Since I last posted about my second project, I have re-thought my scope a bit. I realized that the antebellum Congresses highlighted by Allan G. Bogue and Paul Marlaire in their reassessment of the strength of the “Boardinghouse Caucus,” would be difficult to map because the Congressional Directories often do not print actual addresses for the boardinghouses. If I am lucky, I get a street corner. If I am not, they print “Mrs. Smith’s” and I am left with zilch. Though Washington was a rather small city (really, a town) in the 1820s and 1840s and with a good historic atlas, I could probably tease out the locations, it would take an enormous amount of time and effort. That is, time and effort I would rather spend analyzing rather than collecting my data.
Instead, I’ve decided to re-visit a project that I did for the D.C. Historical Society’s annual conference a couple years back. As I only had about a week’s notice to put together the presentation, I have wanted to examine this topic in greater detail ever since. The general thesis for 19th century Members in our recent book on African-American Members of Congress is that those who served early in the Reconstruction Era served as representative examples northern victory in the Civil War, “the Fifteenth Amendment in flesh and blood,” to quote one contemporary journalist. They were friendly with fellow Republicans (all 19th century black Members were Republicans) and generally accepted in their immediate social circles. In the late 19th century, however, Members had more difficulty getting their voices heard. Rarely recognized to speak–even on issues incredibly pertinent to their own political rights–these Members were shunted aside, both socially and politically. Using the Congressional Directories to create Google maps to locate where they lived, I concluded that their geographic isolation mimics much of their social ostracization. Whereas black Members in the 43rd Congress (1873-1875) lived closer to the center of the city, in nicer neighborhoods, and near prominent Republicans, Members in later Congresses lived farther outside the city or were more likely to gravitate toward black-majority neighborhoods. This makes sense, as segregation policies solidified in Washington and elsewhere in the South; but it worked as a further disadvantage to these Members. Policy making was still relatively social in the late 19th century, conducted off-hours and occasionally at home. I drew these conclusions, however, using very few data points (due primarily to time constraints), as you can see in the images I’ve pasted below.
That said, I would like to test my theory using full Congresses. Did earlier Black Members really live near most their prominent colleagues, or Republicans in general? How isolated were later Members from their peers?
I tested my ability to create and upload a map file with an entire Congress this weekend. Fortunately, I had a list of Members from the 54th Congress (1895-1897) pre-made in Excel for another project I am completing at work. Unfortunately, the only black Member in this Congress (George Murray of South Carolina) arrived late as a result of a contested election. Therefore, his address is not listed and I will not be able to use this map (though I will find other uses for it at work). That’s pretty frustration, because I found that adding the addresses proved difficult (many Members still lived in local hotels, which I needed to track down) and it took me a better part of two hours to put this together. As well, I experimented with various geocoding programs with little success until I found batchgeo. This program allows users to paste in data directly from Excel, customize the output, and it will spit out a kml file for uploading into Google Earth. The result is the following:
(The red markers are Republicans, Blue are Democrats, and Green are Populists)
This map demonstrates a theory I had about this particular Congress (which, as you can see, was heavy on Republicans). I’m noticing less partisan clustering in where Members lived than has been demonstrated (anecdotally) in previous Congresses, though small pockets of clustering still exist.
I layered the map over a historic map pre-loaded into Google Earth. It’s from 1871, so a bit dated for this Congress (1896), but just right for one of the Congresses on which I will focus in my project.
Laura, I think this is a really good project idea.. even if you have to do some data tracking, it seems narrow enough to be manageable.. I’m curious to see where they did live. Fascinating! Are you going to limit yourself to a time frame on this? I’d imagine doing all of them would be too much?
And thanks for linking to the mapping tool. Over the holiday, I was wondering how I’d map a bunch of addresses without having to use a full-blown API (which seems ridiculously daunting!)
Laura, I love your idea and would find the outcome very interesting. I would also ask if you were looking at a particular time frame or which particular congress sessions you are considering for your data set.
Great idea!
This is great–impressive progress for this early. Also, nice find on batchgeo.
I wonder if there aren’t other elements at play here that an analog historian would ask for explanations about. E.g., What was the rent cost distribution in DC at this time (i.e., did it cost a lot less to live in one part vs another and how that affected the map)? What was settlement like in general, and how unusual were the patterns of congressmen vs. regular people?
Anyway, a great start.