Monday
Following the January 6 insurrection designed to pressure GOP Congress members to overturn the election (and perhaps to capture and even kill Democratic members), historians have been looking back through history at instances of mob vilence. These include everything from the Boston Tea Party to southern lynch mobs aiming to overturn the effects of the Equal Rights Amendment. James Madison, author of the Federalist Papers, worried that such “factionalism” would overwhelm rational decision making, and many of our constitutional safeguards were designed to counter the threat.
When I think of literary depictions of mob action, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” comes to mind. Set in pre-revolutionary America, the story features a young man (Robin) who, seeking expanded opportunities, goes to the city to profit from the patronage of Major Molineux, a British-appointed colonial governor. Instead he encounters a mob in action.
Hawthorne sets the stage in the opening paragraph:
After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors, the measures of the latter seldom met with the ready and general approbation which had been paid to those of their predecessors, under the original charters. The people looked with most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power, which did not emanate from themselves, and they usually rewarded the rulers with slender gratitude for the compliances, by which, in softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who gave them. The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors, in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II, two were imprisoned by a popular insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson inclines to believe, was driven from the province by the whizzing of a musketball; a fourth, in the opinion of the same historian, was hastened to his grave by continual bickerings with the House of Representatives; and the remaining two, as well as their successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway. The inferior members of the court party, in times of high political excitement, led scarcely a more desirable life.
It so happens that Robin arrives in the city at the moment when his kinsman will be similarly overthrown. No one informs him of what is about to happen, however, so he wanders through a welter of confusion until encountering the story’s climactic scene:
A mighty stream of people now emptied into the street, and came rolling slowly towards the church. A single horseman wheeled the corner in the midst of them…In his train were wild figures in the Indian dress, and many fantastic shapes without a model, giving the whole march a visionary air, as if a dream had broken forth from some feverish brain, and were sweeping visibly through the midnight streets. A mass of people, inactive, except as applauding spectators, hemmed the procession in, and several women ran along the sidewalk, piercing the confusion of heavier sounds, with their shrill voices of mirth or terror.
The horseman leading the procession is a “double-faced” figure that Robin has previously encountered. One can interpret the red as revolution and the black as nihilism:
One side of the face blazed an intense red, while the other was black as midnight, the division line being in the broad bridge of the nose; and a mouth which seemed to extend from ear to ear was black or red, in contrast to the color of the cheek. The effect was as if two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage.
In the final scene, revolution and nihilism have combined in this attack on the government:
The leader turned himself in the saddle, and fixed his glance full upon the country youth, as the steed went slowly by. When Robin had freed his eyes from those fiery ones, the musicians were passing before him, and the torches were close at hand; but the unsteady brightness of the latter formed a veil which he could not penetrate. The rattling of wheels over the stones sometimes found its way to his ear, and confused traces of a human form appeared at intervals, and then melted into the vivid light. A moment more, and the leader thundered a command to halt: the trumpets vomited a horrid breath, and held their peace; the shouts and laughter of the people died away, and there remained only a universal hum, allied to silence. Right before Robin’s eyes was an uncovered cart. There the torches blazed the brightest, there the moon shone out like day, and there, in tar-and-feathery dignity, sat his kinsman Major Molineux!
He was an elderly man, of large and majestic person, and strong, square features, betokening a steady soul; but steady as it was, his enemies had found means to shake it. His face was pale as death, and far more ghastly; the broad forehead was contracted in his agony, so that his eyebrows formed one grizzled line; his eyes were red and wild, and the foam hung white upon his quivering lip. His whole frame was agitated by a quick and continual tremor, which his pride strove to quell, even in those circumstances of overwhelming humiliation.
It was only through luck and the heroic actions of a few individuals that America didn’t see some of its own leaders suffer comparable fates. As it was, five people died and 140 officers suffered injuries, including one who lost an eye.
A particularly disturbing element of the story is that Robin, like many who attended the Trump rally preceding the Capitol attack, gets caught up in the excitement–it seems a frolic–and all but joins the mob:
The contagion was spreading among the multitude, when, all at once, it seized upon Robin, and he sent forth a shout of laughter that echoed through the street; every man shook his sides, every man emptied his lungs, but Robin’s shout was the loudest there. The cloud-spirits peeped from their silvery islands, as the congregated mirth went roaring up the sky! The Man in the Moon heard the far bellow; “Oho,” quoth he, “the old earth is frolicsome tonight!”
In our case, Madisonian checks preserved our republic, although only barely. Reason did in fact prevail as Congress voted to uphold the election results and Joe Biden became president. On the dark side, far too many Republicans voted the way the mob wanted them to, despite the non-existence of voter fraud. One shudders to think what would have occurred had the entire election come down to a single state and had Republicans had a majority in the House.
Hawthorne’s story is interesting because he doesn’t romanticize the energies that led to the American Revolution. He doesn’t go into the details of what galvanized the mob (he deliberately avoids “a long and dry detail of colonial affairs”). Rather, he leaves us with the same question that confront us: what does one do after witnessing a mob at work?
Robin’s first instance is to run back home where everything is familiar. “I begin to grow weary of a town life, Sir,” he says, addressing a gentleman who has served as a guide. “Will you show me the way to the ferry?”
The man, however, refuses to do so, telling him, “Some few days hence, if you continue to wish it, I will speed you on your journey. Or, if you prefer to remain with us, perhaps, as you are a shrewd youth, you may rise in the world, without the help of your kinsman, Major Molineux.”
It is up to Robin, just as it is up to us, to figure out how to negotiate the uncharted waters that lie before us. Thanks to Trump and the new GOP, we can no longer take for granted customary democratic safeguards, just as Robin cannot rely on Major Molineux. We must rise in the world looking to our own resources.
Maybe that’s an overly grim assessment since, for the most part, the courts have remained committed to the rule of law, various Republicans have told the truth about the elections (but paid a price in doing so), and the armed forces have remained loyal to the Constitution. The mob isn’t calling all of the shots.
But, as with Robin, the way forward is a lot murkier than we once thought.
