In the lead up the 1864 Presidential election Republicans, certain that Lincoln couldn’t win in November, sought out General Ulysses Grant as an alternate candidate. After several years Grant had become the most successful military general the Union had and many hoped he could lead the Republicans to victory.
But Grant’s
reaction was adamant: “They can’t make me do it! They can’t compel me to do
it!” he told those who sought him out. When asked if he had told Lincoln as
much, Grant said he’d thought it unnecessary because the successful resolution
to the War needed Lincoln as much in the White House as it needed him on the
battlefield.
Grant had no
interest in politics before the war and when asked if he ever voted, he told
reporters that he’d voted once in 1856 for Buchanan. Asked why, he said simply:
“I knew Fremont.” But after the surrender at Appomattox confirmed Grant’s place
as the biggest hero of the Union and after Johnson ascended to the Presidency
after Lincoln’s assassination, the Republicans began to push for Grant as their
next standard bearer. Radical Republicans had hoped to nominate someone like
Salmon Chase or Benjamin Wade but after losses in state elections the following
year, the moderates believed they had a winning cause and chose Grant. Grant
was nominated unanimously on the first ballot and Schuyler Colfax the Speaker
of the House was named as his running mate.
The
Republicans were not just counting on Grant’s popularity to win the Presidency.
During this period a new phrase entered the political vernacular “to wave the
bloody shirt”. Both parties used this to deride the opposition to make
emotional calls to avenge the blood of soldiers who died in the civil war.
Democrats were more common to use this phrase against Radical Republicans while
campaigning in the South, while the Republicans would do the same to urge
Northerners to vote for them because Southern Democrats were responsible for
causing the war.
The phrase
gained the most traction in April 1871 when Congressman and former Union
General Benjamin Butler while on the House of Congress, held up the shirt
stained with the blood of a carpetbagger who had been whipped by the KKK. The
story was apocryphal: while Butler did give a speech that month condemning the
Klan, he never waved a shirt. But the legend outlived the facts and both sides
would use it for the rest of the century.
The
Republicans didn’t use a bloody shirt to win but they did use the War as a
prop. Starting with Grant in 1868 with just a single exception every Republican
nominee for President would be a soldier, usually a general, who served in the
Civil War and all would live in Ohio, then as now, a critical state in winning
Presidential elections. They would win the Presidency with five of those
candidates, and Grant would be the first, defeating Governor Horatio Seymour of
New York. Grant’s victory was the first where blacks could vote under
Reconstruction and their votes were critical in the South mostly going
Republican. Grant won with 214 electoral votes to Seymour’s 80.
By 1871, a new
term had entered the political lexicon: ‘Grantism’. It was not a compliment.
Grant’s administration had the reputation of being notoriously corrupt, even
though Grant himself was honest. This was not necessarily on Grant: American
politics in the 1870s and 1880s was notoriously corrupt as the robber barons
and big business began to take a hold in every aspect of politics as every
level. But Grant seemed particularly incompetent when it came to choosing who
advised him: at the position of Attorney General alone, five men would hold the
office due to multiple resignation from scandals. Grant was also perceived as
incompetent as leader, and rumors about his drinking in the Oval Office were
rampant even by his allies.
As early as
1870 many of the original founders of the party, including Carl Schurz and
Charles Sumner were becoming dissatisfied with Grant’s leadership. Many were
also becoming weary of Grant’s enforcement of Reconstruction and wanted to
tackle issues like Civil Service reform. They were in increasing opposition of
ensuring rights for African-Americans and wanted to give amnesty to
ex-Confederates.
In May of
1872, they held a convention in Cincinnati with the hope of nominating a
Presidential candidate that could win the support of the Democrats and defeat
Grant. Schurz had founded the party but was born in Germany and ineligible to
run for President.
The party had
several strong candidates including Charles Francis Adams and Lyman Trumbull of
Illinois. Another candidate was Supreme Court Justice David Davis, but due to
newspaper coverage he withdrew in favor of Newspaper publisher Horace Greeley.
After six ballots, Greeley received enough support to clinch the nomination.
