In the US vice presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance a couple of weeks ago, one question was particularly significant.
Vance was asked by the moderators if his side would accept the result if they lost the presidential election.
True to form, Vance equivocated, but the fact that the question was asked at all was extraordinary. Until recently, it would have been unthinkable to imagine anything other than a peaceful transfer of power from one regime to another in America, but January 6, 2021 changed all that.
Thousands of Trump followers attacked the Capitol in a bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, breaking into the centre of democracy. Several people were killed in the chaos.
You can visit the Capitol and see where much of the rioting took place. So I did.
For a historic landmark which recently had mobs rampaging through its parliamentary offices, and attackers shot dead in the hallways, the Capitol is remarkably accessible.
It’s a good deal easier to enter than Leinster House, for instance. Walk through the doors of the visitor centre and, after putting your valuables through an airport-style security scanner, you’re through to the main hall.
The guides are terrifically well-informed and enthusiastic, the setting is impressive, and the experience is uplifting.
And informative. Take the Capitol Crypt, the many-columned room beneath the Rotunda. In the middle of this space is a white marble “compass stone” in the floor; this marks the very centre of the US Capitol but is also the point from which the entire city is divided into quadrants — northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest.
Or the statue of Ronald Reagan: The pedestal is mostly marble but also contains a band of concrete from the Berlin Wall, to commemorate Reagan’s speech there in 1987.
Or the painting on the ceiling of the Rotunda, ‘The Apotheosis of Washington’ (with Apotheosis looking very much like Assumption, forgive the blasphemy). The fresco is 55m above the floor, and the painted figures are approximately 4.5m in size in order to be seen at that distance. The fee for artist Constantino Brumidi back in 1865 when he finished it was $40,000 — about €732,000 in today’s money.
There are darker corners of the Capitol as well, however. January 6 wasn’t the first time its halls echoed to violence sparked by division within the nation.
North of the Rotunda and Brumidi’s fresco lies the old senate chamber. It was used for Senate debates from 1819 until 1859, but with new states created after the American Civil War there were more and more senators; eventually the chamber became too small to accommodate them, so the senate was moved to more spacious surroundings.
You can still take in the old senate chamber on a visit, an atmospheric room with a small press gallery elevated at the rear.
The observant may notice a small anomaly among the neat desks, however. One of the desks, on the back row on the right as you enter, has a book on it.
It’s there to identify the spot where senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts used to sit. It was there in 1856 that Sumner was savagely beaten by a member of the house of representatives, Preston Brooks of South
Carolina, who was outraged by Sumner’s abolitionist speeches.
Brooks broke his cane across Sumner’s head in the assault, while one of his accomplices stopped anyone coming Sumner’s aid thanks to a gun in his hand, a powerful deterrent. Brooks walked unimpeded out of the chamber afterwards but the severity of Sumner’s injuries would keep him from returning to the Capitol for three years.
The incident reflected the deep divisions in America at the time, as did the reaction.
Approving supporters from all over the southern states sent Brooks replacement canes, while Massachusetts did not replace Sumner as a senator until he was well enough to take his place again; though he suffered from the after-effects of the assault for the rest of his life, he was a senator for another 18 years.
(Brooks died a few months after the incident from croup.)
It is extraordinary to visit the room and stand a few feet from the exact spot where it happened. The caning of Sumner was a preamble to the American Civil War, the defining conflict in the country’s history which is remembered elsewhere in the Capitol also.
For instance, downstairs in the visitor centre one can view — through windows — one of the great American historical relics: The catafalque of Abraham Lincoln.
When Lincoln was shot in 1865 at Ford’s Theatre— just a few streets away from the Capitol — those organising the funeral hurried to make a simple wooden platform to bear the coffin. The resulting catafalque was returned to Washington after Lincoln was buried in Illinois, and when not in use for state
funerals it is kept on display in the visitor centre. (Less ominous: Nearby is the low table Lincoln used for his notes when delivering his second inaugural address.)
The Capitol has also seen assaults more insidious than overt violence. The old Supreme Court chamber was used from 1810 to 1860 and survived the attack by British forces in 1814 which destroyed so much of the Capitol. It is also open to visitors, who can appreciate the deeply shadowed room which stretches back from the justices’ imposing bench.
One of the decisions taken there contributed directly to the nationwide devastation of the civil war, as visitors to the room stand close to the very spot where the Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1857.
Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom when he was taken to a state where slavery was illegal. When his case went all the way to the Supreme Court, that body decided the US Constitution did not extend American citizenship to African-Americans.
The legal scholar who described it as “first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions” reflects the general consensus on the judgement. Frederick Douglass predicted at the time that it would lead to civil war, and he was correct.
On my tour of the Capitol, there were other striking images — the downstairs doorway in use for over 200 , for instance — but one relatively humdrum corridor caught my eye.
It was the hallway which Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman ran along on January 6, 2021, warning senator Mitt Romney to escape before turning back to divert an approaching mob of Trump supporters away from the senate chamber nearby. Readers may recall the video clip of Goodman sprinting towards a masked Romney, gesturing urgently, and Romney quickly turning on his heel.
Goodman was rightly hailed as a hero afterwards, but those events three years ago leave more than an ugly memory.
Last week, Vance was asked five times in an interview whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 election; he refused to answer each time. Trump’s insistence he did not lose in 2020 was of course the animating principle behind the January 6 attack.
If Kamala Harris wins next month’s presidential election, will Goodman and his colleagues be forced to face down another murderous mob next January?
