Minnows, Spies, and Aristocrats: The Social Crisis of Congress in the Age of Martin Van Buren

Abstract

Scholars have been debunking the Jacksonian era's reputation as the "Age of the Common Man" for decades now, but they have gone too far in dismissing changes about which many contemporary political observers and participants complained. This essay explores the turbulent political culture of Washington, D.C. in the 1830s and finds evidence of real political democratization, understood as social (and related cultural) change in the composition and operation of American political institutions. The peace and job security enjoyed by members of the established "residential elite," longtime officeholders and their families, was disturbed by the influx of new blood who followed Andrew Jackson to Washington, including a large number of newspaper editors and other men whose middling to working-class social backgrounds and rough manners mostly barred them from office before 1828. Jackson appointed more than 70 editors to his administration and many of them ended up in Congress by the time of Martin Van Buren's presidency. Congress had a difficult time adjusting to the presence of these "minnows," and vice versa. In the bulk of the essay, the experiences of former newspaper editors' in Washington are woven together to show some of the problems surrounding the entry of common men into high office. Three former editors figure most prominently in the narrative. Michigan senator John Norvell could not afford to serve in Congress, but did the drudgework the great orators shirked, then quit to seek patronage offices when he was nearly bankrupt. Matthew Livingston Davis was a printer from the 1790s and longtime henchman of Aaron Burr who pioneered punditry in the 1830s with a column signed "The Spy in Washington." The column's inside information set nerves on edge and helped stir up a string of violent incidents involving members of Congress, including the shooting death of another former editor, Rep. Jonathan Cilley of Maine, in a misbegotten duel.