It was a major
miscalculation. The kindest thing one could say about Greeley was that he was a
national celebrity. As a publisher he had the reputation of a busybody who had
been a gadfly in politicians ears (Lincoln had loathed him) He was personally
unctuous, had been known to embrace causes such as vegetarianism that were
outside the societal norm and had isolated many of his supporters when he had
posted bail for Jefferson Davis when the former President of the Confederacy
was being tried for treason. Worst of all, Greeley had spent almost his entire
career in journalism attacking everything the Democratic Party stood for,
especially in the Northeast.
Despite these
qualms the Democratic Party made one of their dumbest decisions when they
decided to nominate Greeley and embrace the Liberal Republican platform without
even a second thought. Their convention took less than six hours. Many
Democrats sat out the election while the Liberal Republican party fused with
the Democrats in all states that were in the Union save Louisiana and Texas.
The campaign
was a complete disaster from start to finish for the Liberal Republicans.
Greely broke precedent by personally going out on the stump to campaign (only
Stephen Douglas had done so previously) and while some thought he was eloquent,
most thought he sounded like a fool. It didn’t help that Greeley favored
protectionism and opposed civil service reform, two of the issues the party had
been founded on. Greeley’s argument against corruption sounded tone-deaf
considering his own past association with many Republican leaders. And despite
Greeley’s long personal record of advocating for civil rights, African-American
held a distrust of the party because it was associated with the Democrats.
Grant’s administration was deeply flawed and easy to campaign against, but with
Greeley as his opponent, he was unbeatable.
The result was
a disaster both for the Liberal Republicans and Greeley personally. Grant won
in a landslide carrying 30 states and 286 electoral votes. Not long after the
election Greeley’s wife died, he was institutionalized and he died on November
29th 1872, less than a month after election day.
If anything
Grant’s second term was worse than his first. A national depression hit the
country in 1873 and a veto of what was a version of a stimulus bill caused the
Republicans to lose the house in 1874, giving the Democrats control for the
first time since the before the War. The Whiskey Ring did much to hurt his
cabinet and his Secretary of Ware was discovered to be guilty of taking
kickbacks and was impeached by the Houses. Grants own brother was indicted in a
corruption scandal. Despite all of that, Grant considered running for an
unprecedented third term, but the scandals were so great he decided against
running. That year. After that the favored candidate was James G.
Blaine, former Speaker of the House and current Maine Senator. He came in with
immense popular support and it managed to slowly build but the controversy
surrounded around corruption prevented the convention from moving to him. Over
six ballots the opposition would solidify around Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio,
and on the seventh ballot he won a narrow majority. (We’ll be hearing from
Blaine again.)
Hayes had
spent his career in law in his youth and has spent time in his legal career
defending slaves who had been escaped and been accused under the Fugitive Slave
act. A staunch abolitionist, he was a rising star in the newly formed
Republican Party but as the South began to secede, he was lukewarm to the idea
of civil war restoring the Union, suggesting the two sides were irreconcilable.
After the South fired on Fort Sumter, he resolved his doubts and joined a
volunteer company becoming part of the 23rd regiment of the Ohio
Volunteer Infantry.
He rose
quickly for the ranks and suffered numerous injuries in battle being shot
through the left arm while leading his regiment at the Battle of Stone
Mountain. After he recovered, he was promoted to the position of Brigadier
General. He would se little action until 1864, when his division would be
assigned to West Virginia, most famously engaging Confederate Troops in Cloyd’s
Mountain and fighting in the Shenandoah Valley for numerous campaigns. His
troops won multiple campaigns and Grant would later write of Hayes that ‘his
conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry as well as the display
of qualities of a higher order than more personal daring.”
While still in
uniform, he was nominated for the House of Representatives in the second
district of Ohio and was sworn in after the war ended. He would vote for the
Fourteen Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. He left Congress in July
of 1867 to run for Governor of Ohio and narrowly defeated Allan Thurman. He won
reelection in 1869 and helped ratify the Fifteenth Amendment in Ohio. He chose
not to run for reelection in 1871 but four years later when the Republican
convention nominate him for Governor he accepted, becoming the first person to
earn a third term of governor of Ohio.
