|
|
|
All Politics Are Local: Another Look at the 1890s
By Peter H. Argersinger, Southern Illinois University
Although rarely considered by historians, legislative and congressional apportionments were among the most important, absorbing, and contentious political issues of the late nineteenth century. Local, state, and national party leaders struggled to shape apportionments and thereby secure disproportionate influence for the counties, districts, and states their followers controlled. Gerrymanders, in turn, not only distorted representation but often incited a furious opposition, which disrupted legislative bodies, transformed political campaigns, and ultimately produced unprecedented judicial intervention. In surveying these overlooked developments, this essay points to important questions that historians must hereafter address.
|
|
|
|
American politics of the 1890s are usually described and understood by their striking characteristics at the national level: the struggle between gold-bugs and silverites, McKinley versus Bryan, the human icicle of Benjamin Harrison, or the obduracy of Grover Cleveland in older scholarly formulations; critical elections, realignment, and American political development in newer formulations. Yet in many important ways, the nation's politics were profoundly local. Here I have in mind something more basic than did Tip O'Neill in his famous remark that "all politics is local" or Winfield Scott Hancock in his analogous Gilded Age contention that the tariff was a local question.1 |
1
|
|
Rather, I refer to "local" as relating to place or location. And the key fact of American politics was that its electoral system and hence its parties and government were based on geographic districts. I will focus here on legislative and congressional districts, but nearly all offices were based on districts—from city councils and county supervisors to boards of railroad commissioners up to, indeed, the president. This characteristic is so widely recognized as to go virtually unmentioned, except perhaps for incomplete references to swing states in presidential elections, but its implications remain insufficiently addressed or realized. For where people lived, more than any other factor, determined both their political influence and the outcome of elections. |
2
|
|
Legislative representation on a geographic basis reflected, in part, the historical process by which the states had been settled and by which representation was gradually extended to new areas. Indeed, many states stressed geographic diffusion of representation more than representation proportional to population and sometimes provided for a minimum or equal representation by political subdivisions, regardless of population, in at least one house of the legislature. In Vermont, for example, each of the 243 towns had one representative in the house, which meant that in 1880 a voter in Somerset (population 67) had more than 180 times as much political representation as a voter in Rutland (population 12,149). Even where districts were not permanent but periodically rearranged in response to population shifts measured by federal or state censuses, inequities in representation resulted because of locational factors. Michigan, for instance, mandated districts containing "as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants." But by also granting representation to counties when their population reached some particular fraction of the representative ratio, it produced house districts in 1881 varying in size from 8,689 to 25,394. Other standard constitutional provisions, such as limiting the number of counties that could be combined in a district or prohibiting the division of townships or counties in the creation of districts, also guaranteed disproportionate representation simply because population was not distributed evenly. Many of the most egregious violations of equity, however, stemmed from legislatures simply ignoring or deemphasizing requirements for districting according to population.2 |
. . . |
There are about 7894 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
