The Democratic Rooster, Indiana, Harry Truman, the Midwest, Alabama, and Me
Why I treasure the rooster lamp I inherited from my parents. It stands for Democrats.
While the red shade is somewhat new, as long as I can recall, this rooster lamp adorned my homes. First the homes of my parents. Then my own home. This is how it looks today atop my father’s “highboy” bureau now parked in my foyer.
You may have noticed I have picked the rooster as the avatar for this blog. This post explains why the rooster is a symbol of the Democratic Party.
After moving to Indiana in 1983, I came to realize the significance of the rooster to Democrats, especially in Indiana.
The rooster began “crowing” about Democratic victories on the pages of newspapers beginning in Greenfield, the seat of Hancock County, to the immediate east of Indianapolis and its home in Marion County, along U.S. 40, the National Road, and more lately Interstate 70.
Of course in those days, newspapers were printed only in black and white. That’s the origin of the old joke, “What’s black and white and ‘red’ all over?”
You had to run the front page or the editorial page of a newspaper through another cylinder in which red ink was applied to the same page so as to produce the red rooster overlaying the black type of the post-election front or editorial page.
I was reminded of the rooster a couple of years ago while visiting “The Truman Little White House” in Key West, Florida, at the U.S. Navy station right downtown there where President Harry S Truman used to seek solace from Washington.
(It is called The TRUMAN Little White House to distinguish it from its predecessor, FDR’s Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, now called “Roosevelt’s Little White House.”)
The entire Key West house was designed in 1899 as Navy officer quarters. It was converted in 1911 to a single-family house for use by the base commandant.
The first president to visit the site was William Howard Taft of the Republican Party, a Cincinnati Episcopalian (for whom, in an odd twist of Jewish assimilation fate, I recently found out I may have been named). Taft was followed by another visitor, the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, born in Ohio, raised in Michigan, but most closely associated with New Jersey.
After 19 months in office in 1946, Truman was exhausted. His doctor ordered a warm vacation. Truman arrived at Key West and the commandant’s house was prepared for him. He liked it. The Navy re-decorated the house for Harry and Bess Truman.
In the dining room of the Truman Little White House, there are two porcelain roosters on the sideboard, placed there by the decorators hired by the Navy.
According to Wikipedia:
As he was leaving, he promised to return whenever he felt the need for rest. His second vacation came in March 1947. This set the pattern for additional visits every November–December and every February–March. Changing technology allowed the President to communicate with multiple political or world leaders at one time and he could summon staff to Key West for a meeting in three hours' flight from Washington. Most importantly, Truman realized that where the President was, the White House was. Documents issued from the Little White House read "The White House, US Naval Station, Key West, Florida." Truman spent 175 days of his presidency at the Little White House.
In 1948, James Forrestal met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to hammer out the creation of the Department of Defense. This was called the Key West Agreement, named after the place where the basic outline for the document was agreed to at a meeting that took place from March 11 to March 14 on the base at Key West.
During the Truman visits, Cabinet members and foreign officials were regular visitors for fishing trips and poker games. Truman visited Key West shortly after his 1948 re-election and Division Street was renamed Truman Avenue in his honor.
After Truman, other presidents and national officials used the Little White House for visits, including President Dwight Eisenhower, President John F. Kennedy, President Jimmy Carter, President Bill Clinton, and also then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Please remember this mention of Powell as it will come up much later in this post.
The two roosters were no doubt located in the dining room by the Navy as a nod to Truman’s Democratic Party origins. It was a way to please him, the guide at the site told me after I asked. Yes, the military is non-partisan. But, I guess, it’s only realistic to acknowledge that the command-in-chief does possess public partisanship.
Here’s a photo of the dining room in the Key West Truman Little White House. See the roosters on the sideboard beneath each sconce on the back wall?
So whence cometh the red rooster?
From Truman’s beloved Missouri?
Nope.
Wherefore art thou, red rooster?
It’s a Hoosier thing.
The rooster stood for Democrats who crowed about their victories, crowing being a euphemism for the impolite act of “boasting.” It was meant as an insult.
The rooster was invented in 1840 in Greenfield by Joseph Chapman, according to a longish and quaintly homespun historical sketch published in The Journal of American History in 1913 by John Fowler Mitchell, Jr., the associate editor of the journal and son of the then-publisher of the Hancock Democrat in Greenfield. (A history of the Mitchell family’s Indiana newspaper operations spanning several generations is here.)
The insult about a rooster “crowing” as a substitute for “boasting” was taken as a badge of honor.
This was much in the same way that President Andrew Jackson, co-founder of the modern Democratic Party along with President Martin Van Buren, saw his name twisted as “A. Jackass” in a cartoon caption. This led to his Jackson’s choice to accept the donkey as a Democratic Party symbol, albeit the one most associated today with the party. (Until recently, the Democratic Party had no official symbol or logo.)
