The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

The Chicago Convention of the Republican party, meeting early in June, was the scene of a battle between the two elements in the party. At the outset, the old independents, headed by Curtis, and reinforced by younger men like Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, broke the slate of the National Committee and seated a chairman of their own choice. But the regulars rallied, controlled the platform, and made the nomination. Blaine and John A. Logan were selected, the former accepting the honor with secret misgivings, for he had a clear understanding of the intensity of the opposition within the party. The reformers went home discouraged, many of them determined not to let party regularity hold them to Blaine.

Out of the nomination of Blaine grew the "Mugwump" movement, whose influence was greater than that of the last bolt. The origin of the name "Mugwump" is not entirely clear, but it was well known as an opprobrious epithet, and was applied now by party regulars to the "holier-than-thou" reformers. One of the regulars later quoted Revelation at them: "Thou art neither hot nor cold ... so, then, I will spew thee out of my mouth." They were more offensive to Republicans than were the Democrats, while the latter were bewildered but cynical. "I know that to-day we are living in a very highly scented atmosphere of political reform," said one of the Democratic Senators a little later, "I know that under the saintly leadership of the Eatonian school of political philosophers we are all ceasing to be partisans, that we no longer recognize party obligations, party duty, party discipline, and party devoirs; that we are all to become reconciled to a life of political monasticism; but I will continue to have one failing, and that is in my humble way to be as watchful and as vigilant of the purposes, designs, and craft of the Republican leaders as I have endeavored to be in the past."

The Mugwumps left Chicago and at once opened negotiations with the Democratic leaders. The Nation and the Evening Post were already with them. Harper's Weekly, which had been a Union journal in the war, and Republican ever since, abandoned the party ticket. George William Curtis, its editor, led in the revolt, and the Mugwumps met at the house of one of the Harpers for organization, on June 17, 1884. Their problem was whether to nominate an independent ticket and be defeated, or to support and help elect a Democratic President, in case the Democrats should be willing to coöperate with them.

Not all the reformers turned from Blaine. Whitelaw Reid, the successor of Horace Greeley on the New York Tribune, remained regular. Lodge went back to Massachusetts and persuaded himself to take part in the canvass. Roosevelt, discouraged by the nomination of Blaine, remained regular, but stepped out of the campaign and began his ranch life in the Far West. With him, as with many others, it was a matter of conviction that reform, to be effective, must be urged within the party. But enough of the reformers went with the Mugwumps to lessen Blaine's chances of election.

When the Mugwumps made overtures for fusion to the Democratic leaders, they had in mind as a candidate a young Democratic lawyer who had appeared as Mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and had been elected as reform Governor of New York in 1882. He had secured the aid of independent reformers in that campaign,—men who resented the candidacy of Folger and the intrusion of the National Administration in local politics. As governor he had speedily established his reputation for stubborn honesty and independent judgment. Grover Cleveland had become, like Tilden, the most promising candidate in a party that had no admitted leader.

The opposition from two elements in his party, at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, strengthened Cleveland as the candidate of reform. Ben Butler, who had himself been nominated for the Presidency by an Anti-Monopoly Convention, denounced him as a foe of labor; and such was Butler's reputation that his enmity was one of Cleveland's assets. John Kelly, the chief of Tammany Hall, opposed him, too, having learned to know him as Governor of New York. Well might Cleveland's friends say, "We love him for the enemies he has made." They nominated him on the second ballot, selecting Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, to run with him. Their platform was full of reform, even of the tariff, but on the latter subject it was less specific than the tariff reformers had hoped.

As the parties stood in 1884, personal character meant more than platform or party name. Cleveland possessed qualities that made his appeal to independents quite as strong as it was to Democrats. With older brothers in the army he had supported his mother during the war, and had kept clear of copperheadism. He stood for sound money; he believed in a tariff for revenue; he had proved his devotion to civil service reform; he lacked the factional enemies who weakened the candidacy of a prominent leader like Blaine; and his peculiar appeal to Republican dissenters led the canvass away from issues into the field of personalities.

The charge of the independents upon Blaine's personal honor caused the Republican schism and drove the party regulars into a retort in kind. The private life of the candidates was uncovered to the annoyance of both and to the greater embarrassment of Cleveland. Nothing discreditable to his honesty could be found, but an apparent lapse in his private conduct gave the pretext for wild and dishonest attacks upon his character. A few years later the novelist, Paul Leicester Ford, in a keen study of New York politics entitled The Honorable Peter Stirling, portrayed a situation somewhat resembling that of Cleveland, though disclaiming Cleveland as his model. The Boston Journal led in the exploitation of the charges, and partisans forgot decency on both sides. Nast, having formerly cartooned Blaine in the "Bloody Shirt," now turned to "A Roaring Farce—The Plumed Knight in a Clean Shirt," while others pointed out the fact that the admirer who coined the "plumed knight" epithet had been counsel for the fraudulent star-route contractors.

Attempts were made to appeal to class hatred on both sides. Butler had hesitated for several weeks in his acceptance of the nomination by the Anti-Monopoly Convention. Greenbackers and a few labor leaders made up his following, and it was supposed that they would draw votes from the Democrats. After conference with Republican leaders, Butler agreed to run, and it was freely charged that these leaders financed his campaign to injure Cleveland. Republicans appealed to the Irish vote by recalling Blaine's vigorous diplomacy against Great Britain; their opponents caricatured Blaine by representing him as consorting with Irish thugs and dynamiters. At the very end of the canvass a chance remark may have decided the result.

So much had been said of character in the campaign that both candidates brought out the clergy to give them certificates of excellence. In October a meeting of clergymen of all denominations was held at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to greet Blaine. The oldest minister, Burchard by name, was asked to deliver the address, and while he spoke Blaine thought of other matters. He thus missed a phrase which other hearers caught and which the Democrats immediately advertised. It denounced the Democrats as adherents of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion," and was reported as conveying a gratuitous insult to the Irish vote. How many Irish turned from Blaine to Cleveland in the last week of the campaign cannot be said, but the election was so close that a few votes, swung either way, could have determined it. Cleveland carried New York and won a majority of the electoral college, but his popular plurality over Blaine was only 23,000, while he had some 300,000 fewer than his combined rivals. Butler drew 175,000 votes without defeating Cleveland. Purists, disgusted with the personalities of the campaign, swelled the Prohibition vote to 150,000.