The United States Since the Civil War Part 9

The congressional elections in the fall of 1882 indicated that the factional disputes among the Republicans, and their failure to reform conditions in the civil service had presented the opposition with an opportunity. In the House of Representatives, Republican control was replaced by a Democratic majority of sixty-nine; the state legislatures chosen were Democratic in such numbers as to make sure the even division of the Senate when new members were elected; in Pennsylvania, a Democratic reformer, Robert E. Pattison, was elected governor, and in New York another, Grover Cleveland, was successful by the unprecedented majority of 190,000.

The results of the campaign added interest to a civil service reform bill which had been drafted by some reformers led by Dorman B. Eaton, and which had been presented to the Senate by George F. Pendleton, of Ohio. The debate elicited several points of view. Pendleton set forth the evils of the existing system of appointments, and emphasized the superior advantages of appointment after compet.i.tive examination. The Democrats were in distress. Although Pendleton was himself a Democrat and the party platforms had been advocating reform, nevertheless the election of 1884 was not far ahead, Democratic success seemed likely, and the party leaders desired an unrestrained opportunity to fill the offices with their followers. Senator Williams expressed a conviction that the Republican party was a party of corruption and continued:

The only way to reform is to put a good honest Democratic president in in 1884; then turn on the hose and give him a good hickory broom and tell him to sweep the dirt away.

The Republicans, on their side, were fearful of the same clean sweep that Williams hoped for, and they therefore looked with greater equanimity upon a bill which might retain in office the existing office-holders, most of whom belonged to their party. This aspect of the situation was not lost upon such Democrats as Senator Brown who moved that the measure be ent.i.tled "a bill to perpetuate in office the Republicans who now hold the patronage of the government." In the Senate only five members voted against its pa.s.sage, but thirty-three absented themselves; and in the House forty-seven opposed, while eighty-seven were absent. A little study of the debate makes it clear that the pa.s.sage of the act was due to conviction in favor of reform on the part of a few and to fear of public opinion on the part of many others.

Undoubtedly many of the absentees were members who would not vote for the measure and were fearful of the results of voting against it. The President signed the bill January 16, 1883.

The Pendleton act left large discretion in the hands of the President.

It authorized the appointment of a commission of three who should prepare and put into effect suitable rules for carrying out the law. The act also provided that government offices should be arranged in cla.s.ses and that entrance to any cla.s.s should be obtained by compet.i.tive examination; that no person should be removed from the service for refusing to contribute to political funds; and that examinations should be held in one or more places in each state and territory where candidates appeared. The system was to be inaugurated in customs districts and post offices where the number of employees was as many as fifty, but could be extended later under direction of the President. The soliciting or receiving of contributions by federal officials of all grades, for political purposes, was forbidden. With the exceptions just mentioned, officers could be removed from office as before, but the purpose of removal was now gone. Since the appointee to the vacancy must be the successful compet.i.tor in an examination, the chief who removed an officer could not replace him with a personal friend or party worker.

The first commission was headed by Dorman B. Eaton. The work of grading officials and placing them within the protection of the law began at once, and by the close of President Arthur's term nearly 16,000 were cla.s.sified. Fortunately, the work of the commission was carried on sensibly and slowly, and no backward steps had to be taken.

The att.i.tude of Congress toward tariff revision ill.u.s.trates many of the characteristics of congressional action during the early eighties. In his first message to Congress, Arthur said that the surplus for the year was $100,000,000, and therefore urged the reduction of the internal revenue taxes and the revision of the tariff. In May, 1882, Congress authorized a tariff commission to investigate and report, and in conformity with the law Arthur appointed its nine members. All of them were protectionists and the chairman, John L. Hayes, was secretary of the Wool Manufacturers' a.s.sociation. After holding hearings in more than a score of cities and examining some hundreds of witnesses, the commission recommended reductions varying from nothing in some cases to forty or fifty per cent. in others. The average reduction was twenty to twenty-five per cent.