Hayes’
opponent in 1876 was Samuel Tilden, the governor of New York who like Hayes had
a reputation for honesty. Both men advocated on civil service reform but with
the country still recovering from the depression of 1873 and Grant’s miserable
Presidency, he felt their was little chance of him winning election.
To summarize
what happened on election day of 1876 would require an entire book and indeed
volumes have been written on it. I will speak in broad terms. Tilden would win
the popular vote by more than a quarter of a million. On election day he had
184 electoral votes, one short of the 185 needed to win. Hayes had 165. 20
electoral votes from three Southern states were in dispute and it might not
come as a shock that one was Florida.
The Republican
leaders challenged the results, charged the Democrats with fraud and voter
suppression of blacks while the Democrats countered that the governments of
those states were in the hands of Republicans. Both parties claimed victory in
the states of Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina and no one knew who had the
authority to decide which slate of electors to seat: the Republican controlled
Senate or the Democratic controlled house. (Imagine the battle of 2000 tripled,
amplified on crack and you might get a
hint as to what this was like, particularly for a country little more than a
decade removed from a Civil War.)
Finally in
January of 1877, Grant and Congress agreed to submit the matter to a bipartisan
Electoral Commission made up of five representatives, five senators and five
Supreme Court justices. There were seven Democrats and seven Republicans among
the members. The fifteenth member was David Davis, an independent both parties
respected. But Davis had cold feet and when he was elected to the Senate, he
used this as an excuse to get off the commission. The only remaining justices
on the Supreme Court were Republican and they chose Joseph Bradley, believed to
be the most independent minded. But when the commission met, they voted on
strict party lines and Hayes won all 20 electoral votes.
The Democrats
were understandably outraged and attempted a filibuster to prevent Congress
from accepting the outcome. Many thought that military action might be need.
But eventually both sides negotiated a compromise, the bulk of which was Hayes
would withdraw federal troops from the South and accept the election of
Democratic governments in the remaining states, in all effects ending
Reconstruction. As a result, freedmen were at the mercy of white Democrats
who didn’t intend to preserve their rights. Jim Crow began within a few
months and for the next seventy-five years the South as a bloc would vote
Democratic in every Presidential election that followed and all major office
holders in every state being Democratic. (You will not read that in any
progressive history of America when it comes to the South.) Hayes also pledged
that he wouldn’t run for reelection.
Hayes’
presidency was a mixed bag, aside from the considerable issue of ending
Reconstruction (which as I argued in a previous series was an inevitability
regardless). He did do his best to preserve laws promoting the rights of
southern blacks, defeating Congress’s efforts to curtail federal power to
monitor federal elections. Four times the Democrat House tried to pass a bill
with a rider to repeal the Enforcement Acts, which were used to suppress the
KKK in the South. He would veto the bill with that rider four times before the
House gave up. Hayes believed in racial equality but couldn’t accept the South
or Congress to go along with it.
He also fought
for civil service reform, particularly in New York, a state ripe with
corruption particularly in the New York Custom House. He would issue an
executive order forbidding federal office holders from being required to make
campaign contributions. When the head collector Chester Arthur refused to obey,
Hayes demanded his resignation and those of two subordinates which they refused
to give. The Senate chair, Roscoe Conkling of New York, refused to accept his
replacements. In July of 1878, he fired Arthur and Alonzo Cornell during the
Congressional recess and replaced them with recess appointments. Conkling
opposed their confirmations but Congress confirmed them. (It was far from the
end of Arthur’s political career.) He also made two appointments to the Supreme
Court and his first appointment John Harlan would serve for 34 years and is
considered one of the best justices in the court’s history.
By the time of
the 1880 Republican convention the party was divided into Stalwarts, which
supported political patronage and Half-Breeds their opponents who believed in
civil service reform. The Stalwarts focused their efforts on Grant, who was
seeking a third term. Conkling was his biggest supporter. The Half Breeds chose
James Blaine, who cared less for reform and more about destroying Conkling, his
political nemesis. As an alternative some crowed around John Sherman of Ohio,
Hayes Treasury Secretary a competent official but a reserved man.
