Topline
The House Speaker election is dragging on to a fourteenth vote, but it’s still a far cry from the chaos and violence that plagued 19th Century speaker races, especially one in 1856 that just preceded the Civil War.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) talks to reporters as he leaves the House Chamber during the third … [+]
Key Facts
It’s the fourth day of the embattled effort to elect a Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has failed thirteen straight votes to capture the speakership, making this race for the fifth-longest speaker election in history (so far).
No vote for the speakership has required multiple ballots in 100 years, but several elections in the 1800s took well more than 10 rounds of voting — including, most spectacularly, the 1856 election of the 34th Congress, which lasted two months and 133 ballots.
The contentious 1856 election took place in a highly divided House: no party held a majority as the Whig party was disintegrating and the modern two-party system was not yet fully formed, and the political climate was fiercely divided over both slavery and immigration.
Rep. Nathaniel Banks, an anti-slavery congressman from Massachusetts who represented the Know Nothing, or American Party, finally won the two-month long battle on February 2, 1856, emerging victorious over a field that initially saw 21 candidates contend for the speakership.
The deadlock was so intense that the House finally voted to require the winner of the speakership to capture only a plurality of votes instead of a simple majority (a threshold McCarthy hasn’t yet been able to clear) — with this rule change, Banks narrowly won with 103 votes over pro-slavery South Carolina Democrat William Aiken Jr., who had 100 votes.
Democrats introduced the resolution to adopt a plurality vote because they were confident they could come up with enough votes for Aiken — so confident that President Franklin Pierce congratulated Aiken on his presumed victory the day before the final vote — but ultimately, some congressmen who were expected to rally behind Aiken balked.
Crucial Quote
“In 1856 and 1859, the issue of slavery was front and center. And so those speakership elections ended up being very explicitly about, how does the person nominated feel about slavery? So that’s part of what made it really contentious. That’s unlike the present because the current wrangle isn’t really about a policy issue at all. They’re not talking about policy issues. They’re not talking about legislation … This is just about power,” Yale University historian Joanne Freeman, author of The Field of Blood: Congressional Violence in Antebellum America, says.
Key Background
The political climate was uniquely turbulent during the 1856 speaker election. Divisions over slavery between northerners and southerners were hardening, and the chaos only intensified amid “Bleeding Kansas” — a series of violent conflicts in the 1850s between pro- and anti-slavery settlers. The party composition of the House was also fractured as the United States was morphing into the modern two-party system; Congress consisted of the Democrats and a coalition of opposing parties, including the emerging Republican Party and the nativist Know Nothing, or American Party. “It is a difficult matter to give the exact political complexion of the House,” the Baltimore Sun wrote ahead of the convening of the 34th Congress.
Surprising Fact
The 1856 speaker election was so impassioned, it turned violent: In late January 1856, as the election approached the two-month mark, Democrat Albert Rust, an Arkansas politician and slaveholder, attacked a pro-Banks reporter, the would-be famous journalist and one-time presidential candidate Horace Greeley, outside of the Capitol. “He struck me a stunning blow on the right side of my head and followed it by two or three more, as rapidly as possible,” Greeley wrote. When Greeley asked his assailant who he was, Rust responded: “You’ll know me soon enough.”
What To Watch For
Will McCarthy make a deal with far-right lawmakers? He’s reportedly made several concessions already, including moves that will dilute the speaker’s power. One such measure would allow a single lawmaker to begin the process for ousting the speaker, which could put McCarthy under constant threat by far-right House members. McCarthy opponent Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said Thursday night the conservative opposition has “zero trust” in McCarthy and threatened “he will have to live the entirety of his speakership in a straightjacket constructed by these rules that we’re working on now.”
Tangent
The fourth day of speaker voting falls on the second anniversary of the January 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Before convening for the twelfth round of voting, House Democrats — and reportedly only one Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) — held an emotional moment of silence outside the Capitol. “The Jan. 6 insurrection shook our republic to the core. For many in the Congress and across our country, the physical, psychological, and emotional scars are still raw,” former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
Further Reading
McCarthy Makes Progress—Flips 15 Republican Votes As House Adjourns Until 10 P.M. (Forbes)
When the House needed two months and 133 votes to elect a speaker (The Washington Post)
The longest vote for US House Speaker lasted two months (BBC)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/01/06/this-house-speaker-race-is-not-nearly-as-chaotic-as-the-two-month-133-ballot-epic-in-1856-when-slavery-was-a-core-issue/