CHAPTER III. NOVEMBER 8, 1892.
November the 8th, 1892, will be noted, by the historian of the future, as a date constituting a milestone to mark the road and journey of struggling humanity. What July the 14th is to the French, July the 4th is, and November the 8th will be, to the American people.
The surface of the waters of public opinion presented a peaceful appearance at the dawning of that autumn day, but beneath the tranquil surface there raged subterranean and powerful forces, moving the deep waters of public sentiment. The much-discussed “general apathy” was the silent, sullen wrath, dangerous in individuals as it is in the masses. The silent fighter is tireless and terrible. The people had ceased to be moved by oratorical effort, brass bands, and torchlight processions. They had become surfeited with argument upon the subject of Protection. The changes had been rung upon the effect of the passage of a Force Bill, until the people had become as accustomed to the beating of the flanges of the newspapers upon the rails of this somewhat attenuated subject, as a slumbering passenger on a railway train. In fact, the cessation of the clangor would have attracted more attention than the continuation of the monotonous drumming.
The leading journal in the Force Bill camp had been that preëminently vigorous newspaper, the New York Sun. Under the guidance of the genius of the Hon. Charles A. Dana, the New York Sun had seized the most attractive, because the most novel, instrument of noise presented in this campaign of education. It had blown such vigorous blasts, that a large portion of newspaperdom, who regarded the opinions expressed by Mr. Dana as apt to be eminently reasonable, had joined in the chorus of the Force Bill farce, and created discordance and noise enough to have nauseated the masses with weariness of the subject. The pot-house politician, as well as his more exalted brother of the Fifth Avenue palatial political headquarters, was abashed and confused, by the fact that his efforts to arouse enthusiasm among the masses were utterly fruitless. They neither agreed with him nor disagreed with him. There was no room for argument. It was like the professional pugilist descanting on the beauties of the bruiser’s art to a Whittier, Holmes, or Longfellow; the subjects, upon which the politicians of all degrees and kinds had exhausted themselves, were not interesting.
The issue before the people was sentimental. The detestation of the prevalence and growth of a pretended and sham aristocracy, became the important and all-absorbing theme within their hearts. They heard the talk; they read the dissertations of learned editors, and while it was all, doubtless, the product of powerful brains, it was not the most important matter in the struggle to be decided that November morning, between the masses and an assumption of “caste” in free America. Mr. Thomas Dolan, at the Clover Club, in Philadelphia, in referring to the result of the election, had at least the candor to admit the cause of the Republican party’s defeat. Had he, and gentlemen of his doubtless aristocratic tendencies, realized the impression that their course of conduct was making upon the minds of the mass of the Common People prior to that eventful day, November the 8th, and had they taken warning by the signs of the times, had they believed less in the Burchard theory of Blaine’s defeat in ’84, and more in the efficacy of the impression, prejudicing the minds of the people against Mr. Blaine and his party by that banquet,—which has been dubbed in political parlance, “the Belshazzar feast,”—they might have been forewarned. But those who have been, for the last thirty years, attempting to create an artificial order to govern society, “caste,” have become so puffed up by wealth, and blinded by the ever-narrowing view they are able to obtain from their assumed exalted position, that they have lost sight of every other consideration; becoming absorbed in their own one overmastering emotion—love of money. Before this god of Mammon they had performed such obsequious service, that they imagined the only appeal necessary to make to the people, was the one so much paraded by the Republican press, i. e., the advantage of Protection to the pocket of the poor man. Upon this day, November 8th, which was to decide, in no doubtful manner, the destiny of the nation with regard to its social life, in the silence, communing only with their outraged sense of the rights of man and the equality of all mankind, the voters sought the confessional-like closets in the booths, established by the introduction of the Australian system of voting. There was no hurrah, no noise, no violence, but a tremendous outpouring of men, filling every voting precinct in the land, creating a larger percentage of voters who exercise their right of franchise than on any former election ever held in America.