Back home in Indiana, Chapman was running for the state Legislature in 1840 as a Democrat against a Whig Party candidate named Thomas Walpole. Chapman’s family also owned the tavern in Greenfield.
Mitchell, writing in 1913, described Greenfield of the 1840s as :
scarcely a town, — merely a little settlement of pioneers whose huts, built upon the National Road, basked in the summer sun, with the occasional rumbling of a stage coach and the muffled note of the woodman’s axe to break the monotony of her drowsy simplicity.
In the pioneer communities the tavern was the center of social life and interest, and Greenfield was no exception to the rule. Strange to say, Greenfield’s first tavern, built in I834, by Joseph Chapman, the originator of the Democratic emblem, stands today [NOTE, that is, in 1913] in a fair state of preservation. Apropos to this, with your pardon, I will add that my great-grandfather, Mr. James B. Hart, purchased the old tavern from Chapman and sold it to the Goodings, who are its present owners.
The tavern was headquarters for the Democracy of this part of Indiana and it was here that the political career of Chapman had its beginning.
[NOTE: Per Wikipedia, the name of the Democratic Party was settled upon in 1848. In 1840, an alternate name, “The Democracy,” was also in use for the same political party.]
Joseph Chapman was an honest, sincere man, gifted with a pleasing personality, a convincing tongue, and a wit remembered to this day for its keenness. His personality expressed itself in every movement at the opening of Hancock County’s history, and the debt this particular section of Indiana owes to Joseph Chapman, had he not given us the Democratic emblem, is indeed great, for he was an efficient county officer, a legislator, an orator and a soldier.
Mr. Chapman was a native of the Buckeye State and lived for several years in Rush County, Indiana, before coming to Hancock County in 1829. He was twice married; first to Miss Jane Curry, by whom he had six children; the second time to Miss Matilda Agnes, by whom he had five children. His first wife is buried in the old cemetery in Greenfield. He was elected Clerk of the County in 1832 and representative in the lower house of the Legislature in 1837, 1839, 1841, 1842, and 1843.
From the very beginning of his political career he was the most optimistic politician then stumping the country and this characteristic was always associated with Chapman. At the beginning of each campaign Chapman claimed every county in the State. He was a spellbinder of note and would, by one of his characteristic speeches, put new life and new hope into a section or community that was overwhelmingly Whig. This sort of thing today would be called boasting, but to the men of the early period it was “crowing.” Especially did the opposing party, — the Whigs, — dub Chapman’s original style of oratory — “crowing.” Despite this fact Chapman’s style was effective; so much so that he was sent into doubtful sections and always succeeded in securing a Democratic victory.
A picturesque and interesting character was this Joseph Chapman, of Greenfield, and a Democrat of the Jacksonian type, a man of the people.
The period of which I write was the famous “Log Cabin and Hard Cider kainpaign” of 1840, and it was at this time that the Democrats chose for their National emblem the Rooster. It was the first National campaign after the panic of 1837 and the Whigs were encouraged by the coming of Democrats to their ranks. These Democrats believed that by the changing of the party in power better times would follow. The Democrats had selected [former New York governor and Jackson’s Secretary of State] Martin Van Buren to lead them in the approaching campaign. The Whigs held their convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and William Henry Harrison and John Tyler were chosen as their leaders. General Harrison was at one time Governor of Indiana Territory [HINT: The Indiana Territory was far larger than present-day Indiana] and by his brilliant military victories at Tippecanoe, and other Indian strongholds in Indiana, was a popular military hero in the Hoosier State. No doubt many older men will remember the campaign song of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.” The Democrats had been in power several years and the possibility of electing Van Buren was indeed discouraging. However, the depressing situation did not dampen the ardor of Joseph Chapman, who remained as optimistic as of yore.
Joseph Chapman, at this time, was a candidate for representative in the Legislature against Thomas D. Walpole, the most brilliant Whig, in Eastern Indiana, and his personal campaign was one of the most complete in his career.
Early in the campaign the two candidates announced that they would travel together and speak from the same platform, as was customary at that time. Arrangements had been made for a great celebration in the north central part of the State and both candidates were to be there, Mr. Walpole speaking to the people from the standpoint of a Whig and Mr. Chapman advocating Democratic principles.
Mr. Walpole was a man most particular about his personal appearance and alwavs appeared in a well tailored suit and a ruffled shirt. This subjected him to a great deal of public criticism from Chapman, the Democrat, who stvled him “a fop in a ruffled shirt.” The night before this meeting Mr. Chapman gave his home-spun shirt to the wife of the tavern keeper to be laundered and ready for him the next morning. During the night, unfortunately, the shirt was stolen from the line and the Democratic candidate spent the greater part of the morning in bed. His opponent kindly offered one of his ruffled shirts but Chapman would not think of appearing in such attire. Mr. Walpole insisted, explaining that the neck could be turned under and his coat buttoned over the ruffles. As there was no alternative, Chapman fell into the trap.
