For those open to the possibility of reincarnation, the life of George Francis Train, who ran for president in 1872, may persuade you. As the self-proclaimed candidate on behalf of what he termed “Spread-Eagleism,” Train bears an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump. Resemblance, however, does not mean identical. Along with some differences in character, the most significant difference between them is that one was a fringe candidate and the other was elected. Therein lies the importance of Train as a fringe candidate amplifier of views that, at the time, were in the equivalent of a larval state beneath the nation’s political landscape.
Let’s begin with the case for reincarnation. “The Philadelphia Record calls George Francis Train ‘a political clown,’” a Louisiana newspaper told readers in January 1872. “Clown Runs for Prez” headlined the front page of the New York Daily News on June 17, 2015, accompanied by an image of Trump as a clown—one of several front-page images in that newspaper of Trump as a clown.1 Of Train another newspaper quipped, “The all absorbing theme of [his] discourse was George Francis Train.” Even the sedate New York Times described a campaign speech he gave in that city by saying, “George Francis Train . . . strutted and fretted his little hour on the stage. . . . His various observations appeared to be that all the world was sunk . . . and only one man could save it, and he was GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN.” Eerily similar to Trump’s declaring at the 2016 Republican Convention, “I alone can fix it.”2
Also much like Trump, Train was a highly successful businessman who amassed great wealth that spanned the globe. Where Trump rose through the ranks of his father’s real estate business, Train rose through the ranks of his uncle’s overseas shipping company. Both envisioned far greater possibilities for their respective companies. Train, at the age of twenty, foresaw that his uncle’s company would have to use packet ships twice the size of those then in existence in order to acquire a competitive edge—advice that the company followed, to its enormous profit.3
Or so he claimed. He also claimed that, to better enable impoverished Irishmen to emigrate and become longshoremen for the company, he “invented the prepaid passenger certificate and also the small one-pound, English money, bill of exchange.”4 Which must have been news to the Bank of England, being under the impression it had begun issuing £1 notes in 1797.
“In Train’s life . . . it was never quite clear where real life experience left off and legend began; the exaggeration was quickly accepted as fact,” the historian Dennis B. Downey wrote in a biographical sketch of Train. As to how widely the public accepted Train’s claims, Downey aptly described the arc of Train’s reputation when he went on to say he “was variously hailed as a financial wizard, astute political philosopher, defender of womanhood, an oddball bent on self-aggrandizement, and a declared lunatic.”5
Even discounting for exaggeration and, possibly, mental illness, Train clearly possessed considerable business acumen. In 1850 his uncle entrusted him to oversee the company’s operations in the bustling British port of Liverpool and, in 1853, dispatched him to Australia to extend the company’s routes to ports in the South Pacific. When a group of Americans there held a Fourth of July banquet, Train took the opportunity to deliver an oration, the entire text of which appeared on the front page of his hometown newspaper, the Boston Post. What the article did not report was that the Australian correspondent for the Post was none other than George Francis Train.6
When speaking of his time in Australia, Train frequently mentioned his overseeing the construction of a six-story warehouse for his company that, in point of fact, was two and a half stories—much as Trump Tower in New York was billed by its namesake as having sixty-eight stories, ten of which are also fiction.7 Not surprisingly with such accomplishments, Train went on to become the president of Australia’s Chamber of Commerce and, amid political turmoil taking place in the gold mine region of Ballarat, the leaders of what has come to be known as the Eureka Rebellion offered him the nation’s presidency—although newspapers from the time, later historians, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce have never mentioned either achievement.8
Returning to the United States in 1856, Train wrote the first of what would eventually be fourteen books during his seventy-four-year life, detailing his experiences and political views. Here he compares unfavorably with Trump, who published twenty-five such books by age seventy. Also at this time Train saw that big money could be made in, well, trains. With new railroads branching out in the United States, he put his entrepreneurial skills to work and secured financing to build a railroad in Ohio that joined several existing lines to create a new entity called the Great Western Railroad. He then envisioned a fortune to be made by introducing street railways into England to replace horse-drawn omnibuses. As in America, some resisted this innovation due to dangers it created; also in England Train faced additional resistance due to support he had expressed for independence movements in Ireland and Australia. Nevertheless he persisted and, ultimately, succeeded.
With the United States on the brink of civil war, Train spotted a new opportunity: politics. In 1859 he published Spread-Eagleism, a term from that era that referred to pride in the nation’s uniqueness, today termed “American exceptionalism.” Train, however, employed the phrase to convey a somewhat different perspective. His book’s introduction commenced with a recitation of the favorable reviews he got in England for his first book, Young America Abroad. He then complained about the negative reviews he received in the American press for his next book, Young America in Wall Street.
