In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American elections, one faction often tried violently to prevent another from voting. One eighteenth-century broadside advised: “As soon as your ticket is agreed on, let it be spread through the Country that all your party intend to come well armed to the election.” One of the earliest election riots, as distinct from the drunken brawls which were also common on election days, occurred in Philadelphia in 1742.
Two prominent political factions, the Quaker and Proprietary parties, were divided over one notable issue—the reluctance of the Quakers, centered in the East, to authorize the use of force against the Indians in the West. This issue was complicated by an ethnic division; the frontiersmen were mostly Scotch-Irish, and the Quaker party counted many Germans among its allies. Every year, these antagonisms came into focus on election day. The polls in Philadelphia were located on the balcony of the Court House. Voters would ascend a staircase from the street, deposit their tickets, then descend by the opposite staircase. Whoever controlled the stairs could intimidate or reject opponents. For years, the Quakers controlled the stairs, but in 1742 the Proprietary Party hired burly sailors and ships’ carpenters to remove them. The sailors were at first successful, but the Germans rallied and drove them off, and the Quaker faction triumphed once again. The following account is from the Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, IV (1951), 620–2. See Sister Joan Leonard: “Elections in Colonial Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly, XI (1954), 385–401; and William T. Parsons: “The Bloody Election of 1742,” Pennsylvania History, XXXVI (July 1969), 290–306.
“By a petition lately presented to us from a great number of the freemen of the city and county of Philadelphia, they complain of a very extraordinary riot committed within the said city at the last election. As it is an affair which justly alarmed the inhabitants of this province, and was attended with very uncommon circumstances, it engaged our inquiry and stay much longer than is usual at this season of the year. The discoveries we have been able to make in the course of this inquiry, we apprehend it to be our duty to lay before the Governor as they appear to us from the examinations taken, which are to the effect following:
“Early in the morning of the first of October past, being the day appointed by our charter and the laws of the province for the choice of representatives to serve in Assembly, a number of sailors, consisting of thirty or upwards, mostly strangers lately arrived at the Port of Philadelphia, prepared themselves with large clubbs or truncheons, and armed with them went about through divers parts of the city in a riotous and tumultuous manner, and particularly before the Mayor’s door and in his sight, without his taking the care he ought to have done to disperse them. Divers freemen, inhabitants of the city, observing this, and fearing some outrage was intended at the election, and judging it unlawful for these men to go about in the manner before described to the terror of the King’s good subjects, addressed themselves to the Mayor and Recorder the same morning, desiring them to take proper measures for preserving the publick peace, but did not receive such an answer as might justly have been expected from gentlemen in their stations. Applications were likewise made to others of the city magistrates, who promised to attend and use their endeavours to prevent any disorders which might happen. About the tenth hour in the forenoon of that day, the freemen and inhabitants of the county being met, and the Sheriff attending, proceeded in a peaceable manner to choose inspectors, during which time the sailors before mentioned having joined themselves with others, also strangers, making in all about seventy, armed with clubbs and other weapons, which they flourished over their heads with loud huzzas, and in a furious and tumultuous manner approached the place of election. Divers of the magistrates present observing this, attended by some few of the electors, went towards them and let them know they had no right to appear in that riotous manner, endeavouring to perswade them to desist going further or giving any disturbance at the election, in which they, being strangers and not inhabitants, could have no pretence of right, and desired them to retreat peaceably. This the sailors not only refused, but struck at the magistrates and others with great violence. The constables interposing with their staves for some time kept off the rioters, but their attack was so furious as to break the constables’ staves, who were then obliged to give ground. In this interval, divers of the inhabitants were knocked down and greviously wounded, and amongst them one of the aldermen of the city, who in all likelihood would have been barbarously murthered had it not been prevented. The sailors at length marched away in the same riotous manner they came, and the inhabitants being unwilling to be disappointed in their election, and not expecting further abuse, proceeded in the choice of their inspectors, which was performed in a very peaceable manner. And soon after the ballot for the choice of representatives was begun, when on a sudden the same sailors, in like furious and tumultuous manner as aforesaid, made a second and unexpected attack upon the freemen of the province, throwing stones at them and knocking down all they were able, without regard to age or station. Many of the inhabitants having before dispersed themselves to several parts of the city, and those who remained being unarmed and having nothing to defend themselves withal, were in the surprize driven away by the sailors some distance from the place of election, but at length recovering themselves and provoked by the repeated abuses they had received, turned on their assailants, who seeing this soon fled before them, and being pursued by directions from some of the magistrates, upwards of fifty of them were in a little time apprehended and carried to prison, and the freemen proceeded to finish the election of their representatives, which was done in a very peaceable manner.…
“In the course of our examinations it further appears that the recorder and divers other magistrates were present and saw these outrages committed, and were at the time repeatedly requested to exert themselves in suppressing the rioters, and told that numbers of the electors were ready and willing to assist to that end if the magistrates thought fit, but all applications proved wholly inefectual; they refused the least interposition of their authority, and remained unactive spectators of the abuses committed, some of them behaving rather like men that approved of the conduct of the rioters than otherwise. This, however, was not the case of all the magistrates; some there were who exerted themselves laudably, and merit the thanks of all well wishers to the province for the services done their King and country on that day.”