History of the United States Volume V Part 8

The North, once ablaze with zeal for the civil and political rights of the southern negro, heard the march of this exultant southern crusade with equanimity, with indifference, almost with sympathy. Perfunctory efforts were made in Congress to secure investigation of negro disfranchis.e.m.e.nt, but they evoked feeble response.

CHAPTER II.

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1888

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Grover Cleveland.

Photograph copyrighted by C. M. Bell.

[1888]

It looking forward to the presidential campaign of 1888 the Democracy had no difficulty in selecting its leader or its slogan. The custom, almost like law, of renominating a presidential inc.u.mbent at the end of his first term, pointed to Mr. Cleveland's candidacy, as did the considerable success of his administration in quelling factions and in silencing enemies. At the same time reform for a lower tariff, with which cause he had boldly identified himself, was marked anew as a main article of the Democratic creed. The nomination of Allen G. Thurman for Vice-President brought to the ticket what its head seemed to lack--popularity among the people of the West--and did much to hearten all such Democrats as insisted upon voting a ticket free from all taint of mugwumpery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

W. Q. Gresham.

The att.i.tude of the Democratic party being favorable to tariff reduction, the Republicans must perforce raise the banner of high protection; but public opinion did not forestall the convention in naming the Republican standard-bearer. The convention met in Chicago. At first John Sherman of Ohio received 229 votes; Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana, 111; Chauncey M. Depew of New York, 99; and Russell A. Alger of Michigan, 84. Harrison began with 80; Blaine had but 35. After the third ballot Depew withdrew his name. On the fourth, New York and Wisconsin joined the Harrison forces. A stampede of the convention for Blaine was expected, but did not come, being hindered in part by the halting tenor of despatches received from the Plumed Knight, then beyond sea. After the fifth ballot two cablegrams were received from Blaine, requesting his friends to discontinue voting for him. Two ballots more having been taken, Allison, who had been receiving a considerable vote, withdrew.

The eighth ballot nominated Harrison, and the name of Levi P. Morton, of New York, was at once placed beneath his on the ticket.

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Levi P. Morton.

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Benjamin Harrison.

Mr. Harrison was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison, great grandson, therefore, of Governor Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, the ardent revolutionary patriot, signer of the Declaration of Independence.

An older scion of the family had served as major-general in Cromwell's army and been executed for signing the death-warrant of King Charles I.

The Republican candidate was born on a farm at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1883. The boy's earliest education was acquired in a log schoolhouse. He afterward attended Miami University, in Ohio, where he graduated at the age of nineteen. The next year he was admitted to the bar. In 1854 he married, and opened a law office in Indianapolis. In 1860 he became Reporter of Decisions to the Indiana Supreme Court. When the civil war broke out, obeying the spirit that in his grandfather had won at Tippecanoe and the Thames, young Harrison recruited a regiment, of which he was soon commissioned colonel. Gallant services under Sherman at Resaca and Peach Tree Creek brought him the brevet of brigadier. After his return from war, owing to his high character, his lineage, his fine war record, his power as a speaker and his popularity in a pivotal State, he was a prominent figure in politics, not only in Indiana, but more and more nationally. In 1876 he ran for the Indiana Governership, but was defeated by a small margin. In 1880 he was chairman of the Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention. In 1881 he was elected United States Senator, declining an offer of a seat in Garfield's Cabinet. From 1880, when Indiana presented his name to the Republican National Convention, General Harrison was, in the West, constantly thought of as a presidential possibility. Eclipsed by Blaine in 1884, he came forward again in 1888, this time to win.

In the East General Harrison was much underrated. Papers opposing his election fondly cartooned him wearing "Grandfather's hat," as if family connection alone recommended him. It was a great mistake. The grandson had all the grandsire's strong qualities and many besides. He was a student and a thinker. His character was absolutely irreproachable. His information was exact, large, and always ready for use. His speeches had ease, order, correctness, and point. With the West he was particularly strong, an element of availability which Cleveland lacked. In the Senate he had won renown both as a debater and as a sane adviser. As a consistent protectionist he favored restriction upon Chinese immigration and prohibition against the importation of contract labor. He upheld all efforts for reform in the civil service and for strengthening the navy.

