American foreign policy shifted on December 2, 1823, when President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine in his yearly address to Congress. President Monroe reaffirmed that European colonial expansion in the Western Hemisphere would be considered a hostile act to the US, while also pledging non-intervention in European matters. Despite this bold declaration, the US lacked the military, especially naval, strength to enforce it. Instead, the British Royal Navy played a decisive role in upholding the doctrine throughout much of the 19th century, aligning it with Britain’s own economic and political interests in the Americas.

Why & How the Monroe Doctrine Was Born

The origins of the Monroe Doctrine can be found as early as 1783, when the United States declared the policy of isolationism following the American Revolution.

American historian Samuel Eliot Morison pointed out that:

“as early as 1783, then, the United States adopted the policy of isolation and announced its intention to keep out of Europe. The supplementary principle of the Monroe Doctrine, that Europe must keep out of America, was still over the horizon.”

By 1823, the Latin American Republics had achieved long-awaited independence and diplomatic recognition from the United States. These territories had been under Spain’s colonial rule for centuries. The Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent invasion of Spain in 1808 weakened Spain’s colonial control, laying the foundation for the Spanish colonies to seek independence. In the following years, the waves of the independence movement spread across Latin America.

When Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated in 1815, the Congress of Vienna did not take into consideration the independence struggles in Latin America. However, the United States saw the opportunity to support the revolutions in the Western hemisphere. The Congress of Vienna intended to restore the balance of power in Europe, reinstate monarchies, and prevent the spread of revolutionary movements. On the other hand, the United States, influenced by its own revolutionary past and economic interests, viewed the colonies’ independence movement as a way to weaken European dominance in the Americas.

The formation of the Holy Alliance on September 23, 1815, changed the power dynamics. The alliance, composed of the European powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, aimed to strengthen monarchism in post-Napoleonic Europe. To achieve this goal, the Holy Alliance authorized the use of military force to re-establish the rule of the Bourbon dynasty over Spain and its colonies. At the same time, France had already agreed to re-establish monarchy in Spain in exchange for control over Cuba.

As a constitutional monarchy, Great Britain did not join the Holy Alliance, whose members supported the principle of absolutism. Instead, British Foreign Secretary George Canning proposed to American President James Monroe a joint Anglo-American action that would constrain the Holy Alliance’s influence in the Western Hemisphere.

The British proposal was dictated by several calculations. In particular, as a great European power, Britain sought to maintain its current colonies as well as expand territorially to meet the increasing demand for new markets and sustain its quick industrialization. While the Spanish Empire struggled to survive, and France was still weak from the Napoleonic Wars, Britain remained the only European power able to influence the power dynamics with the United States, whether through support or coercion.

In 1821, the Russian Empire also entered the contest between the powers set on gaining influence in the Western hemisphere with the Ukase (proclamation), claiming territorial sovereignty over northwestern North America (present-day Alaska) and most of the Pacific Northwest. Under this proclamation, the Russian Empire also forbade non-Russian ships from approaching the coast.

Simultaneously, the Monroe administration was negotiating with Spain to purchase Florida to increase its influence in the region. The negotiation resulted in the Transcontinental Treaty, signed in 1821. Following this, the United States proceeded to recognize the Latin American republics of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico as independent states in 1822.

While the United States sought to keep the old European colonial powers out of the Americas, the Monroe administration recognized that the United States lacked the necessary military strength to achieve this goal. As the historian Caitlin Fitz pointed out: “Great Britain was the preeminent global power, while the United States was little more than a “second-ring show in the high-strung Atlantic circus.”

Although President Monroe did not turn down British suggestion to join forces to deter European colonialism in the Western hemisphere, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams disagreed, claiming that “It would be more candid as well as more dignified to avow our principles explicitly to Russia and France, than to come in as a cockboat in the wake of the British man-of-war.”

Despite these concerns, the conflux of interests between the two countries, ensuring the stability and independence of Latin American republics while preventing European intervention, led to the creation of the Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed by the United States, but enforced by the Royal Navy of Great Britain.

The Monroe Doctrine

In his yearly address to Congress on December 2, 1823, President James Monroe unveiled a new American foreign policy strategy, later known as the Monroe Doctrine. According to this doctrine, the New and Old Worlds, having distinct socio-political systems, should remain divided.

James Monroe outlined four key points of the new approach:

• The United States would refrain from interfering in the internal affairs or the military conflicts between European powers.
• The United States would recognize and would not be involved in the affairs of the existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere.
• The remaining territories of the Western Hemisphere were closed to future colonization.
• Any attempt by a European power to gain control over any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.

The address read:

“In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparations for our defense.…With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power, we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition to oppress them or control in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”

Initially, President Monroe’s address was not perceived as the foundation of a foreign policy “doctrine” but rather as an answer to the security challenges and the compromise between passive and aggressive policy options in light of the rising threat of the re-colonization of the newly independent republics in Latin America by the reactionary European powers.

According to author Leonard Axel Lawson, avoiding entering the Anglo-American alliance and instead declaring the unilateral Monroe Doctrine was part of Secretary Adams’s diplomatic game. In his book The Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine (1922), Lawson argues: 

“England possessed, at that time, a navy as large as the combined navies of all the other powers of the world; and, insofar as the existence of the British navy compelled respect for those interests, it also compelled respect for and observance of the Monroe Doctrine.”

Indeed, Secretary of State Adams, in explaining his position regarding the relation with Great Britain, declared: “My reliance upon the cooperation of Great Britain rested not upon her principles but upon her interests.”

By adopting the Monroe Doctrine, the United States needed a formidable maritime presence, especially a powerful navy, to safeguard the vast coastline of the Americas from European colonial powers’ intervention. The British Royal Navy would play a decisive role in enforcing the doctrine throughout the 19th century, even if it acted out of self-interest in expanding and maintaining trade relations.

The British Royal Navy’s Role in Enforcing the Monroe Doctrine

In the 19th century, the British Royal Navy maintained a dominant presence in key strategic regions, particularly the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, and the South Atlantic, to prevent European intervention in the Americas and to deploy rapidly in case of a threat.

One such example was the Falkland Islands Dispute in 1833, when Britain deployed its fleet to curb Argentina’s claim over the islands. While Argentina was not a European nation, Great Britain illustrated its intention to uphold the Monroe Doctrine with this move.

Similarly, when France invaded Mexico and installed Emperor Maximilian I, a French-backed monarch, in December 1860, Britain decided to withdraw its support for France in 1866. Without British diplomatic and naval support, France was forced to retreat from Mexico.

The event effectively deterred future French ambitions in the region and reinforced the Monroe Doctrine.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary & the End of British Royal Navy Dominance

During the second half of the 19th century, the United States emerged as a leading naval power.

By this time, the United States had undergone a rapid industrialization process and expanded its economy and infrastructure through global trade. Regarding territorial expansion, in 1867, the United States acquired strategic locations such as Alaska. However, the Spanish-American War of 1898 appeared to be a turning point. The United States emerged victorious and gained control over former Spanish territories, including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. This victory demonstrated American military strength and capabilities.

This period also saw the influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s naval theories, which emphasized the importance of a strong navy for acquiring and maintaining global influence. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s naval theories inspired Theodore Roosevelt who emerged as a leading maritime strategist. After 1901, when Roosevelt became the president of the United States, he linked the Monroe Doctrine to his new foreign policy approach. In this context, he secured the construction of the Panama Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and sent 16 battleships, also known as the Great White Fleet, on a world tour.

The introduction of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904 marked the beginning of the United States actively enforcing the doctrine itself, rather than relying on the British fleet. The Roosevelt Corollary ensured that the United States could intervene in the internal affairs of the Latin American countries if necessary. Throughout the 20th century, the United States would play a decisive role in world politics as a new global power.

Dolours and Marian Price were involved in Irish republicanism during the decades-long conflict that became known as the Troubles. After the two sisters joined the IRA in the early 1970s, they were soon charged for their involvement in the 1973 IRA bombings in London. Whilst imprisoned, they went on a hunger strike that lasted over 200 days. The Price sisters were also part of the “Unknowns,” a secret unit responsible for many disappearances during the Troubles, including that of Jean McConville.

The Price Sisters: Irish Republicanism Runs in Their Blood

Andytown, or Andersonstown, is a suburb in the western part of Northern Ireland’s capital city, Belfast. Nestled beneath two hills that perch high above the city, Andersonstown is a predominantly Catholic, nationalist area of the city. Though it is now a family-friendly, peaceful part of Belfast, it once teemed with paramilitary activity during the Troubles. It was in this suburb that Dolours and Marian Price were reared by a family entrenched in Irish republican ideology.

Dolours Price, born in 1950, and Marian Price, born in 1954, were exposed to Irish republicanism from an early age. Their father was a staunch Irish republican and former member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Likewise, their mother (and grandmother) were part of the all-female faction of the IRA, the Cumann na mBan. Bridie Dolan, aunt to the Price sisters, lived with the family, and she, too, was a faithful Irish republican. In her twenties, she lost her eyesight and her hands when she accidentally dropped the explosives she was handling for the IRA.

The girls grew up hearing stories about their parents taking part in bombings and other paramilitary activities, fostering their desire to follow in their family members’ footsteps. The sisters decided from an early age that they wouldn’t stand on the sidelines of the republican cause but would instead take direct action for a united Ireland.

Civil Rights Activists

After attending school in west Belfast, including a teacher-training course, the Price sisters decided they would make more of a difference in their community if they took part in political activism. In 1969, they participated in the Belfast to Londonderry/Derry civil rights march, where they were attacked by loyalists during the Burntollet Bridge incident.

The Burntollet Bridge illustrated the political and civil unrest that had begun months prior in Northern Ireland. Marchers protested gerrymandering, or the manipulation of electoral districts. They called for freedom of speech and fair representation in jobs and housing in Londonderry/Derry, as Catholics were often discriminated against compared to Protestants.

However, during the march, activists were attacked by Ulster loyalists. Many Catholics felt that the police force in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), did not protect the marchers from loyalist attackers, furthering the already ignited tensions between nationalist and unionist communities.

The Price family was familiar with the RUC, as the force had raided the Price home before due to perceived IRA connections. The Burntollet Bridge incident was a turning point for the two women, inspiring them to take up arms alongside the IRA.

“Crazy Prices”

Two years later, in 1971, Dolours Price became the first woman to gain full membership in the IRA. Her membership came on the heels of the reintroduction of internment, a policy by which people, mostly republicans, were imprisoned without a trial. This policy influenced many young people to become “volunteers” for the IRA, prepared to lose their lives or commit acts of terrorism for Irish independence. Marian followed soon after.

The Price sisters walked the streets of Belfast armed, sometimes hiding rifles under their coats for potential confrontations with the British Army. They moved explosives for the IRA, using their charming, self-assured personalities to get through British Army checkpoints. Locally, they were known as the “Crazy Prices.” The sisters were also involved in high-profile paramilitary activity.

