American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment

11. Obscurity

178 s 11 obscurity I do hope that I will some day have a book written by you to refresh my memory of some of the things you so entertainingly related to me. Why not? Edward W. Bingham (nephew), 1886 Retirement was not kind to John Bingham. He had the gift of robust health until he was past eighty, but ended up outliving his income.1 Amanda passed away in 1891, and his two daughters feuded when they were not spending their father’s money.2 During his final years, mental decay and poverty took such a toll that Congress was pressed to give him a special pension.3 Meanwhile, the Supreme Court kept on construing the Fourteenth Amendment in a manner contrary to his broad design, culminating in Maxwell v. Dow, a case decided while Bingham was on his deathbed, which rejected the argument that the Bill of Rights was included in the privileges or immunities of national citizenship.4 Back in Cadiz Bingham returned home in September 1885 and was asked to speak at a Republican rally in Cadiz.5 His appearance was “received with the most enthusiastic applause,” and he was finally able to break free from the public political neutrality that was necessary while he was representing the United States abroad: It gives me pride to know that the representatives of the Republican party—which is emphatically the party of the country, the party of the Constitution and the party of the Union—had the good sense and the patriotism in this contest to open it with the declaration that the guarantees of the Constitution (meaning these amendments that were put obscurity t 179 in the Constitution by Republican votes both in the Congress and in the Legislatures of the States) must be sacredly observed and zealously maintained. Bingham also made a direct pitch to African American voters, appealing to “my colored brother” not “to go and smite in the face the party that emancipated your race, to smite in the face a party which, despite a united Democratic opposition, declared you citizens of the United States, and thereby forever blotted out that horrible blasphemy once mouthed from the Supreme Bench of the United States, that a colored man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.” He reminded the crowd that the “Constitution does not execute itself. . . . [I]t devolves upon the Judges of the Supreme Court, in their final judgment in all cases affecting the guaranteed rights of citizens to see to it that the spirit of the amendments is respected and carried out.” “You want unity and harmony,” he concluded. “So do I; so do all the Republicans in this land. There is nothing we desire so much. But we must have the Constitution of our land respected. We must have the guarantees which it secures all citizens respected and we must have them enforced.”6 It is tempting to read this as a criticism of the Supreme Court’s Fourteenth Amendment cases up to that time, but Bingham ’s message was, in this instance, elusive. Initially, Bingham settled into an enjoyable routine. He practiced law part-time, for a fee if possible and pro bono when necessary.7 Invitations poured in for ceremonial speeches. He was the featured attraction at the dedication of a statute to Daniel Webster in New Hampshire and of the courthouse in Cadiz, which still stands today.8 Publishers asked if he wanted to write an autobiography, but Bingham never displayed any interest.9 He also dabbled in politics, attending the Republican National Convention in 1888 to vote for Benjamin Harrison’s presidential nomination , nearly fifty years after he had campaigned for Harrison’s grandfather .10 When he was not away, Bingham was a familiar figure in Cadiz who “wore a silk hat, which he politely doffed to the ladies. . . . His furlined overcoat and gold-headed cane would naturally attract attention; and the deference he received showed that he was not considered an ordinary personage in that community.”11 In 1886, a historian named Henry Howe paid a visit to Bingham’s home and offered this recollection: 180 s obscurity He personally answered my ring, and I made an appointment to meet him again in the afternoon. But we stood on the porch and talked some time. He is seventy-one years of age, a rather large gentleman, a blonde, with mild, blue...