REWRITING HISTORY, ONE WIKIPEDIA PAGE AT A TIME
When on February 8th, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in the case of DONALD J. TRUMP, Petitioner, v. NORMA ANDERSON, ET AL. an overworked phrase appeared on countless screens: ‘history was being made’. Quibblers and nitpickers might argue that the factory of the present makes history 24/7, but what made this designation seem more apt than usual is the way in which various advocates and commentators connected the argument over whether an individual state could exclude the previous president from this year’s election ballot to speeches and events that occurred over a century and a half ago. History was being remade.
History — “a work in which each movement, action, or chain of events is dealt with as a whole and pursued to its natural termination” in this argument meant claims advanced in the 1868 ratification of the 14th amendment particularly during congressional debates held on Valentine’s Day. Decisions taken that year qualify as key links in the chain of events that created for the nation as much delayed reaction the current question whether states like Colorado and Vermont could exclude from their ballots Mr. Trump or anyone involved in insurrection. Those 19th Century actions and movements rarely covered in American history courses were not just critical elements in briefs filed before this past week’s hearing: they bubbled up in front page and op-ed mentions and erupted Internet discussions and even in more cordial settings.
A young friend who is a second year law student brought to my attention one particular brief by Vikram Amar, Distinguished Professor of Law at University of California at Davis School of Law. A frequently cited expert on constitutional law, Professor Amar filed his brief to bring to the attention of the court what he considered to be a highly pertinent historical episode shaping the language of Section C of the 14th amendment, the part central to the arguments of both sides in this case. He argues that the events detailed in his brief have “gone almost unmentioned in all previous scholarship on Section Three and in all previous briefing in this case.“
Such language lays a clever trap for the history buff or even just the Internet browsing interested citizen by teasing of a goof story yet untold. My own susceptibility to wanting to know much more about this unattended period comes from my work as a playwright in storytelling, which includes borrowing, stealing, and transmogrifying tales and sagas. Story is the older sibling of history and storytellers are not above appropriating our younger sister’s toys if they are new, flashy, and cool. What could be cooler than Amar starting his brief by asserting through the records of the 40th Congress that his subject includes the story of the First Insurrection of the 1860s, an insurrection before the Second Insurrection of the 1860s, typically known today as the Civil War? A First Insurrection? Do tell.
Amar describes that event as occurring when “high-level executive officials in Washington, DC, violated their solemn constitutional oaths as part of a concerted plan not just to hand over southern forts to rebels, but also to prevent the lawful inauguration of the duly elected Abraham Lincoln.” (Emphasis in original) He then argues that the facts of January 6th are “remarkably similar to those of the First Insurrection of the 1860s.” Those events include the disgraceful and treasonous behavior of John Floyd, Secretary of War for Lincoln’s predecessor: President James Buchanan. As documentation for the relevance of what was discussed in congressional debate prior to the ratification of the 14th amendment to present day circumstances, Professor Amar specifically cited key phrases in a speech made on February 14th 1868 by Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan. Howard was arguing that a former official was barred from office because of his actions that had the purpose of “preventing the inauguration of President Lincoln.” Desiring to know more about this dark figure from our Republic’s past, I searched for John Floyd and Google brought me quickly to that titanic seagrass of stories and statistics: Wikipedia. I found on Wikipedia (and other pages) ample evidence of Floyd’s perfidy as Secretary of War and subsequent incompetence as a confederate general. However, I also learned that Senator Howard could not have been referring to him in that speech because Floyd died in 1863. Were there others in the Buchanan cabinet who would also be remembered for their betrayal?