In March of 1973, bombs were set off in London. A bomb exploded in a car outside the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court in London, and one outside of Westminster. The city had been warned before the bombs exploded, though over 200 people were still injured, and one person died of a heart attack. The IRA was behind the bombing, and Dolours herself took responsibility for the campaign. She believed that bombing London would make more of a statement rather than bombing Belfast, so she, along with Marian and other IRA volunteers, planned the attack.

The group managed to steal four cars in Belfast and refit them with English license plates, shipping them on a ferry across the sea. Bombs were planted in all four cars, and they were all set to explode before 3 pm. However, an informer within the IRA had tipped off the British police, and the authorities were prepared to thwart the attack. In total, two bombs exploded before the police could detonate them.

The IRA volunteers were found at London’s Heathrow Airport, ready to board a flight to Dublin. In total, eight volunteers, including the Price sisters, were convicted and received double life sentences.

A Hunger for Ireland

Once imprisoned, the Price sisters decided to go on a hunger strike. Throughout Irish history, Irish prisoners had used fasting and starvation as a form of protest and as an example of their willingness to die for Ireland. In the early 20th century, Irish and British suffragettes alike used hunger strikes to protest the lack of women’s rights during the suffragette movement.

In 1981, in the midst of the Troubles, Bobby Sands and nine others died on hunger strike as they worked to put pressure on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government. Years before, though, Dolours and Marian had begun their own hunger strike, demanding to be transferred to a prison in Northern Ireland and to be recognized as political prisoners.

Due to public outcry over the sisters being fed against their will in prison, the British government discontinued their force-feedings, though the two continued with their hunger strike for more than 200 days. They were eventually transferred to Armagh prison in Northern Ireland. Dolours spent six years in Armagh and was eventually released because of her physical deterioration. Likewise, Marian was released in 1980 due to her health decline.

The “Unknowns”

Dolours belonged to the “Unknowns,” a secret unit in the IRA, and it is believed Marian was also part of the elusive group. The unit was responsible for a number of disappearances during the Troubles, including that of Jean McConville. McConville was a mother of ten who went missing in Belfast in 1972.

After being seen helping a British soldier and with rumors spreading that she was an informer, McConville was abducted by the IRA. It is believed Dolours was one of the volunteers who aided in her disappearance, driving her across the Irish border where she was held captive and later murdered. However, it is also rumored that Marian was the one to kill McConville after Dolours had confided to a number of people that Marian was the murderer. McConville’s body was found in 2003 on Shelling Hill Beach in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland.

That same year, Dolours was part of the kidnapping and disappearance of Seamus Wright after it was discovered he was a double agent for the British Army. Price drove him and Kevin McKee, a teenager who was also discovered to be an informer, across the border. Both were executed and secretly buried. In 1999, the IRA admitted that it had murdered nine out of the 16 “Disappeared,” people who had been abducted, murdered, and interred in remote locations by republicans during the Troubles. The remains of three of the victims have never been found.

The Price Sister’s Lives After the Good Friday Agreement

After she was released, Dolours moved to Dublin, where she worked as a journalist and married the actor Stephen Rea. When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, both sisters criticized it, believing the deal did not justify the suffering the people of Belfast went through during the Troubles. In the early 2000s, she contributed to the Belfast Project.

Based out of Boston College in Massachusetts, the project was an oral history archive intended to document people’s experiences during the Troubles. The director of the project was Ed Moloney, an Irish reporter who had extensive experience interviewing paramilitaries. Dolours was one of more than 40 paramilitaries who were interviewed. She detailed her experiences within the IRA, particularly her participation in disappearances. She revealed that she had driven Joe Lynskey, an IRA volunteer who was caught having an affair with the wife of another IRA member, across the border to his death.

Dolours was also known for speaking out against Gerry Adams. Adams is an Irish politician, civil rights activist, and former president of Sinn Fein, a democratic socialist party present in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. He was also instrumental during the peace process. Dolours disclosed Adams as her commanding officer in the IRA, though he adamantly denies this claim. Until her death in 2013, Dolours supported a united Ireland.

In 2009, Marian Price was arrested in connection with the attack on the Massereene Barracks in Northern Ireland. The attack left two British soldiers dead. She was charged with supporting an act of terrorism by providing an object for the purpose of a terrorist attack. She was later charged with supporting an illegal organization after presenting at a rally in Londonderry/Derry, which commemorated the Easter Rising. In 2011, she was imprisoned but was released in 2013 after protests.

In late 2024, Marian spoke out against her alleged involvement in the disappearance of Jean McConville. In the TV adaptation of Say Nothing, journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s book detailing the Troubles, Marian is depicted murdering Jean McConville. She has threatened to sue Disney+ over the depiction, saying that she had nothing to do with the disappearance or murder. However, Keefe supports the claim that Marian murdered McConville.

The Price sisters were complicated and controversial figures, representing not only the cost of the Troubles in Ireland as a whole but also of families caught in the crossfires of the conflict.

The extinction of the Rurikid dynasty in Russia at the end of the 16th century sparked a 15-year period of political turmoil known as the Time of Troubles. During this period, Russia suffered a disastrous famine, the enthronement of a pretender of uncertain origins, unpopular aristocratic rule, and military intervention by Poland and Sweden, which encouraged the formation of patriotic Russian militias that liberated Moscow and restored order with the election of Mikhail Romanov as tsar in 1613.

The Extinction of the Rurikids

The Time of Troubles came about as a result of the extinction of the main Rurikid line—the Grand Princes of Moscow, who claimed descent from the Viking chieftain Rurik—in 1598. This had much to do with Tsar Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible, who had consolidated his power by executing rival claimants from his extended family.

Ivan the Terrible’s intended successor was his eldest son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. It is generally accepted that the tsarevich died in November 1581 after an altercation with his father, who chastised Ivan’s wife for not being suitably dressed while pregnant. When the tsarevich intervened on behalf of his wife, the tsar struck his son with his staff in a fit of rage. A famous painting by Ilya Repin depicts the tsar cradling the bloodied head of his mortally wounded son in a display of remorse.

When Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, he was succeeded by his surviving adult son, Fyodor Ivanovich. Nicknamed Fyodor the Bellringer for his piety, the new tsar may have had a mental disability and certainly lacked interest in state affairs, leaving the business of government in the hands of his minister Boris Godunov, the brother of his wife Irina.

When Fyodor became tsar, there was only one other possible successor from the Rurikid line. Fyodor’s half-brother, Tsarevich Dmitry, was born in 1582, but since his mother, Maria Nagaya, was Ivan IV’s sixth wife, the marriage was considered illegitimate by the Orthodox Church. Boris Godunov had them sent to the faraway town of Uglich, where Dmitry was found dead in 1591. While a delegation from Moscow concluded that the child died in a freak accident, it was rumored that Boris was responsible.

Boris Godunov

During the 16th century, the Russian state had tripled in size, and the military expenditure to support this expansion placed a significant tax burden on peasants. The exploitation of the peasantry, combined with population growth, high inflation, and a colder climate caused a series of famines at the turn of the 17th century.

As Tsar Fyodor’s regent, Boris restored order to state administration, albeit at the expense of making powerful enemies among leading Russian aristocrats known as boyars. Meanwhile, Boris’s efforts to address the economic challenges by enserfing peasants—restricting their movement to prevent the further dwindling of the tax base—did little to arrest the economic decline. This gave peasants even greater incentives to run away and become Cossacks on Russia’s southern frontier. Boris’s economic policies not only worsened the conditions of the peasantry but also reduced the status of the lower gentry, who served as militiamen for the tsarist army.

When Tsar Fyodor died childless in January 1598, marking the extinction of the Rurikid line, Boris was the obvious candidate to succeed to the throne. While his rivals amplified rumors of his involvement in the Uglich tragedy, Boris prevailed and was crowned in September.

As an excellent administrator and effective diplomat, Tsar Boris temporarily ended costly wars with Russia’s neighbors, but his reign was overshadowed by the Great Famine of 1601-1603. While he responded energetically by making state grain reserves available to hungry peasants at low prices, he struggled to overcome speculators who manipulated grain prices by buying up the supply. The famine killed around two million people, or just under a third of Russia’s population.

False Dmitry

The Great Famine—now understood to have been caused by global cooling following the eruption of the Huaynaputina volcano in Peru in February 1600—ruined the tsar’s reputation among his subjects. God-fearing Orthodox Russians believed that God was punishing Russia for choosing an illegitimate and sinful tsar, leading many to conclude that Boris had indeed murdered Tsarevich Dmitry.

Nevertheless, Tsar Boris did not face a major threat to his rule during the famine. The Russians still needed a tsar, and the alternative candidates were equally illegitimate. This was until 1604 when a young man claiming to be Tsarevich Dmitry invaded Russia at the head of a small army consisting of Cossacks and Polish soldiers.

When “Dmitry” emerged in Poland-Lithuania in 1603, King Sigismund III of Poland saw an opportunity to turn a rival state into an ally. Upon hearing the news, Boris claimed that the young man was a dangerous runaway monk named Grigory Otrepyev. While few people genuinely believed that the young man was Dmitry, it was enough for the anti-Godunov coalition in Russia to have an alternative candidate who could convincingly present himself as a prince of the Rurikid line.

After Dmitry crossed into Russia in October 1604 at the head of 4,000 men, several cities in southern Russia declared in his favor. On December 21, the rebel army defeated a much larger tsarist force near Novgorod-Seversky (now Novhorod-Siverskyi in Ukraine). Dmitry’s ranks swelled by the day, but a month later, he was defeated at Dobrynichi and barely escaped capture.

Rather than effectively pursuing the pretender, the tsarist forces allowed him to recover and carried out atrocities against the civilian population in regions that had supported Dmitry, while a large tsarist army fruitlessly besieged Kromy near Oryol, some 200 miles south of Moscow.

The tsarist cause was fatally weakened with Boris Godunov’s death on April 13. Although the boyars in Moscow initially swore allegiance to Boris’s 16-year-old son, Fyodor II, the defection of senior tsarist commanders Pyotr Basmanov and Vasily Golitsyn from the siege camp at Kromy proved decisive in bringing about the downfall of Fyodor II on June 11. On June 20, the deposed Tsar Fyodor and his mother were killed in captivity. The same day, the pretender entered Moscow in triumph and was welcomed as the new tsar.

The Fall of the Pretender

Dmitry was crowned tsar on July 21, becoming the first and only individual in Russian history to be raised to the throne by popular rebellion. Aside from the killing of the Godunovs and the banishment of Godunov’s ally Patriarch Job, the new tsar was magnanimous towards his foes. When the ambitious boyar Vasily Shuisky attempted to seize the throne for himself, Dmitry briefly exiled him and recalled him to the boyar council within a matter of months.

