Welcome, everyone. We are so glad you could join
us today for this deep dive into the sources.
Absolutely. It's going to be a fun one. Yeah.
So I want you to picture something for a moment.
You're sitting at your computer. It's late. You
fall down one of those late night Internet rabbit
holes. Right. And you land on a Wikipedia article.
We've all been there. Right. And the title of
this one is List of United States Senators from
Illinois. Which I mean. You have to do exactly
what you're thinking. You're thinking, wow, that
sounds like a spreadsheet. Yeah. That sounds
like an absolute cure for insomnia. It is literally
just a table of names, dates and political parties.
But trust me on this. You're going to want to
stick around. You really are. Because, I mean,
it does look incredibly dry at first glance.
Right. It's just a chronological roster of politicians.
Right. you know, apply a little historical context,
the entire narrative completely changes. It really
does. You start seeing these massive constitutional
standoffs just sort of hiding in plain sight.
And that is our mission for you today. We're
going to prove that this seemingly straightforward
administrative list is actually this treasure
trove of political drama, broken rules and major
historical milestones. OK, let's unpack this.
Let's do it. To set the stage for you, we really
need to go back to the very beginning. So Illinois
was admitted to the union on December 3rd, 1818.
OK. And since that day, the state has been represented
in the United States Senate by exactly 47 individuals.
Wow. Just 47 people over the course of more than
two centuries. Which honestly strikes me as a
surprisingly small number when you think about
how long Illinois has been a state. Yeah. And
200 years of history. And you basically fit every
senator they've ever had onto a single Greyhound
bus. It is a very exclusive club. And just as
a quick refresher on how the Senate operates,
because this kind of dictates the flow of this
entire list. Senators from Illinois, like all
states, they're divided into specific classes.
Right. The staggered elections. Exactly. In Illinois'
case, they hold a class two and class three seats.
This just means, like you said, their elections
are staggered. Both seats are never up for grabs
in the exact same year. Which creates that continuous
overlap. Right. It was designed specifically
for political stability. For example, Class 2's
next election is in 2026 and Class 3's is in
2028. You get that rhythm. Stability is the stated
goal, sure. But as we're going to see, stable
is probably the absolute last word you'd use
to describe some of these terms in office. Fair
point. But before we get into the pure chaos
of those footnotes, walk me through the record
holders. Like who actually makes up this list?
Sure. So looking at the very start of the roster.
The first two men to hold these seats back in
1818 were Jesse B. Thomas, who took the Class
2 seat, and Ninian Edwards, who took the Class
3 seat. you know, the trailblazers setting up
the state's initial footprint in Washington.
Right. And if we fast forward all the way to
the end of the table, the current delegation
representing Illinois consists of two Democrats,
Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth. Durbin has been
serving since 1997 and Duckworth has been serving
since 2017. That is a significant amount of time
for Senator Durbin, stretching across multiple
presidential administrations. Yeah. But he actually
doesn't hold the record for the state. Oh, really?
No. If we look at the metric of pure longevity
on this list, that title belongs to a man named
Shelby Moore Cullum. Shelby Moore Cullum. That
is a fantastic 19th century politician name.
It really is. How long was he in office? Cullum
was a Republican who served a massive uninterrupted
chunk of time. He held his seat from 1883 all
the way to 1913. Wow. 30 full years in the United
States Senate. 30 years. I mean, just think about
the sheer amount of American history that happened
between 1883 and 1913. The transformation of
the country during his single tenure is staggering.
He took office right at the tail end of the Reconstruction
era, sat through the entire Gilded Age, the turn
of the 20th century, the Wright brothers taking
flight. Oh, wow. Yeah. And he left office just
before the outbreak of World War I. The nation
completely industrialized, the population exploded,
and the United States became a global superpower,
all while Shelby Moore Cullum occupied that one
specific chair in the Senate chamber. It's fascinating
to realize how much the world changed outside
the Capitol building while that one specific
guy held that one specific seat. Exactly. But
longevity isn't the only major milestone jumping
out of this data. I was looking at the demographic
data in the introduction, and there's a statistic
about the class three seat that absolutely stopped
me in my track. It's a big one. Here's where
it gets really interesting. Yeah. The demographic
milestones are perhaps the most compelling part
of the modern era of this list. Since the era
of Reconstruction ended in the late 19th century,
there have been a total of eight African -Americans
to sit in the entire United States Senate. Just
eight? Eight. across all 50 states over the span
of more than a century. Which is a profoundly
small number for the entire nation over that
time period. A remarkably small number. But the
specific detail to note regarding Illinois is
this. Out of those eight African -American senators,
Three of them have held Illinois' class three
seat. That concentration is just wild to me.