Even in the
early days it looked like it would be an ugly battle. When the nominations took
place, the reception to Blaine’s was lukewarm and Grant’s faced hisses. Then
Ohio stepped forward to have its delegate give the nominating speech for
Sherman. The nomination speech was from a candidate who had just been elected
to the Senate by the Ohio state assembly. His nominating speech for Sherman
would be the first step towards his seeking a higher office.
James Garfield
had enlisted in the Army at the start of the Civil War. His victory as Jenny’s
Creek earned him a promotion to Brigadier General and he would serve at Shiloh
and as chief of Staff for General Rosecrans, commander of the Army of the
Cumberland. He fought bravely at Chickamauga and that led him to being elected
to Congress in 1862. Garfield had not wished to leave the Army and had
personally visited Lincoln. Lincoln said he had enough generals and needed
political support. He served in the House from 1862 to 1878, becoming floor
leader in 1875 and serving as a member of the Electoral commission that put
Hayes in the White House. He had no association with either faction, and while
he supported Blaine prior to the convention, he backed his fellow Ohioan
Sherman when he entered the race. Sherman had helped earn him election to the
Senate but some thought he was the better choice for the Presidency. His
nominating speech for Sherman was more well-received than his candidate was at
the convention
379 votes were
required to obtain the nomination. Grant received 304 on the first ballot,
Blaine 285 and Sherman was a distant third with 93. No one else was remotely
close. In what would be the longest battle by the Republicans to come up with a
nominees, the figures remained basically the same for 28 ballots. By that point
the delegates thought all three men were dug in and the only way to break the
deadlock was to come up with a new candidate.
After several
ballots Sherman’s count began to increase and he had gotten all the way up to
117 ballots. Then on the thirty fourth ballot, sixteen Wisconsin delegates
shifted their votes to Garfield. Garfield was so shocked he challenged the
correctness. The chairman ignored. On the next ballot a movement to Garfield
began and on the 36th ballot, Blaine realized his chances were
slipping and ordered his supporters to endorse Garfield. On the thirty-sixth
ballot Garfield received 399 votes, 93 more than Grant to finally win the
nomination.
For all
intents and purposes Garfield had been drafted by the Republican Party to serve
as its nominee for President. He would face as his opponent by the Democrats
another Union General, but one who had actively sought the nomination – and had
been considered as a viable candidate for as long as Grant had been.
Winfield Scott
Hancock was, as you might expect, named by his parents for Winfield Scott when
he was born on February 14, 1824. While he attended West Point, he was below
average and graduated close to the bottom of his class when he graduated in
1844. He was assigned to the infantry and ended up serving in the Mexican War.
Mainly known for his ability to sign up soldiers, he was good at it that his
superiors were initially reluctant to send him to the front. They did so in
July of 1847, where he made up part of an Army that his namesake led, though
there is no indication they met during that period.
Hancock would
join a regiment in Puebla and served as a first lieutenant for meritorious
service at both Contreras and Churubusco. He was wounded at the latter battle
and developed a fever, which would keep him from participating in what would be
the final breakthrough at Mexico City.
In peacetime
he would serve primarily as a quartermaster and adjutant. He served in the West
during the warfare in Kansas and the carnage in the Utah Territory. He was
stationed in Southern California in November of 1858 and remained there until
the Civil War broke out. He became friendly with many southern officers during
this period, but when they left the Confederacy, he stayed with the Union.
He originally
served as quartermaster for the Union Army but by September of 1861 he was
named Brigadier General. In the Peninsula campaign in 1862, he would lead a
critical counterattack in the Battle of Williamsburg. George McClellan
telegraphed that “Hancock was superb today” and he would carry that appellation
– one of the most generous of all military ones – for the rest of his career.