While Dmitry was rumored to have sworn allegiance to King Sigismund, offering to convert Russia to Catholicism and to cede large tracts of land to Poland, he took no steps to do so in power. However, his tolerance of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and other religious groups caused some discomfort among the Orthodox faithful. Dmitry’s relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church deteriorated in late 1605 when he planned to marry the Polish princess Marina Mniszech. To the dismay of senior Orthodox clergy, Dmitry supported his bride’s refusal to convert to Orthodoxy. This amplified rumors that he was a secret Catholic.

Following his recall to the capital, Vasily Shuisky continued plotting to remove the tsar. He decided to strike on the occasion of Dmitry’s wedding in May 1606, shortly before the tsar planned to leave on a campaign against the Crimean Tatars.

Despite warnings of a plot against him, Dmitry took few precautions. On May 17, Shuisky spread rumors that the Polish wedding guests were intending to murder the tsar and all the Russians in Moscow. While an enraged mob stormed the Kremlin and hunted down the Poles, a group of conspirators broke into Dmitry’s quarters. The tsar attempted to escape out of a window but stumbled and fell, enabling the conspirators to catch up to him and kill him.

Tsar Vasily

Vasily Shuisky quickly moved to seize power and denounced the late tsar as an evil sorcerer and imposter. The dead tsar’s mangled body was initially put on public display before being cremated, after which the ashes were supposedly fired from a cannon towards Poland. Vasily hastily arranged his coronation as Tsar Vasily IV for June 1 before conveying the real Dmitry’s body to Moscow for burial and veneration as a saint.

After Shuisky’s opponents on the boyar council appointed his rival Filaret Romanov as the patriarch of Moscow, Tsar Vasily purged the council and appointed Metropolitan Hermogenes of Kazan as the new patriarch. The elderly Hermogenes proved an energetic ally to Vasily and helped him secure his hold on Moscow.

In the Russian countryside, Dmitry’s supporters claimed that he had miraculously escaped assassination once again and was still alive. Southern Russia once again rose up in rebellion in Dmitry’s name. By fall, rebel commander Ivan Bolotnikov relieved the siege of Kromy and occupied Oryol. By October, rebel columns led by Bolotnikov and Istoma Pashkov were laying siege to Moscow. However, the rebel commanders had fallen out, and elite tsarist forces under Vasily’s nephew, Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, crushed the rebels on December 2.

Bolotnikov retreated to Kaluga and defeated besieging forces in early 1607 before falling back on Tula. Vasily personally led a large army to besiege Tula, and the tsarist army captured the city in October after diverting the waters of the river Upa. Despite Vasily’s promises to spare his life, Bolotnikov was killed in secret, and many of the rebels rallied to the banner of a man who claimed to be the resurrected Tsar Dmitry.

This new pretender, known to history as False Dmitry II, established his camp at Tushino to the northwest of Moscow and besieged the capital for the next 18 months. Filaret Romanov arrived in Tushino and was reconfirmed as patriarch of Moscow, while Marina Mniszech “recognized” her husband.

Although the rebels surrounded Moscow almost completely, the actions of rebel soldiers in the countryside inspired popular uprisings on behalf of the tsar. In the meantime, Prince Skopin-Shuisky led a force of Swedish mercenaries to defeat the rebels northwest of Moscow, and “Dmitry” was forced to leave Tushino in December 1609.

A Polish Tsar?

As a result of the agreement between Sweden and the Shuiskys, Russia came to serve as a new front for the Polish-Swedish War of 1600-1611. In September 1609, King Sigismund led a Polish army to besiege Smolensk while False Dmitry II rallied new support south of Moscow. The anti-Shuisky boyars considered offering the throne to Sigismund’s son Władysław on condition that he would convert to Orthodoxy.

Tsar Vasily’s cause was undermined by the unexpected death of Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky in April 1610, and it was widely believed that the tsar had murdered his popular nephew to prevent him from challenging his throne. On July 4, 1610, a Polish army decisively defeated a Russian force at Klushino.

The defeat encouraged Shuisky’s enemies to depose him two weeks later and imprison him in a Kremlin monastery. With Polish troops heading towards Moscow, a council of seven boyars headed by Fyodor Mstislavsky formally offered the crown to Władysław.

The Polish commander Stanisław Żółkiewski invited senior Russian dignitaries, including Filaret Romanov, Vasily Golitsyn, and the former Tsar Vasily, to the Polish siege camp at Smolensk on the pretext of negotiating the terms of Władysław’s accession. However, upon their arrival, Sigismund informed the boyars that he intended to rule Russia in his own right. When the Russians refused, they were all taken prisoner and escorted to Poland. Polish troops continued to attack Russian towns, and the council of seven eventually invited the Poles to occupy Moscow to restore order.

Minin and Pozharsky

The Polish occupation of Moscow was naturally unpopular with most Russians, and Patriarch Hermogenes was arrested for denouncing the treason of the seven boyars. Most of False Dmitry II’s supporters were also opposed to Polish intervention, and the pretender’s murder by a member of his entourage in December 1610 encouraged a united front against the Poles.

Patriarch Hermogenes was still able to write secret letters encouraging the townsfolk of Nizhny Novgorod to rise up, while the nobleman Prokopy Lyapunov organized a militia against the Poles in early 1611. After the militia attacked Moscow in April 1611, the Poles were restricted to the city core, while the suburbs were burned to the ground.

The fall of the Shuisky regime and the Polish occupation of Moscow encouraged Swedish troops to secure the submission of Novgorod in June 1611. Even King James I of England considered sending troops to north Russia to secure the trading routes through Archangelsk.

The unity of the Russian militia received a bitter blow when Lyapunov was murdered by Cossacks. The Cossack leader Ivan Zarutsky assumed effective command and championed the cause of the young Ivan Dmitrievich, the posthumous son of False Dmitry II and Marina Mniszech. These efforts were opposed by the Nizhny Novgorod militia led by the butcher Kuzma Minin, who joined forces with the minor aristocrat Dmitry Pozharsky, an opponent of Zarutsky.

Financed by the townsfolk in the Volga region, who had continued to conduct profitable trade throughout the Time of Troubles, Minin and Pozharsky organized the Second National Militia to challenge not only the Poles but Zarutsky, who had recently eliminated a third False Dmitry who emerged in northwestern Russia. From his base at Yaroslavl, Pozharsky attracted many Cossacks from Zarutsky’s ranks.

A New Dynasty

During the summer of 1612, the Second Militia’s prospects improved as the Poles and Zarutsky clashed repeatedly to the west of Moscow, with both sides sustaining heavy losses. In July, Zarutsky was abandoned by his ally, Dmitry Trubetskoy, who joined forces with Pozharsky. However, Trubetskoy was conscious of being a higher-ranking aristocrat and resented being under Pozharsky’s authority.

At the beginning of September, when the Polish commander Jan Karol Chodkiewicz led a relief force to attack Pozharsky’s army besieging Moscow, Trubetskoy remained on the sidelines. However, most of his Cossacks joined the battle and helped Pozharsky achieve victory.

Trubetskoy and Pozharsky soon came to an agreement in which Trubetskoy was appointed nominal commander-in-chief of the militia even though Pozharsky and Minin remained in charge. In early November, the national militia successfully liberated Moscow and forced the Polish garrison to evacuate the city. An interim government nominally led by Trubetskoy was installed while the Assembly of the Land was summoned to elect a new tsar.

The delegates were initially deadlocked, and Trubetskoy’s own candidacy was opposed by Pozharsky and the boyars. The Romanov family, who had supported the first two false Dmitrys before joining the seven boyars, proposed the 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov, son of the imprisoned Patriarch Filaret. While Trubetskoy and Pozharsky opposed the Romanov candidacy, a body of Trubetskoy’s cossack delegates declared in his favor, and Mikhail was elected tsar on February 7, 1613.

While rival boyar families were not enthusiastic about Mikhail, they believed that they could control him via the boyar council. While Mikhail’s position on the throne was initially precarious, Romanov propagandists moved to cover up the family’s association with the pretenders and the Poles, and the tsar’s agents quickly silenced anti-Romanov voices.

During the early years of his reign, Mikhail summoned the Assembly regularly to coordinate reconstruction efforts, but following Filaret’s return from captivity in 1619, the tsar’s father became the effective ruler of Russia until his death in 1633. The Romanov dynasty continued to rule Russia for three centuries until the 1917 Revolution.

Legacy

The Time of Troubles was an incredibly traumatic period of Russian history that has reverberated through the centuries. During the 19th century, Boris Godunov became one of the most famous tragic figures in Russian drama, firstly with Alexander Pushkin’s 1825 play Boris Godunov, which in turn inspired Modest Mussorgsky’s 1872 opera Boris Godunov.

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Tsar Alexander I made reference to Minin and Pozharsky as he rallied the Russian people to resist the invader. In 1818, a few years after Russia’s victory over Napoleon, a statue of Minin and Pozharsky was unveiled in Red Square, celebrating the militia leaders who liberated Moscow in the 17th century.

In 1815, the Italian court composer Catterino Cavos wrote a two-act opera, Ivan Susanin, based on the legendary tale of an old man who is supposed to have given his life to save Mikhail Romanov from Polish soldiers. Mikhail Glinka’s 1836 opera A Life for the Tsar on the same subject, renamed Ivan Susanin during the Soviet period, is considered Russia’s first national opera.

When Russia experienced a similar period of political turbulence and economic crisis at the beginning of the 20th century with the First World War, the Revolutions of 1917, and the Russian Civil War, opponents of the Bolshevik regime labeled the period as the krasnaya smuta or “Red troubles.”

In contemporary Russia, the Time of Troubles is used to justify the need for a strong ruler who can prevent anarchy and disorder. In 2005, Vladimir Putin’s government instituted a national holiday known as the Day of National Unity on November 4, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Moscow from Polish occupation in 1612.

Autogolpes, or self-coups, occur when a leader who came to power legitimately overthrows themselves as president in favor of an illegitimate but all-powerful leadership position unburdened by his country’s legislature or judiciary. While the best-known autogolpe in the Latin American region occurred in Peru in 1992, successful and attempted self-coups have plagued the region since independence. Is Latin America especially susceptible to autogolpes, and if so, why?

Latin America: Birthplace of the Autogolpe?

While various forms of government overthrow have abounded around the globe, the autogolpe, the name itself born in the region, seems to be especially prevalent in Latin America. The key to this phenomenon may lie in how independent governance evolved in the wake of colonization and the rise of caudillismo.

In the power vacuum left behind after Spain’s withdrawal from the continent, former military leaders often took charge, having gained influential wealth and power from the lands they were granted in reward for their service. In this period of instability, people looked to strong rulers who could protect them. These caudillos, steeped in military traditions of unquestioned authority and strict adherence to orders, led the only way they knew how: with an iron fist. Caudillos might pursue policies that were progressive or conservative, but their governance style was authoritarian.

