Era of Experimentation: American Political Practices in the Early Republic

“ ‘We the People’ Have No Political Existence”

{ 15 The following satirical article, a parody on the fugitive slave advertisements that filled the southern press, appeared in a Boston newspaper four days after the congressional election of 1820: deserted from the federal cause, on 23d inst. six hundred legal voters , principally merchants and mechanics. They have no other excuse for their conduct, than that the overseers, who have lately taken the management upon their shoulders, have threatened them with gagging, if they refused obedience. They may be known by their attachment to the good old federal politics of ’96, which they are fond of exhibiting on all occasions, and a certain obstinacy and perverseness, which they, agreeable to the obsolete nomenclature, denominate independence. Whoever will take up said runaways and return them to the overseers shall receive the thanks of the general (alias Central) committee, and the promise of an invitation to the next Primary Caucus, in case any vacancy should happen in the present Ward Delegations.¹ Historians, with few exceptions, have treated this period as one in which parties were weak or nonexistent. So why, in critiquing the relationship between local Federalist leaders and their constituents, did the New-England Galaxy choose as the most appropriate analogy that of overseers and slaves? To the editor of the Galaxy and his readers, the notion that parties played an insignificant role in politics would have seemed absurd. For two decades at least, political life in Boston had been defined by a struggle between rival Federalist and Republican organizations. Modern scholars are apt to consider institutionalized two-party competition as proof of a flourishing democratic politics. Many Bostonians, however, did not share this faith. They believed that the existing political arrangements were designed to concentrate power “ ‘we the people’ have no political existence” The Rise and Fall of the Middling Interest in Boston, Massachusetts 1 era of experimentation 16 } in the hands of a few and to rob the many of their right both to choose those who would govern over them and to regulate their conduct once in office. For this reason, a large section of the town’s residents spent the early 1820s in open revolt against the established party system. The banner under which these protestors rallied was the Middling Interest. The Middling Interest did not seek to do away with parties entirely. Instead , they proposed to transform them from impediments to popular rule into instruments for implementing the will of the people. Modeling their organization on that of their opponents, the insurgents enjoyed an initial spell of electoral success. Ultimately, though, the movement’s failure to overcome the obstacles of operating in a political environment so accustomed to twoparty competition ensured that its career would be short-lived. Nonetheless, the rise and fall of the Middling Interest illustrates the extent to which the practical implications of popular sovereignty remained subject to dispute during this period and provides an opportunity to explore some of the many meanings attached to both partisanship and antipartisanship. ❖ As President Monroe coasted toward almost unanimous election to a second term, party conflict raged unabated in Massachusetts.² The Federalists clung to control of both the executive and legislative branches of government , but statewide contests for the governor’s mansion were always closely fought affairs, and the Republicans consistently racked up healthy minorities in both the Massachusetts General Court and the state’s delegation to Congress . With each Federalist failure elsewhere in the Union, the situation became more fraught. To Republican partisans, every lost election represented another missed opportunity for Massachusetts to rejoin the national mainstream . For Federalists, just one slip could spell the end of their party’s very existence. Nowhere did that existence seem less in peril, however, than in the town of Boston. The Republican ticket had not tasted success there since the heady days of Thomas Jefferson’s first tenure in the White House. Presiding over this bastion of Federalism was an exclusive group of party grandees fronted by Harrison Gray Otis, Thomas Handasyd Perkins, and William Sullivan. Although these three names had been rendered notorious throughout the nation by their association with the ill-fated Hartford Convention, at home they represented the pinnacle of social prestige and political power.³ Looking { 17 The Rise and Fall of the Middling Interest in Boston back sixty years later, Josiah Quincy Jr., whose father was also a sometime member of the Federalist inner circle and would play a principal role in...