America's quadrennial contest in 1880 was thoroughly dull. At one point the New York World gave more space to the arrival of the "divine Sarah Bernhardt" in America than to the presidential campaign. it was almost as if the United States was trying to compensate for the searing crisis of 1876. Party zealots, to be sure, threw brickbats, stung mud, and rolled in gutters during the campaign, but their invective was for the most part uninspired. And the contesting parties adopted barely indistinguishable platforms, nominated commonplace candidates, and ignored the serious social and economic issues facing the rapidly industrializing nation. At the height of the campaign the golden-tongued freethinker Robert Ingersoll could think of nothing better to say for his beloved Republican party than this- "I believe in a party that believes in good crops; that is glad when a fellow finds a gold mine; that rejoices when there are forty bushels of wheat to the acre... The Democratic Party is a party of famine; it is a good friend of an early frost; it believes in the Colorado beetle and the weevil."

It was Ohio Congressman James A. Garfield, forty-eight, a dark horse, for the Republicans on the thirty-sixth ballot, with Chester A. Arthur, "gentleman boss" from New York City, in second place. This time the Democrats decided to try with a Civil War hero: on the second ballot they picked General Winfield Scott Hancock (after Gettysburg, McClellan had exclaimed, "Hancock was superb"), who knew little about public issues but had been a fair-minded military governor of Texas and Louisiana in 1868. For his running mate they chose William H. English, wealthy Indiana banker, mindful of his money as well as his state's electoral votes. Both parties endorsed civil-service reform, opposed government aid to parochial schools, and objected to Chinese immigration. It remained for the little Greenback-Labor party, which ran General James B. Weaver of Iowa, to make serious proposals for bettering America's industrial order: a graduated income tax, curtailment of child labor, an eight-hour work day, the regulation of interstate commerce, and a sanitary code for industry.

At the beginning of the campaign the Republicans brought out the bloody shirt again and the Democrats raised a clamor about the "great fraud" of 1876; but these issues soon palled. The campaign then shifted to personalities. The Republicans stressed Garfield's log-cabin birth, his work on the Ohio canal as a boy ("Boatman Jim"), and his rise to eminence in Congress by sobriety and diligence. They also organized Towpath Clubs and arranged for one delegation after another-young people, businessmen, German-Americans, ladies-to call at his home in Mentor, Ohio, and hear his short inspirational talks. A Republican campaign book was filled with Garfield homilies: "Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up"; "If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best substitute for it"; "Nine times out often the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself"; "A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck."

While boosting Garfield the Republicans belittled Hancock. They said his son married a rebel sympathizer, called him a coward (though Grant had praised him during the Civil War), and, in a pamphlet entitled, "A Record of the Statesmanship and Political Achievements of General Winfield Scott Hancock ...Compiled from the Records," presented readers with seven blank pages. One of' Hancock's remarks-"the tariff is a local issue"-evoked large guffaws. Though tariff bills are, in fact, the product of' pressures by local interests, Harpers Weekly called Hancock's statement "loose, aimless, unintelligent, absurd," and the Nation exclaimed: "The General's talk about the tariff is that of a man who knows nothing about it, and who apparently, until he began to talk had never thought about it." In Harper's, Thomas Nast pictured the bewildered General on a speaker's platform whispering in someone's ear: "WHO IS TARIFF, AND WHY IS HE FOR REVENUE ONLY?"

But the Democrats had the corruption issue to exploit. Back in 1868 Garfield had received $329 from Credit Mobilier, the Union Pacific Railroad's corrupt holding company, and though he insisted it was a loan, not a bribe, which he had paid off, the Democrats cited it as evidence of corruption and went around chalking the figures, 329, on buildings, sidewalks, doors, and fences (and even, someone averred, "on underclothing and the inside of shoes"). They also reminded voters that as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee he had presented a brief for a pavement contract in Washington and received $5000 for his services. And they made a great deal of the fact that Garfield's running mate, Chester Arthur, was such a notorious spoilsman as head of the New York Custom House that President Hayes had removed him from office.

Democratic efforts were in vain. A fake letter circulated in October associating Garfield with importing cheap labor from China hurt him in California but did not prevent his victory elsewhere. On election day he carried all the Northern and Western states except New Jersey and Nevada and his electoral victory was stunning: 214 to 155. But his popular victory was narrow: 4,454,416 votes to Hancock's 4,444,952, a majority of less than 10,000 out of nine million. Though the campaign was lacklustre the voter turnout was impressive: 78.4 percent of the eligible voters. The return of prosperity after the depression of 1873-79 helped Garfield and so did his party's superb organization and fat campaign chest.

Garfield was not President long. A few months after his inauguration he was assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker, and Chester Arthur became President. "Chet Arthur President of the United States! Good God!" exclaimed one Republican. But the former spoilsman performed creditably in office. He even championed civil-service reform.

Source: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 142-44.