While caudillismo ultimately fell out of favor with the global push toward participatory democracy, it had left its mark: a practice, both among politicians and the populace, of obedience to a single, strong-willed leader. This tradition was necessarily at odds with the multi-pronged structure of democratic governance, as well as the development of institutions to hold the government accountable. As a result, democracy was slow to take hold in Latin America, undermined by military coups, authoritarian power grabs, and outright dictatorship throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that when democracy did get a foothold, elected leaders struggled to function under a system designed to impede unilateral rule. While they believed in democracy enough to get themselves elected, such a belief often did not extend to their actual time in office. From here, then, the autogolpe is born.

Self-Coups Without a Name: Early Autogolpes

The term “autogolpe” did not enter the political discourse until, arguably, the late 20th century, and the majority of government overthrows in Latin America prior to that were orchestrated by the military, sometimes with the help of the CIA. Still, there are several historical events for which the term could be applied in retrospect. Mexico’s famous Santa Anna, for example, pursued a number of autogolpe-like tactics during his numerous presidencies, including the dissolution of congress in 1834 and repeal of the constitution in 1835. However, given that representative governments had arguably not been fully consolidated in these countries, these power grabs were often seen as missteps along the path to fully implementing democracy, rather than coups.

One successful autogolpe took place in Brazil in 1937, when the democratically elected  Getúlio Vargas moved to install himself as a dictator. Though his rule, begun in 1930, had already been marked by authoritarian moves like suspending civil rights and declaring successive “states of emergency” that gave the government outsized policing powers, it finally came to a head when he “convinced” congress to sign a new constitution. With that done, the upcoming presidential elections were cancelled, opposition candidates arrested, political parties banned, and the media censored. For the next eight years, the country was largely ruled by decree until the military deposed Vargas in 1945.

Uruguay also faced not one but two events that could be termed self-coups, the first in 1933. Gabriel Terra had been elected in 1931 and faced a spiraling economic situation. He proposed reforming the constitution and dissolving the agency that set economic and social policies. Deciding that these reforms weren’t coming to fruition quickly enough, Terra dissolved the general assembly and began ruling by decree, censoring the press and silencing the opposition. Although a new constitution was ultimately adopted and a constituent assembly elected, Terra won an illegal second term and continued in power until 1938.

Again in 1973, the democratically elected candidate, Juan María Bordaberry, already employing a variety of authoritarian tactics, including the suspension of civil liberties and imprisonment of opposition candidates, moved to rule as a dictator. After just one year in office, Bordaberry dissolved congress and suspended the constitution. Awarding extraordinary powers to the country’s police and military, he ruled by decree, advised only by his security council, until he was forced to resign.

Despite these earlier examples, it was ultimately the dramatic government overthrow orchestrated by Peru’s president Alberto Fujimori in 1992 that brought widespread recognition to the term autogolpe.

Fujimorazo: The Quintessential Self-Coup

The quintessential self-coup, the one that cemented the word autogolpe in the lexicon of history, was Fujimori’s overthrow of his own legitimate government in Peru. Elected two years earlier in a country plagued by terrorist attacks from the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla movement, Fujimori struggled to move his agenda through the country’s legislature, where his party was in the minority. In particular, opposition parties resisted the adoption of economic austerity measures being pushed by financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank.

On April 5, 1992, Fujimori suspended the country’s constitution, dissolved the legislature, dismissed senior judges, and placed prominent opposition officials under house arrest. Former president Alan Garcia barely escaped arrest and sought asylum in Colombia. Fujimori quickly adopted Decree Law 25418, giving himself all legislative powers and overriding the country’s constitution.

Often overlooked in recounting the autogolpe, the country’s military had, years earlier, drawn up plans for a “traditional” military coup, the so-called Plan Verde, which Fujimori adopted to launch his self-coup. It then comes as no surprise that all branches of the military promptly signed a communiqué supporting Fujimori’s new Government of Emergency and National Reconstruction—it was their own plan all along. The military took control of the nation’s media outlets and occupied government buildings, tear-gassing a group of politicians attempting to hold a session after Fujimori’s announcement disbanding the legislature.

International response to the self-coup was underwhelming. Although the general opinion was against Fujimori’s illegal moves, Peru was not suspended from the Organization of American States for violating the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Within two weeks, the US formally recognized Fujimori as Peru’s legitimate president. Domestically, Peru’s politicians and journalists rejected the autogolpe, but the Peruvian people, though perhaps limited in their understanding of events by media blackout, largely supported Fujimori. In fact, they would go on to re-elect him in 1995 in what were broadly considered free and fair elections. The Fujimorazo was a success.

Guatemala 1993: The Failed Copycat Autogolpe

In 1993, the beleaguered president of Guatemala, Jorge Serrano Elías, who had apparently watched Fujimori’s autogolpe with great interest, attempted a similar power grab. Just two years earlier, Serrano’s accession to the presidency had marked the first peaceful and democratic transfer of power from an incumbent to the opposition in 40 years, a promising start. Yet, with the country amid a prolonged civil war and his party holding just 18 seats in the legislature, he was primed for a difficult term.

During his first two years, the country saw modest economic growth, and Serrano was able to reestablish civilian control over the military. Yet, he failed to sufficiently address the issue of human rights abuses by the military and right-wing paramilitaries and made little progress in securing peace with the leftist rebels, both key campaign promises.

Despite his party’s success in the 1993 mayoral elections, Serrano remained relatively weak politically, so his next step has long puzzled political scholars. On May 25, 1993, Serrano suspended the country’s constitution and closed congress, as well as the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court. Like Fujimori, Serrano proclaimed himself a champion of democracy, implementing these measures in order to root out the corruption in the very institutions of governance that were preventing democracy from thriving.

Unlike Fujimori, Serrano gravely overestimated his popularity and support, particularly with the military, which had been so key in Fujimori’s takeover. Widespread opposition to his maneuvers quickly coalesced among civil society, including key players like the press and the Catholic Church, international organizations condemned his takeover, and foreign governments imposed sanctions. By June 1, Serrano had resigned and fled the country. Democracy, though temporarily thrown into chaos, prevailed.

Autogolpes in the 21st Century

Despite the widespread consolidation of democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere, autogolpes have continued into the modern era, though they have evolved over time. Rather than outright disbanding the co-institutions of government, today’s self-coup often involves illegally co-opting the legislature and judiciary, undermining and ultimately rendering impotent the other branches of government, or simply ignoring them and daring anyone to stop them. There have been quite a number over the last two decades, including another attempted self-coup in Peru in 2022.

With Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013, Nicolas Maduro, then-vice president, took over Venezuela’s presidency. Venezuela was arguably already in dictatorship territory prior to Chavez’s passing, but the vestiges of democracy remained. Even those quickly fell apart. After the opposition won control of the National Assembly in 2015, Maduro quickly moved to fill the country’s Supreme Court with allies during “lame duck” assembly sessions and oversaw the removal of opposition candidates from the new legislature due to supposed electoral irregularities, ending the opposition’s supermajority.

The packed court, cancelling a recall referendum, awarded Maduro more and more authority, until he ultimately ordered it to take over the assembly’s legislative powers in 2017. After elections, widely regarded both at home and abroad as rigged, produced a Constituent Assembly favorable to Maduro, he declared the 2015 assembly dissolved. He remains in power today.

El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele has often referred to himself as the “world’s coolest dictator,” and the dictator part, at least, is not hyperbole. Elected in 2019, his party initially didn’t have enough legislative representation to push his agenda. His response, on one occasion, was to send soldiers into the legislative assembly to intimidate it into approving a loan request. After his party won the majority of seats in 2021, Bukele moved swiftly to ensure his ongoing authority. The five judges on the country’s Constitutional Court were removed, along with the attorney general, and new, Bukele-friendly judges took over. By 2022, Bukele had invoked the country’s infamous “state of exception,” suspending civil liberties like due process and jailing tens of thousands of “gang members” in order to bring order to a country plagued by violence. Despite a constitutional ban on consecutive terms, Bukele was inaugurated for a second time in 2024.

One unifying element of 21st-century autogolpes is that they are commonly referred to as “constitutional crises” until their success or failure is determined. These two examples of modern self-coups were without a doubt successes, but a number of constitutional crises elsewhere present additional threats to the supremacy of democracy over autocracy in the hemisphere.

Pressure for change in political leadership can come from the outside or from inside the government itself. But what happens when the president wants to be king? Autogolpe is the term used when would-be autocrats are democratically elected and then swiftly move to undermine their own governments and consolidate power. Less blatant and usually less bloody than a traditional coup d’état, autogolpes have a higher success rate—and can be just as hard to overcome.

The Coup: A Time-Honored Tradition

As long as there have been leaders, there have been people dissatisfied with their leadership and various methods employed to bring that leadership to a swift end. Whether the people rise up or an assassin steps in, unpopular leaders usually don’t remain leaders for very long.

However, the pressure for a change in government often comes not from the outside—rebellion—but from within. A coup is generally defined as an attack on the state—or more specifically, “the illegal removal of a leader by force or threat of force by those within the government.” Given the brute strength of the military, it is quite often at the head of such attacks on the state, like the overthrow of Argentina’s Juan Perón in 1955 or Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Military coups are the most recognizable type of overthrow—particularly in the modern era, where palace coups are by and large no longer relevant.

As democracy has become the preferred form of government, and especially with the advent of global news media, ousting leaders—popular or unpopular—outside the confines of the electoral process has become more challenging. An outright coup, especially one broadcast around the world, would usually bring widespread condemnation and perhaps international pressure or the loss of much-needed foreign loans.

But that doesn’t mean coups have disappeared; they’ve just adapted. Instead of the military overthrowing the president, presidents have just started overthrowing themselves.

The New Coup: Autogolpe

Autogolpe, Spanish for “self-coup,” is, as the name implies, a coup against oneself, and there have been at least eleven attempted or successful autogolpes in the Americas alone since WWII. Essentially, the leader in question, who has come to power legitimately, overthrows himself* as president to instead take up a new, illegitimate, and all-powerful leadership position unconstrained by the other elements of his own government apparatus intended to provide checks and balances on the executive.

As political scientist Maxwell Cameron explains, “Presidents implement autogolpes in order to pursue policies that would be impeded by a vigorous legislature, independent courts, and watchful citizens.” Those policies vary by regime, but one common cause is the president’s desire to continue in power after losing an election or completing his allotted number of terms.

Unlike the slower consolidation of powers that often marks a leader’s shift from president to autocrat (à la Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua), the hallmark of the autogolpe has long been the rapid dismantling of the other branches of government and the wholesale purge of government employees who are not loyal to the president himself.

The legislative and judicial branches are (ostensibly temporarily) dissolved, and the constitution is suspended. Without them, the president rules by decree, usually until he can set up loyal governing bodies to present the outward appearance of democracy while vesting most, if not all, of the state’s power in the executive.

