The Election of 1884
(November 4, 1884)


When the Republicans met in Chicago on June 3, 1884, for their eighth national convention, the Reverend F. M. Bristol delivered the invocation. Not only did he thank the Almighty for the Republican party; he also prayed that "the coming political campaign may be conducted with that decency, intelligence, patriotism and dignity of temper which becomes a free and intelligent people." His prayer went unanswered. The election of 1884, moaned Andrew D. White, was "the vilest" ever waged. "Party contests," lamented the Nation on October 23, "have never before reached so low a depth of degradation in this ...country. -- The public is angry and abusive," Henry Adams wrote an English friend. "We are all swearing at each other like demons." Scandal-mongering dominated the campaign, issues were submerged, and voters were finally asked to choose between a candidate who was "delinquent in office but blameless in private life" (James G. Blaine) and one who was "a model of official integrity, but culpable in his personal relations" (Grover Cleveland).

Blaine was the most popular Republican of his generation. When his name was put in nomination at Chicago, the effect was electric. "Whole delegations mounted their chairs," reported the New York Tribune, "and led the cheering which instantly spread to the stage and deepened into a roar fully as deep and deafening as the voice of Niagara. The scene was indescribable. The air quivered, the gaslights trembled and the walls fairly shook. The flags were stripped from the gallery and stage and frantically raised, while hats, umbrellas, handkerchiefs and other personal belongings were tossed to and fro like bubbles over the great dancing sea of human heads." But reformers were outraged, not only by Blaine's nomination on the fourth ballot, but also by the choice for second place of General John A. ("Black Eagle") Logan of Illinois, who, like Blaine, was suspected of crooked railroad dealings. Republican liberals, one observer noted, "applauded with the tips of their fingers, held immediately in front of their noses." Charging that Blaine "wallowed in spoils like a rhinoceros in an African pool," reformers bolted the party, held indignant protest meetings in Boston and New York, and announced they would support the Democratic nominee that year if he proved acceptable.

The Democratic nominee-New York's forty-seven-year-old Governor Grover Cleveland-was fully acceptable to reformers in both parties. The New York World supported him for four reasons: "1. He is an honest man; 2.He is an honest man; 3. He is an honest man; 4. He is an honest man." As sheriff of Buffalo County and mayor of Buffalo, Cleveland was celebrated for his rugged integrity; and as Governor of New York he came to be known as "Grover the Good." Tammany's Boss Kelly ("Honest John") hated him for bucking the spoils system, but Tammany's hostility was, for reformers, one of Cleveland's strong points. We "love him for the enemies he has made," cried General Edward S. Bragg of Wisconsin when he seconded Cleveland's nomination at the Democratic convention at Chicago in July. To appease the old guard, though, the convention chose Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana to run with Grover of Buffalo. Right after the Democrats had made their selections, Independent Republicans decided to join up: prominent men like Carl Schurz, Henry Ward Beecher, and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and influential Republican journals like the New York Times, the Nation, and Harpers Weekly. The New York Sun airily dismissed them as "Mugwumps" (an Algonquin Indian word meaning "chief"), a word the Indianapolis Sentinel had used in 1872 to describe Independents who thought they were bigger than their party. The Sun had its own definitions: "holier-than-thou Pharisees," "big bugs," "swellheads." But the Republican bolters adopted the name with pride; as Mugwumps, they championed civil-service reform, tariff' reduction, and simple honesty and efficiency in government. Republican regulars showered them with epithets: "Blackguards," "Soreheads," "Mutineers," "Snakes", "Brawling Pharisees," "Sleek-faced Hypocrites," "Holy Willies," "Dudes," "Goody-Goodies," "Political Hermaphrodites."

Cleveland did little campaigning, preferring to remain hard at work in the Governor's office in Albany; but he did make two brief speeches in October stressing the civil-service issue. Blaine, however, spent six weeks touring the country and making more than four hundred short talks praising protectionism. He loved the platform, was a real spellbinder, and enjoyed damning the Democrats as "rebels" and 'Tree traders" and the Mugwumps as "agents of foreign interests" for backing tariff reduction. But the appearance of James Mulligan on the scene suddenly put him on the defensive. The letters Mulligan had released in 1876 about Blaine's Curious railroad connections helped prevent his nomination that year. But now that Blaine had won the nomination Mulligan, with more letters lifted from the files, seemed bent on doing him in again.

