By Mike Davis

Guest Columnist

Hello neighbors.

I wanted to write in today, to speak to you and comment on the late riots at our nation’s Capitol.  I felt it appropriate to do this given my daily work and study of our history, and also the fact that, following my bid in our recent local election, I am known politically to many of you as well.  However you know me, whether you are a supporter, a friend of local history, or simply a reader of this newspaper, today it does not matter. If you are an American, and you love our nation as I do, then these words are for you.

I am distraught over the events in Washington, D.C. last Wednesday night. I am deeply concerned for the direction our nation is going. I needed to tell you, if you feel this way as well, that we can still find a path through it. For such things, as reprehensible as the thought is, have happened here before, and today the message which I look to history for, and which I find in its lessons, is one of endurance.  

The idea of political furor over ‘stolen’ elections is not a modern concept, nor is a foreign one. Here in Maine, in January of 1880, a similar drama played out in our capital.  The Election of 1880, amid cries of poor management and vote buying, had ended in a draw after no candidate received a majority of the vote, as the law required at the time. Under these circumstances, the current policy was to send the election to the state legislature, which would vote for a winner. The Legislature selected the Republican candidate, Daniel Davis, and declared him the new Governor of Maine. Immediately, this was called illegitimate by the Democrats, who charged fraud and bribery. The outgoing governor, a Democrat named Alonzo Garcelon, led a committee to investigate and recount, which produced the verdict that their coalition’s candidate Joseph Smith was the winner.

At this point, with a disputed election, Senator James G. Blaine determined to save Maine for the Republicans and began drawing up lists of supporters and assembling an ad hoc militia on the grounds of his estate in Augusta. Just a few days after, a throng of over 2,000 protestors descended on the State House, driving out the legislature with cries of fraud. Soon, a crowd of counter-protestors assembled outside. Outgoing Governor Garcelon called out the State Militia, led by non-other than former Governor, President of Bowdoin College, and Hero of Little Round Top, General Joshua Chamberlain himself. Declaring “I am determined that Maine should not become a South American State,” Chamberlain stationed the militia outside Augusta and marched in alone to the occupied capital. A Republican himself, the protestors there expected he would side with them. Appointed by a Democrat, their opposition likewise claimed him for their own, and pressed him to declare for their side. Chamberlain, in his wisdom, did neither. Instead he called on both sides to disperse, and placed himself in the state house under the protection of the capital police. Once it was realized that he was not there to declare a winner, threats against him rose on both sides, each calling him a traitor to their cause. At the end of things, a crowd of men assembled outside the capital building, and he went out to face them alone. They were armed. He was not. They attempted to sully his honor by bribery, by claiming that whichever side he chose would repay him, as a base of supporters to propel him to the U.S. Senate in the next election. He refused. As tensions rose, they began to shout and threaten. To their threats, and the guns now aimed against him, he threw open his coat to expose his heart and declared;

“Men, you wish to kill me, I hear. Killing is no new thing to me. I have offered myself to be killed many times, when I no more deserved it than I do now. Some of you, I think, have been with me in those days. You understand what you want, do you? I am here to preserve the peace and honor of this state, until the rightful government is seated — whichever it may be, it is not for me to say. But it is for me to see that the laws of this state are put into effect, without fraud, without force, but with calm thought and purpose. I am here for that, and I shall do it. If anyone wants to kill me for it, here I am.  Let Him Kill!”

The mob’s spirit broke to hear their hero say this, and reason came again to them. They dispersed in shame, whereafter Chamberlain sent the matter to the Supreme Court of Maine which ruled, after little deliberation, that the rule of law be maintained with the original vote of the legislature. Daniel Davis became our next governor; Joseph Smith, still claiming victory, faded into a deserved obscurity; and General Chamberlain returned to Bowdoin, having won what was perhaps his dearest victory for our state, and the Union.

So too in Washington, D.C., when the British came in 1814 to burn it to the ground, were there men who appeared in this same spirit, who cast aside their fear and all thought of personal safety for the sake of the Republic. And one need not be a war hero or beloved public figure to do this; a true patriot can come from anywhere. For while many of you likely know, the name of Chamberlain, I’d suppose far fewer recall Dr. William Thornton, that humble member of the U.S. Patent Office who, when the British drew their forces around it intending to loot and burn its records, did not flee as others might, but instead walked to its doorstep, stood before their very cannons, and pleaded to their humanity, saying, “Are you Englishmen or only Goths and Vandals? This is the Patent Office, a depository of the ingenuity of the American nation, in which the whole civilized world is interested. Would you destroy it? If so, fire away, and let the charge pass through my body.” They did not, and the Patent Office survived.

Even here in Bridgton, far from any capital, can this this American spirit be found; as in 1834 when the abolitionist minister Joseph Fessenden of South Bridgton found himself at the mercy of a pro-slavery mob who’d gathered at his house, in the shadow of the very church, intent to tar and feather him, to hang him, for having preached his message of freedom. What did Parson Joe do? He went out to meet them, unarmed, and began to talk of common life, and ask questions of the mob, and name those he recognized amongst it. He beat down their threats of violence with only words; words of brotherhood, patriotism and honor.  Again, the mob dispersed.

I longed for this to happen last Wednesday. Don’t be mistaken, American heroes were there and made their presence known; I expect that very soon we’ll all know the name of the Senate page who, as rioters beat down the doors of that sacred chamber, took up the boxes of electoral votes and fled with them, as securely as Dolly Madison saving the portrait of Washington from the Royal Navy. He deserves a medal of the highest honor for his role in protecting our American cause from those who would destroy it.  Likewise, I must praise our legislators, who continued their count in defiance of force and barbarism, and so too all the capital police who did, at the end of the day, manage to quell the riot.

Sadly, the mob was not dispersed without violence, as might have been done had the wisdom of Chamberlain been manifest. Blood has indeed been shed. Americans are now dead. Even during the Civil War, the Confederate flag never got half as close to our capital as it did Jan. 6. This was a monstrous abomination. Where was the one who might have rose in the spirit of Chamberlain? Where was perhaps the only one who could have quelled the anger which drove the mob to invade the capital? Where was the leader who should have taken up that role; the man who ought to have been there, to stand against the mob and lay their passions with words of reason? He was not there. He did not do that. Far from it, he had in fact just hours earlier, actually encouraged the very mob which later acted in his name. As an American, a historian, and politically a conservative, I am disgusted. 

Those of you who see me around town will know that I have, for the past five years, taken to wearing a cockade in our national colors to honor our country and the spirit of the revolution which won us our many freedoms. These are freedoms for which I would lay down my life, in an instant, to preserve. Today, for the first time, I am now wearing a black one, as a sign of mourning. I grieve not only for what has happened, but for what we have become. If America is to continue as she was, triumphant and unsullied, let us look to our history and learn its lessons while there is yet time.

Let us have Chamberlains again.