1: and then finally the kudagra the clean shaven vote. And
12:36
Speaker 1: I was actually talking with super producer Casey Pegram off air,
12:39
Speaker 1: and I wanted to ask this to you, Ben, was
12:42
Speaker 1: there no means, or if only rudimentary means of confirming
12:46
Speaker 1: someone's identity when they were voting in these days? What
12:49
Speaker 1: was that like? It's an interesting question. It's one that
12:51
Speaker 1: has echoes and consequences here in the modern day with
12:55
Speaker 1: the argument over voter I D Cards, which is a
12:58
Speaker 1: big problem with the Trump stuff we woul talking about earlier.
13:00
Speaker 1: That was a big beef where a lot of places
13:03
Speaker 1: in the United States got rid of those voter I
13:05
Speaker 1: D laws because they are considered by many to be
13:07
Speaker 1: inherently racist, right, and as horrific and sad as it is,
13:13
Speaker 1: we have to we would be remiss if we did
13:15
Speaker 1: not point out that one of the most immediate ways
13:19
Speaker 1: people at the polls or polling officials decided whether or
13:23
Speaker 1: not someone was qualified to vote was by observing the
13:25
Speaker 1: color of their skin, which is a huge travesty. But
13:31
Speaker 1: in addition to that, we have to wonder if there
13:34
Speaker 1: were some sort of proof of residency, like an address, perhaps,
13:39
Speaker 1: because in these accounts of voter fraud, one thing that
13:43
Speaker 1: we don't see mentioned at all is any mention of
13:47
Speaker 1: paperwork involved. We just see disguises, And obviously you could
13:51
Speaker 1: vote while you were rip roar and drunk, clearly. And
13:55
Speaker 1: the thing too, is like if the fix here, the
13:58
Speaker 1: the scam was just to buy a bunch of fake
14:01
Speaker 1: mustaches and beard they obviously didn't have a whole you know,
14:04
Speaker 1: counterfeiting department, you know, uh, stamping out fake passports or
14:10
Speaker 1: birth certificate documentation or anything like that, So it seems
14:13
Speaker 1: to me like it was a much more on a
14:15
Speaker 1: eyeball recognition and a handshake and a promise kind of
14:19
Speaker 1: in these days. Right. Yeah, and here's something else weird.
14:23
Speaker 1: Until the introduction of what was called the Australian ballot
14:27
Speaker 1: in the eighties, when you voted, your voting choice was
14:31
Speaker 1: public viva vote. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly what is
14:35
Speaker 1: it with the human voice? I believe that's the actual term. Yeah,
14:43
Speaker 1: this is kind of where we see the start. Maybe
14:46
Speaker 1: not with the coercion and the kidnapping, but in the
14:49
Speaker 1: early days of democracy, voting was always a pretty contentious
14:52
Speaker 1: situation because if you had to say, in front of
14:55
Speaker 1: God and your peers and your township and everyone who
14:58
Speaker 1: you voted for, if they and agree with you, they
15:01
Speaker 1: might try to kick your ass. Yeah try being the
15:05
Speaker 1: hopeful addition to that sentence there. Yeah, there's an article
15:09
Speaker 1: on History Extra called A Brief History of Election Rigging
15:12
Speaker 1: in the US that covers some of this. And the
15:17
Speaker 1: strange thing is that what we're describing is absolutely correct.
15:20
Speaker 1: So voters would line up to cast their ballots with
15:23
Speaker 1: party operatives on the side telling them to do the vote,
15:28
Speaker 1: or trying to bribe them to do the vote, or
15:30
Speaker 1: trying to talk them into or out of the vote.