From that springboard he dove into the book’s topic. “Spread-Eagleism is an Institution,” he wrote. “Young America is the vanguard of change—the coming age. . . . He despises Humbug—Exaggeration [?!?]—Hypocrisy.”9 From which he turned to the essence of his political viewpoint:
The fact is, if a man don’t have a good opinion of himself, who will care for him? I know of no one better pleased with number one than I. . . . This is my theory: As there are so many young men in the world who don’t like to go over and around it; who don’t like to know the languages, make books, and be in the newspapers, I say, as there are so many of these modest, unassuming men, who are not ambitious, I maintain there is no harm to mankind, no moral wrong committed, in having one superlative exception.10
If his readers wondered who that superlative exception might be, the chapters that followed eliminated any doubt. Chapter 1 was titled “Review of Young America from ‘Illustrated London News,’ Nov. 20, 1958.” Chapter 2: “Sketch of the Author from ‘New York Herald,’ 1856.” All the subsequent chapters were speeches Train had delivered, with two exceptions, one being his correspondence with British officials, the other a chapter titled “Opinions of the British Press.” Spread-Eagleism, in this context, might best be defined as Spread-Trainism.
In fairness Train did not always speak in platitudes or in praise of himself. In Young America in Wall Street, for example, he offered his strategy in that 1857 book for avoiding secession by the slaveholding states: “Since my remembrance, this country has been agitated by legislating for the ‘blacks.’ The whites have been neglected. . . . Now, while I have the best possible feelings toward the ‘blacks,’ I have also the highest respect for the whites. . . . In times such as these, the futile discussion of the slave question had better be thrown under the table, not to be taken up again till Congress has legislated on some of the practical questions of the day. The whites demand a hearing.”11 For working-class whites, the leading issues at the time were the need for laws or labor agreements limiting the workday to eight hours and the right to form unions with the right to strike, all of which Train consistently supported.
Not surprisingly Train’s view on slavery was well received in the South. “It develops a very substantial truth,” a Baton Rouge newspaper told readers in a front-page article on Young America in Wall Street that reprinted his plan to avert national catastrophe.12
Perhaps because the book received so many negative reviews in the North, Train did not reiterate this plan in Spread-Eagleism. Indeed this first foray of his into the whitewater of politics capsized at an 1862 Republican state convention in Massachusetts. While all in attendance were supportive of President Lincoln, the convention’s leadership sought to avoid differences among Republicans regarding abolition, which Lincoln had recently announced in his soon-to-take-effect Emancipation Proclamation. Train, who opposed abolition, sought to reply to a speech by Senator Charles Sumner that contained remarks Train believed were directed at him. But the convention’s leaders forbade Train to speak and quickly adjourned. Train took the stage anyway, at which point the party bosses called the cops, and in the ensuing uproar Train was arrested. Needless to say, his struggle at the convention was heartily applauded in the South. “The Conflict Commenced in Boston—George Francis Train Mobbed by Sumner’s Supporters—No Free Speech” headlined the report that appeared in the Richmond Dispatch. Among those opposed to Train, however, a term began to surface that would plague him the rest of his life: “Train is acknowledged to be a lunatic,” the New York Times declared.13
Train retreated for a time to his original turf, entrepreneurship. In 1863 he organized the Union Pacific Railroad. Or said he did. In everyone else’s reality he was only a minority investor.14 Having accomplished that Herculean task, he contributed his unbounded energy to several movements by underdogs (though never underdogs of African lineage). From 1867 to 1870 he was often on the podium for woman suffrage, accompanying Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on speaking tours across the nation.