Hancock served
in many of the most critical battles of the Civil War, fighting and Antietam,
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. But his finest hour came at Gettysburg
where he served as corps commander. After his friend Major General Reynolds was
killed early on July 1st, General Meade ordered him to take command
of the units on the field. Hancock was not the most senior Union officer
present, which demonstrated Meade’s high confidence in him. He would organize
defenses on Cemetery Hill on July 1. On July 2, he was positioned on Cemetery
Ridge, roughly in the center of the Union line. In what was arguably his
boldest decision, he ordered the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry
Regiment to advance and charge a Confederate brigade four times its size. The
cost was brutal – the brigade suffered 87 percent casualties – but it brought
time to organize the defensive line and saved the day for the Union. Then
Hancock sent another line to the fighting on East Cemetery hill where Jubal
Early’s division had gotten to Union Batteries. It flushed them out. On July 3rd,
Hancock defended his position on Cemetery Ridge – and bore the brunt of
Pickett’s Charge.
As the
Confederate military bombarded him, he led his troops on horseback, reviewing
and encouraging them. When a subordinate protested saying: “The corps commander ought not to
risk his life that way,” he supposedly replied: “There are times when a corps
commanders life does not count. Hancock was wounded by a bullet that struck his
saddle, causing him to receive a wound in his thigh with wood and a nail.
Helped from his horse by his aides, he removed the saddle nail himself. Despite
his pain, he refused evacuation to the rear until the battle was resolved.
An inspiration
to his troops throughout the battle, he received the thanks of Congress for his
‘gallant, meritorious, and conspicuous share in that great decisive victory.”
The wound
caused so much damage that Hancock barely served for much of the rest of the
war. That said, he performed well under Grant in both the Wilderness and
Spotsylvania Courthouse. Only once during the entire wat did he suffer a
significant military defeat, during the siege of St. Petersburg. By any measure
Hancock is one of the great Union Generals during the conflict.
His service to
the nation was far from over in peacetime. He would supervise the execution of
the Lincoln conspirators and in 1866, he would serve in the Middle Military
Department. He was one of Johnson’s most trusted administrators in
Reconstruction but his sympathy for restoration of white Southerners put him at
odds with the Radical Republicans. He refused to let local Republicans force
him to use his power to overturn elections and court verdicts, while making it
clear that open insurrection would be suppressed. This made Hancock so popular
with Democrats that in 1868, he received substantial support for the
Presidency. He received substantial support and was actually leading all
contenders by the twenty-first ballot but on the next one there was a rush to
Horatio Seymour, the governor of New York, and he received the nomination.
Grant’s
victory would lead to him being reassigned to the Department of Dakota. During
his tenure he would lead an expedition that would help contribute to the
creation of Yellowstone as a national park. Grant’s jealousy of Hancock kept
him out of the South for the rest of his career.
Hancock’s
political ambitions revived in 1876 but he was never a serious contender.
However in 1880 Hancock had his name placed in nomination and won on the second
ballot.
Compared to
the last two elections, the 1880 was relatively calm. With Reconstruction over,
party membership was based more on ethnic and religious background more than
ideology. While the Democrats would try to raise the issue of 1876 as ‘the
stolen election’ the Republicans yet again tried waving the bloody shirt, but
with the passage of fifteen years and two Union Generals at the head of both
major parties, it did little to excite the voters. In truth, there were few
practical differences between the two candidates so it came down to which
states to carry. Hancock expected to carry the ‘Solid South’ and the North was
safe for Republicans. It came down to handful of close states, including New
York and Indiana.
The Democrats
chose to make it a character debate, arguing that Garfield had been connecting
to the Credit Mobilier Scandal. The Republicans were reluctant to criticize the
hero of Gettysburg so they charged him as uninformed. The Democrats couldn’t
come up with a clear message for their campaign.
The election,
like so many between 1876 and the end of the twentieth century, was both
extremely close and had an immensely high voter turnout. 78 percent of all
eligible voters cast a ballot, one of the highest turnouts in American history.
And the final count was incredibly close in the popular vote: out of nine
million votes cast, Garfield would defeat Hancock by less than 40,000 votes.