In the presidential campaign of 1888 personalities had little place.

Instead, there was active discussion of party principles and policies.

The tariff issue was of course prominent. A characteristic piece of enginery in the contest was the political club, which now, for the first time in our history, became a recognized force. The National a.s.sociation of Democratic Clubs comprised some 3,000 units, numerous auxiliary reform and tariff reform clubs being active on the same side. The Republican League, corresponding to the Democratic a.s.sociation, boasted, by August, 1887, 6,500 clubs, with a million voters on their rolls.

Before election day Indiana alone had 1,100 Republican clubs and New York 1,400.

During most of the campaign Democratic success was freely predicted and seemed a.s.sured. Yet from the first forces were in exercise which threatened a contrary result. Federal patronage helped the administration less than was expected, while it nerved the opposition.

The Republicans had a force of earnest and harmonious workers. Of the mult.i.tude, on the other hand, who in 1884 had aided to achieve victory for the Democracy, few, of course, had received the rewards which they deemed due them. In vain did officeholders contribute toil and money while that disappointed majority were so slow and spiritless in rallying to the party's summons, and so many of them even hostile. The zeal of honest Democrats was stricken by what Gail Hamilton wittily called "the upas bloom" of civil service reform, which the President still displayed upon his lapel. To a large number of ardent civil service reformers who had originally voted for Cleveland this decoration now seemed so wilted that, more in indignation than in hope, they went over to Harrison.

The public at large resented the loss which the service had suffered through changes in the civil list. Harrison without much of a record either to belie or to confirm his words, at least commended and espoused the reform.

Democratic blunders thrust the sectional issue needlessly to the fore.

Mr. Cleveland's willingness to return to their respective States the Confederate flags captured by Union regiments in the civil war; his fishing trip on Memorial Day; the choice of Mr. Mills, a Texan, to lead the tariff fight in Congress; and the prominence of southerners among the Democratic campaign orators at the North, were themes of countless diatribes.

A clever Republican device, known as "the Murchison letter," did a great deal to impress thoughtless voters that Mr. Cleveland was "un-American."

The incident was dramatic and farcical to a degree. The Murchison letter, which interested the entire country for two or three weeks, purported to come from a perplexed Englishman, addressing the British Minister at Washington, Lord Sackville-West. It sought counsel of Her Majesty's representative, as the "fountainhead of knowledge," upon "the mysterious subject" how best to serve England in voting at the approaching American election. The seeker after light recounted President Cleveland's kindness to England in not enforcing the retaliatory act then recently pa.s.sed by Congress as its ultimatum in the fisheries dispute, his soundness on the free trade question, and his hostility to the "dynamite schools of Ireland." The writer set Mr.

Harrison down as a painful contrast to the President. He was "a high-tariff man, a believer on the American side of all questions, and undoubtedly, an enemy to British interests generally." But the inquirer professes alarm at Cleveland's message on the fishery question which had just been sent to Congress, and wound up with the query "whether Mr.

Cleveland's policy is temporary only, and whether he will, as soon as he secures another term of four years in the presidency, suspend it for one of friendship and free trade."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Lord L. S. Sackville-West.

The Minister replied:

"Sir:--I am in receipt of your letter of the 4th inst., and beg to say that I fully appreciate the difficulty in which you find yourself in casting your vote. You are probably aware that any political party which openly favored the mother country at the present moment would lose popularity, and that the party in power is fully aware of the fact. The party, however, is, I believe, still desirous of maintaining friendly relations with Great Britain and still desirous of settling questions with Canada which have been, unfortunately, reopened since the retraction of the treaty by the Republican majority in the Senate and by the President's message to which you allude. All allowances must therefore be made for the political situation as regards the Presidential election thus created. It is, however, impossible to predict the course which President Cleveland may pursue in the matter of retaliation should he be elected; but there is every reason to believe that, while upholding the position he has taken, he will manifest a spirit of conciliation in dealing with the question involved in his message. I enclose an article from the New York 'Times' of August 22d, and remain, yours faithfully, "L. S. SACKVILLE-WEST."