In addition, the outright dissolution of governing bodies may not be necessary for the modern autogolpe; some scholars contend that actively undermining the legislature, judiciary, and constitution, to the point where they are rendered powerless, might also qualify. For example, political scientist David Pion-Berlin and his co-authors define the autogolpe more broadly to include events in which “a nation’s chief executive, in order to hold onto, consolidate or expand power, coercively interferes with or shuts down another branch or branches of government.”

It’s important to highlight that the populace does not necessarily have to condemn the autocrat in order for his actions to be considered a self-coup—though that is often the result. There have been instances where citizens have initially supported the president’s actions in the face of an intransigent or incompetent government—including what is widely considered the “first” autogolpe.

*Author’s note: There are no recorded autogolpes or attempted autogolpes by women.

The First Autogolpe?

While no doubt similar forms of government overthrow preceded it, the quintessential autogolpe, the lens through which most contemporary autogolpes are seen, remains Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 overthrow of his own legitimate government in Peru.

On April 5, 1992, Fujimori, elected as an “outsider” candidate two years earlier, suspended the country’s constitution, closed its congress and dismissed senior judges. While Fujimori had won the presidency, his party’s minimal representation in congress and faltering political alliances made enacting his agenda nearly impossible. So, he gave up.

Instead of continuing to work within the confines of the democratic process, he instituted emergency measures designed to root out alleged corruption in the judiciary and reshape the legislature. Media outlets were placed under military control, and several prominent opposition officials were placed under house arrest. All branches of the military signed a communiqué supporting the new Government of Emergency and National Reconstruction.

Though Fujimori claimed he was not trying to destroy the country’s democracy but make it more efficient and effective, it was under considerable international pressure, including from the Organization of American States, that he agreed to call for new elections. Finally scheduled for November 1992, the opposition was divided over whether or not to participate. The new congress that was ultimately elected gave Fujimori a majority and then drafted a new constitution, which barely passed by referendum in 1993.

Yet Peruvians largely supported Fujimori’s anti-democratic actions, due in part to the country’s inability to address the Shining Path insurgency movement and his support for a stronger military response to the guerrillas. In fact, Fujimori was reelected in 1995.

The “first” autogolpe was an undeniable success—though it’s worth noting that Fujimori, after claiming victory in highly irregular elections in 2000, resigned, then fled the country amid bribery and human rights scandals. He was ultimately arrested and was only released on humanitarian grounds that saved him from dying in prison.

Keys to Success: Launching a Winning Autogolpe

Though anyone launching a coup must have some reason to believe they will succeed, according to political scientist John J. Chin, while about half of traditional coup attempts fail, four out of five attempted autogolpes succeed. Why are autogolpes more successful than “regular” coups and what leads to their success?

Conditions prior to the launching of a self-coup play an important role. Countries with a long history of democracy are less likely to fall victim to an autogolpe, while those that haven’t built up sufficient popular belief in the value of democracy over other forms of government may be more susceptible. In Latin America, with a history of caudillismo, or strong-man rule, following independence from Spain, autocracy has a much longer tradition than democratic rule.

Military support is essential for a successful autogolpe; the leader must ensure that the country’s armed forces are loyal to him personally. The implicit threat of repressive action against ousted officials or the civilian populace is necessary to ensure that the autogolpe proceeds apace. The dangers of attempting an autogolpe without it can be seen in two recent failed self-coups: Peru in 2022 and South Korea in 2024. Both presidents ended up in jail when military support for their power grabs failed to materialize, and they were instead held to account.

The leader’s ability to control the narrative surrounding his illegal actions is also paramount; a successful self-coup will usually see press freedoms being curtailed or national media being co-opted by the new regime. Having an identifiable threat, like Fujimori with the Shining Path, may help to convince people, at least in the short term, that extraordinary measures must be taken. However, over the long term, a return to the trappings of democracy is generally necessary to appease both internal and external observers.

The Challenges of Fighting Autogolpes

By nullifying the state apparatus that people have traditionally relied on to, however clumsily, represent their interests while simultaneously retaining power over the state’s military forces, the autogolpe leaves the citizenry few avenues to protest, let alone fight back. People cannot appeal to legislators when there’s no legislature; lawsuits can’t be brought to courts that no longer exist. Further, with the regime silencing or taking over national media, comprehension of what’s actually happening may be limited, decreasing the likelihood of mass movements like general strikes.

Even less inspiring, self-coup failures historically have largely been the result of the leaders themselves overestimating their support with the military or party elites, not because of anything the citizenry has done or is able to do to stop them.

There is some evidence that international pressure, as it does with traditional coups, can undermine self-coups specifically by causing the president’s internal support to dry up—if the military or his political supporters believe international action is imminent, they may flinch.

Political scientist Alexander Noyes argues that “international supporters of democracy must step up and provide more robust and consistent responses to executive coup attempts.” Mass demonstrations may also put sufficient pressure on the president’s supporters but run the risk of being suppressed by the military.

Some scholars argue that disincentivizing autogolpes—for example, the adoption of clear prosecution standards for leaders attempting a self-coup—may play a role in preventing them. The fact that nearly all of Peru’s living former presidents are currently in prison or under house arrest, at least three of them having attempted autogolpes, may serve as a cautionary tale—potential jail time does not always dissuade presidential shenanigans.

Overall, evidence suggests that “high media accuracy, low partisanship, and citizen support for democracy typically promote democratic survival,” and therefore are keys to both preventing and undermining autogolpes. However, in a world of rising populism, these elements are increasingly absent.

During the American Revolutionary War, the young New York lawyer Alexander Hamilton established a close working relationship with General George Washington and served as his senior aide-de-camp. His administrative abilities and financial expertise led Washington to appoint him as Secretary of the Treasury after becoming the first president of the United States. Hamilton had a grand vision for how the federal government could support the American economy. While his ideas were controversial and faced considerable opposition, his contributions helped the United States become an economic superpower.

Washington’s Right-Hand Man

Alexander Hamilton’s working relationship with George Washington began in early 1777 when he was appointed the commander-in-chief’s aide-de-camp during the American Revolutionary War. Washington had been impressed by Hamilton’s conduct as an artillery officer the previous year, and the general soon found him an indispensable asset in his efforts to lead the United States to victory over British forces.

Since Washington struggled to deal with the voluminous correspondence from Congress, individual states, and subordinate officers on other fronts, the 22-year-old Hamilton quickly used his administrative skills to help the general manage the workload. Soon, he was given the authority to issue orders on Washington’s behalf. Although Hamilton begged Washington for a field command, the commander was reluctant to lose him from his staff and kept him on until March 1781. Hamilton secured his desired command in the summer of 1781 and took part in the Siege of Yorktown.

During his service as Washington’s de facto chief of staff, Hamilton shared the general’s frustrations regarding the Constitutional Congress’ limited powers and the tendency for individual states to prioritize their own narrow interests over the national cause. While the Articles of Confederation had come into force in 1781, after the war, Hamilton believed that further centralization was required and joined forces with James Madison of Virginia to call for a stronger national government.

Their efforts led to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. Washington presided over the deliberations that resulted in the promulgation of a new Constitution in September 1787, which was ratified by the states the following summer.

Secretary of the Treasury

Washington became the first president of the United States in April 1789 and appointed Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury in September. Other members of Washington’s cabinet included Secretary of War Henry Knox, who had been Hamilton’s superior officer as artillery commander of the Continental Army, Attorney General Edmund Randolph of Virginia, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had been serving as ambassador to France in Paris and did not take office until early 1790. The future president would become Hamilton’s leading rival within the cabinet.

Hamilton’s immediate duties included setting up accounting systems for the federal government and creating the US Customs Service to collect the import duties that served as the main source of government revenue. While taxation was a contentious issue since it had been a major cause of the American Revolution, there was a general consensus among America’s early political leaders that the federal government had to be able to collect taxes to support its operations.

Hamilton’s most important task as Secretary of the Treasury was to address the issue of America’s public debt accumulated during wartime, which amounted to some $79 million. Much of this was in the form of bonds issued to war veterans in lieu of pay. Since there was little expectation that these would be redeemed, most veterans promptly sold their IOUs to financial speculators at heavy discounts to their face value. Hamilton’s solution reflected his ambitions to leverage the scale of the federal government to stimulate economic development.

Government Credit

In January 1790, Hamilton presented his 40,000-word First Report on Public Credit to Congress. The core of Hamilton’s proposals were the concepts of redemption and assumption. Hamilton argued that the government should redeem the bonds by paying the bondholders rather than the initial recipients. Additionally, he believed that the federal government should assume the debt of the states, transferring bondholders’ loyalty to the national government rather than the states.

Both redemption and assumption faced opposition in Congress. Hamilton’s erstwhile ally, James Madison, broke with him on the issue of redemption, arguing that it would not be fair to war veterans while enriching speculators who did nothing to support the war effort. Hamilton defended his plans by emphasizing the importance of ensuring full faith in government credit so that the government could borrow and invest in the economy at low rates.

While Hamilton’s redemption bill was easily passed by Congress, the assumption bill was more politically contentious. Not only would this entail a significant centralization of powers for the federal government’s powers to borrow and tax, but less indebted states felt it was unfair to share the burden at the federal level with more indebted states.

Madison rallied opposition to defeat the assumption bill in the House. It was only after Hamilton compromised in June 1790 by agreeing to support a permanent capital on the site of Washington DC that Jefferson and Madison agreed to drop their opposition.

The First Bank of the United States

In December 1790, Hamilton presented his Second Report on the Public Credit, in which he sought to build on the foundations of his public credit system by establishing a central bank. This institution would issue a uniform national currency, loan to public and private entities to develop the economy, collect revenues, and hold government funds.

While Hamilton saw the national bank as a key part of his program to stabilize the economy and stimulate investment, Jefferson and Madison argued that the proposals were unconstitutional as there were no provisions for such a bank in the Constitution.

After the bill passed the House, Jefferson urged Washington to veto it on constitutional grounds. The president gave Hamilton the opportunity to respond, and the latter made a strong argument for its constitutionality since the Constitution allowed Congress to pass legislation considered “necessary and proper” for its functioning. Washington accepted Hamilton’s arguments and chartered the Bank of the United States on February 25, 1791.

The issue of a national bank has been contentious throughout American history. Hamilton’s opponent, James Madison, was president in 1811 and refused to renew the 20-year charter of the First Bank of the United States. However, after the government was on the brink of bankruptcy during the War of 1812, Madison recognized that some form of national bank was required. The Second Bank of the United States, formed in 1816, was, in turn, abolished by President Andrew Jackson in 1836, and it was not until the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 that the United States had a central bank again.

Promoting American Industry

In December 1791, Hamilton produced the Report on Manufactures, his third major policy paper as Secretary of the Treasury. Although Hamilton was in favor of close trading relations with Britain and endorsed free markets in principle, the rationale behind the report was to achieve economic independence from Britain and nurture the development of American commerce. In order to achieve these objectives, Hamilton suggested protective tariffs, subsidizing industry, and a public infrastructure program to encourage interstate trade and develop a national economy.

