Henry Cabot Lodge
The 1888 election was a close one, and one that Republican Benjamin Harrison won narrowly, and only by the electoral vote. It was in this election that Republican got for the first time since the Grant Administration unified government. The Republicans set to work on numerous bills that they did not have a chance at passing if either the House or Senate were Democratic. One of these, proposed by Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.) was the Federal Elections Bill. If enacted, this measure would have, among other provisions, authorized the federal supervision of Congressional elections in cases in which 500 petitions had been made from the respective districts about voting practices to the Judge of the District Court no less than two months prior to the election (The New York Times). This bill only covered Congressional elections, and was constitutional given that Congress has the explicit authority to regulate elections for senators and representatives except for the places in which senators are chosen under Article I, Section 4, Clause 1. The primary purpose of this measure was to implement the 15th Amendment, as it was often the case that blacks were subjected to voter intimidation and fraud to keep their numbers down. There were several Congressional elections in which Congress overturned the result due to voter intimidation and fraud in the South. In 1890, for instance, Thomas E. Miller of South Carolina and John Mercer Langston of Virginia, both who identified themselves as black (Miller was mostly white), were seated after findings by Congress that a fair election had been denied. However, it was a bill that applied nationwide. Thus, the shenanigans of Northern city machines could very well be impacted too. Lodge stood steadfastly by his bill. Something to note here is that Lodge was not in keeping with radical egalitarianism, indeed in response to a letter that expressed concern over “ignorant Negro votes”, he responded, “Nothing in this bill or any other prevents a state from excluding ignorance from the suffrage. Massachusetts has an educational test. South Carolina can do the same, but will not because she wishes to exclude black ignorance and let white ignorance vote” (Gwin, 105). That sounds like a color-blind policy to me! On July 2, 1890, the bill passed 155-149. It was on to the Senate, where the bill’s sponsor was George Frisbie Hoar (R-Mass.) and it commanded a lot of Republican support. But was it enough?
Although the House passed it, the bill did not seem terribly popular. The Weekly San Diegan (1890) noted, “It is significant that the San Francisco and Portland Councils of Federated Trades have adopted resolutions condemning the federal election bill as dangerous to the freedom of the ballot box” (2). They were not the only unions to oppose this measure. Indeed, Knights of Labor leader Terence V. Powderly (1890) opposed, arguing that the measure itself would intimidate voters and encourage fraud, and furthermore claims hypocrisy, stating, “The Democratic party does its best to intimidate the colored citizens of the South, and they give as a reason that if they did not do so they would be subject to negro rule down there, or as they put it, “ignorant rule.” In the North the employers of labor intimidate the workmen in the interest of the Republican Party, but that party cannot lay claim to so respectable an excuse as the desire to avoid “ignorant rule,” for the workmen of the North have never imposed ignorant rule where they elected their own representatives” (10).
On August 13th, it was reported that Pennsylvania boss Matthew Quay (R-Penn.) introduced a resolution to postpone consideration of the Lodge Bill so the tariff bill could be passed (Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 1). It was said that Senator Arthur P. Gorman (D-Md.) and Quay were making an agreement behind the scenes, and it would make sense for those two to do so; both men were at the head of political machines that had engaged in corrupt practices to maintain political dominance. And indeed, the Lodge Bill was postponed, being again considered in the Senate during the lame-duck session of Congress. One of the opponents, notably, was Senator William M. Stewart (R-Nev.), who had authored the 15th Amendment. Opponents in the Senate, led by Gorman, sought to defeat the bill by delay, and they succeeded. Silver Republicans, such as Stewart, had joined the Democrats to defeat the bill given a promise from Gorman not to interfere with their silver interests (The New York Times, 1906).
Although modern liberal opinion is positive on this measure*, liberal opinion did not historically approve. Historian Richard E. Welch, Jr. (1965) noted that “The standard liberal interpretation of American history applauds recent efforts in behalf of greater political equality for the southern Negro. It continues, however, to deplore the Federal Elections Bill of 1890: its introduction, its provisions, the motives of its originators and proponents. In the lexicon of American history the defeat of the force bill of 1890 was a “good thing”” (511). This is quite reminiscent of President Kennedy’s simultaneous support for civil rights in his time and his belief that Republican Reconstruction had been a mistake.
Would the Lodge Bill have made the sort of gains on civil rights like the 1960s? I think it a mistake to believe this law would have been a panacea and would have had difficulty surviving after the next election. However, if it remained, it would have constituted a fair (in my opinion) and constitutional means of not only enforcing a race-neutral application of voting laws but also countering the fraudulent antics of big city machines. I can see this measure as both garnering historical support from contemporary liberals (now that the “little guy” isn’t just a white working man) and contemporary conservatives as a way to actually apply color-blind standards, possibly rendering more federally intrusive measures unnecessary, and countering voter fraud.
* – The pro-critical race theory The Forum Magazine’s 2022 article on the subject, which compares Republican efforts in 1890 to Democratic efforts for the For the People Act in 2022, even though the bills have many substantive differences.
References
A Federal Election Bill. (1890, March 15). The New York Times.
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Encourages Fraud. (1890, August 3). The Saint Paul Daily Globe, 10.
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Gorman Dies Suddenly; Was Seemingly Better. (1906, June 5). The New York Times.
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Gwin, S.P. (1968). The Partisan Rhetoric of Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. University of Florida.
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Remonstrance Against the Federal Election Bill. (1890, July 24). The Weekly San Diegan, 2.
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/1048031780/
Senator Quay’s Move. (1890, August 13). Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 1.
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https://www.newspapers.com/image/394966835/
The Federal Elections Bill of 1890. Library of America.
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https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2024/10/the-federal-elections-bill-of-1890.html
Welch, R. (1965, December). The Federal Elections Bill of 1890: Postscripts and Prelude. The Journal of American History, 52 (3), 511-526.
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Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 