The Whig candidate spoke first, closing his address with the usual criticism of the Democratic party. Mr. Chapman followed with a denouncement equally as bitter against the Whigs, also calling the attention to the frailty of a candidate who unfailingly appeared in a ruffled shirt. After Mr. Chapman had concluded the young attorney, Walpole, stepped again before the people and said he was not in favor of putting a man in office who was an impostor, declaring, “This Democrat has criticised me for wearing a ruffled shirt. Now, gentlemen, behold his ruffled shirt!” at the same time throwing open the front of Chaprnan’s coat. However, we can forgive Walpole for this, as later he left the Whigs and became a Democrat.
Mr. George Pattison at this time was the editor of “The Constitution,” a Democratic newspaper published in Indianapolis. It is quite evident that unencouraging reports of the situation in Hancock County reached his ear and he wrote a letter in June, 1840, to the Postmaster, William Sebastian, one of the leaders of the party in the county. A copy of this letter it has been my good fortune to secure. It is the famous message to Chapman which was at first taken tip as a sort of battle cry by the Democratic press in central Indiana, and like wild fire spread throughout the land. The letter is as follows:
“Indianapolis, June I2, 1840.
“Mr. Sebastian.
“Dear Sir: l have been informed by a Democrat that in one part of your county thirty Van Buren men have turned for Harrison. Please let me know if such be the fact. Hand this letter to General Milroy. I think such a deplorable state of facts can not exist. If so, I will visit Hancock and address the people relative to the policy of the Democratic party. I have no time to spare, but I will refuse to eat or sleep or rest so long as anything can be done. Do, for heaven’s sake, stir up the Democracy. See Chapman, tell him not to do as he did heretofore. He used to create unnecessary alarms; he must CROW! we have much to crow over. I will insure this county to give a Democratic majority of two hundred votes. Spare no pains. Write instanter.
“GEORGE PATTISON.”
The letter was read and left on the table in the post office, where it was picked up by Thomas D. Walpole, read and copied. It was published in the Indianapolis Semi-Weekly journal, the leading Whig newspaper of the State, June 16, I840. Its publishers were Douglass & Noel. This paragraph appeared before the letter in the journal as follows:
“TELL CHAPMAN TO CROW”
“If any of the friends of General Harrison have felt at all discouraged as to the result, either in August or in November, we think a perusal of the letter published below will cause all their fears to vanish. The confidence exhibited by the Van Buren party [the Democrats] is assumed only for effect and this letter, from the pen of the principal Van Buren editor in this town, is not only characteristic of the source from which it emanated, but will sufficiently illustrate the truth of our remarks. The copy has been handed us for publication by a citizen of Greenfield.”
Then follows Mr. Pattison’s letter to the postmaster as printed above.
It is quite evident that the discovery of the letter by the Whigs created a sensation. Below is another article copied from the “Indianapolis Journal” which appeared June 16, 1840, written by a Whig of Greenfield and sent to the paper for publication. The article is as follows:
“Greenfield, June 12, I840. ‘Mr. Editor: “A letter came to the post office in this place this morning, addressed to the Postmaster, by the editor of the ‘Constitution,’ asking for information on the state of our politics, and giving advice which he considers of vital importance to the party in its present sinking condition. A Whig accidentally got hold of the letter and took a copy. It shows, if anything can, their true situation as understood and felt by themselves. It calls in the most desponding language, on the Postmaster at this place to write immediately and let him (the editor of the ‘Constitution’) know if any such a deplorable state of things does really exist as had just been reported to him by a creditable Van Buren citizen of this county. This deplorable state of things is nothing more than this creditable Van Buren citizen had told him that he feared Van and Howard could do nothing in this county, and that within his own knowledge thirty to fifty original Jackson men had left Martin Van Buren and joined the stand of General Harrison. The editor then requests the postmaster to tell Joseph Chapman (the lo-co-fo-co candidate for Representative in this county) for heaven’s sake to CROW, Yes CROW, even if their case appear to be hopeless. He tells him to speak as though he were confident of success. He then, probably by way of illustration and to show what is meant by ‘crowing,’ states that Marion County is safe for a majority of two hundred Van Buren votes. He also calls on the assistant marshal, General Milroy, a petticoat hero, to stir up the Democracy while he is engaged in his official duties of taking the census. This letter shows that the locos are aware of the true condition of affairs and to keep up appearances the hired officeholders and office seekers are informed that they must crow to keep up their fast sinking cause. The editor of the ‘Constitution’ can be furnished with a copy of this letter by addressing the Tippecanoe Club of Greenfield.”
