Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic

2. Voting Rites and Voting Acts: Electioneering Ritual, 1790–1820

andrew w. robertson 2 Voting Rites and Voting Acts Electioneering Ritual, 1790–1820 One of the benefits of recent scholarship in the early republic has been a more profound understanding of political celebrations and festivals. With the exception of Alan Taylor and David Waldstreicher, and, in a later period, Mary Ryan and Jean Baker, historians have not paid explicit attention to electioneering rituals themselves.∞ In the 1950s and 1960s, historians described polling rituals metamorphosing from ‘‘deferential’’ politicking to a full-fledged ‘‘party system’’ by 1800.≤ In the late 1970s, Ronald Formisano coined the term ‘‘deferentialparticipant ’’ political culture for this era.≥ Since then, historians have not really considered the ways in which ‘‘deferential’’ political rituals gave way to, or paved the way for, the mass-based politics that followed. This is particularly important, since we have solid empirical evidence indicating that between 1808 and 1814 upwards of 70 percent of all adult males in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire and all adult white males in North Carolina were voting.∂ Perhaps this is the time to look beyond Formisano’s intriguing formulation and think about how the andrew w. robertson 58 elements of ‘‘deference’’ and ‘‘participation’’ clashed and blended to form a unique political culture in the early republic. In his consideration of deference in a democratic society, J. R. Pole wondered how we might explain ‘‘the paradox of popular consent to a scheme of government which systematically excluded the common people from the more responsible positions of political power.’’∑ Pole and Formisano understood that deference and popular participation were paradoxically linked together in the early republic. Pole observed that deference does not seem ‘‘a very secure cement to the union of social orders. Yet to those who live under its sway, it can be almost irresistible.’’∏ Why was this ‘‘irresistible’’ force so closely linked to a pattern of political behavior that would seemingly ensure its destruction? Perhaps it was because deferential political rituals by their very nature often enabled and sometimes encouraged the imaginary exercise of power by those who were marginalized in the community. This may explain why in the early republic, participant forms of electioneering frequently overlaid, exploited, and extended deferential forms of voting rituals. In this essay, I propose to sketch out the layering of ritual behavior that occurred in early republican politicking. Understanding the interaction between ritual, rhetoric, and voting gives us the key to understanding why so many Americans in the early republic sought to participate in some form of politics. To describe this interaction I have concentrated on two states: Virginia, which preserved many aspects of a ‘‘deferential’’ political culture well into the nineteenth century; and Pennsylvania, which seemingly led the way toward organized mass partisanship. In fact, these distinctions between ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ political cultures generate as much confusion as clarity. In Virginia and Pennsylvania , as elsewhere during this period, mass politicking used both traditional and innovative rhetoric and practices to enlist the audience. What was ‘‘deferential’’ about early republican electioneering? Perhaps J. G. A. Pocock in ‘‘The Classical Theory of Deference’’ has o√ered the clearest definition of political deference in the eighteenth century.π Pocock adopted his definition of eighteenth-century deference from the work of seventeenthcentury English radical James Harrington, in the Oceana. According to Pocock, eighteenth-century politicians and voters had accepted Harrington’s notion that the polity was divided between those who exercised a ‘‘deliberative’’ function and those who exercised a ‘‘verdictive’’ function. According to Harrington, these functions required very di√erent orders of time and preparation, but they were equally important. The deliberative function was the prerogative of the few, in the legislature and in the law. Those with su≈cient property, education, and Voting Rites and Voting Acts 59 leisure had the opportunity to debate important questions of policy as representatives of the many. This larger group exercised a likewise critical function, to render a verdict on aspiring members of the elite who would best represent the interest of the community.∫ The verdictive function of the electorate was analogous , and equal in importance to, the role of the jury in a court trial. Deferential electioneering ritual marked the intersection between the many and the few, the verdictive and the deliberative sections of the polity. In the American colonies and the early years of the republic, the rulers accepted the verdictive function of the ruled insofar as the criterion for judgment was the character of...