The Proud History of Voter Apathy

__"Limits of Political Engagement in Antebellum America: A New Look at the Golden Age of Participatory Democracy" by Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, in The Journal of American History (Dec. 1997), 1125 E. Atwater Ave., Bloomington, Ind. 47401–3701.__

As clucks of disapproval about Americans’ political apathy and low voter turnout have grown louder in recent years, many historians have looked back to the decades before the Civil War as a time when Americans (at least the white males eligible to vote) were enthusiastically engaged in politics. In that golden age, citizens immersed themselves in politics, understood "the issues," flocked to meetings and rallies, and faithfully voted on election days as if taking part in a solemn religious rite. "More than in any subsequent era," one such historian has written, "political life formed the very essence of the pre-Civil War generation’s experience."

Not quite, say Altschuler and Blumin, professors of American studies and American history, respectively, at Cornell University. Closely examining political life during the 1840s and ’50s in 16 county seats and small cities, they found that political apathy is hardly a strictly modern phenomenon. In a complaint characteristic of the period, the Dubuque Daily Times editorialized in 1859 that the "better portion" of the electorate "retire in disgust from the heat and turmoil of political strife. They leave primary meetings, and County, District and State Conventions to political gamblers and party hacks."

Altschuler and Blumin found that antebellum politics was much like our own: that lawyers and businessmen predominated among the politically active; that local party caucuses and conventions were often thinly attended, even when there were close contests; that interest in campaigns slackened in off-year elections; that "spontaneous" outpourings of support for candidates at major campaign rallies were nearly always pumped up by imported party workers; and that the political parties did not rely on the civic conscience of their supporters to get them to the polls but rather used organizers and treats such as whiskey to make sure they voted.

In short, those people who were deeply committed to political affairs worked hard to influence those who were not, Altschuler and Blumin say. "The very intensity of this ‘partisan imperative’ suggests the magnitude of the task party activists perceived and set out to perform." The big turnout at the polls during the period reflects their success in this effort more than it does "the broad and deep political conviction" of the electorate, as the dewy-eyed historians would have it. Indeed, write the authors, "American democracy found its greatest validation in the peaceful and apolitical aftermath of the strident political campaign."