This correspondence, published on October 24th, took instant and universal effect. The President at first inclined to ignore the incident, but soon yielded to the urgency of his managers, and, to keep "the Irish vote" from slipping away, asked for the minister's recall.

Great Britain refusing this, the minister's pa.s.sports were delivered him. The act was vain and worse. Without availing to parry the enemy's thrust, it incurred not only the resentment of the English Government, but the disapproval of the Administration's soberest friends at home.

Influences with which practical politicians were familiar had their bearing upon the outcome. In New York State, where occurred the worst tug of war, Governor Hill and his friends, while boasting their democracy, were widely believed to connive at the trading of Democratic votes for Harrison in return for Republican votes for Hill. At any rate, New York State was carried for both.

It is unfortunately necessary to add that the 1888 election was most corrupt. The campaign was estimated to have cost the two parties $6,000,000. a.s.sessments on office-holders, as well as other subsidies, replenished the Democrats' campaign treasury; while the manufacturers of the country, who had been pretty close four years before, now regarding their interest and even their honor as a.s.sailed, generously contributed often as the Republican hat went around.

In Indiana, Mr. Harrison's home State, no resource was left untried. The National Republican Committee wrote the party managers in that State: "Divide the floaters into blocks of five, and put a trusted man with necessary funds in charge of these five, and make him responsible that none get away, and that all vote our ticket." This mandate the workers faithfully obeyed.

So far as argument had weight the election turned mainly upon the tariff issue. The Republicans held that protection was on trial for its life.

Many Democrats cherished the very same view, only they denounced the prisoner at the bar as a culprit, not a martyr. They inveighed against protection as pure robbery. They accused the tariff of causing Trusts, against which several bills had recently been introduced in Congress.

Democratic extremists proclaimed that Republicans slavishly served the rich and fiendishly ground the faces of the poor. Even moderate Democrats, who simply urged that protective rates should be reduced, more often than otherwise supported their proposals with out and out free trade arguments. As to President Cleveland himself no one could tell whether or not he was a free trader, but his discussions of the tariff read like Cobden Club tracts. The Mills bill, which pa.s.sed the House in the Fiftieth Congress, would have been more a tariff for revenue than in any sense protective. Republican orators and organs therefore pictured "British free trade" as the dire, certain sequel of the Cleveland policy if carried out, and, whether convinced by the argument or startled by the ado of Harrison's supporters, people, to be on the safe side, voted to uphold the "American System."

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Joseph B. Foraker.

More than eleven million ballots were cast at the election, yet so closely balanced were the parties that a change of 10,000 votes in Indiana and New York, both of which went for Harrison would have reelected Cleveland. As it was, his popular vote of 5,540,000 exceeded by 140,000 that of Harrison, which numbered 5,400,000. Besides bolding the Senate the Republicans won a face majority of ten in the House, subsequently increased by unseating and seating. They were thus in control of all branches of the general government.

CHAPTER III.

MR. HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION.

[1888]

The new President, of course, renounced his predecessor's policy upon the tariff, but continued it touching the navy. He advocated steamship subsidies, reform in electoral laws, and such amendment to the immigration laws as would effectively exclude undesirable foreigners.

A chief effect of the Kearney movement in California, culminating in the California const.i.tution of 1879, was intense opposition throughout the Pacific States to any further admission of the Chinese. The const.i.tution named forbade the employment of Chinese by the State or by any corporation doing business therein. This hostility spread eastward, and, in spite of interested capitalists and disinterested philanthropists, shaped all Subsequent Chinese legislation in Congress. The pacific spirit of the Burlingame treaty in 1868, shown also by President Hayes in vetoing the Anti-Chinese bill of 1878, died out more and more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Speaker exhorting a crowd.]