Out of the entire country, almost 40 percent
of the African -American senators since Reconstruction
have come not just from one state, but from one
specific staggered electoral cycle in that state.
Right. That specific fact makes Illinois the
state with the most African -American senators
in U .S. history. Yeah. We are talking about
Carol Moseley Braun, who broke a massive barrier,
followed later by Barack Obama and then Roland
Buttis. And obviously the data point for Barack
Obama carries its own massive historical weight.
He's elected to the class three seat in 2004,
takes office in early 2005. And then the list
just notes that he served until November 2008.
And the reason for his departure is listed right
there in the electoral history column. He resigned
to become the president of the United States.
Which is presented as such a matter of fact data
point, like resigned to become U .S. president.
Just another Tuesday. Right. Just a totally casual
everyday reason to leave your Senate seat early.
It is stated very objectively just as another
piece of administrative data. But taking a step
back, you realize that this one column of a Wikipedia
table is quietly tracking major tectonic shifts
in national leadership and historical representation.
Yeah. The class three seat in Illinois essentially
served as the direct launching pad for a historic
presidency. Absolutely. We're looking at this
purely through the lens of the data provided.
And the data tells a story of major national
milestones happening right there in the class
three seat. But I want to shift gears now. OK.
Because while the main table shows us history
being made, the footnotes. Oh, the footnotes.
The footnotes are where the drama lives. The
footnotes are where the veneer of formal parliamentary
procedure completely breaks down. Completely.
I think we tend to view 19th and early 20th century
politics through the sepia toned lens. You know,
we imagine it was. Very formal, very by the book.
Men in top hats following strict rules of decorum.
Yes. But this roster proves that early Illinois
politics were incredibly chaotic. Let's talk
about the rule breakers. Walk me through the
situation with James Shields. James Shields is
a perfect example of a constitutional technicality
colliding with pure political audacity. If you
look at the entry for the class two seat. around
the year 1849. Shields is listed as being elected.
OK. But right next to his name, it says election
voided. So he wins the election, packs his bags
for Washington. And then what happens? The Senate
refuses to seat him. The United States Constitution
has very specific requirements for who can be
a senator. And one of those requirements is that
you must have been a United States citizen for
at least nine years. Shields, an Irish immigrant,
had not hit that nine year mark yet. You would
really think that would be something you check
before you run a statewide campaign for the United
States Senate. You'd think so. Like, let me just
check my paperwork. Yeah. Yep. I am legally allowed
to hold this job. One would assume. But what's
fascinating here is how strictly literal. the
early Senate was regarding the rules and also
how Shields strategically responded to that literalism.
How so? Well, the Senate didn't banish him from
politics forever. They just looked at the calendar,
looked at his citizenship papers and essentially
said, not yet. The math doesn't work out today.
Because he was just a few months shy. The footnote
mentions he officially reached the nine -year
mark of his citizenship on October 21st, 1849.
So what happens? He doesn't go home and disgrace.
He doesn't give up. No. He literally just waits.
He waits for October 21st to roll around, hits
his nine -year anniversary of being a citizen,
and then he is immediately elected to finish
his own vacant term. It is a brilliant, if slightly
ridiculous, procedural workaround. It really
is. The Senate accepted his subsequent election
because technically on that new date in October,
he met the constitutional requirement. You filled
the vacancy that he himself had created by being
initially ineligible. And he just loved the stubbornness
of it. I can't sit in this chair today. Fine.
I'll be back in October. Keep it warm for me.
Pretty much. It just shows you that the rules
were the rules, but there's always a loophole
if you had the patience to exploit it. And if
you think Shields was stubborn with the federal
government. We need to discuss the case of Frank
L. Smith in the 1920s. Oh, boy. This is arguably
the most bizarre constitutional standoff in the
entire historical record for the state. Oh, this
one is wild. This is the infamous double rejection
set the scene for us in 1926. So think about
Illinois in the 1920s. It's the Prohibition era,
the Roaring Twenties, a time of massive political
machines and, frankly, quite a bit of corruption.
Right. In December of 1926, a senator named William
B. McKinley dies just before the end of his term.
The governor of Illinois appoints Frank L. Smith
to finish out those last few months. So Smith
goes to Washington, presents his credentials.