“ONE OF THE CLUB.”’”
A month later another letter appeared in the “Semi-Weekly journal” in its issue of July 30, 1840. The letter is as follows:
Greenfield, July 13, I840.
“Mr. Moore: ‘As the Loco-focos keep a CROWER in our county I will take upon me occasionally to let you know how we are getting along, and give statements of facts only. Mr. Chapman has, since he received his peremptory order to crow, been doing all that lies in his power as a CROWER. But as the people are now satisfied that he is only obeying imperative orders, his CROWING passes off with about as great profit to him and his party as would the shearing of a squealing porker to his shearers. He has been crowing very loud lately, hoping thereby to effect something for himself and his party in an election for magistrate in Blue River Township. The election took place on last Saturday and the result was that the vote of Mr. Hackleman (Whig) more than doubled that of Mr. Gallaher, who is a very prominent Van Buren man. Mr. Hackleman received eighty-seven votes and Mr. Gallaher forty-one votes. It is proper to state that Mr. Gallaher has always been very popular in his township. He has always heretofore received almost a unanimous vote. Mr. G. ran for sheriff at the last election and was second highest on the list where four others were running for the same office. At that time, however, the Whigs knew of no CROWING “bulletins” being issued, and a great many of them voted for Mr. Gallaher.
‘You may rest assured that all will be right in this county at the August and November elections. Mr. Chapman can have no possible hopes of being elected, notwithstanding he has the “census taker” to assist him in crowing. He has resorted to means that no honorable man would, by making unfounded statements, calculated to injure the private character of Mr. Walpole, his opponent. His slanders against Mr. Walpole he attempts to prove, by obtaining a certificate which answers his purpose, from Col. Tague. But this certificate Mr. Walpole rebukes by getting another certificate from Col. Tague (who is a very accommodating old gentleman in the certificate line) which makes exactly a counter statement to the one he gave Chapman. The two certificates show what is phrenologically termed “Destructiveness” more than anything I can now think of, except the story of the two “Kilkenny cats.” The first certificate aims at the destruction of Mr. Walpole’s private character; the second being from the same person and exactly reverse of the first, will be likely to show its destructiveness on the veracity of its good-natured vender, and lastly, like the Kilkenny cats, the two certificates destroy each other, and in this instance do not leave even a greasy spot.’
“HANCOCK””
It will be noticed that the idea of “crowing” was the theme against which the Whig political writers centered their attack. Indeed, the Whigs had discovered the uneasiness of their opponents and had also, by the finding of the letter, ascertained the policy outlined by Mr. Pattison — to keep up the fight for appearance’s sake alone.
The word “crowing” fitted Chapman to the letter and the Whigs made the most of it. Strange to say, this idea of gameness, daring, or tenacity, expressed in the order “Crow, Chapman, Crow!” caught the popular fancy of the Democrats; they liked its ring. They were in sympathy with their leader, Mr. Chapman, and the expression “Crow, Chapman, Crow!” was taken by them as complimentary to their leader rather than a term of ridicule, as the Whigs had used it. Notwithstanding this avalanche of criticism, or the handwriting on the wall, of the parties approaching defeat, Joseph Chapman fought on, and while the Democracy went down in defeat in the National election, he was elected Representative to the Indiana Legislature. At the close of the August election in 1840 the “Semi-Weekly Journal” of August I3, I840, could not resist the temptation of another thrust and printed the following editorial:
“CROW, CHAPMAN, CROW!”
“A letter written from this place on the 12th of June last to the postmaster at Greenfield, directing Chapman to ‘crow’ and declaring that the party had much to crow over, says,
“‘I will insure this county to give a Democratic majority of 200 votes.’
“Well, it did give upwards of 300 Democratic majority — not indeed for patent Democracy — but for the real Harrison Democracy.”
The campaign of 1840 was the greatest that had ever occurred in the State. At this time the West was gaining recognition in the East, and with it the conviction that this part of the United States was to be a factor in the election. The Whig candidate for President, General William Henry Harrison, was a western man and lived in a small and modest house at North Bend, on the Ohio River, a short distance from the Indiana line. The Democrats in the campaign styled General Harrison the “Log Cabin and Hard Cider Candidate.” His friends took up these terms and made them the party’s battle cry. This year was also the first campaign in which processions, parades and barbecues were introduced as a part of the political campaign work. In every State great processions paraded the streets and country roads, carrying miniature log cabins and barrels of hard cider.
In no State did political excitement run higher than in Indiana. The great meeting of the campaign was held at the Tippecanoe battle ground, where the principal orators of the party addressed the people upon the very spot where their standard bearer a few years back won his brilliant military victory.