15:32
Speaker 1: That's why. Why do you think it's so important that
15:34
Speaker 1: we don't allow campaigning at polling places today? Clearly an
15:39
Speaker 1: offshoot of this kind of behavior, right, Yeah, and it's
15:41
Speaker 1: still it's still in a strange way. Look, the states
15:44
Speaker 1: are doing their collective best with the voting process, but
15:49
Speaker 1: there's still gang rules. I'm sure there are still people
15:51
Speaker 1: who wear a who say, Okay, I can't support a
15:53
Speaker 1: political candidate, but let me wear an all blue or
15:56
Speaker 1: all red. I don't know a onesie I've never seen
16:00
Speaker 1: in anybody in a once. But there's weird rules about
16:02
Speaker 1: that stuff too, Like you certainly couldn't, definitely couldn't wear
16:04
Speaker 1: like a vote for Hillary t shirt. Heck no, But
16:07
Speaker 1: if you wore some kind of dog whistle thing that
16:10
Speaker 1: let people know I'm watching you. And that's the thing too.
16:13
Speaker 1: Trump actually encouraged he sees He said, Okay, there's gonna
16:17
Speaker 1: be this widespread voter fraud, and he encouraged his supporters
16:21
Speaker 1: to quote keep an eye on the polls. Yeah, and
16:25
Speaker 1: maybe make people a little uncomfortable. I had heard about
16:29
Speaker 1: that too, and whether that results in physical activity on
16:32
Speaker 1: the ground. What remains in arguable is that this did
16:35
Speaker 1: not come straight out of the blue, straight out of
16:38
Speaker 1: left field. This has vast historical precedent here in the US.
16:43
Speaker 1: Violence in voting in the eighteen hundreds was common enough
16:47
Speaker 1: that up to a point, it was just considered part
16:49
Speaker 1: of the voting process, was just the thing, It was
16:51
Speaker 1: what to be expected, right, yeah, Yeah. In the logic
16:55
Speaker 1: was this there's a little misogyny in here, of course,
16:57
Speaker 1: but the logic was if a vote was not quote
17:01
Speaker 1: unquote manly enough to stand up for his chosen convictions
17:06
Speaker 1: and the candidates of his choice, then uh, if they
17:09
Speaker 1: if they couldn't, if they couldn't man up as the
17:12
Speaker 1: case were against, a little bit of rowdiness is some fisticuffs,
17:16
Speaker 1: even some cajoling from supporters of other candidates, then were
17:21
Speaker 1: they really even fit to vote? How is the idea?
17:25
Speaker 1: And it's interesting too how alcohol plays a role in
17:27
Speaker 1: this from the start as well, even before the kidnapping
17:30
Speaker 1: and shoving fake mustaches on people's faces. In this mental
17:34
Speaker 1: flass article, it references the fact that even George Washington
17:37
Speaker 1: himself understood that's maybe you might need a little bit
17:41
Speaker 1: of liquid courage at the polls because of this whole
17:45
Speaker 1: idea of standing up for what you believed, and if
17:48
Speaker 1: you need to have your voice be louder than the opposition,
17:50
Speaker 1: you might need to be a little tanked before you
17:54
Speaker 1: do this. And he ran for the Virginia House of
17:57
Speaker 1: Burgesses in seventy eight and gave voters at the polls
18:02
Speaker 1: eight gallons of rum, fifty gallons of rum punch, thirty
18:06
Speaker 1: four gallons of wine, forty six gallons of beer, and
18:09
Speaker 1: two gallons of hard cider. Uh. No mention on whether
18:13
Speaker 1: he distributed his famous eggnog. No, but he did talk
18:16
Speaker 1: about he did use the expression swilling the planters with
18:20
Speaker 1: bumbo um, which is a I'm pretty tasty sounding yet
18:24
Speaker 1: boozy cocktail consisting of rum, water, sugar, nutmeg, and optional cinnamon.
18:31
Speaker 1: And I do want to point out for everyone who
18:34
Speaker 1: might have had the question. All those gallons you heard about,
18:37
Speaker 1: those were total for the day, because we're not per person.
18:41
Speaker 1: It was not that wealthy. But uh, he was onto something.