The electoral margin was somewhat larger for Garfield but not by much: he
received 214 electoral votes to Hancock’s 155. The difference came in New York
which had 35 electoral votes. When Garfield carried it by 21,000 votes, it
would be enough to get him into the White House. Each candidate carried 19
states but because all of Garfields were in the North it was enough to win.
Hancock was
convinced the Republicans won New York by fraud, but with no evidence and
reminded of everything that happened four years earlier, the Democrats chose
not to contest the matter.
Hancock took
his defeat in stride and attended Garfield’s inauguration. Garfield was shot
less than four months into his presidency and die two months later. Many were
terrified what his Vice President Chester Arthur would do, but he would support
civil service reform, something Garfield had championed. Hancock died in 1886
and was held in high esteem for his personal integrity by both Republicans and
Democrats. Even a Republican who didn’t vote for him truly believed if he had
been elected President, “much which both parties now recognize of having been
unfortunate and mischievous during the past 13 years would have been avoided.”
And much of that was due to the Republican candidates, including the one who
had served as President in the aftermath of Hancock’s defeat.
In the 1884
election for the first time since 1868, neither ticket put forth a party with a
Civil War general at its head. Philip Sheridan and William Tecumseh Sherman
were both sounded out but both declined: Sherman famously responding: “If
nominated I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. James G. Blaine was
nominated on the fourth ballot and John Logan was nominated as his Vice
President. Logan had served as a General during the Civil War, but with little
distinction compared to some of his previous competitors. (Besides, no one
voted for Vice President.) The Democratic nominee for President was Grover
Cleveland, governor of New York. Cleveland had hired a substitute to fight in
his place after the Conscription act of 1863 was passed.
Cleveland
defeated Blaine by a margin not much larger than Garfield had defeated Hancock
by; 50,000 votes out of ten million cast and 219 electoral votes to 182. Again
New York made the difference with Cleveland’s narrow margin there electing the
first Democratic President since before the Civil War began. While there were
many factors blamed for Blaine’s defeat, much of it focused on the corruption
that surrounded the Republican nominee to the point that members of his own
party defected to vote for Cleveland. Despite that, his narrow loss made him
the front runner for the election in 1888, but he denied interest. Many of his
supporters divided in March of 1888, he privately wrote that there was one man
that he thought could make the best candidate and who he threw his support too.
That man was
also a Civil War general originally from Ohio but by the time he was considered
Presidential timber he was representing Indiana in the Senate. There were many
other reasons to consider Benjamin Harrison president.
Benjamin
Harrison was not only the grandson of William Henry Harrison but his
great-grandfather Benjamin Harrison V had been one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence. He was seven when his grandfather was elected
President, but he didn’t attend the inauguration. His father John Scott was a
two-term Congressman from Ohio, but his family was not wealthy. He moved with
his wife to Indianapolis and began practicing law there and got into Republican
politics not long after the party was formed. When Lincoln called for more
recruits, Harrison wanted to enlist but didn’t now how to serve his young
family. After visiting Governor Morton and finding him distressed at the
shortage of men answering the call, he offered to help recruit a regiment, but
would decline the offer to command. He would finally be commissioned a colonel
in August of 1862, and then left to serve in Kentucky.
For much of
the first two years Harrison’s regiment performed reconnaissance duty and
guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee. By January of 1864, Harrison was
led to the command the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of
the XX Corp and by May he and his regiment would join Sherman’s Atlanta
campaign in the Army of the Cumberland. He commanded the brigade from Resaca to
Kennesaw Mountain and all the way to Atlanta. When Sherman’s main force began
its March to the sea, his brigade was transferred to the District of Etowah and
participated in the Battle of Nashville. During the bitterly cold winter,
Harrison would prepare coffee and personally bring it to his freezing men at
night. As he led his men into battle, he personally encouraged them with the
cry: “Come on boys!” Despite his memorable military accomplishments and the
praise he received for them, Harrison nevertheless thought “war was a dirty
business that no decent man would find pleasurable” a view that led him to
believe that Americans had ‘no commission from God to police the world.”