As the hours of the day passed, some of the keen observers and astute party leaders began to realize that the existence of a general “feeling of apathy” had been more apparent than real; else what was the meaning of this outpouring of voters, who, silently and with determined, fixed certainty of purpose, sought to exercise their right as citizens? Even in those sections of the large cities where the wealthy reside, and in the back country, where it is difficult for the voter, often, to find the time, opportunity, and the means of getting to the polls on election day, it was the same story. The nation had been aroused in some magical and mysterious manner, which was beyond the expectation and prognostication of the politicians and party leaders. The people had taken the matter out of their hands. They had simply taken the ship of State into their own keeping, and the professional politician had to cling to the life-line in the wake thereof.
Wonderment seized these gentlemen of supposed miraculous political perspicacity. They asked one another, by their silent and inquiring glances: “What does this mean? Is our occupation, like Othello’s, gone?”
The people, regardless of their mistaken mouthing, like some massive Percheron horse, had taken the bit; and, regardless of all attempts at guidance, were exerting the strength which, when aroused, they possess, contrary to the expectations of the learned gentlemen of the political profession. When the sun went down, November 8, 1892, none were less able to predict the result of this tremendous uprising of the people than those who by their diplomacy had arrived at that position, so enviable in the minds of petty politicians, Chairmen of various Campaign Committees. Chairman Carter might have exclaimed, with the drowning people at Johnstown, as he sank beneath the flood of indignant “Common People,” “Whence comes this water?” Chairman Harrity might well have been drunk and delirious, as the result of his own good fortune, for as surprising to him as to Chairman Carter was the existence of this slumbering volcano of indignation which had brought about the overwhelming success of the candidate who represented, in the minds of the people, the opposition to the growing aristocracy which had become engrafted upon the Republican party. Chairman Harrity might well have been dazed by the remarkable results of his own endeavors, had he not realized that his efforts had been incidental to, and not the cause of, the success of Cleveland.
It is not presumed to criticise the conduct of the campaign as managed by the campaign committees of both sides. Their duties, without doubt, were performed in a most masterly manner. The organizations with which both committees worked with tireless energy to achieve success for their respective sides, cannot fail to impress even a very tyro in politics. It was, however, like two learned physicians, disputing over the disease of a patient, and both being in error; each applying established remedies that experience had taught him were efficacious in the disease he had imagined it to be; both equally in error because they had mistaken the complaint of the patient. To the average politician of the present day, Tariff Reform and Protection constitute the sum of all evils and diseases of the body politic. Like Dr. Sangrado’s instruction to Gil Blas, they have only two remedies: phlebotomy and plenty of hot water. And the astonishment expressed by them at the possible existence of some other disease and some other remedy, was productive of as much consternation as that in the breast of Gil Blas, at the result of the treatment of his patients at Valladolid. As the returns from the different States began to arrive at the headquarters of the different committees; as the result of the opinion of the people upon this momentous occasion (so fraught with disappointment to the aristocratic believers in “caste”) became apparent, surprise and astonishment were depicted upon every countenance; while, mingled with unalloyed delight in the breasts of the Democrats, and with mortification in the hearts of the Republicans, the same surprise and astonishment existed. That Illinois, a State that had sent over 200,000 men to fight under the Federal flag, and in which such large sums of pension money had been annually distributed to the disabled veterans for many years, should have been so unmindful and heedless of the display of the time-honored and ensanguined garment, the “Bloody Shirt,” and the howling of the Republican press about Cleveland’s vetoes of pension bills, was simply outrageous to the minds of the stupefied Republican leaders.
Could it be possible that their so often victorious shout of sectionalism, and constant address to the pocketbook of the veteran, had been relegated to the shadowy shelf of “innocuous desuetude”?
They looked aghast at the result of the counting of votes in Indiana. That much-talked-of, recently-discovered Gas belt, in which had sprung up innumerable manufactories, whose workshops were filled with “Common People,” had failed to find an all-obscuring attraction in the glittering gold that the magnates of wealth had held out to them as an inducement to perpetuate the power of the rich and to increase those privileges and class distinctions that they fondly hoped would be accorded to them by the American people. Verily, like DeFarge, in Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” the workman of the manufacturers in Indiana had presumed to hurl the magical Louis piece back into the carriages of the wealthy, rejecting with indignation the attempt to bribe their honor, and their sense of the equality of man.
