THE BLAINE-CLEVELAND CAMPAIGN

By Harry Thurston Peck.

PROFESSOR PECK, from whose "Twenty Years of the Republic" (1885-1905) this account of the memorable Blaine-Cleveland Presidential campaign of 1884 is taken, by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, was long a member of the faculty of Columbia University and was editor of the New International Encyclopedia, as well as of a popular "Dictionary of Literature and Antiquities."

As here set forth, the defeat of Blaine, the Republican, by Cleveland, the Democratic candidate, was largely attributable to the impolitic speech of the Rev. Samuel D. Burchard in which the Democratic party was styled "the party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." In an unusually bitter campaign the combined Democratic and "mugwump" vote elected Cleveland, who received 219 electoral votes to 182 cast for Blaine, and was inaugurated March 4, 1885, the first Democratic President since the Civil War.

THE nomination of James G. Blaine produced an indescribable sensation throughout the length and breadth of the United States. No American statesman had ever had more ardent and intensely loyal friends than he, as none had ever had more virulent and bitter enemies. The former hailed his candidacy with intense enthusiasm ; the latter began at once moving heaven and earth to compass his defeat.

Mr. Blaine had already enjoyed a remarkable career. Born in Pennsylvania of Scotch-Irish parentage, he had been by turns a teacher and an editor, having taken up in 1854 his residence in Maine. In 1858 he had entered the State Legislature, where for two years he served as Speaker. In 1862 he was sent to Congress, and at once made his mark by his readiness in debate, his quick grasp upon political principles, and his exceptional fertility in resource. He had the impetuosity of the Celt and the clear reasoning brain of the Anglo-Saxon, besides that indescribable quality which, for want of a better name, is known as magnetism. His personal charm was indeed remarkable, and it was to this as much as to his other gifts that he owed the extraordinary devotion of his followers and friends. Early in his political life he had been compared to Henry Clay, to whose career his own was to exhibit a striking parallel. At first he was better known to his associates in Congress than to the country as a whole ; but when, in 1869, he was elected Speaker of the House, he rose at once to the rank of a great party leader.

But the fierce white light which beats upon a throne is no more fierce than that which beats upon a Presidential aspirant. It was turned at once upon Mr. Blaine's whole past career. Every incident and every act of his were now subjected to minute investigation by his enemies and rivals. A dozen stories grew until they filled the minds of every one about him. It was said that Mr. Blaine had pledged a number of worthless railroad bonds to the Union Pacific Railway Company in return for a loan of $64,000 which had never been repaid. It was also charged that without consideration he had received bonds of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad.

These reports obtained so widespread a currency that Mr. Blaine was forced to rise in his place and bring the matter to the attention of the House. He read a letter from the treasurer of the Union Pacific and from Colonel Thomas A. Scott, the president of that railway, denying the story of the worthless bonds. He read another letter from Morton, Bliss & Company, who were alleged to have cashed the draft for $64,000, mentioned in the story, but who now declared that no such draft had been presented to them. Mr. Blaine went on to say that he had never owned the Little Rock and Fort Smith bonds which he was said to have received without any consideration. Apparently his name was cleared.

The time for the National Republican Convention was drawing near. Many States had already instructed their delegates to support his candidacy. That he should be the subject of an investigation for corrupt transactions while his name was before the Convention would be fatal to his chances ; and he desired above all things to stave it off. Nevertheless, the House, which was strongly Democratic, ordered its Judiciary Committee to make such an investigation, though in the resolution ordering it, Mr. Blaine was not specifically named. This was on May 2d; and at the first sessions of the committee the evidence was corroborative of Mr. Blaine's assertions.

On May 31st there was brought before the committee a man named James Mulligan. Mulligan had at one time been a clerk for Mr. Jacob Stanwood (the brother of Mrs. Blaine), and later a bookkeeper for Warren Fisher, Jr., a business man of Boston, who had had close relations with the management of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad. While Mr. Mulligan was testifying, he chanced to mention very quietly that he had in his possession certain letters written by Mr. Blaine to Warren Fisher, Jr. Mr. Blaine asked a friend on the committee to move an immediate adjournment. The committee rose, to meet again the following morning. When it so met it listened to a most extraordinary story.

