Introduction
Last week, the author of another substack newsletter, Zeynep Tufekci, argued that Americans have failed to recognize a new form of “blatant blackmail.” Tufekci was referring to the rise of “hack-and-leaks,” in which troves of politically sensitive data are made public in the name of transparency, such as in the Wikileaks case. She expressed concerns about their use in political campaigns: “They say to anyone thinking about entering politics: you and your loved ones will be targeted, not politically, but personally, in the most damaging possible ways…”
Without getting into how this connects to current events or media ethics, I decided to write up some research on “blackmail” in election campaigns, specifically in the context of an 1867 scandal involving Mary Lincoln.
Old Clothes Scandal
Most readers probably know something about the so-called “old clothes scandal,” but portrayals are often misleading. For all the embarrassment it caused Robert Lincoln, it cannot be understood mainly as Mary stumbling into the spotlight in an insane delusion of poverty. It was a series of strategic, deliberate moves—she had a point to make, and was willing to bear an awful lot to make it. This is a summary of the situation that I wrote up a while ago:
In the fall of 1867, after many hints she would do so, Mary Lincoln traveled to New York City and tried to sell her now useless wardrobe. Unsuccessfully, she tried to push Republican politicians with whom she had been friendly to buy them as a favor to her, and wrote letters that essentially blackmailed them—if it is possible to blackmail someone by implicating yourself. In what was probably an act of frustration as much as a desire for financial gain, she allowed her letters to find their way into the democratic paper the New York World—in the middle of election season and republican infighting. She turned the tables and spoke exclusively through the copperheads—going straight to Ben Wood’s copperhead journal to release official statements, and told the Republican party, ‘Buy my old clothes or I will dismember you.’”[i] In her own splendid words, “I could not relinquish my attachment for the party to which my husband belonged, and in whose cause his precious life was sacrificed, notwithstanding it is composed of such men as Weed, Raymond and Seward who nominally belong to it, and who, to accomplish their purposes, would drag it down to the lowest depths of degradation. The late President thoroughly tested these men, and had become fully aware before his death of their treachery and falseness.’’[ii]
[i] Correspondence of the Springfield Republican, quoted in New York World, October 17, 1867.
[ii] Reprinted in The Daily Journal (Wilmington, North Carolina), October 9, 1867. After the whole scandal had blown over, on December 2, 1867, the Sydney Morning Herald of Australia’s New York correspondent commented “She is particularly severe on Messrs. Raymond, Seward, Weed, Wakeman, and other prominent Republicans, through whose influence, she says, a plan to raise a voluntary subscription of the people of 100,000 dollars for her was defeated.” (It’s not likely that she intended this charge to apply to Abram Wakeman).
Historians who have been more attuned to this element have noted that the decision to turn the letters over to the press when the politicians failed to cooperate—something threatened in both the letters and by her clothing broker— “smacked more than slightly of blackmail.”
Definitions
That phrase—“smacked more than slightly of blackmail”— got me thinking. It was blackmail or extortion, right? I initially assumed this was an attempt to be delicate by sympathetic biographers, but even unsympathetic ones seemed reluctant to characterize it that way. They seemed to see it through the lens of insanity or obnoxious entitlement, maybe because framing it as corruption got a little too close to implicating Lincoln himself. That was closer to what Republicans in 1867 were worried about. The reason for this will become clearer if we take a moment to go over definitions.
The simplest definition of blackmail is “the action, treated as a criminal offense, of demanding payment or another benefit from someone in return for not revealing compromising or damaging information about them.” It is usually done for personal gain, and the information may be true or false. It does not appear the term was used much back in 1867, and it didn’t enter the criminal code for another century. Some in the contemporary press, however, referred to her behavior as “extortion,” and blackmail is now considered either a form of extortion or synonymous with it, depending on the state or country. The use was probably metaphorical; it seems unlikely extortion laws recognized this type of coercion back then. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the term originated with Mary’s rowdy ancestors, the English and Scottish border dwellers, who were big on running protection rackets. “Mail” meant “tribute,” the kind demanded “in return for immunity from raids and other harassment.” In the twentieth century, “blackmail” became a popular way to refer to political corruption, mainly influence-peddling and racketeering schemes.
