An Empirical View of the Speaker Elections of the 1850s: Nathaniel P. Banks, the Massachusetts Native American, and Kevin McCarthy
Editor’s Note: Thomas Balcerski is the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor of U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-term Fellow at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. He is the author of “Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King” (Oxford University Press). He tweets about presidential history @tbalcerski. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
Today, Republicans in the House may face a similar set of calculations. A large majority of Republicans want McCarthy, who has been a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, but if the prolonged battles of the 1850s are any guide, they would do better to select someone who is acceptable to the entirety of their caucus. Otherwise, they risk prolonging the balloting for days, weeks or even months.
Kevin McCarthy has stated his readiness to break the record, however there is a chance the House could fail to choose a speaker on the first ballot again, something that happened in the last election.
It is usually a result of either a new candidate for speaker or a willingness on the part of the splinter group to compromise. If history is any guide, we may once again be living a version of one of these two scenarios.
What does this long, strange history of contested speaker elections tell us about today’s divides? In the speaker contests of the 1850s, the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories was the crucial factor that divided the two major parties. Republicans didn’t get their first choice for speaker, but instead chose a member of their own party, which gave them time to fight against the Slave Power.
The speaker race was the most serious challenge yet. Without sufficient Democrats or former Whigs to reach a majority, a compromise candidate was found in Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts, a member of the nativist American Party (also called “Know Nothings”). Banks, who became speaker after 133 ballots held over two months, defeated Democratic challenger, William Aiken, Jr., of South Carolina, whose backers hoped that a plurality resolution would once again capture the votes of competing factions. Banks defeated Aiken on February 2, 1856.
In 1923, a progressive faction of western Republicans challenged the selection of the party’s first choice candidate, returning speaker of the House Frederick Gillett of Massachusetts. The Democrats wanted to change the House rules after the 1922 midterm election where Republicans had seen their majority reduced, in order to get more legislation to the floor.
After deadlocking for eight ballots, an emergency meeting was held between the Republican majority leader Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, and the radical faction, represented by Rep. John M. Nelson of Wisconsin, Rep. Fiorello LaGuardia of New York and Rep. Roy O. Woodruff of Michigan. As a result, the House agreed to a number of procedural reforms and Gillett became speaker.
Although the politics have changed, similar dynamics are also at work in 2023 as they were in 1923. Today, a vocal conservative minority is trying to assert it’s power within the Republican group and possibly emerge stronger for it. This group may be dissatisfied with McCarthy but they need to decide if they will achieve their aims under Republican leadership or if they will stay out of governing.
But the 1855-56 battle was different from the current contest in an important way. Although it was fueled by fractured parties, it was grounded in a vital policy difference: the fate of slavery, which was the core of the period’s politics, inescapable, growing hotter by the moment and entangled with American fundamentals like the economy, sectionalism and citizenship.
It was for good reason that congressmen wanted to know who they were dealing with given the coming struggle. The speaker would be in charge of staffing committees and they would shape Congress.
John Hickman in the First Battle of the War with Virginia Fire Eater Keitt, a South Carolina Senator, and an Oscillator (June 1859-60)
And indeed, there was violence. In the 1859-60 election, during the first eight weeks of the first session, there were nine physical fights and numerous nonviolent confrontations. There was a fight on the street. John Hickman criticized John Brown of the raid fame, which scared the entire state of Virginia with a few men. The Virginia Democrat slugged the South Carolina Representative when he saw him on the street, but was pulled away by him.
This was out of place for the fire eater Keitt. When the South Carolina governor William Gist told his state’s congressional delegation that if a Republican were elected speaker he should be ejected by force if necessary, Keitt took his cue. He and a group of people from the South came up with a plan. His wife, who was also named Susanna, wrote to his brother in a panic at the opening of Congress. Her husband and three Southerners were going to fight the knife in Congress if a Republican were elected because they wanted to take possession of the Capitol.
Ultimately, there was no bloody onslaught, though the passions of the moment were felt on the floor. A wave of Republicans and Southern Democrats came towards him when a Southerner shouted at him after a Republican made threats of violence in the speakership contest.