And the Senate, I assume, rolls out the red carpet.
The Senate slams the door in his face. They outright
refuse to seat him. The basis for this refusal
was that Smith's broader political campaigns
were, in the Senate's view, rife with fraud and
corruption. They essentially deemed him too corrupt
to join the chamber. OK, so the federal government
says no. The United States Senate draws a hard
line in the sand. Case closed, right? Far from
it. Because Smith wasn't just appointed to finish
the old term. He had also already been elected
by the voters to the next full six -year term
that was about to start. Oh, wow. So a few months
later, in March of 1927, Smith comes right back
to the Senate. This time, he presents his credentials
for the freshly elected term. He just walks back
in and says, try again. What is the Senate's
response this time? They rejected him a second
time. Unbelievable. For the exact same reasons.
They reiterated that the fraud and corruption
surrounding him made him unfit to serve, and
they refused to seat him for the elected term
as well. This is the part that absolutely amazes
me. The United States Senate explicitly tells
this man. twice on the official record, you cannot
be here. And yet, if you look at the roster today,
Frank L. Smith is included on this list of United
States senators from Illinois. Why does he get
to be on the list? Because of sheer, unadulterating
stubbornness on the state level. Despite the
Senate refusing to cede him, Smith and the governor
of Illinois simply considered him to be the rightful
senator anyway. You're kidding. No, they essentially
chose to ignore the federal government's ruling.
So they just stared each other down, the state
government and the federal government just glaring
at each other across the country. That is precisely
what happened. For approximately two years. Smith
acted under the assumption that he was the senator
and the governor backed him up from roughly December
1926 until he finally officially resigned in
February 1928. He resigned from a job the Senate
said he never officially had in the first place.
The historical record has to thread a very fine
needle here. The footnotes clarify that the Senate
does not consider him to have been a senator.
But because he held the credentials from the
state and occupy this bizarre constitutional
limbo for two years, history and this list has
to acknowledge the standoff. It's a constitutional
crisis hidden in a footnote. It really is. And
Smith isn't even the only one who had trouble
actually sitting in the seat he won. Briefly,
looking back a bit earlier, there's William Lorimer
in 1909. Right. William Lorimer's case is another
messy one. He was elected in 1909, but he was
initially ineligible because he hadn't formally
resigned from his seat in the U .S. House of
Representatives yet. Meaning he tried to be a
senator before he remembered to quit his other
job in Congress. It was a very chaotic overlap.
And ultimately, his election was voided altogether
due to corrupt practices in the state legislature,
which is how senators were chosen back then,
before the 17th Amendment established direct
popular elections. The early 1900s were a particularly
messy time for Illinois Senate credentials. To
say the least. But lest you think all these quirky
administrative anomalies are buried in the distant
past, you know, wearing bowler hats and riding
steam trains. Right. Let's jump forward to a
modern quirk. Let's talk about the year 2010
and the situation involving Mark Kirk. Walk me
through what happened here because the logistics
of this are hilarious. This involves the seat
that Barack Obama vacated when he became president.
When Obama resigned in late 2008, Roland Burris
was appointed to continue the term. But as that
term was wrapping up in 2010, the state needed
to hold an election. Right. The anomaly involving
Mark Kirk is a masterclass in logistical absurdity.
Kirk ran to fill the remainder of Barack Obama's
term in a special election. But that special
election was scheduled to be held on the exact
same day as a general election for the next full
six -year term. Okay, let me make sure I'm visualizing
the reality of this. You're a voter in Illinois
in November 2010. You walk into your local polling
place, you get your ballot, and you have to vote
for Mark Kirk to finish out a term that is almost
entirely over. And then, on that exact same piece
of paper... you have to vote for Mark Kirk again
to start a brand new six -year term. Yeah, it
is the reality of the situation. He ran for both
the fractional remainder of the term and the
full upcoming term simultaneously. And he won
both elections on the same day. So what does
this all mean? When we look at James Shields
sitting around waiting for his citizenship clock
to run out so he can exploit a loophole, or Frank
Smith pretending to be a senator for two years
while the Senate locks him out, or Mark Kirk
winning two elections for the same job on the
same Tuesday. Wait, on the same Tuesday? Yeah.