Traveling to Ireland in 1868, Train lent his support to those seeking independence from England. So influential had he become that some twenty thousand residents of Cork escorted him through the streets to prevent his arrest. Or, once again, so he said. Neither historians nor Irish newspapers ever mentioned the event; its brief mention several years later in the American press bore no attribution, raising suspicion that the source was George Francis Train.15 “If Train had anywhere near 20,000 following him in Cork, I have no doubt it would have been printed somewhere,” states Bryan McGovern, a leading scholar on the Fenian Rebellion, adding, “I have never come across the story. Compare that to the 30,000 who showed up in Dublin for the Fenian-sponsored funeral of the little-known Terence MacManus in the early 1860s. That was covered in numerous papers on both sides of the Atlantic.”16
Later that (election) year Train returned to the United States to take another shot at political office. This time he tried his luck running for a New York congressional seat as an independent against that city’s well-entrenched Tammany machine. He received 1 percent of the vote, the overwhelming majority going to incumbent John Morrissey, the Tammany candidate, a bare-knuckle boxer turned casino owner.17
Undeterred Train continued his quest. Scoping out a new railroad project in California, he spoke on behalf of Chinese immigrants, who faced massive and frequently violent opposition. In San Francisco—ground zero for Chinese arrivals—Train declared he “found the Chinese to be more advanced in civilization than the English.” He went on to relate, “I saw in Batavia [a Dutch colonial city, present-day Jakarta, Indonesia] one hundred thousand Chinese. The Chinese were gathered in a square with military cannon all around them, with the pretense of making a treaty with them, and the Dutch officers left them, on the pretense of going for a paper to complete the treaty when the military were ordered to fire upon them, which they did until not one of them was left alive.”18
In this instance there was indeed a massacre of the Chinese in Batavia, though it differed in several details, one being that it occurred in 1740. No evidence exists of the atrocity Train described. Indeed he himself makes no reference to any such shocking event in any of his subsequent books.
In 1870 Train turned up in France during the revolutionary upheaval that resulted in the Paris Commune, offering his expertise to those then called “communards.” Amid the violence and turmoil he came to be regarded by the revolutionaries as the ruler of France. No doubt refutation no longer need be said. What was significant, however, is that Americans were now doubting Train’s claims. “Mr. Train’s description of the manner in which he became ruler of France was original in the extreme,” a Memphis newspaper told readers, despite Train’s popularity in the South for having opposed abolition.19
Significant in the opposite direction of growing awareness of Train’s lies was his apparently remaining so unaware of himself. One realm in which this was particularly vivid was his racism—though such oblivion was not uncommon in his day (or the present day). In addition to the racism inherent in his plan to avoid a civil war, Train was not averse to the occasional racist joke in his speeches, yet perplexed when African Americans did not hop aboard his presidential bandwagon. To a very sparse turnout at a campaign speech he gave for African Americans, Train declared, “I have ever been your friend. What is the reason that so few of you are present here tonight?” When someone called out, “Because you called us ‘cocoanuts’ in the newspapers,” Train acknowledged the statement appeared but claimed it was “a lie invented by . . . the sensational press”—in modern parlance, fake news.20
The African American vote was the least of Train’s problems in his 1872 bid for the presidency. By then his time had passed. For some years public consensus had been building along the lines of that expressed in a Cleveland newspaper: “Train belongs to a large and growing class of individuals who believe that they are born with a mission from heaven to administer the affairs of their native country.”21 Echoing this view not long after, a newspaper in Olympia, Washington, told readers, “Train is quite as much mistaken about himself as are his other admirers. . . . He is, after all, no imposter but simply a talking fool who honestly believes himself a great man.”22 In the same vein the press could not resist tidbits of ridicule along these lines: “Skilled navigators have been sent out to bring Cape Horn to the coming [centennial] Jubilee, and George Francis Train has been engaged to blow it.”23 Most damaging, however, was a one-sentence item that surfaced nationwide at the outset of 1872: “An uncle of George Francis Train has made an oath that Francis is a lunatic, and has asked to be appointed over him.”24
Train, ever thin-skinned to criticism, declared war on the press. Appearing days later in newspapers nationwide was a similarly brief item: “George Francis Train is about to sue all the newspapers that have published him as being crazy. Damage, $50,000 each.” To which the press added a closing zinger: “We want no other proof of his lunacy.”25
To be sure, Train did still have admirers. “George Francis Train has been in the city three or four days and has had an ovation such as no other man ever had here,” a Memphis newspaper reported in April 1871, going on to declare, “The ideas propagated by the Northern press that he is crazy is [sic] utterly dissipated. . . . He is a miracle of thought, action, and elocution. . . . Train is a great genius.”26 Yet it was on the same page of that newspaper that the article appeared describing his explanation of being ruler of France as “original in the extreme.” What is most notable in this regard is that this newspaper recognized but discounted Train’s flights of fancy. Similarly a Nashville newspaper wrote of his upcoming visit to that city, “It is anticipated that there will be a great rush for places to hear the most eccentric genius, the sanest lunatic in the world.”27