The Whigs had in their parades miniature log cabins and barrels of hard cider. Their battle cry of the “Hard Cider and the Log Cabin” no doubt created a desire among Indiana Democrats for a similar cry. When the phrase “Crow, Chapman, Crow!” was introduced they seized upon it and forthwith adopted the characteristic fowl, the Rooster, for their emblem. The Indiana press heralded the phrase and the new-born emblem to the four corners of the State. Gradually it grew in favor and importance, other newspapers in other States copied it, and in a comparatively short time the Rooster was accepted and recognized as the National emblem of the great Democratic party.
June 21, 1841 a new Democratic paper was started in Indianapolis called the “Indiana State Sentinel.” It was published every Wednesday by C. A. and J. P. Chapman. These gentlemen were not related to Joseph Chapman. The first number of the paper, at the head of the first page, contained a picture of the Rooster and the phrase “Crow, Chapman, Crow!” This same head was carried for a number of years thereafter. On the editorial page of Volume I, No. 1, a mention was made of the letter incident.
Here, from the “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” archives of the U.S. Library of Congress, is the front page for Volume One, Issue One, of the weekly Indiana State Sentinel, the brand-spanking-new Democratic newspaper firsd published in Indianapolis on July 21st, 1841. Below is an enlargement of the banner, with the “Crow, Chapman, Crow!” motto of the paper quite easily read.
The rooster is certainly hard to miss.
The Indiana State Sentinel’s editorial columns for that first issue expanded on the “Crow, Chapman, Crow!” theme. Bear in mind, if you missed it in the long except above, that the Chapmans who founded the Sentinel bore no relation to the Chapman of Hancock County who was the original crowing rooster of the Democrats. Also, “Vigo” refers to Vigo County, home of Terre Haute, for those whose Hoosier geography may be somewhat lacking. And if your legal Latin be lacking, too, molle prosequi means an action by a prosecutor or plaintiff to abandon all or part of a suit.
I am glad to have been for several years a member of Indianapolis’ Marion County Democratic Party. It has produced two Democratic National Committee chairs, Thomas Taggart and Joe Andrew.
That long tale of the Rooster, invented in Indiana, is told in reprint of a book by John Fowler Mitchell, Jr., available for sale on Amazon in both hardback and paperback. Here are the front and back covers of the paperback version.
The originally published book, The Rooster: Its Origins as the Democratic Emblem by the aforementioned John Fowler Mitchell, Jr., and published by his family’s The William Mitchell Printing Co. of Greenfield also in 1913, is held in the collection of the Indiana University Library. The images below are from a scan of the opening pages of the book as held by the IU Library.
An Off-Topic Side Note: About the Debt of Hoosiers
This also happens to be the time of the greatest financial crisis in Indiana’s history.
We leave the rooster for a few paragraphs to study how Indiana nearly bankrupted itself at the same time.
The state forfeited on general-obligation bonds issued at the direction of its fifth governor since the 1819 statehood. Gov. Noah Noble was born a Virginian but had settled in Franklin County near Cincinnati. (To this day, Franklin County is quite rural; its only incorporated area is in the town of Batesville, which mostly lies in adjoining Ripley County.) The bonds had been issued pursuant to the Indiana Mammoth Internal Improvement Act of 1836, passed that same year by the General Assembly at Gov. Noble’s behest.
Turnpikes, canals, and later, railroads, were all funded by the debt subsequently issued as moral obligations in the name of Indiana’s taxpayers. But the Panic of 1837, followed by the rise of railroads overcoming the network of canals begun by the state to join the Ohio River to Lake Michigan in the style of New York State’s wildly profitable Erie Canal, resulted in Hoosierland placed in forfeiture. In 1841, Indiana could no longer make even the interest payments. The state officials went hat in hand to the bond financiers in New York City — right at the great port made wealthy by the Erie Canal — and the Indiana projects were promptly handed over to the state’s creditors in London in exchange for a 50 percent reduction in debt. Ignominious.
Indiana had narrowly avoided total bankruptcy, a horror reflected in the conservative labyrinth of Indiana financial structures to this day. You won’t see any general obligation bonds issued by Indiana any time soon, no sir! Plenty of these bonds are issued by cities, towns, counties, and even by specially created quasi-state agencies. But none by Indiana itself.
Naturally, the Democrats of 1841 were happy to lay the blame for this fiasco — a fiasco remembered in the second Indiana state constitution in effect today — at the feet of the Whigs. So the Indiana State Sentinel in its inaugural editorial columns also published this scolding of the noble Noble plan:
But back on-topic to the Democratic Rooster.
I’ve spent much space and electrons on the account of the Democratic Rooster and its origins in Greenfield. Here’s a roadside history marker in Greenfield to celebrate the rooster. It was erected in 1966.
Animals were often used to represent politicians, usually in the worst possible light.
