The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

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?