Using the report as a foundation, the Senate drew up a tariff measure, added it to a House bill which provided for a reduction of the internal revenues, and pa.s.sed the combination. Meanwhile, lobbyists poured into Washington to guard the interests of the producers of lumber, pig-iron, sugar and other materials upon which the tariff might be reduced. When the Senate bill reached the House it contained lower duties than the protectionist members desired. The latter, although in possession of the organization of the House, were not strong enough to restore higher rates, but under the shrewd management of Thomas B. Reed, one of their number, they were able to refer the bill to a conference committee of the two houses which contained seven strong protectionists out of ten members. Reed admitted that the proceedings were "unusual in their nature and very forcible in their character" but he felt that a change in the tariff had been promised and that the only way to bring it about in the face of Democratic opposition was to settle the details "in the quiet of a conference committee." A "great emergency" having arisen, he would take extraordinary measures. The bill produced under these circ.u.mstances reduced the internal revenue taxes, lowered some of the tariff duties and raised others, but left the general level at the point where it had been at the close of the war. _The Nation_, favorable to reform, scornfully characterized the act as "taking a shaving off the duty on iron wire, and adding it to the duty on glue!" Senator Sherman, a protectionist member of the conference committee, wrote an account of the whole procedure many years afterward. After commending the spirit and proposals of the tariff commission and mentioning the successful efforts of many persons to have their individual interests looked out for, he expressed a regret that he did not defeat the bill, as he could have done in view of the evenly balanced party situation in the Senate at that time.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The election of 1880 is well treated by Sparks, Stanwood, Andrews, and Rhodes. Senator G.F. h.o.a.r, the chairman of the Republican nominating convention, has a valuable chapter in his _Autobiography of Seventy Years_. Such newspapers as the New York _Times_ and _Tribune_ are invaluable for a discussion of the conventions.

The events of the administration, such as the tariff debates, the pa.s.sage of the civil service law and others are discussed in the special works mentioned in Chapter V. Consult also: Edward Stanwood, _J.G.

Blaine_; T.C. Platt, _Autobiography_; and A.R. Conkling, _Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling_. The _Annual Cyclopaedia _contains several excellent articles on the tariff (1882, 1883), civil service reform (1883), star route trials (1882, 1883). H.C. Thomas, _The Return of the Democratic Party to Power in 1884_ (1919), contains useful chapters on Garfield and Arthur.

[1] For Platt's account of the annual reunion and banquet of the three hundred and six--"The Old Guard"--see _Autobiography_, 115.

[2] Garfield's early career as a ca.n.a.l boy led to such campaign songs as the following:

He early learned to paddle well his own forlorn canoe, Upon Ohio's grand ca.n.a.l he held the h.e.l.lum true.

And now the people shout to him: "Lo! 't is for you we wait.

We want to see Jim Garfield guide our glorious ship of state."

[3] William Windom, of Minn., was Secretary of the Treasury; E.T.

Lincoln, of Ill., Secretary of War; Wayne MacVeagh, of Pa., Attorney-General; T.L. James, of N.Y., Postmaster-General; W.H. Hunt, of La., Secretary of the Navy; S.J. Kirkwood, of Ia., Secretary of the Interior.

[4] The death of the President emphasized the need of a presidential succession law. Under an act of 1792, the president and vice-president were succeeded by the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House. When Garfield died, the Senate had not yet elected a presiding officer and the House had not met. The death of Arthur would have left the country without a legal head. The Presidential Succession Act of 1886 remedied the fault by providing for the succession of the cabinet in order, beginning with the Secretary of State. The presiding officers of the Senate and House were omitted, because they might not be of the dominant party.

[5] The cabinet was composed of F.T. Frelinghuysen, N.J., Secretary of State; C.J. Folger, N.Y., Secretary of the Treasury; R.T. Lincoln, Ill., Secretary of War; B.H. Brewster, Pa., Attorney-General; T.O. Howe, Wis., Postmaster-General; W.E. Chandler, N.H., Secretary of the Navy; H.M.

Teller, Colo., Secretary of the Interior.

[6] Above, p. 145.

[7] Some thoroughly unselfish members of Congress like Senator h.o.a.r, however, believed the bill a justifiable one and voted for it. See h.o.a.r, _Autobiography_, II, chapter VIII.

CHAPTER VIII

THE OVERTURN OF 1884

The election of 1880 was memorable only for the type of politics with which that contest was so inextricably involved. The party leaders were second-rate men; the platforms, except for that of the Greenback party, were as lacking in definiteness as the most timid office-seeker could desire; in brief, it was a cross-section of American professional politics at its worst. The election of 1884 was a distinct, although not a complete contrast. It was not a campaign of platforms, but like the election of 1824 it was a battle of men. Two genuine leaders, each representing a distinct type of politics, contended for an opportunity to try out a philosophy of government in the executive chair. In 1880 the conventions were the chief interest--the campaign was dull. The campaign of 1884, on the other hand, was one of the most remarkable in our history.