This example is ex post facto, but check out this cover cartoon by the great Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly of August 31st, 1872. The corrupt Tammany Hall patronage organization that ruled New York City is depicted as a tiger being whitewashed by a reform candidate for mayor, the crusading New York Tribune editor and Republican Party co-founder and elected politician Horace Greeley. He ran on the “Liberal Republican Party” ticket for president in 1872, which repudiated the presidency of President Ulysses S. Grant. The Democratic Party endorsed the Liberal Republican, Greeley, opposing the incumbent Republican president, Grant. It was a weird election featuring two professed Republicans, one with the Democratic endorsement and the other beloved by much of the nation for serving President Lincoln as the commanding general of the Union Army who brought the Civil War to a close. (The only other American to hold that Army title was George Washington; like Grant, the title was bestowed by Congress.)
Nast’s caption was: “What Are You Going to Do About It If ‘Old Honesty’ Lets Him Loose Again?”
Nast, according to the National Museum of American History, used his own version of the Democratic donkey in Harper’s Weekly in 1870:
Nast had often used the symbol to represent ignorance. Nast featured an elephant for the first time in 1874 to represent the Republican vote. He rendered the animal, unsure of its own weight, plodding through planks representing its own party platform. Nast’s elephant and donkey appeared together in a cartoon for the first time in 1879.
While I have recounted at length the Mitchell version of the history of the Democratic donkey, there’s another name in the milieu of the story who, some claim, might be the real inventor of the Democratic donkey.
And he was not a Demoract!
He was Jonathan Chapman’s Whig legislative opponent in 1840, Thomas D. Walpole.
According to the myth-debunking site Snopes.com, “[I]t's often mistakenly assumed that the donkey was always the symbol of the Democratic Party, when in fact the party began using a crowing rooster as its mascot around 1840. This version of how that came to pass is from a biographical sketch of Indianapolis lawyer and Whig politician Thomas D. Walpole published in 1876 [NOTE: Actually, it was 1877]:
“In 1840 [Tom Walpole] was an ardent and enthusiastic Whig, and rendered great service to the Whig party, and contributed largely to the success of General Harrison. It was during this canvass that Tom gave to the Democratic party their emblem, which they have claimed ever since, the chicken cock, or rooster. George Patterson, then editing the Democratic paper, wrote, just before the August election of that year, to Joseph Chapman, of Greenfield, that the Democratic party would be beat, and that there was no hope, but, said he, "Crow, Chapman, crow." By some means Tom got possession of the letter, and exposed it. A year or two subsequent to this circumstance Messrs. George and Page Chapman became proprietors and editors of the Democratic paper and placed a rooster at the head of their paper, and from this circumstance it was generally supposed that they were the persons to whom the letter was addressed and the original crowers; but such is not the case. It is to Tom Walpole the Democratic party is indebted for the emblem of the rooster.”
Other sources grant full credit to Joseph Chapman for dreaming up the rooster symbol, but in any case, although it was never officially adopted as the emblem of the national Democratic Party, it very quickly became an unofficial one and remained so until cartoonist Thomas Nast's depictions of Republicans as elephants and Democrats as donkeys captured the public imagination in the late nineteenth century (to date, the national Democratic Party has never officially adopted any animal as its symbol).
This account of Walpole’s role also emanates — as does so much of this history — from Indianapolis and Central Indiana, this time in a history by John H.B. Nowland called Sketches of Prominent Citizens of 1876: With a few of the pioneers of the city and county who have passed away and also subtitled A sequel to “Early Reminiscences of Indianapolis” 1820-76. (Indianapolis: Tilford & Carlon, Printers: 1877)
You can read a scan of the original book online from the collection of the New York Public Library. Here are some of the early pages in the book:
The main account of Thomas D. Walpole of Greenfield and the Democratic rooster:
Now we come to a sad issue: the rooster and racism.
We start with this compilation by Facebook member Frantz Kebreau of Democratic roosters used as symbols in many elections.
We see the rooster used by state Democratic parties in Alabama, Kentucky, Delaware, and West Virginia. It has also, according to Stephen Seidman of Ithaca College, been used in Indiana — of course! — as well as also in Oklahoma and Ohio.
It also appeared in this campaign poster in 1944 to reëlect FDR to a fourth term with Truman as his new running mate.
In the case of West Virginia, I call to your attention this sample ballot for the 1960 West Virginia Democratic Party primary election of May 20th showing the rooster right at the top. Yes, JFK ran against HHH that day and defeated the Minnesotan soundly. HHH withdrew from the 1960 race that night.
Surely you noticed that in the case of Alabama’s Democratic Party, during the awful years of segregation — George Corley Wallace, Jr., Bull Connor, and the civil rights fighters of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of Rosa Parks, the rooster was paired with the motto: “White Supremacy for The Right.”