Hamilton’s proposals once again met with opposition from Jefferson and Madison as pandering to financial interests in his home state of New York, further deepening the split between Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

In fact, Hamilton’s recommendations were relatively moderate and sought to strike a balance between commercial and agrarian interests. The proposals for subsidies were particularly unpopular, and Congress never brought them to a vote. However, most of Hamilton’s tariff proposals were enacted in the aftermath of the report. Tariffs would be a major factor in the sectionalization of American politics during the 19th century, with northern states preferring higher tariffs and southern states preferring lower ones.

Despite its mixed reception from Congress, the Report on Manufactures has remained an influential text over the centuries in establishing how the central government could proactively support economic development. While Americans have mostly endorsed free trade, the federal government uses subsidies and infrastructure investment to stimulate the economy. The idea that protectionist policies can support industrial development in developing countries continues to be influential in development economics.

Resignation From Government

Since the federal government’s main source of revenue was customs and excise duties from international trade, Hamilton also took an interest in foreign affairs, which further contributed to his frosty relationship with Jefferson. After war broke out between France and Britain in 1793, Hamilton wanted a close trading relationship with Britain, while Jefferson sympathized with the French Revolution.

In response to provocative actions by the British navy, such as intercepting American ships trading with France and forcibly enlisting American sailors into their ranks, Hamilton persuaded Washington to dispatch John Jay to negotiate a treaty to address the contentious issues and secure a favorable trading agreement.

By the time Jay returned to the United States with an agreement that improved trading relations with Britain, but without any commitment to end the impressment of American sailors, Hamilton had already resigned from the Treasury at the end of January 1795. Shortly before doing so, he issued his Report on a Plan for the Further Support of Public Credit to Congress, which defended his economic program and proposed methods to prevent the indefinite accumulation of the national debt by assessing government revenues and expenditures.

Hamilton further expanded on the necessity of protecting government credit by rejecting calls to tax interest payments to creditors or to sequester the property and assets of the nationals of hostile powers in wartime.

An Enduring Legacy

A few months after resigning from the Treasury, Hamilton returned to his lucrative legal practice in New York and continued to advise Washington behind the scenes, helping to draft his famous Farewell Address.

In spite of his involvement in the embarrassing Maria Reynolds affair, Hamilton remained active in public life and was in effective command of the US Army during the Quasi-War with France. His intervention on behalf of his rival Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election at the expense of his New York rival Aaron Burr, together with his efforts to undermine Burr’s 1804 campaign for governor of New York, contributed to the fateful Hamilton-Burr duel of July 11, 1804, which resulted in Hamilton’s death the following day.

Despite his death at the relatively young age of 49, Hamilton has left behind an immense legacy. While his image began to appear on the US $10 bill in 2006, public awareness of Hamilton soared after Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton debuted on Broadway in 2015. However, Hamilton’s greatest legacy is his undoubtedly public credit system, which arguably serves as the basis not only of the American economy but the global economy.

Although the sustainability of US government debt has remained a contentious issue throughout American history, US Treasuries are widely considered to be the safest and most liquid assets in the world, and the US government has never defaulted on its debt. The faith in US government credit that Hamilton sought to protect remains a key factor in the American government’s ability to borrow from domestic and international creditors at low rates, enabling the United States to be an economic and military superpower in the 20th and 21st centuries.

In 1962, during maintenance works of the cooling system of the Vatican’s Belvedere Courtyard, a group of workers stumbled upon something unexpected: a set of bones. Though initially thought to belong to a dinosaur, the large tooth and fragments of jawbone were, in fact, the remains of a pet elephant owned by Pope Leo X. Named Hanno, the young animal was a gift of King Manuel I of Portugal to the newly elected pope. Besides delighting the Roman court, Hanno became intertwined with the troubled political and religious landscape of 16th-century Europe.

Pope Leo X: A Renaissance Ruler

In March 1513, the papal conclave gathered in Rome elected Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici to be the successor of Pope Julius II. Born in Florence in 1475, the new Pope Leo X was the second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the head of the powerful Medici family and de facto ruler of the Republic of Florence.

Destined to take up a career in the Catholic Church, the young Giovanni was tutored by some of the best scholars of the Italian Renaissance, including Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, and Marsilio Ficino, who educated their pupil according to the humanist ideals of the time. Besides taking lessons in rhetoric and classical subjects, Giovanni de’ Medici gained experience in diplomacy and governance, witnessing firsthand at his father’s court the power dynamics at play in the complex political landscape of 15th and 16th-century Italy.

In 1494, a 19-year-old Giovanni and his family fell victim to that volatile landscape. Forced to go into exile, the Medici left Florence following accusations of having betrayed the republic. Giovanni spent the following years traveling through Europe. He returned to Italy in 1500, where he settled in Rome. In 1512, he eventually restored his family’s control in Florence.

As a pope, Giovanni quickly became the embodiment of the quintessential Renaissance ruler. In a time when politics, culture, and religion were deeply intertwined, Pope Leo X transformed Rome into a leading cultural center. His patronage of the arts led many scholars, musicians, and artists to settle in the city. During his time in office, Leo X commissioned Raphael to paint frescoes in the Vatican Apartments, expedited the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, and enriched the collections of the Vatican Library.

Resembling more a temporal ruler than a spiritual leader, Pope Leo X also aimed to become an influential player in the Italian and international arenas, seeking to further the interests of the Papal States and the Medici family. In 1517, for example, he had young Cardinal Alfonso Petrucci imprisoned in Castel St. Angelo and killed in secret. Charged with masterminding an alleged conspiracy against Leo X, Cardinal Petrucci not coincidentally belonged to a family who threatened the Medici’s hold in Tuscany.

A Wondrous Gift

The exchange of extravagant gifts was a common practice in Renaissance diplomacy, with rulers hoping to secure political support and financial favors by impressing their allies. In the 16th century, as the discovery of direct trade routes to Africa and the Far East opened new markets, many European rulers started collecting “exotic” flora and fauna in the courts. Thus, along with luxury goods, pets and birds from Africa and India began to be a common sight in royal menageries throughout Europe. The members of the Habsburg dynasty, for example, became avid collectors of exotic pets.

Besides entertaining and dazzling guests, the exotic pets and birds were living symbols of their owner’s financial prestige and power in global trade. In particular, King Manuel I of Portugal was set to secure his monopoly on the spice trade. After Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498, Portugal started building trading posts, known as feitorias, to establish relations with the local authorities. King Manuel also developed a special interest in Indian elephants, bringing several pachyderms to his court. Soon, he also used them as diplomatic gifts. After all, elephants “were the ultimate gift a Western European ruler could hope for,” as historian Annemarie Jordan Gschwend remarks.

As Egypt, fearing that it would lose control of the overland trade with the Far East, sought to sway Leo X against Portugal, King Manuel decided to send an envoy to Rome to honor the newly elected pope with an array of precious gifts, including a gold chalice, parrots, and leopards. The most eye-catching gift, however, was a young albino elephant. Born in Cochi (now Kochi), a Portuguese-controlled town in southwestern India, the animal had arrived in Portugal in 1511 after a long sea voyage. In 1514, he embarked on a second journey.

During the first stops in Alicante, the island of Ibiza, and the port of Palma (Mallorca), the elephant immediately began to attract the attention of local residents, with large crowds clamoring to get a glimpse of the animal or even climb on the ship. To avoid delays or incidents, Nicolau de Faria, the equerry in charge of the pachyderm, eventually decided against making any more stops.

When the ship reached Porto Ercole, news of the famous elephant’s arrival had already reached the town on the Tuscan coast. As the Portuguese envoy began traveling to Rome, an ever-growing crowd followed it on foot or horseback, causing damage to fields and buildings. When the elephant and his keeper stayed overnight at a cardinal’s villa in Tarquinia (a town near Rome), so many locals climbed on the roof of a nearby inn that its roof collapsed. Finally, on March 19, 1514, the elephant arrived in Rome.

The Darling of the Pope’s Court

Wearing an elaborate decoration on his back, the elephant made a spectacular entry into the city, with residents rushing to witness his arrival. Having been trained as a performing animal, he also amazed the pope and the court during his first visit to the Vatican. In his 1533 account of the event, Pasquale Malaspina recalled, “with its trumpet so much noise it made that the entire place was deafened; and stretching itself on the ground to kneel it then straightened up in reverence to the Pope, and to his entourage.”

Leo X was immediately delighted by his gift and named him Annone (Hanno) after the Carthaginian seaman. “The sight of this quadruped provides us with the greatest amusement and has become for our people an object of extraordinary wonder,” wrote the pope to King Manuel, adding that “It was the elephant which excited the greatest astonishment to the whole world, as much from the memories it evoked of the ancient past, for the arrival of similar beast was fairly frequent in the days of ancient Rome.”

After Hanno’s arrival at the Vatican, he quickly became the darling of the pope’s court and the main attraction of Rome’s social life. The elephant resided in the Belvedere Courtyard, where he was cared for by his keeper, Giovanni Battista Branconio dell’Aquila, dubbed “il pedagogo de l’alifante” (the elephant’s pedagogue) by satirist Pietro Aretino. Pope Leo X paid Giovanni 100 ducati a year for looking after his beloved pet.

During his stay at the Vatican, Hanno appeared in several events and performances organized to entertain the pope and his court. The elephant even took part in a cruel prank Leo X played at the expense of Cosimo Baraballo, the Abbot of Gaeta and an amateur poet. To humiliate the vain abbot, the pope planned a mock procession through the streets of Rome. The unsuspecting Baraballo agreed to be carried on Hanno’s back to the Campidoglio Square, where the pope promised he would be solemnly crowned “arch-poet.” On the day of the prank, however, the elephant, disturbed by the crowd’s noise, panicked and threw Baraballo to the ground.

Despite the pope’s attention, life at the Vatican did not benefit Hanno. In 1516, his health started to deteriorate. Alarmed, Leo X summoned his best doctors to examine him. Believing Hanno was suffering from constipation, they prescribed a laxative with a high dose of gold, a common treatment at the time. However, Hanno died shortly after on June 8.

Hanno in Art: Satirists and Artists

Pope Leo X mourned the death of his beloved companion, tasking artist Raphael Sanzio with creating a life-size fresco portrait to commemorate him. The fresco was unfortunately later destroyed. Leo himself had written the epitaph. In the following years, many artists depicted Hanno in their work. Giovanni da Udine, for example, built the Fontana dell’Elefante (Fountain of the Elephant) in the gardens of Villa Madama. Raphael’s assistants included Hanno in the fresco known as Creazione degli animali (Creation of the Animals) in the loggia of the Apostolic Palace.