It will be remembered that the year 1882 had been characterized by political upheavals. In Pennsylvania the Greenbackers had demanded that currency be issued only by the central government--not by the national banks--and that measures be taken to curb monopolies; the independent Republicans had revolted against Cameron, and demanded civil service reform and the overthrow of bossism; and the Democrats had elected a governor of the reformer type, Robert E. Pattison. Ma.s.sachusetts Republicans had gasped the day after the election to find that "Ben"

Butler, who bore a questionable reputation as a politician, as a soldier and as a man, had been elected by a combination of Greenbackers and Democrats on a reform program. In New York the Democrats had taken advantage of a factional quarrel among their opponents to elect as governor a man who had achieved a reputation as a reformer--Grover Cleveland. That some of the states which had been Democratic in 1882, had become Republican again in 1883 ill.u.s.trates the unstable character of the politics of the time.

The beginning of the convention season of 1884 gave hint of the vigorous campaign ahead. An Anti-Monopoly party nominated Benjamin F. Butler, who was also supported by the Greenbackers. The Prohibitionists presented a ticket headed by John P. St. John. The action of the Republican convention, which met at Chicago on June 3, proved to be the turning point in the campaign. President Arthur was frankly a candidate for another term, but he did not have the united support of the professional politicians and was distrusted by most of the reform element. Nor had his veto of the Chinese immigration bill and the rivers and harbors act tended to increase his popularity. Most enthusiastic, confident and vociferous were the supporters of James G. Blaine, of Maine. The independent element hoped to nominate Senator Edmunds, of Vermont, and was particularly disturbed at the character of the workers for the "Man from Maine." His campaign manager, Stephen B. Elkins, had been charged with a discreditable connection with the star-route scandals; men of the Platt type were urging that it was now Blaine's "turn"; and Powell Clayton, an Arkansas carpet-bagger of ill-repute, was the Blaine candidate for the position of temporary chairman of the convention.

Before a candidate was chosen the delegates turned to the adoption of the platform. This was of the usual type but was an advance over that of 1880 in several respects. It committed the party to a protective tariff and advocated an interstate commerce law and the extension of civil service reform.

The balloting for candidates proved that Blaine was clearly the choice of the convention. The mere mention of his name threw the delegates into storms of applause and even on the first ballot he received votes from every state in the union save five. On the fourth ballot he received an overwhelming majority and became the nominee. John A.

Logan of Illinois, a prominent politician and soldier, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency--a tail to the ticket, in the opinion of the Democrats, which was designed to "Wag Invitation to the Soldier Vote."

The choice of Blaine was variously received by the different factions in the convention. The Pacific coast delegates, in a special train, went from Chicago to Augusta, Maine, before starting for home, in order personally to pledge their support to the candidate. On the other hand, Theodore Roosevelt disgustedly remarked that he was going to a cattle-ranch in the West to stay he knew not how long. George William Curtis sadly declared that he had been present at the birth of the Republican party and feared that he was to be a witness of its death. Other reformers were no less disaffected.

The outspoken Republican opposition to Blaine gave infinite aid and comfort to the Democrats whose convention, coming a month later, could take advantage of the growing schism in the opposition. During the interval between the two conventions the growing sentiment in favor of the nomination of Grover Cleveland received the additional impetus of independent Republican support. The Democratic party was still an object of suspicion to them, but they were ready to run the risks of even a Democratic administration, if a leader of proved integrity should be nominated, and Cleveland seemed to them to meet the demands of the times. The first work of the convention, which met in Chicago on July 8, was the adoption of a reform platform. Characterizing the opposition party as a "reminiscence," it condemned Republican misrule, and promised reform; it proposed a revision of the tariff that would be fair to all interests, and reductions which would promote industry, do no harm to labor and raise sufficient revenue; and it briefly advocated "honest"

civil service reform.

The enthusiasm which the independent Republicans were manifesting for Cleveland was balanced by the hostility of elements within his party.

As Governor he had exercised his veto power with complete disregard for the effect on his own political future. He had, for example, vetoed a popular measure reducing fares on the New York City elevated railroad, basing his objections on the ground that the bill violated the provisions of the fundamental railroad law of the state. He was opposed by Tammany Hall, led by John Kelley, who declared that the labor element disliked him. Kelley's reputation, however, was such that his hostility seemed like a compliment and gave force to General Bragg's a.s.sertion, in seconding the nomination of Cleveland, that his friends "love him most for the enemies he has made." The first ballot proved that the Governor was stronger than his compet.i.tors, Senator Bayard, Allen G. Thurman, Samuel J. Randall and several men of lesser importance, and on the second ballot he received the nomination.