But how many of those who attended his campaign speeches were supporters and how many came for the spectacle? One attendee told a reporter, “He struts like a game cock; he talks like an egotist. He is the best ‘trained’ buffoon in the world. . . . The same amount of vanity has, perhaps, never been vouchsafed to any other mortal. But George is a success—a triumphant success. . . . We defy the world to beat him.”28
Similar appeal would later vault Trump to victory over opposition from nearly all political insiders, even in his Republican Party. But in 1872 the outcome was different. Reports on the nationwide vote commingled whatever votes Train received with those of other incidental candidates under the category “Other,” which contained a total of 10,473 votes, representing 0.2 percent of the total.29 How much of that percentage may have gone to Train can be estimated by a sample of the county-by-county votes locally reported in the Train-friendly state of Tennessee. Zero.30
But don’t let the vote count fool you. Train exited the presidential spotlight in a nationally observed blaze of glory. One week after the election he offered to post bail for a competing fringe candidate in that 1872 election, Victoria Woodhull. Among those opposed to the candidacy of Woodhull was the powerful leader of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Anthony Comstock. It was he who effected Woodhull’s arrest for publishing obscene material when the newspaper she and her sister published ran an exposé of an adulterous affair between a prominent minister and a woman from New York City’s upper crust. Though Woodhull opted to remain in jail, Train continued to voice his support in the pages of Train Ligue, a newspaper he published at the time. For which Comstock had him thrown in the clink as well.31
What followed was a tangle of court proceedings as to the obscenity charge and, before that could proceed, to determine the sanity of George Francis Train. While jailed in New York’s notorious Tombs, Train went full loco. He declared himself the jail’s “dictator” and warned that within sixty days the Tombs would be pulled down “and the streets would run with blood.”32 But where one physician testified that “Mr. Train was laboring under the insane delusion of personal greatness,” the prison doctor believed “Mr. Train to be a man of strong powers of mind and highly cultivated, but a strong inclination to get up sensations, and would do almost anything to create them.”33
Clearly these two opposing views resonate with later debates over aspects of Trump’s character. Those seeking decisive insight from Train’s case, however, will be disappointed. Train was judged to be sane and, consequently, fit to stand trial on the obscenity charge. At that trial, however, he was shocked when his attorney opted to plead him not guilty by reason of insanity, and, despite vocal objection from Train, the judge directed the jury to return that verdict.34
Through the lens of George Francis Train we can see in the political landscape of the time why he drew such large crowds during his presidential campaign while nevertheless remaining a fringe candidate. Though the last act of the Civil War, Reconstruction, would not officially end until 1877, a number of the federal controls imposed on the South after the war had been lifted by 1872. Thirteen formerly disenfranchised Confederate generals, for example, were now members of Congress and, under the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, the use of the military to protect African Americans from violence abated.35 “The present campaign . . . is essentially of but an ordinary degree of importance,” the North American Review declared in 1872. “Something has been gained by the great elemental epoch from which we are just emerging. . . . All that seems to be wanted is the quiet continuance of the present opportunities and dominant influences, in order that the great settlement may complete itself.”36
Whereas in 2016 social rifts were widening, quite the opposite was occurring in 1872. And while everyone loves a sensational show, Americans across the political spectrum in 1872 were not looking for a president to create sensation.
In the years that followed, Train attempted several swan songs. In 1877 he drew some three hundred people to a lecture he titled “The Foreshadowing of Great of Events.” The foreshadowing, as the New York Times reported, turned out to be the “wonders he had accomplished.” Still the Times had to admit, “All these great achievements he related to the great amusement of his audience.”37 Ten years later Train again ascended the stage, this time speaking out on behalf of seven leftists sentenced to death in a dubious trial in which they were charged with complicity in a Chicago bombing known as the Haymarket Affair. The quality of mercy being strained by puns, the New York Times headlined its report “Train on the Platform.”38
For the remainder of his days Train continued as he had all his adult life, vastly exaggerating his achievements and, despite his career as a wealthy capitalist, voicing support for the downtrodden—though still blind to the struggles of African Americans. In 1894 he was arrested after speaking out in support of Coxey’s Army, a nationwide march of the unemployed seeking to converge on Washington DC, their right to assemble being precluded by federal troops.39 The year before, Train told a New York Times reporter that he’d been importuned to save the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago from financial collapse. “They have put about $25,000,000 into it,” he told the reporter. “They cannot get it back except by the use of psychic force. If this force were properly used it would bring millions of people to Chicago.”40
Wacky, yes. Wacko? You decide. But keep one other thing in mind. When Train went to Chicago in 1887 to speak out on behalf of the Haymarket defendants, he was seen handing out candy and apples to a crowd of impoverished children.41 He told the New York Times of his being asked to use his psychic force to save the World’s Columbian Exposition when the reporter came upon him skipping rope with a group of girls in a New York City park. Clearly the comparison of Train and Trump has limits.