At the same time, Pope Leo X’s love for Hanno did not escape the notice of satirists, who saw the elephant as a symbol of the papacy’s moral bankruptcy and penchant for luxury. In his The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno, Pietro Aretino, known as the “Scourge of Princes,” denounced the wrongdoings of Leo X and his followers. In the satirical text, for example, the elephant arranged to leave his jaws to a cardinal so that he could use them to devour “all the money of the republic of Christ.”

Pope Leo X, Hanno, & the Protestant Reformation

Pope Leo X’s lavish lifestyle, extravagant spending, and vast patronage of the arts required considerable resources, draining the already straining finances of the Papal States. As a result, the pope often resorted to controversial practices to raise funds.

Acting on instructions from Rome, in 1517, a year after the death of Hanno, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, began to sell indulgences (a remission of believers’ sin) in northern Germany to finance the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica. Tetzel’s preaching sparked controversy, leading theologian Martin Luther to write his Ninety-five Theses, a critique of the Catholic Church’s amoral practices and his theological system. It was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

As the schism between the papacy and Luther’s followers worsened, the anti-papal press focused on Hanno, depicting the elephant as proof of Leo X’s frivolity. In an early essay, for example, Martin Luther described the pope as “indolently catching flies while his pet elephant cavorted before him.”

Pope Leo X ultimately failed to fully understand the call for reforms and growing discontent within the Catholic Church. In the 1520 bull Exsurge Domine (Arise O Lord), he condemned Martin Luther as a heretic. In 1521, he excommunicated him. When Leo X died in December of the same year, the Renaissance pope left behind religious turmoil that would permanently change Europe.

The struggle for gender equality is a story that has been unfolding for hundreds of years. From ancient times right through to the present, women have fought for recognition, representation, and freedom in patriarchal societies. Many women suffered, and many died for their attempts. Of major significance in the modern era was the struggle for women’s suffrage—the right to vote.

When were women granted the right to vote in the United States, and what were the consequences?

Women and the Right to Vote

In the United States, women were granted the right to vote on August 26, 1920, with the certification of the 19th Amendment, which stated:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

This was not the beginning of a movement but rather the culmination of efforts across the country in a process that spanned many decades. In Wyoming, in 1869, for example, the territory passed a suffrage law that granted women the right to vote as well as to hold office. In 1893, Colorado became the first state to grant women suffrage by a referendum.

At a federal level, there were no laws that actually forbade women to vote, but the Nineteenth Amendment entrenched women’s right to vote as a legal right throughout the country. Before then, voting rights were usually decided at the state level.

Of course, the United States is not the only country where this struggle took place, and it was only one of many countries that engaged in movements with marches and protests to demand equality. Often cited as the first country to grant women the right to vote, New Zealand, a self-governing colony at the time, did so in 1893. Although a great victory, women were not allowed to stand for election until 1919.

In 1895, South Australia gave women the right to vote and to stand for election, while in Britain, in 1894, single women were granted suffrage. It was only in 1928 that all women were given the right to vote on a level equal to that of all men in the UK.

What Is the Nineteenth Amendment?

Often referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, after the woman who played a pivotal role in its adoption, the 19th Amendment is the guarantor of voting rights based on sex. The amendment explicitly bans any discrimination that allows for the denial of women’s voting rights at the federal or state level.

Established in 1780, the Constitution did not list any restrictions on gender-based voting, thus leaving the gates open for further legal development of suffrage. Ironically, before the establishment of the United States, women had voting rights in the colonies. Then, after the Revolutionary War, states denied women the right to vote at even a nominal level. As the 19th century progressed, however, so did the movement for universal suffrage, including the right for women to vote. Organizations sprang up and began campaigning vigorously for this right.

The movement was interrupted by the pressing matters of the Civil War. However, as the decades progressed afterward, and into the early 20th century, women’s rights movements continued, with some opting for more confrontational methods of protest. Many suffragists picketed and took part in silent vigils and hunger strikes.

Central to this movement were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, in 1878, were successful in arranging an amendment to be presented to Congress. This amendment proposed giving women the right to vote. Stanton died in 1902, and Anthony died in 1906, both at the age of 86. They did not live to see the final fruition of their struggles. The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1920, ushering in a new era in American politics that would signify huge shifts in the political climate as women exercised their right to vote.

Of note is the fact that it was the Republican Party that gave huge support to women’s suffrage. In the vote to pass the 19th Amendment in the Senate, 82 percent of Republicans voted in favor of it, while only 41 percent of Democrats did so.

Political Participation After 1920

Despite the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the struggle for women’s rights in the political sphere was one that continued. The amendment did not solve the myriad issues that still persisted at the time. The generation following the First World War lived in an era of extreme apathy, and the addition of women’s voting rights had little impact. Apathy was so high that many former suffragists didn’t even bother voting.

An article from the National Women’s History Museum notes that in 1927, a survey was conducted with the results showing that only 35 to 40 percent of eligible women voters made their mark in the 1920 elections.This wasn’t only due to voter apathy. There was pushback from patriarchal circles, especially in the southern states, where many men opposed the idea of women having the right to vote.

In the Democratic strongholds of Georgia and Mississippi, the state leadership actively suppressed voting rights for women. Nevertheless, women in those states generally voted Democratic in the 1920 election. In the north and the west of the country, the general trend was that women voted more in favor of the Republicans, the party that had historical ties with the suffrage movement.

In recent decades, the Democratic and Republican parties have undergone huge shifts in their platforms. As a result, the Democratic Party is now seen as the more socially progressive organization, while the Republicans stand for issues that are more socially conservative.

How Did Women’s Votes Change the Political Landscape in the United States?

In the immediate wake of the 19th Amendment, it is difficult to determine how women voted. Illinois was the only state that recorded the presidential vote by sex, thus determining how women voted in 1920 and 1924 is plagued by a severe lack of data. The same survey mentioned above also noted that women tended to vote as their husbands did, in a dynamic that reflects the patriarchal mores of the time. Nevertheless, it is likely that women contributed in part to the success of the Republicans at local and state levels in 1920, as well as the success of Warren G. Harding in his bid to become president.

Political party platforms are subject to major shifts, as has clearly happened before in the United States. If and when these changes occur, the effect they will have on voting trends remains a subject of speculation. It is not safe to assume the Democrats will always push a liberal agenda, nor is it safe to assume that women will always vote more liberally. Gendered values are not consistent, nor are the circumstances that affect how people vote.

A study in Britain, for example, showed that women were more likely to vote Conservative (right of the political spectrum) in the years following the Second World War all the way through to 2017. Recent events, such as Brexit, have impacted the trend, but there is no guarantee that women are more likely to be liberal. Events have shaped how women vote rather than any notion of inherent feminine traits that generate a leaning toward certain political theories.

Ultimately, it can be said that women are individuals and are concerned with far more than just women’s issues. The way they vote is likely reflective of this. With that being said, however, identity politics do play a huge role in the United States, and appealing to women on account of their gender does increase the share of women’s votes, as many women choose to focus on particular policies that directly affect them as women.

This dynamic has been a hallmark of Democratic Party policies in recent years.

What Percentage of Women Vote Democrat Today?

Over the past few elections, statistics have shown that women, as a demographic, continue to shift more to the left of the political spectrum than men. As such, in recent decades, the Democratic Party has benefited more than the Republican Party from women’s votes.

The 2024 election mirrored recent trends in gender-based voting results that stretch back at least as far as 1992. Since Bill Clinton’s run in 1992, data show that women are more likely to vote Democrat than men. Exit poll Data from Edison (formerly Voter News Service 1992-2000) shows that in that year, support for the Democrat candidate amongst women was four points higher than amongst men.

Since then, exit polls have consistently shown that women tend to favor Democratic candidates more than men. In the last few elections, the difference has been considerable. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 54 percent of the women’s vote compared with 41 percent for Donald Trump. That 13-point difference dropped to 12 points for Joe Biden in 2020 and 10 points for Kamala Harris in 2024. In the 2024 election, Harris garnered 53 percent of the women’s vote and 43 percent of the men’s vote, while Trump got 45 percent of the women’s vote and 55 percent of the men’s vote.

A Powerful Force

Women voters represent a powerful force in the world of politics. In the United States since 1980, a bigger proportion of women have turned out to vote than men in every election. Thus, women represent an incredibly important demographic in the democratic process.

It has been over a hundred years since women’s suffrage was granted in the United States. While women have achieved equity in being able to vote, there is still a long road ahead in achieving par with men in political representation in government. Although two women have stood as the Democratic nominee for the presidency, the United States has yet to have a Madam President.

People consider pets family members. Pets roam our homes as observers of our lives and love us unconditionally. The White House is no exception, as it is a home where many families have lived. It is a place that has been shaped by those who have lived within its walls, including presidential pets.

Read on to learn about some interesting presidential pets that have roamed the corridors of the most famous residence in the United States.

Him, Her, Freckles, and Edgar

Lyndon Baines Johnson held the presidency from 1963 to 1969. Throughout this time, multiple beagles resided in the White House. Johnson and his family moved into the White House in December 1963. The family’s beagles joined them, the most famous of the president’s beagles being “Him” and “Her.”

Him and Her moved into the White House with the family in 1963, garnering national attention when they graced the cover of an issue of Life magazine in June 1964. This issue included a picture of Johnson holding Him up by his ears. This photo brought negative attention from animal rights organizations, ultimately causing Johnson to apologize publicly. However, Johnson did not understand the issue. According to the American Kennel Club, as a rancher, Johnson thought pulling a dog’s ears to make them bark was good practice for testing hunting dogs’ voices. Despite this incident, the dogs appeared to be integral parts of the family’s lives.

Lady Bird Johnson, the president’s First Lady, mentions Him and Her in her diaries. In her entry on July 26th, 1964, the First Lady talks about her and Johnson taking Him and Her on a walk around the White House lawn. On this walk, Johnson invited 100 tourists to join them and meet the dogs. Him even came close to getting into a fight with a tourist’s dog (much to the First Lady’s embarrassment) while Her entertained the crowd and showed off her bone.

Her passed away in 1964 after swallowing a rock. In 1965, Him was bred with another beagle. One of the beagles from this litter, Freckles, stayed at the White House. A car fatally struck Him in 1966. Shortly after Him passed, J. Edgar Hoover gifted the Johnson family with a beagle. The family named the new beagle Edgar after the FBI Chief responsible for the gift. At the end of the presidency, a White House staff member adopted Freckles, and Edgar moved home to the family’s ranch in Texas.

Poll the Parrot

Andrew Jackson was president from 1829 to 1837. Prior to his presidency, his wife, Rachel, owned a pet African gray parrot named Poll. Caged birds made popular pets during the 18th and 19th centuries. Parrots were especially popular because of their bright and colorful plumage. After Rachel passed away in 1828, Jackson decided to keep Poll and bring him along when he moved into the White House.

