America’s Deadliest Election:
The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History
by Dana Bash with David Fisher (Harlequin Trade Publishing)
Now that the United States has decided to stop selecting its leaders by election, it is a perfect time to look back, and celebrate some of the remarkable ones. I am sure that you have your own favorite. I remain a 1864 fan. A popular choice is 1876. America’s Deadliest Election is about the Louisiana gubernatorial race of 1872, which is like saying that you liked 1876 before it was cool.
The story starts with the career of Henry C. Warmouth (honestly the names in this book are like a Dickens novel), who is what happens when you wish for civil rights on a monkey’s paw, and his election in 1868 and subsequent benevolent kleptocracy, which leads (but maybe put a pin in that?) into the disputed election of 1872, the result being that Louisiana had two governments. The situation lead to violence, lots of violence, most particularly the Colfax massacre of 1873. Then the presidential election of 1867 happens, which leads to more violence, notably the Battle of Canal Street1. All then ending up in the Bargain of 1877, the end of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, and the failure of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution to amend much. Thus, we briefly end on the Civil Rights Movement of the late 20th Century.
In short, due to corruption, racism, and political opportunism, Louisiana’s election in 1872 turned it into a failed state. This persisted in one form or another until the presidential election of 1876, where its electoral votes would determine the election. The end result was the federal government empowering racism for decades.
The history is good. The facts are compelling. There is lots of things worth learning here. This is a story that any U.S. citizen should know, and in a contemporary way, as opposed to the Lost Cause way that it was taught to you, even in the north, if you are not rather young. There are confusing parts, but it comes out of how the factions would shift, often through transparently corrupt means or brazen power interests. But the authors are clear on how it gets confusing, write as much. This felt cheeky at first (“isn’t explaining it, like, your job?”) but in consideration is a refreshing admission.
The problems are structural. It is fitting that one of the author’s is a CNN anchor, as the book itself has a tendency to written with frequent self-reflective advertisements that I associate with network newscasts (‘when we come back’). The authors also overuse the single-sentence paragraph mic drop.
A sentence fragment.
There are no footnotes, end notes, or citations of any kind, only a biography. I understand that it is popular history, and the perception is that scares people, but it makes my usual citation assessment impossible. There are a few points for which I want to see the citations, as I find them difficult.
The book’s release date before the alleged 2024 U.S presidential election, and the title is there to connect history to current events, maybe with an implied ‘so far.’ This is savvy marketing. But I think that there are problems.
The first is that, prescriptively worried about allegations of bias, the authors avoid interpretation to the point of malpractice. Events get written about to create overt parallels to contemporary politics. I assume it is that way to avoid in allegations of bias, but 1) that’s not history, that’s research, b) we all know what you are doing, so it only makes it look like you are more biased and trying to hide it, and iii) I wager that without guardrails people will willfully misinterpret this to support their preferred positions, which frustrates the authors’ purpose.
The second is…look, I know that complaining about the title makes it look like I am a 2nd year stalling for time when he didn’t do the assigned reading for class. I am also not trying to engage in hair-splitting about what is or is not an election, particularly because one read is that the deadliness of the election is not the violence then, but the persisting affects of racism now. And in terms of marketing, it is a good choice.
But Louisiana was not a tipping point. Yes, it is worthy focus, because the political actions are at the level of slapstick. But the same problem is going on in Florida, with other problems in South Carolina and Oregon. Similarly, the Colfax massacre arises out of the ’72 election in the sense of its material cause, but even the book points out the similar events before and after. And considering how much historical erasure surrounds the acts of terror against Black people, considering how important undoing that is rebutting contemporary racist tropes, I would rather it was differently framed.
Put a different way, my concern is someone focuses on the local political misbehavior as opposed to the regional domestic terrorism. The book is clear that this is not the authors’ intent. But I worry that the tyranny of narrative is going to blow a great opportunity to correct a wrong in the telling of U.S. History.
But to reiterate, it is a good book, and I think that some of my complaints might be why others like it. There are flaws, but it is a useful history and relevant today in obvious and subtle ways.
My thanks to the authors, Dana Bash and David Fisher, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Harlequin Trade Publishing, for making the ARC available to me.
- Keep that one in your pocket if you ever have cause to make a Blue Lives Matter advocate break like an evil computer asked to divide by zero in a 60’s sci-fi B-movie. ↩︎
CITATION HEEDED 