On September 15, the Boston journal published a batch of letters (acquired from Mulligan) written by Blaine to Boston railroad attorney, Warren Fisher; and one of them in particular-a letter he had composed for Fisher to sign clearing him of misbehavior in his railroad dealings-placed him in an awkward position. Blaine had sent his self exonerating letter to the Bostonian on April 16, 1876, along with a covering letter that told Fisher: "The letter is strictly true, is honorable to you and to me, and will stop the mouths of slanderers at once. Regard this letter as strictly confidential." He added that Fisher's signing and releasing the letter he had written for him would be "a favor I shall never forget" and ended: "Kind regards to Mrs. Fisher. Burn this letter!" The eight-year-old letter (which Fisher neither signed nor re leased) was a godsend to the Democrats. Dubbing Blaine "Slippery Jim" and "Old Mulligan Letters," they reproduced the Blaine letter, distributed it widely as a campaign document, and, at party rallies, encouraged people to chant:

Burn this letter!
Burn this letter!
Burn, burn, oh, burn this letter!
Blaine! Blaine!
The Continental liar From the State of Maine!
Burn this letter!

The New York Evening Post introduced a daily column: "The Blaine Falsehoods Tabulated."

But it was not all smooth sailing for the Democrats. On July 21, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph came out with a big headline: "A Terrible Tale: A Dark Chapter in a Public Man's History." The Telegraph subtitled its tale, "The Pitiful Story of Maria Halpin and Governor Cleveland's Son," and went on to reveal that as a young man Grover the Good had taken up with a thirty-six-year-old Buffalo widow, had a son by her, and had since provided financial support for the two of them. The Telegraph even knew the boy's name: Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Cleveland's friends were stunned by the revelation. But when they approached him, Cleveland admitted the story was basically true (though the Telegraph had added a few embellishments); asked how to handle it in the campaign, he said stolidly: "Above all, tell the truth."" The Democrats then took the line that the real issue of the campaign was public integrity, not private misconduct. But Cleveland's enemies didn't see it that way. "We do not believe," wrote Charles A. Dana solemnly in the New York Sun, "that the American people will knowingly elect to the Presidency a coarse debauchee who would bring his harlots with him to Washington, and hire lodgings for them convenient to the White House." The New York Sun and the New York Tribune could scarcely think of words strong enough to convey their contempt for Cleveland: "rake," "libertine," "father of a bastard," "a gross and licentious man," a "moral leper," "a man stained with disgusting infamy," "worse in moral quality than a pickpocket, a sneak thief or a Cherry Street debauchee, a wretch unworthy of respect or confidence."

But Maria's Cleveland had his defenders. The Nation's E.L. Godkin compared the Buffalonian to Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton -- talented but wayward-and insisted Cleveland would make a far better President than a wheeler-dealer like Blaine. And one Mugwump, comparing the privately conventional but politically dishonest Blaine with the publicly trustworthy but privately wayward Cleveland, concluded: "We should therefore elect Mr. Cleveland to the public office which he is so well qualified to fill and remand Mr. Blaine to the private station he is admirably fitted to adorn." " The Republicans had fun chanting, "Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?" But after the election the Democrats reported: "Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!" Lord Bryce followed the campaign with wonderment; it seemed to be a contest over "the copulative habits of one and the prevaricative habits of the other."

As November approached, it became clear that the election was going to be close and that New York, with its thirty-six electoral votes, was crucial. The Empire State looked like a toss-up. Cleveland had many Mugwump supporters there; and Tammany, though lukewarm, had no choice but to support him. But Blaine also had hopes for New York; Irish-Americans in New York City (close to half a million) liked him; his mother was Irish Catholic, he was anti-British, he was sympathetic to the Irish cause, and the Republicans had spread rumors that Cleveland was a religious bigot. On the eve of the election the Democrats were running scared in New York and Blaine's supporters were cautiously hopeful. And then, in the final days of the campaign, things turned suddenly sour for the "Plumed Knight."