According to Wikipedia’s article on the Alabama Democratic Party, the rooster and the slogan, “White supremacy” appeared on state ballots beginning in 1904.
In early 1966, that disgusting phrase was replaced by the simple one-word phrase, “Democrats,” as attested by the Associated Press in a dispatch of January 23rd, 1966, and an article by Bob Ingram of the Birmingham (Ala.) News of January 21st, 1966.
Here is his article:
I offer these citations because of chatter suggesting white supremacy is still linked 57 years later to the rooster in Alabama and even elsewhere across the nation.
Other than in segregationist Alabama, I see no such association in any historical account of the rooster.
The latest change for the rooster occurred just three months ago, on June 4th, 2023.
Alabama was the cause. See how this stuff lasts?
The racist denotation of the rooster came to light again. Wrongly, in my view. On the other hand, this action happened in Oklahoma, home of the former Greenwood Black Wall Street and the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 in which as many as 300 African-Americans were killed, hundreds more injured, and 5,000 homes destroyed.
Which gives Tulsa and Oklahoma residents the right to their own opinion.
According to Randy Krehbiel of the Tulsa (Okla.) World:
After 116 years, the donkey has kicked the rooster off its perch atop the Democratic ballot in Oklahoma.
Last Sunday, the Oklahoma Democratic Party Convention voted, without much opposition, to replace the rooster that has represented the party on Oklahoma ballots since statehood and territorial ones before that, with the more familiar donkey, which traces its origins as a party symbol to 1828.
For generations, “stamping the rooster” meant voting Democrat in Oklahoma, and in other states where the symbol was and is still used. It originated with an 1840 Indiana state House of Representatives race in which the Democratic candidate was encouraged to “crow like a rooster” about the party’s goals and achievements.
But state party Chairwoman Alicia Andrews, who was elected to a third two-year term at the convention, said some Democrats thought a change was in order.
“As I’ve traveled across the state, Democrats have told me they don’t like the rooster,” Andrews said last week. “Some think the rooster is racist.”
Racist rooster?
Turns out, the rooster symbol does have racist connections.
Originally, the rooster just meant being proud and loud. In 1904, however, the Alabama Democratic Party adopted an emblem featuring the bird with the banner “White Supremacy” unfurled above it. According to some sources, the emblem celebrated a new state constitution that effectively disenfranchised Blacks.
The “White Supremacy” motto remained on the Alabama emblem until 1966.
Segregation split the Democratic Party nationally and in Oklahoma after World War II and contributed to a major party realignment.
Donkeys and Democrats first made common cause in 1828, when opponents of Andrew Jackson referred to him as “A. Jackass.” Rather than protest, Jackson began using images of donkeys in his campaign material. An 1837 lithograph depicts Jackson riding a donkey that is refusing to go where he wants.
When Jackson faded from the scene, so did the donkey — which created an opening for the rooster.
Then, in 1870, cartoonist Thomas Nast revived the donkey to represent the Copperheads, a faction of northern Democrats who had opposed the Civil War. Soon the donkey came to represent the entire party.
Nast also popularized the elephant as a Republican symbol, most famously in an 1874 cartoon in which the Democratic Party is actually a fox. But pachydermic portrayals of the GOP, founded in 1854, originated during the Civil War a decade earlier.
Why Oklahoma Republicans chose an eagle with wings spread instead of an elephant for their ballot symbol more than a century ago is unclear. A mild controversy arose in the 1990s when Ross Perot’s Reform Party chose an eagle’s head as its symbol.
The only statutory restrictions on ballot symbols are that they not include “the coat of arms or seal of Oklahoma or of the United States, or the respective flags thereof.”
No one stood up in the rooster’s defense at the convention, although the bull moose and the fighting kestrel had some support. Andrews acknowledged the switch is perhaps more whimsical than anything else, but said that’s OK.
“Some people said, ‘Why is this even on the agenda?’, but we need some of these lighter issues,” she said.
Getting back to Harry Truman, I don’t think the 33rd American president from Independence, Mo., saw the rooster as a racist symbol.
In fact, according to the Wikipedia history of the Alabama Democratic Party, Truman could not secure a ballot position in Alabama for the 1948 presidential election.
Reports Wikipedia:
In 1948, after the inclusion of a civil rights plank in the national Democratic Party platform and President Truman's earlier decision to integrate the Armed Forces, several Southern delegates to the Democratic National Convention fought back. Almost half of Alabama's delegation walked out of the National Convention in protest. The delegates from Alabama along with others from surrounding states then regathered in Birmingham, Alabama and formed the States' Rights Democratic Party commonly called "Dixiecrats." Leading the walkout of Alabama's delegation was then Democratic Lt. Governor, Handy Ellis. The segregationist Dixiecrats held their National Convention at the city's Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham. The Dixiecrats would nominate then-Democratic governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president and Mississippi governor Fielding Wright for vice president. They faced incumbent Democratic president Harry Truman and the Republican nominee Thomas Dewey and his running mate Governor Earl Warren of California. However, in Alabama, Thurmond was the local Democratic Party's presidential candidate instead of President Harry Truman, who was not even able to secure a ballot position in Alabama due to hostility from pro-segregationist Alabama Democrats.