The negro of Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia, upon whom these bondholders thought they had a mortgage, by their claimed procurement of his emancipation, had, even in spite of his color, previous condition, and gratitude, joined with his fellow-citizens, the “Common People,” taking as the representative of those who had most benefited him and his race, the immortal Abraham Lincoln, a man of the “Common People”; and, by the negro’s vote, was added strength to the blow, struck by the white Democracy of the Union, at this arrogant assumption of that thing which the negro, along with the white man, had learned to hate and resent—the assumption of “caste” upon the part of any set of citizens in the United States of America.
The wool-grower of Ohio, the home of the popular McKinley, added sorrow to the cup held to the lips of the would-be aristocrats. He no longer felt bound to bow his head before the advantages held out by the party of wealth. He preferred to take a little less for his wool, and a little more respect for himself, his wife, and children in the social world, where every landmark of equality was being washed away by the tide of aristocratic tendencies. The bewildered Republican leaders gazed with terror upon the transmogrified weapons with which they had waged war. The sword of steel, when held by the hand clad in a golden gauntlet, had become a weapon of straw. They murmured to one another: “If these weapons have failed us, in what shall we seek safety?”
Consternation was in the council of the great of that party who, for more than a quarter of a century, had controlled the legislation of the Republic, and by whom was created, in the minds of the people, the errors of social distinction and “caste” that have crept into the country. The Republicans, assembled at their headquarters, became more bewildered at each new piece of evidence of the disapprobation and rejection of those doctrines, the understanding of which they deemed such conclusive argument to the minds of the people. The oncoming storm had no centre. It was blowing in all directions of the Union. Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, even manufacturing Pennsylvania, were sending a horrible howling of destructive wind, which would sweep away all their carefully-prepared barriers. At the Democratic headquarters, no less was the degree of wonder stamped, though with joyous imprint, upon the faces of the party leaders. Could it be possible that Illinois had cast the majority of its vote for the leaders of the Democratic party, those standard-bearers against whom so much had been said to prejudice the mind of that great Soldier State, the home of Lincoln, the birthplace of the Republican party and of the Grand Army of the Republic?
It was hard for the most hopeful to realize. Had the vaunted undoing of the Democratic party in the State of Indiana, the increase of the manufactures, and the personal popularity of a President, one of Indiana’s chosen sons, been proved false and groundless? Had the negroes in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia joined the Democratic “Common People,” in spite of the promised covenant of their salvation, The Force Bill, and added to the majorities in those Southern States? Connecticut—much-protected Connecticut; could it be possible that she would increase the few hundred majority accorded to the Democratic candidate four years ago?
All seemed so utterly out of keeping with the fondest hopes and expectations of the sagacious chieftains of Democracy, that incredulity was stamped upon every countenance. It seemed to be utterly beyond the comprehension of the wisest of the political world of both parties, that, possibly, they had been treating an unknown and unappreciated disease, the nature whereof they had failed to recognize. The result was not compatible with any established theory of either party. The people had evinced such utter disregard for all the old arguments and well-tried remedies, that it dumbfounded the physicians who pretend to minister to the wants of the nation. From such unsuspected quarters, and in such ridiculous proportions, had come the disapproval of the people, that all were at sea; some wrapping themselves in their own glory, proclaiming, like Cock Robin, “I did it, with my little bow and arrow;” others, seeking to shield themselves behind the transparent, fragile shield of another’s fault: “He did it, his unpopularity;” “Protection did it; it was his policy;” each trying to escape the general stampede, occasioned by the long-suppressed indignation of the people who objected, not so much to the economic doctrines of the Republican party (not that they had become converted to the tenets of the Democratic faith), but to that crime of “caste” which, with its many ramifications in the whole mass of society, was causing them unhappiness.
It is not well for the Democratic party to lay the flattering unction to its soul, that the mass of the people had become converted to the principles enunciated by that party in Chicago, at the Convention where Mr. Cleveland was nominated. It would be as delusive and disappointing to them, in some future election, as it has proved to the Republican party upon the occasion of their late discomfiture. On the other hand, the Republican party should be well convinced, by its downfall, that the people will not endure the wrapping up, in silken garments, of the progeny of the deformed and diseased state of European society, palming the enshrouded babe off as an offspring of that land that lit the torch of freedom for the world.