Harrison would
be elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court while still in uniform. A
skilled attorney, Grant would name him to represent the federal government in a
civil suit filed by Lambdin P. Milligan, the figure at the center of the
landmark treason case by the Supreme Court. His reputation led him caused his
star to rise Indiana politics and he would run for Governor of the state in
1876 and while he lost the race, he built on his prominence in state politics.
Eventually he became one of Indiana’s senators in 1880, even though the new
President James Garfield had offered him a position in his cabinet. Harrison
would advocate for pensions for Civil War veterans and their widows,
unsuccessfully supported aid for the education of children of former slaves and
opposed the Chinese exclusion act. During Cleveland’s administration his
attempts to admit new Western states to the Union were stymied by Democrats who
feared those states would elect Republicans to Congress. (Who can imagine? A
political party opposing statehood for represented a territories for political
reasons?)
After the
legislature deadlocked, Harrison lost his seat in the Senate in 1887. He
returned to Indiana but would declare his candidacy for the Republican
nomination for President against Grover Cleveland. At the convention in June,
Blaine would throw his support to Harrison but the fight was contested.
The leading
candidate on the first ballot was John Sherman of Ohio but the vote was divided
fairly evenly between many candidates. On the fourth ballot there was a rush to
Harrison by the delegates and he would pull into the lead over Sherman by the
seventh ballot, receiving the nomination by acclamation on the next one.
The main issue
in the campaign against Cleveland was against the protectionist tariff which
Cleveland was greatly in favor of and the Republicans opposed. Cleveland
claimed that it was unnecessarily high and the taxation was unnecessary and
unjust. Republicans claimed the high tariff would protect American industry
from foreign competition and guarantee high wages, high profits and economic
growth. Harrison’s campaign was essentially a front-porch campaign and more
energetic from the Republicans. The GOP also played a dirty trick when a
California Republican, under the assumed name Charles Murchison to the British
ambassador to the U.S. claimed to be a former Englishman wanting advice on how
to vote. The Ambassador said from a British perspective Cleveland was. The
Republicans would use this letter as ‘an October surprise’ in order to
influence Irish-American voters. This almost certainly cost Cleveland his home
state of New York and Indiana and aided by almost certainly fraudulent ballots
in both of those states, helped assure Harrison reelection.
More than 78
percent of eligible voters came out in the election of 1888. Cleveland won the
popular vote by about 90,000 out of 11 million cast. But in large part because
of the circumstances above Harrison received 233 electoral votes to Cleveland’s
168 and took the Presidency. That said Harrison’s victory include 26 of the 44
largest American cities (outside the South) and carried the four largest
electoral prizes. In addition to New York, he took Indiana, Pennsylvania and
his home state of Ohio. And one can’t discount the fact Cleveland’s win in the
popular vote was tainted by the massive disenfranchisement and voter
suppression of hundreds of thousands of blacks in the South, who had been
voting Republican.
Harrison’s
supporters had made so many pledges that many thought they had seats in the
cabinet. Much to the bosses dismay he delayed many of the nominations,
especially Blaine’s as Secretary of State, because he didn’t want him to have
any role in the administration. He nominated only one major party boss to his
cabinet and was averse to the idea of federal positions as patronage. This
isolated Harrison early from pivotal political operatives and compromised
whatever future he might have.
Harrison did
his best in his office to pass legislation to protect African-Americans in the
South but his movements were soundly rejected
by bot parties. Perhaps the most important accomplishment of his
Presidency was that during his administration more states were admitted to the
Union than any other one: North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho
and Wyoming. (I doubt the left knows who Harrison even was, but if they knew
this that they would naturally call him the worst President in history based
solely on this detail.)
Harrison faced
off against Cleveland in 1892, though neither candidate was popular with their
party at the time. By this point the Progressive era was beginning to take
flight in the west and the rights of finances and labor versus the
industrialist mattered far more to the average voter than refighting the Civil
War. The bloody shirt was almost non-existent in the campaign that returned
Cleveland to the White House in what was practically a landslide. Less then a
few months later, the Panic of 1893 began, and would doom Cleveland’s second
term before it was properly started.