During the brief respite given by the adjournment of the committee, Mr. Blaine had flashed his mind over all the possibilities of the situation. He knew that Mulligan had letters, which, if made public by Mulligan himself, would be interpreted by every one in a sense extremely unfavorable to Mr. Blaine. He knew that these letters would surely be asked for by the committee so soon as it should reconvene in the morning. To prevent this and to gain time he must act at once. He therefore went to the Riggs House, where Mulligan was staying, and met Mulligan, Fisher and one Atkins. There he first asked to see the letters which Mulligan had with him.

On June 5th, Mr. Blaine rose in the House of Representatives and claimed the floor on a question of privilege. . . . Throughout this animated and even fiery justification of his right, the crowded House had listened in breathless silence, and with a tension of feeling which could almost be felt. There was abundant sympathy with Mr. Blaine. Even his adversaries were sorry for him. He seemed like a man driven into a corner and fighting for his very life. After a brief pause, Mr. Blaine dealt a master-stroke which he had planned with consummate art, and which he now delivered with a dramatic power that was thrilling. Raising his voice and holding up a packet, he went on :

"I am not afraid to show the letters. Thank God Almighty, I am not afraid to show them ! There they are. There is the very original package. And, with some sense of humiliation, with a mortification that I do not pretend to conceal, with a sense of outrage which I think any man in my position would feel, I invite the confidence of forty-four millions of my countrymen while I read those letters from this desk."

The tension was broken. The whole assembly burst out into frantic and prolonged applause. Then Mr. Blaine read the letters, one by one, with comments and explanations of his own. Having done so, he faced one of the Democratic members of the committee, Mr. Proctor Knott, and in the course of a rapid dialogue brought out the fact that Mr. Knott had received a cablegram from a Mr. Caldwell, whose knowledge of the whole affair was very intimate, and that Mr. Knott had apparently suppressed it. The scene at the end of this exciting parliamentary duel baffled all description. The House went mad; and for fifteen minutes there reigned a pandemonium amid which the Speaker was helpless in his efforts to restore even a semblance of order. Mr. Blaine, for the moment, had won a brilliant triumph. He had restored and strengthened the faith of all his followers and had turned apparently inevitable disaster into victory.

The famous Mulligan letters sufficed to prevent Mr. Blaine's nomination for the Presidency in 1876 and 1880, and now, in 1884, from the outset of his candidacy, were printed and scattered broadcast over the country by his political opponents.

The Democratic candidate against whom Mr. Blaine had now to make his fight was a man of a wholly antithetical type. Mr. Cleveland was in no respect a brilliant man. The son of a clergyman, and early left to make his own way in the world, he had, like his rival, been a teacher, and had later taken up the practice of the law in Buffalo. There he had held some minor public offices. In 1863 he was Assistant District Attorney for the county, and from 1870 to 1873 he had served as Sheriff. He first attracted attention outside of his own city when, in 1881, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo by a combination of Democrats and Independents. In this office he instituted reforms and defeated various corrupt combinations, while his liberal use of the veto power maintained a wise economy. In 1882 he had received the Democratic nomination for the governorship of New York, and had been elected by the remarkable plurality of 192,000 votes.

Mr. Cleveland was a type of man such as had not before come to the front as a Presidential possibility. He represented the practical, everyday, usual citizen of moderate means, and no very marked ambitions a combination of the business man and the unimportant professional person, blunt, hardheaded, brusque, and unimaginative, and with a readiness to take a hand in whatever might be going on. His education was of the simplest, his general information presumably not very large; and his interest in life was almost wholly bounded by the limits of his own locality. As a practicing lawyer he was well thought of ; yet his reputation had not gone much beyond the local circuit. A bachelor, he had no need of a large income. His spare time was spent with companions of his own tastes. His ideal of recreation was satisfied by a quiet game of pinochle in the backroom of a respectable beer-garden ; and perhaps this circumstance in itself is sufficient to give a fair notion of his general environment. He was, indeed, emphatically a man's man--homo inter homines--careless of mere forms, blunt of speech, and somewhat primitive in his tastes.

But he had all the virile attributes of a Puritan ancestry. His will was inflexible. His force of character was extraordinary. He hated shams, believed that a thing was either right or wrong, and when he had made up his mind to any course of action, he carried it through without so much as a moment's wavering. So great was the confidence which his character inspired, that when a committee of the independent voters of Buffalo called upon him for the purpose of urging him to stand for the mayoralty, they asked him for no written pledges, but accepted his simple statement as an adequate guarantee. "Cleveland says that if elected he will do so-and-so," they told the people. And the people elected him, because they knew his word to be inviolable.