18:44
Speaker 1: This was This was common in the eighteen hundreds, the
18:49
Speaker 1: practice of cooping. It had a timeline that we should mention.
18:54
Speaker 1: They weren't kidnapping people on the day of voting. They
18:58
Speaker 1: were kidnapping the like up to two or three days
19:02
Speaker 1: before and keeping them in a windowless base against their will,
19:06
Speaker 1: against their or maybe not, I don't know. They probably
19:08
Speaker 1: pulled a lot of homeless people too. We're happy to
19:11
Speaker 1: have a warm place to stay. What a nightmare. But
19:14
Speaker 1: here's the thing. This, this is so off topic, but
19:16
Speaker 1: this reminded me of a story a Russian friend of
19:19
Speaker 1: mine told me about a really disturbing game and and please, uh,
19:24
Speaker 1: fellow Russian ridiculous historians, let us know if this is
19:29
Speaker 1: an actual thing, because I have always been captivated about this. No,
19:32
Speaker 1: it's a game called submarine, so it doesn't even sound
19:37
Speaker 1: like a game to me. I don't entirely understand the point.
19:39
Speaker 1: Does it involve sandwiches? Kind of the story? Is this
19:44
Speaker 1: that a group of people would get together and then again.
19:47
Speaker 1: I heard this from a Russian friend who is telling
19:49
Speaker 1: me about Russian games. Group of people get together. They'll
19:54
Speaker 1: get an apartment and they'll nail up planks or black
19:58
Speaker 1: out all the windows, and they'll get locked in with
20:02
Speaker 1: like cold cuts and brad absolute darkness and just a
20:07
Speaker 1: ton of booze, like hard liquor, and they'll be in
20:11
Speaker 1: there for days in total dark, just drinking and eating
20:15
Speaker 1: cold cuts, and one person who was also on the
20:18
Speaker 1: game comes by later to unlock the door and let
20:20
Speaker 1: them out. That sounds incredibly disturbing to me. Wow, is
20:24
Speaker 1: this sort of like a battle royale with like sandwich
20:27
Speaker 1: meats and booze kind of situation? I have no idea,
20:31
Speaker 1: because you know, I am expecting to find when they
20:33
Speaker 1: come let them out. I have no idea. Maybe it's
20:36
Speaker 1: a spiritual revelatory thing, but what was happening with cooping
20:42
Speaker 1: was uncomfortably close to that, And since there were so
20:46
Speaker 1: many people in on it, the law or the legal
20:49
Speaker 1: system was really hard pressed to impose some kind of
20:55
Speaker 1: consequence for this, because the people who were rigging the
20:59
Speaker 1: vote were the people who were in charge of giving
21:02
Speaker 1: the y or need to a judge. So for a judge,
21:05
Speaker 1: it's political suicide in many cases, especially in New York
21:09
Speaker 1: at the time, to stand up against this. Did you
21:11
Speaker 1: read the bit about how election poll workers were also
21:15
Speaker 1: at risk, ben Um of one thing that I saw
21:18
Speaker 1: was having their coffee spiked with laxatives so that they
21:22
Speaker 1: quote would be otherwise engaged during the most important phase
21:26
Speaker 1: of the count um. This is again from that mental
21:28
Speaker 1: flaws article by A. J. Jacobs. So no one was safe.
21:32
Speaker 1: None were safe, Ben Yeah. None. And as a matter
21:36
Speaker 1: of fact, the public had a bit of hypocrisy about
21:39
Speaker 1: this because people were aware of and disgusted by this
21:45
Speaker 1: practice specifically cooping, but corruption overall in domestic politics. But
21:51
Speaker 1: it was so common, so baked in that we found
21:55
Speaker 1: accounts of it happening in multiple states, not just in
21:57
Speaker 1: New York. And this practice cantinued through the end of
22:02
Speaker 1: the nineteen century. They also had cases in nineteen ten,
22:08
Speaker 1: there was one in Adams County, Ohio, where a judge
22:13
Speaker 1: is a little unusual, actually brought to trial and convicted.
