As we approach the eve of the 2016 election, many of us are likely asking ourselves how did we get to such a divided, perplexing and mean place as a country?
I have some words of comfort you, uncomforting as they might be: It’s been worse. Far, far worse. What follows are a couple of examples to support my claim.
Early on July 11, 1804, on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River at Weehawken, New Jersey, the sitting U.S. Vice President, Aaron Burr, and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton stood about 20 paces apart, pistols aimed at one another. Hamilton fired first into the air; Burr then fired, hitting Hamilton just above the thigh, mortally wounding him.
Fifty-two years later, on May 22, 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks walked into the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol, located Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who was working at his desk, and proceeded to nearly beat him to death with a metal-tipped cane.
Reason? Sumner had made an anti-slavery speech a few days before, to which the pro-slavery Brooks took great offense. Brooks resigned from Congress, only to be re-elected in the next cycle. Sumner never fully recovered from the assault.
Here’s my take: Ours is a history that is often messy, combative -- sometimes to the point of violence -- and where we take one step forward only to take half a step back. That’s why our progress is often slow, noisy and contentious. None of what we are wringing our hands over in 2016 is anything new.
I’m Andrew Nelson, and this is my perspective.
