In 1892's quadrennium Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison went at it again. Neither was popular with party leaders. Harrison was notoriously cold and aloof and Cleveland doggedly independent and bullheaded. "The two candidates were singular persons," observed Henry Adams, "of whom it was the common saying that one of them had no friends; the other only enemies." Robert Ingersoll quipped that "each side would have been glad to defeat the other if it could do so without electing its own candidate."

The Republicans, assembling in Minneapolis on June 7, nominated Harrison on the first ballot, picked Whitelaw Reid, publisher of the New York Tribune, as his running mate, and adopted a platform reaffirming their belief in "the American doctrine of protectionism" and attributing "the prosperous condition of our country" to the "wise revenue legislation" of their party. The Democrats, who met later that month in Chicago, also picked their man, Grover of Buffalo, on the first ballot; and, since Cleveland was known for his hard-money views, selected former Congressman Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, a soft-money man, to run with him. Their platform contained the usual platitudes, but was vigorous enough when it came to the tariff: it denounced "Republican protection as a fraud, a robbery, of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few."

Except for their acceptance letters, filled mostly with conventionalities, Harrison and Cleveland did little themselves to present their opinions to the public. Harrison's wife was seriously ill (she died two weeks before the election), so the President gave no "front porch" speeches as he had in 1888; and Cleveland for the most part avoided making public pronouncements out of respect for Harrison's wife. Cleveland's economic conservatism, especially his attachment to the gold standard, brought him the hearty support of' Eastern bankers and merchants; and this time the Democratic party had more money to spend than the Republicans. But there was a dearth of torchlight parades, lengthy processions, and brass bands in 1892. Even the bloody shirt played only a minor role in the contest.

With the People's party, a new organization, the 1892 campaign came alive. The Populist convention in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 4, was fervent and frenetic. "It was a religious revival," reported one observer, "a crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a tongue of flame sat upon every man, and each spoke as the spirit gave him utterance." Ignatius Donnelly's preamble to the Populist platform was angry and impassioned about the plight of the farmer and worker in the new industrial order and the platform itself promised to restore government "to the hands of the plain people." The Populists presented a long list of reforms, including the popular election of Senators, a graduated income tax, antitrust activity, and public ownership of the railroads, but placed special emphasis on in Hating the currency by increasing the amount of paper money in circulation and adopting the free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold.

The Populists' proposals for currency expansion, particularly the free-silver plank, roused fiscal conservatives like Cleveland to wrath. They regarded the free silver demand as ignorant, reckless, and threatening to the American economic order. But farmers in the South and the West, the backbone of the Populist movement, were unquestionably suffering from a shortage of' money. As the world market for agriculture expanded after the Civil War, there was a steady decline in the prices of wheat, cotton, and other produce which they raised for export. But the farm equipment they depended on remained expensive; and to pay for it they borrowed heavily and mortgaged their land at high interest rates. What they needed, they insisted, was higher prices for then- produce and more money to pay off their debts. And this meant breaking the grip of hard-money bankers and big, businessmen in the East on the nation's economy and instituting measures for the rapid expansion of' the currency. Time and again delegates to the Omaha convention voiced their opposition to the gold standard by singing the "People's Hymn" to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and also chanting:

All hail the power of the People's name, Let autocrats prostrate fall, Bring forth the royal diadem And crown the people sovereign, all.

James B. Weaver, who had run on the Greenback ticket in 1880, received the Populists' presidential nomination and James G. Field of Virginia the nomination for Vice-President.

One of the Populists' best campaigners was Mary Lease of Kansas. Not only did she tell farmers to "raise less corn and more hell"; she also declared that "Wall Street owns the country" and that "it is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street." Lease and Weaver teamed up in campaign trips through the South and West. They usually spoke to different crowds at the same time and after an hour or so "exchanged pulpits," as they put it, and started in again. In many places they drew great audiences, some of which "could only be counted by acres." People were mostly friendly, though on occasion they encountered heckling and egg-, tomato-, and rock-throwing, especially in the South, and sometimes Weaver, according to Mrs. Lease, "was made a regular walking omelet."

During the campaign Populist leaders made a bid for labor support; their platform declared that the interests of "rural and civic labor" were the same and that "their enemies are identical." But urban workers couldn't quite see it that way; their view of farm prices was, not surprisingly, somewhat different from that of the Populists. Still, the labor issue was important in 1892, mainly because of the strike that summer by workers at the Carnegie Steel Company in Homestead, Pennsylvania. To crush the steel workers' union, Carnegie's general manager Henry Clay Frick proposed a contract slashing wages 22 percent, and when the union rejected it, instituted a lockout, put scabs to work, and hired armed Pinkerton detectives to guard the plant. A pitched battle between strikers and Pinkertons followed, and the Governor of Pennsylvania finally sent national guardsmen to Homestead to restore order. Frick won in the end, but his behavior hurt the G.O.P. badly. Republican faithfuls had always insisted that high tariffs meant high wages; but Frick's action-cutting wages while the steel industry was prospering behind tariff walls-belied their doctrine. The Democrats made the most of the inconsistency and began citing Homestead in their assaults on protectionism. But many Republicans, including Harrison and Reid themselves, were upset by Frick's policies. The labor vote, as they feared, went to Cleveland on election day.

On November 8, Cleveland won a decisive victory in his third race for the Presidency, carrying seven Northern states, including New York, as well as the Solid South, and winning 277 electoral votes to Harrison's 145 and over 380,000 more popular votes than Harrison (5,556,543 to 5,175,582). For the first time since the Civil War, moreover, the Democrats won a majority in both houses of Congress. But the Populists also did surprisingly well for a third party entering the lists for the first time: 1,040,886 popular votes and 22 electoral votes (Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska, plus one vote each from North Dakota and Oregon). In the West, farmers normally Republican voted Populist but in the South they stayed with the Democratic party, mainly because it was the party of white supremacy. The high McKinley tariff probably hurt Harrison with industrial workers in the East, but the Homestead strike also played its part. In post-election analyses, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Homestead had hurt Harrison.

Carnegie Steel bigwigs, normally Republican, were reconciled. "I am very sorry for President Harrison," said Frick, "but I cannot see that our interests are going to be affected one way or the other by the change of administration." Andrew Carnegie felt the same way. "Cleveland! Landslide!" he exclaimed after the election. "Well, we have nothing to fear and perhaps it is best... Cleveland is a pretty good fellow." Later on he said: "I fear that Homestead did much to elect Cleveland-very sorry-but no use getting excited."

Source: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 162-64.