During The War of 1812, Andrew Jackson’s troops nicknamed him “Old Hickory” as a nod to his stubbornness and strong will. He carried this nickname with him to the White House, often showing his stubborn and controversial side with a quick temper. Some say that pets begin to act like their owners, and this certainly seemed to be the case for Poll. Upon finishing his presidential term, Jackson and Poll retired to their home, the Hermitage, in Tennessee. In 1845, Andrew Jackson passed away, and his funeral was held in front of an audience of thousands. Poll was one of those in attendance. According to one mourner, Reverend William Menefee Norment, Poll swore loudly and continually until he had to be removed from the funeral.

A Presidential Turkey

Abraham Lincoln’s family also kept a bird in the White House, which left his mark on history. Lincoln’s second son, Tad, had a reputation for loving animals and taking care of others. During the middle of Lincoln’s term, the family received a turkey to kill and feast upon for Christmas. Tad named the turkey Jack and treated him as a pet. Upon learning that his pet was to be eaten, Tad argued with his father that Jack should be allowed to live. Eventually, Lincoln gave in to his son and issued a written reprieve for the turkey. Tad kept Jack for at least another year. Some believe this pardoning led to the current tradition of presidential turkey pardoning on Thanksgiving, while others believe that the Lincoln turkey pardoning may not be entirely truthful (although the Lincolns did own a pet turkey). In 1963, John F. Kennedy officially pardoned the first turkey in a consecutive line of turkey pardoning, which is still a Thanksgiving tradition to this day.

Poll the Parrot and Jack the Turkey have not been the only birds to call the White House home. Some notable other White House birds include James and Dolley Madison’s macaw, James Buchanan’s bald eagle pair, and Calvin Coolidge’s canaries. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s lovebirds currently hold the title of last birds in the White House.

The Roosevelt’s Snakes

Theodore Roosevelt served as president at the turn of the century. During his presidency, the Roosevelt family kept a variety of pets at the White House. These pets included a one-legged rooster, a hyena, a badger, dogs, ponies, and snakes. The family’s snakes attracted attention in the press.

On September 26th, 1907, The New York Times published an article detailing the president’s son, Quentin Roosevelt, and his adventures with snakes in the White House. Quentin had found a few snakes while visiting Oyster Bay with family. Upon returning home to the White House, the snakes had fallen ill and needed to visit a “snakeologist.” Upset at having to leave his snakes to heal, Quentin brought home one king snake and two other snakes from the “snakeologist.” He arrived at the White House on roller skates with the snakes entwined around him. Quentin rushed in to show his father his new pets. Quentin found his father in a meeting with Attorney General Bonaparte. Much to the attorney general’s displeasure, Quentin brought the snakes in to meet them. Later that day, Quentin interrupted his father’s work again for assistance in separating the king snake as it attempted to eat one of the others.

Quentin was not the only Roosevelt child who brought pet snakes home to the White House. Alice Roosevelt, the oldest child, owned a green garter snake. Alice named the snake Emily Spinach, reportedly, “because it was as green as spinach and as thin as my Aunt Emily.” Alice often carried the snake with her in her pocketbook.

Bears and Raccoons

Thomas Jefferson served as president from 1801 to 1809. During his stay in the White House, he owned two grizzly bears. Captain Zebulon Pike gifted Jefferson the female and male grizzly bears in 1807, after acquiring them in Spanish territory. He purchased the bear cubs because they were a different species than was native to the Eastern United States.

Grizzly bears had a dangerous reputation, and Jefferson did not think they would make decent pets. He wrote to his friend, Charles Willson Peale, the owner of a museum in Philadelphia that had previously housed a grizzly bear. Peale agreed to take the bear cubs to the museum. However, it took him about two months to pick them up. During this time, the cubs outgrew their indoor enclosure and had to be kept in a paddock on the White House lawn. Once the cubs arrived at Peale’s Philadelphia museum, they were raised with the hopes that they would remain docile, but this was not the case. As they grew, the grizzlies became dangerous, and one escaped. Both were put down, and Peale mounted their heads for museum display.

Calvin Coolidge held the presidency from 1923 to 1929. The Coolidge family kept many pets, but the most notable were a pair of raccoons named Rebecca and Reuben. According to historians with the Library of Congress, supporters sent the Coolidge family a raccoon to kill and eat for Thanksgiving dinner in 1926. Instead of serving the animal for dinner, the family decided to keep it as a pet. The family named this first raccoon Rebecca, and they built a little pet house for her. First Lady Grace Coolidge took Rebecca on walks and out-of-town trips, and allowed her to attend White House events. The 1927 White House Easter Egg Roll was one of the most notable events Rebecca attended. The family added a second raccoon, Reuben, in 1928 as a companion for Rebecca. When Coolidge’s term as president began to wind down, the family decided to donate both raccoons to Rock Creek Zoo (now known as The Washington Zoo).

Alligators!

Herbert Hoover was another president with a pair of sharp-toothed pets. Herbert Hoover served as president from 1929 to 1933. As a child, Hoover’s son Allan kept two pet alligators that he received as a gift from a family friend. The alligators lived in the Hoover family’s Washington DC home on South Street. Originally, the pair stayed in one of the home’s bathtubs. They eventually became too large for the tub, and Allan relocated the alligators to a pond on the property. Luckily it seems these two never made their way to live in the White House officially. Eventually, the alligators became too difficult to care for, and Allan donated them to the Smithsonian Zoo.

All but three presidents have kept pets in the White House, ranging from average house pets to the more exotic. The White House pets continue to captivate citizens with their unique personalities.

On November 19, 1863, following one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, delivered a 272-word speech, which would become one of the most important speeches in American history. The speech connected the Declaration of Independence and the sacrifices of the Civil War in a way that inspired the hope for “a new birth of freedom.” Read on to learn what exactly Lincoln was trying to explain in the Gettysburg Address.

The Battle of Gettysburg & President Lincoln’s Address

From July 1 to 3, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought between the invading Confederate Army and the Army of the Potomac in Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had launched a major offensive into Northern territory, hoping a decisive victory would pressure the Union into peace talks and gain support from European powers.

The battle resulted in heavy casualties from both sides: 23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate soldiers lost their lives, went missing, or were heavily wounded.

Military historians consider the Battle of Gettysburg to be a pivotal turning point in the conflict. Though the Civil War stretched for another two years, General Lee’s army never again invaded the North. Gettysburg shifted momentum in favor of the Union.

Most of the Union deceased soldiers were buried in Gettysburg in unmarked or scarcely marked graves. Several months later, at local attorney David Wills’s initiative, the idea of establishing a national cemetery at Gettysburg to honor the Union dead was born.

The date of the cemetery’s dedication was set for November. Edward Everett, a former president of Harvard College, senator, and secretary of state, was chosen as the key speaker.

Just two weeks before the occasion, on November 2, David Wills sent an invitation to President Abraham Lincoln, suggesting he “formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.” President Lincoln accepted the invitation, viewing it as an opportunity to outline the significance of the Civil War to American society.

The President left the White House on November 18. According to a claim by Lincoln’s private secretary, John Nicolay, most of the address and last-minute changes were made on the train to Pennsylvania.

President Lincoln, tasked with choosing the perfect words to commemorate the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the cause of the Civil War, would deliver a 3-minute speech before 15,000 gathered people. These words would become one of the most well-known speeches in American history.

The Gettysburg Address

President Abraham Lincoln’s address read:

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

There are five known manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address, each different from the others. The above text is from the Everett version, now at the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield.

What Was Lincoln Trying to Explain in the Gettysburg Address?

President Lincoln’s speech began by addressing the Founding Fathers of the United States, who established American independence and nationhood. “Four score and seven” equals 87 years. This date refers to the Continental Congress’s adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

The Declaration was the founding document of the United States, which successfully formalized the separation of the 13 original colonies from British rule. The 1776 document states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” In the opening section of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln directly referenced the Declaration of Independence to remind his audience that the United States was built on the ideals of liberty and equality.

Additionally, with this quote, Lincoln emphasized the key cause of the American Civil War, a conflict stemming from the dispute over the expansion of slavery, as well as the North and South’s opposing economic interests, political priorities, and moral beliefs. Many in the North viewed slavery as morally wrong and saw its spread as a threat to the nation’s democratic ideals. On January 1, 1863, the president had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all enslaved people in states still under Confederate control and turning the war into a fight for liberty.

In the next section of his speech, President Lincoln focused on the significance of the Civil War. In particular, he emphasized how it would not only influence the future of the United States but also represent a test for any nation established through the values of liberty and equality, revealing whether such nations could survive a civil conflict. When Lincoln delivered the speech, the Civil War was still in full swing. Just a few months later, another bloody three-day battle would happen at Chattanooga, Tennessee, from November 23 to November 25, 1863.

The next part of the speech is dedicated to carving out the delicate connection between the soldiers killed during the Battle of Gettysburg and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers still fighting for the cause of the Civil War. By saying “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” Lincoln shows respect and sympathy to the fallen. He urges the audience to acknowledge and honor those still on the fields by continuing the mission the fallen soldiers began through showing strength and dedication.

In the final section of his address, President Lincoln highlighted the possibility of a renewal for the American nation, ending with probably the most well-known historical quote: “… and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Indeed, at the time, failure to preserve the Union could have left the United States politically fragmented and vulnerable, even open to foreign influence.

Moreover, the government style of the United States, considered a great experiment at the time, still had to prove to the world that a nation that strives for equality and representation was a viable form of governance, serving as an example of a “government of the people” to the rest of the world.

The composition and structure of the Gettysburg Address features the biblical concepts of suffering, consecration, and resurrection, signaling the momentous nature and significance of the Civil War for the United States and the world, implying the message: “Stay the course of a difficult war. If democracy won’t work here, it won’t work anywhere.” Thus, Lincoln’s speech was also a momentous call for preserving self-government, liberty, and equality.

Legacy of the Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address remains one of the greatest speeches delivered by a President in American history to this day.

Edward Everett himself, who delivered almost a two-hour long speech the same day, expressed his fascination with Lincoln’s address in a short note sent to the President following the event: “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

However, various media outlets responded with mixed reactions. The London Times wrote: “The ceremony was rendered ludicrous by some of the sallies of that poor President Lincoln.” Similarly, The Chicago Times published: “The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dish-watery utterance of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.”

Nevertheless, the audience felt inspired and even moved by Lincoln’s words. One of the attendees recalled: “With a hot sun beating down on the immense throng packed together, it was rather long we perhaps all felt. But when Lincoln rose such a silence fell that we almost forgot to breathe. How he stood before us, gaunt, rugged, great.”

To this day, the address continues to inspire leaders and movements that struggle for freedom, equality, and democracy. Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, in his well-known speech “I Have A Dream,” delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, began his address with the following variation of the Gettysburg Address: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.”

Even though the speech was created for a specific political moment in 1863, it has acquired timeless significance. When the United States faced internal division or global uncertainty, the Gettysburg Address resonated, reflecting what the struggle is for—equality, freedom, and democracy.