Part 35

That we repudiate as un-American, contrary to and subversive of the principle of the Declaration of Independence, from which our Government has grown to be the government of fifty-five millions of people, and a recognized power among nations, that any person or people shall or may be excluded from residence or citizenship with all others who may desire the benefits which our institutions confer upon the oppressed of all nations.

That while there are important reforms that are demanded for purity of administration and the welfare of the people, their importance sinks into insignificance when compared with the reform of the drink traffic, which annually wastes eight hundred million dollars of the wealth created by toil and thrift, and drags down thousands of families from comfort to poverty; which fills jails, penitentiaries, insane asylums, hospitals, and institutions for dependency; which destroys the health, saps industry, and causes loss of life and property to thousands in the land, lowers intellectual and physical vigor, dulls the cunning hand of the artisan, is the chief cause of bankruptcy, insolvency, and loss in trade, and by its corrupting power endangers the perpetuity of free institutions.

That Congress should exercise its undoubted power, and prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages in the District of Columbia, in the Territories of the United States, and in all places over which the Government has exclusive jurisdiction; that hereafter no State shall be admitted into the Union until its Constitution shall expressly prohibit polygamy and the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages.

We earnestly call the attention of the laborer and mechanic, the miner and manufacturer, and ask investigation of the baneful effects upon labor and industry caused by the needless liquor business, which will be found the robber who lessens wages and profits, the destroyer of happiness and the family welfare of the laboring man, and that labor and all legitimate industry demand deliverance from the taxation and loss which this traffic imposes, and that no tariff or other legislation can so healthily stimulate production or increase a demand for capital and labor, or produce so much of comfort and content as the suppressing of this traffic would bring to the laboring man, mechanic, or employer of labor throughout our land.

That the activity and co-operation of the women of America for the promotion of temperance has in all the history of the past been a strength and encouragement which we gratefully acknowledge and record. In the later and present phase of the movement for the prohibition of the licensed traffic by the abolition of the drinking-saloon, the purity of purpose and method, the earnestness, zeal, intelligence, and devotion of the mothers and daughters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union has been eminently blessed by God. Kansas and Iowa have been given her as “sheaves of rejoicing;” and the education and arousing of the public mind, and the demand for constitutional amendment now prevailing, are largely the fruit of her prayers and labors, and we rejoice to have our Christian women unite with us in sharing the labors that shall bring the abolition of this traffic to the polls, she shall join in the grand “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” when by law our boys and friends shall be free from legal drink temptation.

That we believe in the civil and political equality of the sexes, and that the ballot in the hand of woman is a right for her protection, and would prove a powerful ally for the abolition of the drink-saloon, the execution of law, the promotion of reform in civil affairs, and the removal of corruption in public life; and thus believing, we relegate the practical outworking of this reform to the discretion of the Prohibition party in the several States, according to the condition of public sentiment in those States; that gratefully we acknowledge and praise God for the presence of His Spirit, guiding our counsels and granting the success which has been vouchsafed in the progress of temperance reform, and looking to Him from whom all wisdom and help come, we ask the voters of the United States to make the principles of the above declaration a ruling principle in the government of the nation and of the States.

_Resolved_, That henceforth the Prohibition-Home-Protection party shall be called by the name of the Prohibition party.

The following table exhibits the popular and electoral vote for 1884:

