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Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit
HOW CAPITALISTS RULE IN A CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY
By Vince Copeland
(Second in a series)
Thomas Jefferson was governor of Virginia before being president. His first political base was largely among the small farmers of western Virginia--which didn't become the separate state of West Virginia until the Civil War.
The slave barons of the eastern part of the state supported him, too, even though some of them were probably not convinced that the white poor provided a basis for a stable regime. They would have rebelled, or at least opposed him much more fiercely, if he had challenged their human property in slaves or even their ultimate political power over the state. But he did not.
Virginia was at first the most populous state. New York barely surpassed it in 1800. It was also the wealthiest and contributed substantial funds to the Revolution of 1776. It contributed very few soldiers, however, because most of its white soldiers were too preoccupied with keeping the Black population in slavery.
Massachusetts, with a bigger free population than Virginia, had contributed more soldiers than any other colony. By 1800 it was also the seat of factories in the growing industrial North. Its wealth had at first come from shipping, but by then was beginning to come from the factory as well as the farm.
Jefferson's identification with the small independent farmer had much to do with his opposition to the direct exploiters of that farmer in the North. But the social and political needs of the small farmer were often the same as those of the big cotton and tobacco growers in the Deep South--that is, the slave masters.
For example, farm tools made in Pennsylvania and New England were often inferior to the English-made tools and cost more besides. The heavy tariffs demanded by Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and the Federalists were thus an "abomination" to both free farmer and slave-owning oppressor. The free farmers were the great majority of the population but accepted the leadership of the big slave-owning farmers on this question, as on some others.
A visit to Tammany Hall
When Jefferson decided to run for U.S. president in 1800, he scouted around for allies in the North. He needed a political machine outside his own state. Even if he had been all the things he is reputed to have been, he would have needed some way of getting votes besides merely advertising his virtues. And advertising did cost something, even in those days.
He needed a political machine. A machine is not necessarily a bad thing. But it is more effective when professional and, as far as possible, national. We have been familiar in recent times with several major machines. There's the Reagan-Nixon-Goldwater machine, financed by the capitalists of the West Coast and Southwest, well known for its wide mailings to the middle class and right-wing voters. And there is the Kennedy machine, powerful in New England, which has taken a liberal stance on some issues. There are also a number of minor machines.
Jefferson's most outstanding success with machine-building was in New York state. Its upstate Democratic political organization was led by George and DeWitt Clinton, who both became governors, and its downstate by Aaron Burr in New York City. Burr's machine was Tammany Hall, a name formerly given to a social club that Burr molded into a political society.
New York State had the most conservative constitution in the North, far to the right of New England's democracy. It had been framed by John Jay, a right winger and later infamous conciliator with the Tories. This constitution was so bad that, for instance, it wasn't possible to vote for mayor of New York or any other city in the state until 1832.
Mayors were appointed by the governor, the attorney general and two or three other state officials. People could only vote for state officials if they owned property. So the male members of Tammany would club together and jointly buy a home, thus getting the right to vote. This was a class struggle, as far as it went, and they, like Jefferson, needed allies.
Tammany was famous later for corralling the vote of immigrant workers and the New York poor. But to what end did Tammany do this? The ledgers of the old Manhattan Bank, if they were available, would give some important clues, because the bank became a financial fortress for the Democratic Party.
Aaron Burr
Jefferson made a special trip to New York with his friend James Madison--a more right-wing Democrat, who owned even more slaves and acres of land. They saw the Clintons and Burr. By this time, Jefferson had clearly made peace with the slave owners.
These New York politicians represented merchants and bankers in the most direct sense. Burr was an agent of the Manhattan Bank, great-grandparent of the present-day Chase Manhattan. He had rammed a charter for the bank through a hostile New York state legislature in 1799, using deception and bribery to achieve his ends. (The left-liberal Gore Vidal managed to write a whole book romanticizing this character, never mentioning his connection to the Manhattan Bank or to Tammany Hall. Vidal, who should know plenty about the machinations of the two parties, apparently didn't want to discuss Burr's real character.)
Of course, its opponents in the Hamilton faction were deathly opposed to the Manhattan Bank because they wanted to keep their monopoly of trade through Hamilton's Bank of New York, chartered in 1784.
The Manhattan boasted that it was the deciding factor in Jefferson's election to the presidency. This boast was somewhat overshadowed and lost to history because of the furor around Burr's failed attempt to get the presidency away from Jefferson with "bullet voting." Both Jefferson and Burr ran on the same slate for president. Under the rules of those days, the one who came in second would be vice president, and Burr had agreed to that. But he really double-crossed Jefferson by getting some of his supporters to vote only for him and leave out the rest of the slate.