The choice of Cleveland gave the independent movement more than the expected impetus. The New York _Times_ at once crossed the line into the Cleveland camp and _Harpers Weekly_, long a supporter of the Republicans, the Boston _Herald_, Springfield _Republican_, New York _Evening Post_, _The Nation_, the Chicago _Times_ and a host of less important ones followed. A conference of Independents in New York City, which was composed of five hundred delegates and which enlisted the support of such men as Carl Schurz, George William Curtis, Henry C. Lea, Charles J. Bonaparte, Moorfield Storey and President Seelye of Amherst College, gave striking evidence of the revolt which Blaine's nomination had aroused. Curtis said in the conference, that the chief issue of the campaign was moral rather than political. The New York _Times_ declared that the issue was a personal one. Some of the better element, however, like Senator h.o.a.r, earnestly urged the election of Blaine, while Senator Edmunds refused either to aid or oppose his party. Others, like Roosevelt, were unable to give ungrudging support, but felt that reform would be better promoted by working within the party than by withdrawing. It is obvious that Blaine and Cleveland, not the platforms of the parties, had become the issue of the campaign.

James G. Blaine was born in Pennsylvania in 1830, was educated at Washington College in his native state, later moved to Augusta, Maine, and purchased an interest in the Kennebec _Journal_. On a.s.suming his journalistic duties he familiarized himself with the politics of the state and became powerful in local, and later in federal affairs. He was a member of the first Republican convention and was chairman of the state Republican committee for more than twenty years, from which point of vantage he had a prevailing influence in Maine politics. He served in the state and federal legislatures as well as in Garfield's cabinet and was a prominent candidate for the presidential nomination in 1876 and in 1880.

Grover Cleveland, although only seven years younger than Blaine, was relatively inexperienced on the stage of national affairs. He was born in New Jersey, the son of a Presbyterian minister, grew up with little education, was salesman in a village store and later clerk in a law office, at the age of eighteen. Although he had been sheriff of Erie County, it was not until 1881, when he became mayor of Buffalo, that he took an important part in politics, and here his record as the business-like "veto mayor" was such as to carry him into the governor's chair a year later. The huge majority which he received in the gubernatorial contest was not wholly due to his own strength--doubtless factional quarrels among the Republicans a.s.sisted him--but the prominence which this election gave him and his conduct as Governor made inevitable his candidacy for higher office.

Few men could have been nominated who would have presented a more complete contrast than Blaine and Cleveland. In personality Blaine was magnetic, approachable, high-strung, possessed of a vivid imagination and of a marvellous memory for facts, names and faces. Over him men went "insane in pairs," either devotedly admiring or completely distrusting him. Cleveland was almost devoid of personal charm except to his most intimate a.s.sociates. He was brusque and tactless, unimaginative, plodding, commonplace in his tastes and in the elements of his character. Men threw their hats in the air and cheered themselves hoa.r.s.e at the name of Blaine; to Cleveland's courage, earnestness and honesty, they gave a tribute of admiration. When the campaign was at fever heat, Blaine was lifting crowds of eager listeners to the mountain peaks of enthusiasm; Cleveland was in the governor's room in Albany, phlegmatically plodding away at the business of his office. He was too heavy, unimaginative, direct, to indulge in flights of oratory. Yet scarcely anything that Blaine said still lives, while some of Cleveland's phrases have pa.s.sed into the language of every-day.

No less a contrast existed between Blaine and Cleveland as political characters. The former's experience in the machinery of politics, in the disposal of its loaves and fishes, has already been mentioned. Of that part of politics, Cleveland had had no experience. It is said that he never was in Washington, except for a single day, until he went there to become President. Both were bold and active fighters, but Blaine was a strategist, a manager and a diplomat, while Cleveland could merely state the policy which he desired to see put into effect, and then crash ahead. Blaine had the instinct for the popular thing, was never ahead of his party, was surrounded by his followers; Cleveland saw the thing which he felt a moral imperative to accomplish and was far in advance of his fellows. The Republican was popular among the professional political element in his party and was supported by it; the Democrat never was.

Cleveland openly declared his att.i.tude on controverted issues, in words that admitted of no ambiguity and at times when only silence or soft words would save him from defeat. Blaine lacked the moral courage and the indifference to immediate results which were necessary for so exalted an action. Cleveland had more of the reformer in his nature, and had so keen a sense of responsibility and duty that his political career was a succession of battles against things that seemed wrong to him.

Blaine accepted the party standards as they were; he belonged to the past, to the policies and political morality of war and reconstruction; Cleveland belonged to the transition from reconstruction to the twentieth century.

