After the Peace Congress in London, in 1890, though sixty years of age, Mrs. Lockwood remained abroad long enough to take a course of lectures at Oxford. When eighty-two, she started off to Europe to carry a peace message to the women of the world, and in 1916, just a year before her death, she gave an address on the re-election of Woodrow Wilson, giving seven reasons for his choice. This was used as campaign literature.
With the nominees of five different parties in the field, each making a fight for the needed votes to insure victory, the political atmosphere became tense. Courtesy and politeness seemed forgotten as the contest became one of the ugliest in the national history; no effort was spared to discredit, defame, and disqualify the candidates. The private life and character of each of the two most prominent was mercilessly attacked, and both Blaine and Cleveland were subject to fierce gruelling in the exposé of incidents, episodes, and transactions of their earlier lives. Sentiment appeared to be overwhelmingly strong for Blaine as party leader, but he was not optimistic. He had seen the coveted victory slip from his grasp before, and he was wearied with defeats and hopes deferred!
A few days before election, the tide was turned against Blaine, and the distrust of him crystallized by the speech of the Reverend M. Burchard, veteran minister representing a delegation of clergymen. In his remarks, Mr. Burchard warned his country against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” and thus gave to the anti-Blaine factions a slogan which Tammany at once placed on billboards, bulletins, and banners, and sent its ringing echoes through the succeeding years as a warning to all subsequent campaigners. Blaine once again dropped his banners in defeat, though Cleveland carried only a meagre victory of a thousand votes in his state.
Mr. Cleveland served as Governor until the meeting of the Legislature after election, when he closed his career with this, the shortest message on record:
January 6, 1885.
To the Legislature:
I hereby resign the office of Governor of the State of New York.
Grover Cleveland.
Until elected to the Presidency, Grover Cleveland concerned himself but slightly with the history of his family, being content with the fact that his line had comprised honourable men and good women, who had filled their respective places with honour to themselves. Each generation turned out ministers, though they shifted their sectarian allegiance—Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Episcopalian denominations being represented by clergy of this name.
Richard Falley Cleveland, the father of Grover, a Yale graduate, was a Presbyterian minister. His task was to bring up and educate a family of nine children on an annual income of $600.