Tufekci clarified on Twitter that she wasn’t using the term “blackmail” in a technical, legalistic sense. She was making a point about the way massive data leaks can be used to corrupt the American political process, making it responsive to interests other than the ones it is intended to serve. (She used the term “hack” in a similar way—not to indicate a security breach, but to refer to how the mainstream media’s “unreflective habits allowed them to be played” by those looking to influence things to serve their own ends.) Still, it is important to understand that what she describes is not blatant blackmail, as that framing won’t get at the actual nature of the corruption. The most obvious missing elements are the threat of revelation and the demand: people leak things to the media during political campaigns, and the media publishes the leaked material, because the entire point is calling information that may be in the public interest to voters’ attention. Unlike with defamation, truth isn’t a defense against blackmail, because it isn’t done in the interest of truth—publication is the punishment for failing to provide the requested benefit. When publication is the benefit, it’s a fundamentally different thing.
Even where the leaks hint at more to come, as they did in 1867, the purpose of this is usually to warn the victim’s partisan allies that if they escalate allegations against his rival, it will get ugly. It tends to encourage self-restraint proportionate to the strength of relative claims, which is preferable to the far blunter tool of third-party censorship. For example, in 1864, Republican papers viciously attacked the personal character of Lincoln’s opponent, and democratic papers responded in kind (including many attacks on Mary Lincoln), while hinting there was more where that came from. The republican papers backed off, and non-partisan/foreign papers expressed relief, as such behavior wasn’t healthy for the country as a whole. If this fails, ultimately only the public can dis-incentivize the behavior—making its disapproval or disregard of such tactics known by voting based on other considerations. In 1864, the war was the decisive issue for the public, and Lincoln was re-elected without even having to publicly address most of the personal attacks.
Mary Lincoln’s Conduct
Now, Mary Lincoln did make a demand: money. But I still don’t think it qualifies as blackmail. Partly for technical reasons, such as that the people who were most embarrassed probably didn’t match up well with those who received threats. It’s not clear how much of a reputational hit anyone took, or how much of this was really a revelation, and that the target was in some ways the Republican Party generally makes it more complicated. And her quest for money was longstanding, premised on old claims, not new demands.
But it isn’t just that. As quoted above, my initial take was that she wrote “letters that essentially blackmailed them—if it is possible to blackmail someone by implicating yourself.” And that’s the key point—and what Republicans were worried about. Some in the press understood it perfectly:
“The widow of the murdered President has deliberately appealed to public judgment to decide the merits of an issue between herself and certain gentlemen whom she charges with being . . . chiefly instrumental in preventing the formerly contemplated appropriation by Congress…and in defeating the alternative suggestion for a national popular subscription, either of which the known circumstances in which Mr. Lincoln’s family were left would have made suitable and acceptable ; and that, moreover, these gentlemen have behaved with the basest ingratitude to the widow and children of a man from whom they asked and received so many favours.”[i]
[i]New York Nation, October 12, 1867.
The whole point was that Mary thought these particular guys—and the Republican party generally—owed her. Her mind fixated on the favors bestowed during the White House years by both Lincolns, and the compensation for Lincoln’s services that, in her view at least, should have been paid to his widow. These republican leaders had demonstrated extraordinary ingratitude and even malice, as she saw it. She was willing to suffer public exposure and questions about these “favors”—in other words, to implicate herself—to make this point and expose her ill-treatment to the public. She does not seem to have felt she was implicating her husband, because she framed the issue as one in which she did low-level politicians favors by passing on their requests to Lincoln. She seemed to think it self-evident that Lincoln would never have actually granted any a request merely because she was the one bearing it. Any favors Lincoln bestowed were to be understood as above-board by definition, and, if unreturned at his death, returned in the form of a donation to her.
By the time the letters were published, retaliation had partly replaced money as the motive. Despite months of brutal press attacks, she pressed on, driven largely by rage at the perceived injustice. She sincerely believed she had been wronged.