October 29 was "black Wednesday" for Blaine. Urged by his managers to make an appearance in New York City, he attended a meeting of several hundred pro-Blaine Protestant clergymen that morning in the Fifth Avenue Hotel and heard the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard, a Presbyterian minister, deliver a warm welcoming address that ended with the words: "We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." Blaine somehow missed the bigoted phrase (which James A. Garfield had once used in 1876) and so did most of the people at the meeting. But when the reporter assigned by the Democrats to cover Blaine relayed Burchard's crack at the Catholics to Democratic headquarters, Maryland Senator Arthur P. Gorman, Chairman of the national executive committee, immediately saw its significance. "Surely," he cried, "Blaine met this remark?" "That is the astonishing thing," replied the reporter excitedly. "He made no reference the words." Said Gorman at once: "This sentence must be in every d newspaper in the country tomorrow, no matter how, no matter what it costs. Organize for that immediately ...and it must be kept alive for the rest of the campaign." Within hours the Democrats were spreading handbills quoting Burchard throughout New York City and elsewhere and by the time Blaine got around to disavowing the clergyman it was too late.

Blaine's morning, October 29, may well have cost him thousands of votes among Irish-American voters angered by Burchard's insult to their faith. But the evening of the 29th was equally disastrous. At the invitation of some of New York's wealthiest citizens Blaine attended a lavish fund-raising dinner at the fashionable Delmonico's restaurant, hobnobbed with millionaires like Jay Gould, John Jacob Astor, and Russell Sage, and, though the country was in a depression at the time, had much to say about Republican prosperity in his remarks after dinner. The next morning Joseph Pulitzer's New York World had a front-page headline:

THE ROYAL, FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR BLAINE AND THE MONEY KINGS... BLAINE HOBNOBBING WITH THE MIGHTY MONEY KINGS... MILLIONARIES AND MONOPOLISTS SEAL THEIR ALLEGIANCE... LUCULLUS ENJOYS HIMSELF WHILE THE COUNTRY SORROWS... AN OCCASION FOR THE COLLECTION OF A REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION FUND

Accompanying the story was a cartoon showing the "Plumed Knight" dining in luxury with the fat and filthy rich while a starving man and his ragged wife and child beg for crumbs. Thundered the World: "From Rum, Romanism and Rebellion, Mr. Blaine proceeded to a merry banquet of the millionaires at Delmonico's, where champagne frothed and brandy sparkled in glasses that glittered like jewels. The clergymen would have been proud of Mr. Blaine, no doubt, if they had seen him in the midst of the mighty winebibbers." It is difficult to say which hurt him more: Burchard or the Belshazzar bash.

On election day Blaine lost New York by 1,149 votes out of more than a million cast and, as a consequence, went down to defeat nationally. The contest was close: Cleveland's popular majority over Blaine's (4,874,986 to 4,851,981) was only around 23,000 out of ten million cast, though he won 219 electoral votes to Blaine's 182. Republicans at first claimed they had won New York; but in a day or two most of them conceded Cleveland's victory. Remembering 1876, however, the Democrats quickly organized a legal committee to ensure an honest count before the Boards of' Canvassers in New York and succeeded in proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Cleveland's victory was genuine. Even the New York Tribune (one of the Republican holdouts) finally admitted that "the canvass of the returns has been thorough, careful and honest, and leaves no room for doubt as to the result."

Cleveland's accession to the Presidency meant that the Democrats were finally in power again, for the first time since Buchanan. Some analysts thought Cleveland hadn't really won; it was just that Blaine had, through bad luck, lost. Blaine himself seems to have looked at it this way. After the election he noted ruefully that he had had thousands of Irish votes sewed up in New York to the very end and would have had even more "but for the intolerant and utterly improper remark of Dr. Burchard, which was quoted everywhere to my prejudice and in many places attributed to myself, though it was in the highest degree distasteful and offensive to me." He also told a friend: "I should have carried New York by 10,000 if the weather had been clear on election day and Dr. Burchard had been doing missionary work in Asia Minor or Cochin China."

Cleveland's youthful indiscretion seems to have done him no real harm in Puritan America. After his victory, the Democrats had a new chant:

Hurray for Maria!
Hurray for the kid!
I voted for Cleveland,
and I'm damned glad I did!


Source: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 146-49.