What does this tell you about how government
actually functions? It tells you that beneath
the polished marble exterior of our democratic
institutions, the actual machinery of government
is often quite clumsy and human. Yeah. We like
to think of laws and procedures as rigid mathematical
formulas. But they're executed by human beings
and human beings create loopholes. They engage
in stubborn standoffs and they create logistical
absurdities like double elections. It really
is a great reminder that the rules are sometimes
just strongly worded suggestions until someone
figures out a creative way around them. But moving
beyond the quirky loopholes, I want to talk about
the deeper history embedded here. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, this entire list
is actually a mirror of American political evolution.
If you look at the party affiliations column
and you trace it chronologically from 1818 to
the present day, you're not just reading a list
of names. You are literally watching the shifting
tectonic plates of American political history
unfold in real time. I see what you mean, because
if you look at the early 1800s, there are no
Democrats or Republicans. The labels are completely
different. Exactly. In 1818, Jesse B. Thomas
and Ninian Edwards are listed as Democratic -Republican.
That reflects the era of good feelings, where
there was essentially only one major national
party. Right. But then as you move into the 1820s
and 1830s, the list shifts. Senators like Elias
Kane and David J. Baker suddenly appear listed
as Jacksonian. Reflecting the rise of Andrew
Jackson and a completely different era of populism.
Yes. That Jacksonian label represents a massive
shift towards mass democracy and a fracturing
of the old political order. Eventually... Those
labels solidify into the modern Democratic Party.
But then, right around the 1850s, something dramatic
happens on the list. The Republican Party suddenly
appears out of nowhere. With Lyman Trumbull in
1855, who actually starts his tenure as a Democrat
and ends it as a Republican, and then Orville
Browning in 1861, listed firmly as a Republican.
That sudden appearance of the Republican Party
isn't just a random rebranding. That represents
the complete collapse of the Whig Party. It represents
the national fracture over the expansion of slavery.
When you see those new party labels appear in
the 1850s, you are looking at the direct lead
up to the American Civil War reflected purely
in the party shifts of this one state senators.
It's like looking at the rings of an ancient
tree. The party names tell you exactly what the
political climate was like in the country at
that exact moment in time. And it keeps evolving
after the Civil War. You see John A. Logan listed
as a liberal Republican in the 1870s, which highlights
the post -war fracturing over corruption and
reconstruction policies. You even have an independent
making a rare appearance. Oh, really? Yeah, David
Davis, who was elected in 1877 and served until
1883, showing that even in an era of intense
partisanship, there was room for disruption.
dry administrative list is a story of human ambition,
changing demographics, and massive political
maneuvering. The source material is just a table,
but the reality it represents is a constantly
shifting battleground of ideas and power. I would
highly encourage you, our listener, to go look
up the historical roster of your own state's
congressional delegations. You might be shocked
at what you find buried in the footnotes of your
own backyard. That is fantastic advice. It makes
you realize that history isn't just in the textbooks,
it's hiding in the spreadsheets too. So, as we
wrap up this journey today, let's look at our
final takeaways. We started with what looked
like a cure for insomnia. A Wikipedia list of
47 names and dates. But by actually unpacking
the details, we found incredible insights. We
learned about the strict, almost comical literalism
of early citizenship laws with James Shields
just waiting out the clock. Right. We saw a massive
historic milestone in diversity with Illinois
holding the record for the most African -American
senators, including a seat that served as a springboard
to the presidency. And we learned about some
truly stubborn politicians like. Frank L. Smith,
who simply refused to take no for an answer from
the federal government and created a two -year
constitutional standoff. This raises an important
question about how we perceive our institutions
today. We tend to look at the modern government
and feel frustrated by the gridlock, the procedural
quirks, or the messy political maneuvering. We
often think it shouldn't be this chaotic. Things
used to be more refined. Yeah, we totally do.
But the data in this list proves that the chaos
is not new. The quirks. The rule bending and
the constitutional game playing are practically
baked into the system from the very beginning.
It really gives you a completely different perspective
on the daily news, doesn't it? The names change,
but the playbook is centuries old. It certainly
does. And I want to leave you with a final thought
to mull over. We have spent this entire time
looking at just one single state, Illinois, a
roster of merely 47 people. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.
Think. of the wild footnotes waiting to be discovered
in the early Rhode Island lists or the California
lists during the gold rush there is a whole world
of drama out there disguised as boring administrative
data we want to thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive into the sources today it
has been an absolute blast unpacking this history
with you and finding the stories hidden in the
margins until next time keep digging into those
footnotes and stay curious