The particular thing, however, that came out of Blaine's past to dog his foot-steps, give him the enmity of the Independents--better known as the "Mugwumps"--and, doubtless, to defeat him, was a series of transactions exposed in the Mulligan letters. In order to understand these, it is necessary to inquire into events that occurred fifteen years before the overturn of 1884. In April, 1869, a bill favorable to the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad--an Arkansas land-grant enterprise--was before the House of Representatives. Blaine was Speaker. As the session was near its close and the bill seemed likely to be lost, its friends bespoke Blaine's a.s.sistance. He suggested that a certain point of order be raised, which would facilitate the pa.s.sage of the measure, and also asked General John A. Logan to raise the point. Logan did so, Blaine sustained him and the act was pa.s.sed. Nearly three months later, Warren Fisher, Jr., a Boston business man, asked Blaine to partic.i.p.ate in the affairs of the Little Rock Railroad. Blaine signified his readiness, closing his letter with the words, "I do not feel that I shall prove a dead-head in the enterprise if I once embark in it. I see various channels in which I know I can be useful." When Blaine's enemies got hold of this, they declared that he intended to use his position as Speaker to further the interests of the road, as he had done at the time of the famous point of order; his friends a.s.serted that he intended merely to sell the securities of the road to investors. Whether one of these contentions is true, or both, he did sell considerable amounts of the securities of the road to Maine friends, getting a "handsome commission." Considerable correspondence pa.s.sed between Blaine and Fisher from 1869 to 1872 when their relations ended. Blaine understood that all their correspondence was mutually surrendered.

In the spring of 1876, the presidential campaign was on the horizon and Blaine was a prominent candidate for the Republican nomination.

Meanwhile ugly rumors were flying about concerning the connection of certain members of Congress, Blaine among them, with questionable railroad transactions, and he arose in the House to deny the charges. He did not discuss the matter fully, as he did not wish his Maine const.i.tuents to know that he had received a large commission for selling Little Rock securities. Gossip grew, however, and a congressional investigation resulted in May, 1876. Blaine was one of the witnesses, but was doubtless anxious to bring the investigation to an end, since it clearly reduced his chances of receiving the nomination. Presently gossip said that Warren Fisher and James Mulligan were going to testify.

Mulligan had been confidential clerk to one of Mrs. Blaine's brothers and later to Fisher. When Mulligan began his testimony it appeared that he intended to lay before the committee a package of letters that had pa.s.sed between Blaine and Fisher, and thereupon, at Blaine's whispered request, one of the members of the committee procured an adjournment for the day. That evening Blaine found Mulligan at the latter's hotel and prevailed on him to surrender the letters temporarily, in order that Blaine might read and then return them. Blaine thereupon consulted two lawyers and on their advice he refused to restore the package to Mulligan. Merely to keep silence, however, was to admit guilt. Blaine, therefore, arose one day in the House of Representatives and holding the letters in his hand read selections and defended himself in a remarkable burst of emotional oratory. At the climax of this defence he elicited from the chairman of the committee of investigation an unwilling admission that the committee had suppressed a dispatch which Blaine declared would exonerate him. Blaine was triumphant, his friends sure that he had cleared himself and the matter dropped for the time. Further investigation was prevented by Blaine's refusal to produce the letters even before the committee and by his sudden illness shortly afterward.

His election to the Senate soon took him out of the jurisdiction of the House committee and no action resulted.

The nomination of Blaine in 1884 was a fresh breeze on the half-dead embers of the Mulligan letters. _Harper's Weekly_ and other periodicals published them with damaging explanatory remarks. Campaign committees spread them abroad in pamphlet form. Attention was directed to such phrases as "I do not feel that I shall prove a dead-head" and "I see various channels in which I know I can be useful." Hostile cartoonists used the phrases with an infinite variety of innuendo. But the most powerful evidence was still to come. On September 15, 1884, Fisher and Mulligan made public additional letters which Blaine had not possessed at the time of his defence in 1876. The most damaging of these was one in which Blaine had drawn up a letter completely exonerating himself, which he asked Fisher to sign and make public as his own. Blaine had marked his request "confidential" and had written at the bottom "Burn this letter." Fisher had neither written the letter which was requested nor burned Blaine's. Meanwhile it was recalled that Blaine had earlier characterized the reformers as "upstarts, conceited, foolish, vain" and as "noisy but not numerous, pharisaical but not practical, ambitious but not wise," and the already intemperate campaign became more personal than ever.

Thomas Nast's able pencil caricatured Blaine in _Harper's Weekly_ as a magnetic candidate too heavy for the party elephant to carry; _Puck_ portrayed him as the "tattooed man" covered all over with "Little Rock,"

"Mulligan Letters" and the like. _Life_ described him as a