The Republican
nominee for President in 1896 had volunteered to serve in the Civil War at the
age of eighteen. William McKinley would serve under then Major Rutherford Hayes
and end up fighting across the war. McKinley would fight in Antietam, where his
service would earn him a commission as second lieutenant. He would fight in the
Shenandoah Valley and would be promoted to captain after the battle of
Kernstown. He had a horse shot out from under him at Berryville and would
personally rally the troops and turn the tide at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Not
long after the 21 year old McKinley voted for Lincoln for President. When the
war ended he was promoted to major, but he declined to take a peace time army
and returned to his home state of Ohio.
In Ohio he
helped make speeches for his friend Hayes when he ran for governor the first
time and in 1869 ran for the office of prosecuting attorney in Stark County, an
office that had bene historically held by Democrats. He won his first elected
office that year.
Slowly
McKinley began his assent in national politics. He would be elected to Congress
in 1877 and would serve in the House of Representatives on and off for the next
fifteen years, frequently being gerrymandered or redistricted out of office by
the Democrats when they controlled the legislature. (The nerve of politicians!
Using such underhanded methods!) By 1886, he was considered one of the leaders
in the Ohio Republican party. During that time he made the acquaintance of Mark
Hanna who spent the rest of his life as his biggest booster. By 1892, he was
out but he quickly began to run for governor and won election in 1891. He would
be reelected by the largest percentage of any Ohio governor since the Civil
war. By the start of 1895, he was one of the frontrunners for the Republican
nomination for President, and thanks to the work of Hanna, he won it easily.
But despite
the fact that McKinley was a hero of the Civil War from Ohio, the bloody shirt
was almost a non-issue in the 1896 Presidential campaign. The major issue from
the start of the 1896 Presidential campaign until election day was bimetallism.
McKinley was on the side of gold, the young William Jennings Bryan proudly on
the side of silver. McKinley’s campaign was far better financed and he spent it
entire on a front porch campaign. While Bryan would stump the entire country,
McKinley chose to give prepared speech from his front porch.
While there
was discussion of financial issues and the working man against the rich, the
issues of either the Civil war or civil rights was non-existent. Earlier in
1896, Plessy V. Ferguson had basically made the law of the land what almost
Americans had been taking for granted since Reconstruction ended. White America
considered its obligation to the African-American over and done with. The
Progressive Era that was well under way would bring about many new rights to
untold millions and entrust them in the hands of the working man. But they
would almost entirely center on White America, and both political parties were
more than willing to let that be the case.
McKinley would
win election over William Jennings Bryan in a thrilling race in 1896 and then
defeat him by a more resounding margin in 1900. One of the major factors that
many attributed to the energy of the campaign was the replacement of McKinley’s
original running mate, Garrett Hobart, who died in 1899.
During much of
this era, a rising star in the Republican Party had been making his assent in
New York politics. While he had been lukewarm to McKinley – saying “The man had
the backbone of a chocolate éclair” – he wanted to move up in politics. He
would be named assistant secretary of the Navy. He very quickly began to
supersede his authority not only over his superior but McKinley himself and
eventually would begin maneuvers that led overtime to the outbreak of the
Spanish-American War in 1898.
Not content
with that the young Theodore Roosevelt resigned to form a cavalry regiment that
he would call the Rough Riders. And leading that regiment, he entered legend
with his charge up San Juan Hill. After the war ended, he would become Governor
of New York in landslide and many were certain he would be President in 1904.
In an effort
to nullify him as a factor in Presidential politics, Tom Platt and other
political bosses took note of the popularity of Roosevelt to force McKinley to
take him as Vice President. When TR took the job, the bosses were gleeful but
Hanna was horrified. “Don’t you fools know there’s only one life between that
damned cowboy and the White House!” he told them and told McKinley his job was
to live the next four years.
When McKinley
was elected TR seemed to know it was the end of his political life and told as
much to reporters on election night, saying he would ‘take the veil’ as Vice
President. An anarchist named Leon Czolgosz had other plans for McKinley – and
history.
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