22:16
Speaker 1: Get this, one thousand, six hundred and ninety voters twenty
22:20
Speaker 1: six of the electorate of the county for selling their votes.
22:27
Speaker 1: And you know, again we have to wonder was the
22:31
Speaker 1: were the voters in question falling for a more gentle
22:36
Speaker 1: Washingtonian bribery scam or was it a more violent nice
22:43
Speaker 1: farm be a shame if something happened to happen to
22:46
Speaker 1: Boss Tweed kind of yeah, and Ben Um, I was surprised, Yeah,
22:51
Speaker 1: not surprised. It makes perfect sense that we inherited this
22:54
Speaker 1: from our former rulers in the in the United Kingdom.
22:58
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. This uh, this, this cooping
23:01
Speaker 1: was was part of their electoral process as well. And
23:04
Speaker 1: I found a delightful passage from a book called Knowing
23:08
Speaker 1: Right from Wrong The Insanity Defense of Daniel McNaughton that
23:12
Speaker 1: describes cooping in English elections UM in eighteen thirty four.
23:17
Speaker 1: And here goes this story UM from this book by
23:21
Speaker 1: Richard Moran. Quote. If bribery and improper influence failed to
23:25
Speaker 1: persuade reluctant voters, they wanted them to vote Tory. Uh,
23:29
Speaker 1: there was always violence and intimidation. The practice of cooping
23:32
Speaker 1: or abducting an opponent's supporters until after the election was
23:36
Speaker 1: nearly universal. Consequently, cooping one's own supporters and keeping them
23:40
Speaker 1: locked up in a public house a pub until it
23:43
Speaker 1: was time to vote developed as a defensive response. Here's
23:46
Speaker 1: here's the best part. Where you have these factions warring
23:48
Speaker 1: with each other. It was not uncommon for large groups
23:50
Speaker 1: of drunken voters to be escorted under guard to the
23:53
Speaker 1: polling place in Ireland where wholesale cooping took place. Refusal
23:57
Speaker 1: to surrender to what one historian has called aremonious abduction
24:01
Speaker 1: carried with it the full wrath of the landlords. The
24:04
Speaker 1: bar keeps. He goes on to say, Um, how people
24:08
Speaker 1: who manage the campaign's actually hired these gangs of what
24:11
Speaker 1: are deemed bullies to intimidate and physically abuse voters. Um.
24:17
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to say election day and
24:19
Speaker 1: many towns and boroughs was characterized by riots and mob violence.
24:22
Speaker 1: At Hertford, the Tory candidate Lord Industr and Lord Mohan
24:26
Speaker 1: employed a band of gypsies to harass Radical voters. The
24:30
Speaker 1: radical candidate Thomas Duncombe retaliated by hiring a hundred and
24:34
Speaker 1: fifty where Bargeman, So you know, fight fire with fire
24:38
Speaker 1: or gypsies with Bargeman. There was also an intensely close,
24:49
Speaker 1: and I would think much more publicly acknowledged link between
24:53
Speaker 1: politics and entertainment, which to a degree helps us contextualize
25:00
Speaker 1: this practice. So public politics had, uh, you know, had
25:04
Speaker 1: a ton of drinking involved at the time. There were
25:06
Speaker 1: a lot of torchlit rallies, and there were things called
25:09
Speaker 1: jollification barbecues. Right, I want to be jollified. And in
25:16
Speaker 1: an article rilling Up the Shrewd Wild Boys by John
25:20
Speaker 1: grinspon uh, we explore some of the differences between then
25:24
Speaker 1: and today. So during the peak of American campaign excitement,
25:29
Speaker 1: he writes, our democracy was louder, meaner, and merrier than
25:33
Speaker 1: it had ever been before. Populist campaigners perfected the art
25:37
Speaker 1: of political show business, a genre. And he gets his
25:40
Speaker 1: licks in here that seems to be making a comeback.