Drifting further into the amusement park tunnel of Google search at first did not yield any clues as to whom Howard was pillorying from the Senate floor. The footnote in Professor Amar’s brief cited the Congressional Globe, which contains the congressional debates of the 23rd through 42nd Congresses (1833–73), but getting to the actual source proved elusive until I came upon a happily antique looking website that allowed me to discover the text. The tiny type revealed that the person to whom the quote about preventing the inauguration of President Lincoln referred was Phillip Francis Thomas, Secretary of the Treasury for a brief time in 1860 and also a member of the Buchanan cabinet. Howard and others were arguing that Thomas in that role had acted as an insurrectionist and, therefore, was ineligible to serve as Senator from Maryland despite his 1867 election by that state’s legislature.
Curiously, the Wikipedia entry for Thomas made no mention of Thomas’s insurgent activities. Previous contributors to that piece attributed his resignation as Secretary after only thirty-two days to disappointment in not being able to accomplish an important treasury bond sale to fund the interest on the public debt. Government funding troubles and insurrection trials: History just can’t resist rhyming. In fact, one source, a 1933 article by William Russ in the Maryland Historical Journal, echoed the claim of ‘disenfranchisement’ heard in present day arguments against blocking ex-President Trump from the 2024 ballot. The claim then was that the characterization and subsequent denial of Thomas as an insurrectionist, a former governor of Maryland before 1860, was character assassination.
But such a claim did not fit the facts then or now. The records available from the Congressional Globe were not included in the Wikipedia entry. One page of that massive directory, which now must be considered our most frequently consulted journal of history, included a conspicuous error significant to our current dilemma. In 1868 our government refused public office to Phillip Thomas for reasons eerily similar to the current contentions that our government should enact the same conclusion for ex-president Trump: aiding rebels “endeavoring to raise a military force and to beleaguer the city of Washington with the design of seizing it” and “preventing the inauguration” of a duly elected president.. With those implications in mind, I rewrote this one page of history. A good storyteller wants to get the facts right. Accurately remembering actions taken by our fellow citizens present and past can strip us of harmful illusions of what happened on January 6 as an anomaly: questions about whether those who committed insurrection should ever hold office again are neither new nor superseded by our current judicial and political systems.
There was more evidence than the arguments made in that senatorial debate of betrayal of an oath of office by Secretary Thomas. The New York Times covered his January 1861 resignation in a brief article that made clear his departure from the cabinet was not due to the failed bond sale but rather his unwillingness to enforce Buchanan’s decision to collect port duties in Charleston, South Carolina when rebels there were already stealing these monies from the federal government. As Howard would note seven years later, “only three days before he resigned his place as Secretary of the Treasury, the sub-treasury at Charleston, South Carolina was robbed deliberately by the rebels, plundered, taken into possession by the government there while Thomas here at Washington stands by quietly, offers no rebuke, makes no effort to defend the public treasure.” The Times printed Thomas’ resignation letter admitting that inaction over the Charleston ‘plundering’ as well as Buchanan’s reply to acknowledging the disagreement and stating that he was otherwise satisfied with the Thomas’ performance heading Treasury in his brief month of duty.
Weirdly — and too many stories of my own need telling to allow chasing down the reasons for this inconsistency — when the Senate refused to seat Thomas in 1868 the New York Times accused those in that effort led by Senator Howard of “partisan intolerance.” That citation was in the Wikipedia entry to which I added those references from the Congressional Globe and the earlier New York Times article. Deleting any of the misleading information was not my intention. Context broadens our understanding even if some details point in the wrong direction.
It’s only one page in Wikipedia and who knows if it will stand in its new formation. But paying attention to how we continue to recognize our national character means accurately remembering the actions taken by our fellow citizens present and past. Most pundits have already opined that the court will find in favor of the ex-president, but whatever the Supreme Court decides in this particular case, the similarities of two insurrections deserve our attention and not just because the argument about imputed insurrection and electoral eligibility will continue. The last lines ever written in his notebook by one of the greatest American storytellers, F Scott Fitzgerald, were in block letters “ACTION IS CHARACTER.” Honesty about our actions in the repositories to which we repair for context is critical for understanding and, if as it increasingly seems necessary, repairing our own character as Americans.
By T.J. Elliott
https://testing-a-personal-hx.com/
