Assassination Under the Big Top

Assassination under the big top: A historian recreates a forgotten crime that shook the country Blood on the Sawdust: The Assassination of a President and the World It Unmade By David T. West 487 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95 Reviewed by Chris Merton-Pierce On a recent episode of "The Daily Show," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin unwittingly drew a chorus of nervous titters from the studio audience by referring to the "five presidential assassinations in American history." Doubtless, the crowd was expressing anxious laughter at seeing so august a historian make such an obvious blunder, but what the incident really demonstrates is the degree of obscurity which has overtaken a vast and crucial part of American history, a cloak of ignorance that would have been unthinkable even 50 years ago. That may change with David West’s welcome new study of that now-obscure "fifth" assassination: the brutal 1905 murder of Sprinkles, clown president of the American circus. Although the 21st Amendment eliminated it, for over 150 years America’s circus industry was a vital part of its constitutional makeup; every four years, workers in the carnival and circus trades were allowed to vote for their own president, who was charged with administering this unruly, exciting segment of national life. Nor was this merely a symbolic sop with little impact on the rest of the country, as with the "Queen of Ladies" elections in the early republican period; by 1900, fully 1 in 3 Americans were employed in the "three-ring industry," as ringmasters, lion tamers, cooks, clowns, tumblers, spielers, grinders, bally gals, pony punks, billposters, snub ropers, long line skinners, hook rope boys, and, it must be admitted, glass-eating freaks. At the top of this huge, thriving community was the Circus President, who not only wielded tremendous power in his own sphere but was obligated by the Constitution to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. West’s book does not try to tell the fascinating story of this institution, and wisely so: such a task would be impossible in a single volume. Instead, he focuses on the most sensational episode in the 150-year history of the circus presidency; the assassination of a president and the aftermath of the crime. The narrow focus is a smart idea: West can build his narrative with the basic outlines of what Henry Adams called "the republic of the midway" while concentrating his tale on a relatively compact cast of characters and set of themes. He does a fine job of conjuring the peculiar circumstances of turn-of-the-century Circus America. The industry was at its peak, with the devastation wrought by motion pictures not yet a glimmer on the horizon. Unheard-of sums of money were being made and the circus elections had become virtually as important as their civil counterparts. Indeed, West demonstrates that the turnout for the 1904 circus election was actually higher in real numbers than that year’s vote for "non-showbiz" president. Although this can be attributed in part to the attraction of free cotton candy and a glimpse at a lion at circus polling places, the fact remains that more Americans than ever were involved with circus politics. That year turned out to be a watershed for the institution of circus president. After more than 20 years of ringmaster domination, America had its first clown president. This transition was handled better than may have been expected; after all, the election in 1928 of America’s first Quaker president kicked off the bloody "Take Off Your Hat" riots. The ringmasters, by contrast, became an important part of Sprinkles’ cabinet, although suspicion peddled by conspiracy theorists has clung to them ever since the assassination. It is one of the virtues of West’s book that he conclusively demonstrates that the ringmasters and lion tamers who at first seemed so reluctant to accept a clown president had nothing to do with his assassination. Giggles the Portly, successor to Sprinkles The blame for that act lies squarely at the feet of the acrobats, specifically those influenced by the anarchism espoused in Kropotkin’s book "Property, the State, and Tumbling." West does an excellent job of illuminating the fervid political underworld of Circus America at the time, particularly demonstrating how the influx of acrobats from Southern Europe contributed to an overall radicalization of the big top. West should also be commended for portraying the acrobats in an evenhanded way, showing that their demands for lighter-colored tights and stronger nets, when presented peacefully, were often met with savage repression by authorities. In this environment, it’s not hard to see how some acrobats concluded they could only gain recognition by resorting to violence, which they did by pushing Sprinkles off a trapeze in front of a packed house in Barstow. The shockwaves from that event went well beyond the confines of midway and ballyhoo. Theodore Roosevelt declared a national state of emergency, and a vigilante pogrom against "Reds" commenced that summer, with the most famous incident being the lynching of Marxie, the Clown Who Shares. West does an excellent job of detailing this violent aftermath, and convincingly lays some of the blame at the feet of the assassinated Sprinkles, who refused to purge his cabinet of ruthless bearded ladies, despite their penchant for suspending the rule of law in pursuit of political enemies. The book is not without flaws, though. Although he is an excellent historian of ideas – few people can explain the appeal of anarcho-syndicalism to human cannonballs as succinctly – West struggles to bring the period to vivid life. We learn a great deal about what these people did, but we are given little sense of who they were. Who, for instance, is the man at the center of the story? West dutifully relates the facts of Sprinkles’ upbringing, of his move from junior pie boy in the Hardshell Methodist Carnival of the Carolinas to Head Seltzerer for Barnum, but we don’t get any insight about what kind of man he was. Sprinkles made it the focus of his administration to replace the hateful stereotype of the sad clown with that of what he called "the productive clown of industry," but the forces that drove him are apparently beyond West’s scope to depict. Sprinkles’ assassination was a pivotal moment, in part because it enabled the rise to prominence of his protégé, Senor Chucklepants, who later became a crucial New Deal ally. As such, it’s a brightly-colored and important scrap of the American quilt, and if West’s book serves to reintroduce the public to the details of this fascinating, long-gone institution, so much the better. Chris Merton-Pierce is the author of the forthcoming "America Gobbles the Power Pellet: Confronting Our Fears in a Post-Pac-Man World." He lives in Brooklyn.