25:43
Speaker 1: He's writing in prescient right and right. Uh. And so
25:48
Speaker 1: from eighteen forty through nineteen hundred, he says, uh, these
25:52
Speaker 1: types of campaigns did select people who would lead the
25:56
Speaker 1: government at this stage unanimously all men. And but they
26:01
Speaker 1: also were the best show in town. These were gaudy,
26:05
Speaker 1: gonzo rituals, and people would go a political people would
26:10
Speaker 1: go just because it was great food, tons of cheaper
26:13
Speaker 1: free booze. And then there were shows that were singing.
26:16
Speaker 1: There was partying. There were the pretty much distracts of
26:20
Speaker 1: the time, which were these fiery invectives against those monsters
26:25
Speaker 1: and traders or or they would sometimes say, perhaps not
26:30
Speaker 1: entirely American opponents. Oh yeah, you know what, it makes
26:33
Speaker 1: me think of that scene in um Oh brother ware
26:36
Speaker 1: art thou where it's you know, is he is or
26:38
Speaker 1: is you ain't my constituency and he has like dwarves
26:41
Speaker 1: and it's all like this crazy smoke and mirrors, kind
26:44
Speaker 1: of like P. T. Barnum esque atmosphere with banners and
26:48
Speaker 1: parades and all this stuff, you know, some of which
26:51
Speaker 1: we still see today, but much more cartoonish. To to
26:53
Speaker 1: borrow your your word of choice there, thank you, it's
26:56
Speaker 1: a it's a go to. Well. Here's the thing, though,
26:58
Speaker 1: because we're talking about this practice which was wild, which
27:02
Speaker 1: was common, which was real, But we have ignored up
27:06
Speaker 1: to this point the fact that several great and acclaimed
27:09
Speaker 1: US politicians were alive and active during this time, and
27:13
Speaker 1: they were also doing the same sort of thing. Maybe
27:16
Speaker 1: not cooping, but politicians themselves encouraged that. We even have
27:21
Speaker 1: a record of Abraham Lincoln in the eighteen forties planning
27:26
Speaker 1: what he thought would be a great party. That headline
27:29
Speaker 1: wild Shrewd Boys comes from his letter that he wrote
27:33
Speaker 1: that sounds like a really cool party crew, the Wild
27:36
Speaker 1: Shrewd Boys. It does. I would I would love to
27:39
Speaker 1: see them at a house party, so long as it
27:42
Speaker 1: was not my house. And as you mentioned earlier, been
27:45
Speaker 1: there was a time where you know, you poll workers
27:48
Speaker 1: would know whether it was okay for someone to vote
27:52
Speaker 1: or not simply by looking at the color of their skin,
27:55
Speaker 1: you know, seeing if they were in fact or not white.