Harry Truman knew how to count noses and remember things. I doubt he forgave Alabama Democrats for forcing him off their state’s 1948 presidential ballot.
The rooster, the Little White House, racism, and Colin Powell
One of the guiding modern heroes about racism in America was the late Colin Powell — of Harlem and Bronx, N.Y., son of Jamaican immigrants, a former Army general, a former chair of the Joint Chiefs, a former national security advisor, and a former secretary of state.
In April 2001, Powell, then Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, used the Truman Little White House as the site for peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This monument and these flags remember the event.
But perhaps the most telling photo from the event is something more historical in the U.S. context and less diplomatic in the global context.
It’s a photo of Secretary Colin Powell sitting at Truman’s Little White House desk in 2001, at the very place where in 1948 the president signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26th, 1948, which desegregated the U.S. military.
Here is Secretary Powell in 2001at Truman’s desk in Key West.
As recounted by the Truman Little White House website:
In 1948, Truman [signed] one of the most important [actions] of his presidency, Executive Order 9981, the desegregation of the military. The military was not quick to accept this order and failure to act on it resulted in Kenneth Royall to retire from his post as Secretary of the Army in 1949 because he would not eliminate segregation in the U.S. Army. [NOTE: Wikipedia writes of Royall, of North Carolina: “Royall served as the first Secretary of the Army from 1947 to 1949, until he was compelled into retirement for refusing to obey and realize President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981 for the racial desegregation of the military forces of the United States.] Prior to the order, there were separate military training bases for white and black soldiers and all black units, including the Tuskegee Airmen, 11 Tank Destroyer Divisions, 24 Field Artillery Battalions, 7 Field Artillery Regiments, 3 Tank Battalions, 1 Parachute Infantry Battalion, and 8 Cavalry and Infantry Regiments. Black military nurses and doctors could not treat white soldiers and donated blood from African Americans could not be used on white sailors and soldiers. In 1989, forty two years after the signing Executive Order 9981, President George H.W. Bush appointed General Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military person in the country and the first African American to hold that position.
Executive Order 9981 says in its entirety:
Whereas it is essential that there be maintained in the armed services of the United States the highest standards of democracy, with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country’s defense:
Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and as Commander in Chief of the armed services, it is hereby ordered as follows:
1. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.
2. There shall be created in the National Military Establishment an advisory committee to be known as the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, which shall be composed of seven members to be designated by the President.
3. The Committee is authorized on behalf of the President to examine into the rules, procedures and practices of the armed services in order to determine in what respect such rules, procedures and practices may be altered or improved with a view to carrying out the policy of this order. The Committee shall confer and advise with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Air Force, and shall make such recommendations to the President and to said Secretaries as in the judgment of the Committee will effectuate the policy hereof.
4. All executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government are authorized and directed to cooperate with the Committee in its work, and to furnish the Committee such information or the services of such persons as the Committee may require in the performance of its duties.
5. When requested by the Committee to do so, persons in the armed services or in any of the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall testify before the Committee and shall make available for the use of the Committee such documents and other information as the Committee may require.
6. The Committee shall continue to exist until such time as the President shall terminate its existence by Executive Order.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
The White House
July 26, 1948
Despite searching for a couple of hours, I cannot find on the Internet any written account of what I am about to report. During my trip to the Truman Little White House, when I saw the pair of porcelain roosters on the dining room sideboard, I was told by a guide that Powell was greatly moved to be seated at the spot where desegregation of the military was ordered by President Truman in 1948.
I don’t remember the exact words Powell is said to have spoken, but it goes like this: If it were not for President Truman and this executive order, I might still have served in the Army — but as a private and a cook instead of as a general.
I wish I could find online corroboration for this.
In any case, the Democratic roosters at the Truman Little White House, and in my apartment, and in the annals of Indiana newspapers and political history, mean that Democrats should crow about winning.
For me, I’ll cast the racist overtones aside. They belong to a now departed chapter in Alabama history.
Today, the lone Democrat from Alabama in the U.S. House is an African-American, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell. She is a native of Huntsville, a graduate of Princeton, Harvard Law School, and St. Hilda’s College of Oxford University. She lives in Selma and represents the Alabama Seventh Congressional District encompassing Selma, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery.
She was first elected in 2010 and is now serving her seventh term in Congress.
Today’s Democratic rooster at The Moderate Democrat crows for her.