Burr's failure was an early example of the limits of maneuverist politics when great forces are involved. But it could also illustrate the drive of the Manhattan Bank and the merchant class to try to rule the country with the slave owners--and Jefferson--as junior partners instead of senior. If so, they soon learned their lesson and contentedly played second fiddle to the slave owners for the next 60 years, mostly within the Democratic Party.
Power of cotton
What helped them learn the lesson, of course, was the swift expansion of cotton production and the cotton trade due to the cotton gin, the industrial revolution and the increased exploitation of the chattel slaves. The economic center of the country was in the South. Whereas 36,000 bales of cotton were exported in 1800, well over 4 million were sent abroad in 1860. A bale is about 500 pounds.
But the power of the New York banks and their participation in the government, mainly through the Democratic Party, put their stamp on the party long after these banks had switched to Whig and then Republican politics. It is true that capital could not long coexist with chattel slavery. But centralized banking capital in New York City not only coexisted at that time but to a certain degree co-ruled the country.
Burr did become Jefferson's vice president, but discredited himself in a duel with Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton fired the first shot and missed, purposely or otherwise. Burr paused, took careful aim and shot Hamilton dead. It wasn't considered sporting.
Burr, his fortunes on the wane, was later indicted for treason. The Democrats then ran George Clinton, former governor of New York, for vice president. Until about 1816, the nominees for president and vice president were picked by Congressional caucuses. These caucuses, in turn, were closely related to the wealthiest figures in the ruling class. Today, to keep up the fiction of democracy, the nominees have to be screened more secretly by the biggest corporations and the most exclusive and influential clubs before they are unleashed for expensive primary campaigns.
Clinton served four years with Jefferson and another term with Madison right afterward. James Monroe, who succeeded Madison as president, had Daniel Tompkins, also a governor of New York, as his second in command for eight years. This was a strong statement of the political strength of New York--and its banks.
Meanwhile, four of the first five presidents were from Virginia. All were Democrats from 1800 to 1860, except for two four-year periods of Whig ascendancy. Nearly all were from the South.
The Virginia-New York axis of the Democratic Party was thus cemented at an early time. The decline of Virginia's power within the South merely shifted the center of national power farther South.
The merchant banks
The merchant banks, led by the Manhattan, could be said to have represented, at least for a brief moment in history, the progressive aspirations of patriotic and more or less revolutionary New York merchants. They were in a struggle with the cabal of land swindlers, Tory sympathizers, feudal barons and speculators that had monopolized the trade of New York City and used their national power in the Federalist Party to keep the less wealthy merchants in line.
Well known to historians but usually glossed over is the fact that New York was occupied by the British all through the Revolution. Thus, the first successful merchants against whom Burr and the Manhattan fought were precisely those who collaborated most with the occupying army.
But the gentry had bet on the wrong horse when they backed the Federalist Party. The country was growing too fast after the Revolution and the newer bourgeois elements were getting richer from the internal trade funneled through New York to all parts of Europe. Their defeat of the Hamilton group as far as merchant banking was concerned became inevitable.
In fact, their final victory over the Bank of New York and the Federalists, although less dramatic, was almost as important and far-reaching as the victory in France of the Paris banks over the Bourbon kings in the Revolution of 1830.
What was the situation with merchant banking and what did it have to do with the Democratic Party? The Manhattan and other anti-Federalist banks that soon opened up commanded much more capital than banks elsewhere in the country. They soon outdistanced their old enemy, Philadelphia, and far surpassed the southern banks.
When any exporters wanted to realize their profit and change the uncertain prospect of payment in London for the sure cash of payment--at a nice discount for the bank--in the United States, they went to a New York bank.
This was the secret of the alliance between New York City and the slave-owning South--if not in Jefferson's first election, then certainly in the election of his Democratic successors.
The New York banks had become so rich in the first place because of the splendid harbor and reachable interior. This was made far more reachable by the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. The banks profited most from the tremendously increased trade.
The southern gentry shipped their cotton to England as well as to New England via New York City. They also began to spend summers in New York and buy much of their supplies from New York merchants. Many of their sons and daughters found spouses in New York. The leading Democratic banker, August Belmont, married the daughter of John Slidell, probably the most influential southern member of Congress, who later tried to negotiate French support for the Confederacy. And to cap all this, when some of the slave masters became delinquent in their loans, the banks moved in, taking plantations, slaves and all.
Next: The Jackson Democrats.
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010. Phone (212) 206-8222.On New York Transfer or PeaceNet, write "workers".)
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