27:58
Speaker 1: But then we have them answered patient in the late
28:01
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, so we have that fantastic article from history
28:04
Speaker 1: extra dot com that talks about the plight of African
28:06
Speaker 1: Americans after this period in time, and especially in the South,
28:12
Speaker 1: there was a sense that um, even though black men
28:17
Speaker 1: did receive the franchise, their very presence at these elections
28:23
Speaker 1: was seen as an affront to the election process and
28:27
Speaker 1: that they were somehow plants from you know, Northern Yankee
28:32
Speaker 1: carpet bagger scum, trying to rig the election in their
28:35
Speaker 1: union love and favor. Gross gross stuff again, Yeah, that
28:41
Speaker 1: is he is or is you ain't? My constituency stuff
28:43
Speaker 1: comes to mind. So a long, hard fought battle to
28:47
Speaker 1: where we are now with elections, which clearly people still
28:51
Speaker 1: have some issues with. I don't think we're ever going
28:54
Speaker 1: to be fully comfortable with something as important as the
28:57
Speaker 1: election process, cause I've always wondered, why don't they just
28:59
Speaker 1: put it all online? There's an answer to that from purists, right, well, yeah,
29:04
Speaker 1: but then again it's it's something that's two answers, one
29:08
Speaker 1: from the realm of idealism and one from the realm
29:11
Speaker 1: of well, how low can people go? Morally speaking? The
29:15
Speaker 1: thing is there is always someone who can go lower
29:17
Speaker 1: than you in the game of morality limbo. I'm actually
29:23
Speaker 1: happy with that. A lot of these comparisons don't work
29:26
Speaker 1: because you are shooting from the hip. But that wouldn't
29:28
Speaker 1: that wasn't that bad? No, man, well done? Should we
29:30
Speaker 1: put it on a T shirt? Hey? What what do
29:33
Speaker 1: you say? Historians? We do have a new T shirt
29:36
Speaker 1: shop coming up at T Public if you haven't heard
29:39
Speaker 1: of it, where they do this thing where we can
29:42
Speaker 1: we can drum up a catchphrase design and ah and
29:45
Speaker 1: two shakes of a Lamb's Tale. So if you guys
29:47
Speaker 1: want some unique short run, ridiculous history catchphrase, tease or
29:51
Speaker 1: hoodies or you know, throw pillows. Sure, let us know,
29:56
Speaker 1: park Is, I don't know, we're just making stuff up.
29:58
Speaker 1: Or let us know what what you think? Bunny hugs? Yeah, yeah,
30:02
Speaker 1: while it's um Jenko jeans, I don't think they make
30:07
Speaker 1: those anymore, Dude, I think it's over for Jenjens. Somebody
30:09
Speaker 1: still has a pair. I'm sure we would like to
30:12
Speaker 1: hear your ideas for that. I think we're already both
30:14
Speaker 1: pretty much sold on Son of a Fish and Ship
30:17
Speaker 1: Show shirts, respectively, but we want to hear your designs
30:21
Speaker 1: and ideas. What would be a cool T shirt? This
30:25
Speaker 1: is so new and strange to us, I think we're
30:28
Speaker 1: gonna get very weird with it. Yeah. And the best
30:31
Speaker 1: place to do that, um, if you don't want to
30:33
Speaker 1: just email us directly at Ridiculous at how stuff works
30:35
Speaker 1: dot com, is to hit us up on our Facebook group,
30:38
Speaker 1: the Ridiculous Historians, which you can join via your mobile
30:42
Speaker 1: or desktop Facebook app. And we've got a cool little
30:44
Speaker 1: community there and we hop in there and hang and
30:46
Speaker 1: chatowy now and then, so, um, maybe we could do
30:49
Speaker 1: a pole ben I want to. So this is the
30:52
Speaker 1: idea I proposed. No, no, you have you can confirm
30:56
Speaker 1: that you have not heard about this until we're on air,
30:59
Speaker 1: But I'd to do maybe one pole a week on
31:02
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, just about stuff. We could do a poll,
31:07
Speaker 1: for instance, on vote for a favorite T shirt concept.
31:10
Speaker 1: We could also do a poll on questions about where
31:15
Speaker 1: you and your fellow listeners stand on a particular topic
31:19
Speaker 1: brought up in an episode, because if we've learned one
31:23
Speaker 1: thing from today's show, it's that, Uh, no matter how
31:27
Speaker 1: much we knocked the voting process today, it's way cooler now. Yeah,
31:31
Speaker 1: he should do it. It's important, especially you know on
31:34
Speaker 1: our Facebook page. Yeah, I be the change start on
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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Let us know. You can also find us
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31:52
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Speaker 1: the Trocadero Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July the first,
32:01
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32:07
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32:09
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32:13
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32:17
Speaker 1: is that there are several surprises in store, But what
32:20
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32:23
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32:25
Speaker 1: another episode of ridiculous History. Take care, everyone,