When I started researching the elements of blackmail, I had a nagging feeling that her behavior somehow didn’t quite fit the definition, because political mudslinging was certainly legal—even encouraged as being in the public interest—and the allegations of misconduct, the cries for help or recognition, seemed more central that the money itself. This line of thinking is evident in my characterization of John Watt’s behavior in an earlier post:
“However, [Watt] ran into some kind of trouble with Newton, who ran that department, which set him on what seems to have been a blackmail kick. He threatened to have one or more letters of Mary Lincoln's published, which would be embarrassing because they discussed their petty corruption ventures. It may not have technically been blackmail because Watt may have truly believed he was owed money by Mary Lincoln, and lashed out due to perceived bad treatment, just to put the pressure on.”
The definition of “blackmail” used in the U.K., where there is a clear distinction between blackmail and extortion, seemed to recognize this aspect:
“a person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces [threats] and for this purpose menaces are unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief that he had reasonable grounds for making the demand and that the use of menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand.”
Wikipedia expanded upon this:
“These tests relate to the actual belief of the perpetrator, not the belief of an ordinary or reasonable person. Therefore, tests related to what a "reasonable" person might think, and tests of dishonesty, are not often relevant - the matter hinges upon the actual and honest beliefs and knowledge of the perpetrator him/herself.”
Whether or not most readers find it reasonable, her conduct likely reflected a belief that she had reasonable grounds for making the demand, and threatening to go public was a proper means of reinforcing it, given that the republicans in question had previously used the press against her on the issue of compensation. And she knew these people and how they operated. The “Raymond” she mentioned was Henry J. Raymond, who was editor of the New York Times when Lincoln died. For reasons I won’t detail here, the paper quite blatantly and disingenuously discouraged anyone from donating money to Lincoln’s family. At one point, it argued that Lincoln would be satisfied living in humble circumstances, as if any possible donor thought 1) Lincoln’s personal preferences were relevant anymore or 2) Lincoln’s rather indulged wife and children would be comfortable moving from the White House to a log cabin.
Conclusion
I have had a harder time figuring out whether U.S. law has anything similar to the U.K.’s exception. In the David Letterman case, the defendant opted for a plea deal that seems to have skirted the relevant issues. Federal law prohibits debt collectors from making such threats, and each state codifies its own definitions, often using blackmail interchangeably with extortion. The confusion arises in part because “blackmail is a legal paradox because it does not require a threat of an illegal activity…This paradox has troubled legal scholars, judges, economists, philosophers, and theologians for hundreds of years and there is no consensus on why it is illegal.” Given the complex social interactions behind most blackmail-esque behavior, I think the principle used in the U.K. gets to the heart of the matter: whether or not the perpetrator is seeking justice and believes the methods employed are warranted. In both cases, I have little doubt that Mary Lincoln sincerely believed this was so.
To substantiate some of the points I made in this piece, I return to the testimony of J. K. C. Forrest, discussed in an earlier post. Part II will be ready soon. In his late-in-life reminiscences, he provided good context for the old clothes scandal. In fact, Forrest was writing for the Chicago Republican at the time, and that paper essentially directed the republican response to Mary’s actions. He is therefore one of the best people to look to for an assessment of what was really at issue:
“[After Lincoln’s death,] Congress appointed a commission to investigate the expenditures of the White House, to count the very plates and cups and saucers which [Mary Lincoln] had left behind her . . . Worse than this, the same congress absolutely refused to provide an appropriation [for her support] … at the same time that it was distributing largesses at the suits of its own members to the widows of inferior officers. And this brings me to one of those eccentricities which this poor, persecuted woman was charged with perpetrating—that is the offering of her wardrobe at public auction. Now, I have the best of reasons for believing and knowing that this act was simply—shall I call it a ruse de guerre?—to bring the congress to its senses, and to its senses it did bring that shameless body, which, during the life of the president, had appointed ‘a committee on the conduct of the war,’ which was no more nor less than a standing caucus not for the purpose of nominating a president but for the purpose of preventing the renomination of President Lincoln . . .”
A ruse de guerre is a war stratagem. He seems to have believed she felt that her behavior and methods were warranted, given that history. In fact, he seems to have believed that they were warranted.
Congress finally granted her a pension in 1870, largely because Charles Sumner filibustered until his more reluctant colleagues caved.