══════════════╤═════════════════════════════════════════════╦═════════════════ │ POPULAR VOTE. ║ ELECTORAL │ ║ VOTE. ├──────────┬─────────┬──────────────┬─────────╫──────────┬────── STATES. │ Grover │James G. │ Benjamin F. │John P. ║Cleveland │Blaine │Cleveland,│ Blaine, │ Butler, │St. John,║ and │ and │New York. │ Maine. │Massachusetts.│Kansas. ║Hendricks.│Logan. ──────────────┼──────────┼─────────┼──────────────┼─────────╫──────────┼────── Maine │ 52,140 │ 72,209│ 3,953 │ 2,160 ║ ―― │ 6 New Hampshire │ 39,183 │ 43,249│ 552 │ 1,571 ║ ―― │ 4 Vermont │ 17,331 │ 39,514│ 785 │ 1,752 ║ ―― │ 4 Massachusetts │ 122,481 │ 146,724│ 24,433 │ 10,026 ║ ―― │ 14 Rhode Island │ 12,391 │ 19,030│ 422 │ 928 ║ ―― │ 4 Connecticut │ 67,199 │ 65,923│ 1,688 │ 2,305 ║ 6 │ ―― New York │ 563,154 │ 562,005│ 16,994 │ 25,016 ║ 36 │ ―― New Jersey │ 127,798 │ 123,440│ 3,496 │ 6,159 ║ 9 │ ―― Pennsylvania │ 392,785 │ 473,804│ 16,992 │ 15,283 ║ ―― │ 30 Delaware │ 16,964 │ 12,951│ 6 │ 55 ║ 3 │ ―― Maryland │ 96,932 │ 85,699│ 531 │ 2,794 ║ 8 │ ―― Virginia │ 185,497 │ 139,356│ ―――――― │ 138 ║ 12 │ ―― West Virginia │ 67,317 │ 63,096│ 810 │ 939 ║ 6 │ ―― North Carolina│ 142,952 │ 125,068│ ―――――― │ 454 ║ 11 │ ―― South Carolina│ 69,890 │ 21,733│ ―――――― │ ―――――― ║ 9 │ ―― Georgia │ 94,667 │ 48,603│ 145 │ 195 ║ 12 │ ―― Florida │ 31,766 │ 28,031│ ―――――― │ 72 ║ 4 │ ―― Alabama │ 93,951 │ 59,591│ 873 │ 612 ║ 10 │ ―― Mississippi │ 76,510 │ 43,509│ ―――――― │ ―――――― ║ 9 │ ―― Louisiana │ 62,540 │ 46,347│ ―――――― │ ―――――― ║ 8 │ ―― Texas │ 225,309 │ 93,141│ 3,321 │ 3,534 ║ 13 │ ―― Arkansas │ 72,927 │ 50,895│ 1,847 │ ―――――― ║ 7 │ ―― Missouri │ 235,988 │ 202,929│ ―――――― │ 2,153 ║ 16 │ ―― Tennessee │ 133,258 │ 124,078│ 957 │ 1,131 ║ 12 │ ―― Kentucky │ 152,961 │ 118,122│ 1,691 │ 3,139 ║ 13 │ ―― Ohio │ 368,280 │ 400,082│ 5,179 │ 11,069 ║ ―― │ 23 Michigan │ 149,835 │ 192,669│ 42,243 │ 18,403 ║ ―― │ 13 Indiana │ 244,990 │ 238,463│ 8,293 │ 3,028 ║ 15 │ ―― Illinois │ 312,355 │ 337,474│ 10,910 │ 12,074 ║ ―― │ 22 Wisconsin │ 146,459 │ 161,157│ 4,598 │ 7,656 ║ ―― │ 11 Minnesota │ 70,144 │ 111,923│ 3,583 │ 4,684 ║ ―― │ 7 Iowa │ 177,316 │ 197,089│ ―――――― │ 1,472 ║ ―― │ 13 Nebraska │ 54,391 │ 79,912│ ―――――― │ 2,899 ║ ―― │ 5 Kansas │ 90,132 │ 154,406│ 16,341 │ 4,495 ║ ―― │ 9 Colorado │ 27,723 │ 36,290│ 1,953 │ 761 ║ ―― │ 3 Nevada │ 5,578 │ 7,193│ 26 │ ―――――― ║ ―― │ 3 California │ 89,288 │ 102,416│ 2,017 │ 2,920 ║ ―― │ 8 Oregon │ 24,604 │ 26,860│ 726 │ 492 ║ ―― │ 3 ├──────────┼─────────┼──────────────┼─────────╫──────────┼────── │4,874,986 │4,851,981│ 175,370 │ 150,369 ║ 219 │ 182 ══════════════╧══════════╧═════════╧══════════════╧═════════╩══════════╧══════

No man was ever big enough to conduct a Presidential contest for himself. The intense interest a candidate must have in the struggle, and the constant strain upon him, would unbalance the most forceful intellect the world has ever produced. Blaine would have been matchless in the skilful management of a Presidential campaign for another, but he was dwarfed by the overwhelming responsibilities of conducting the campaign for himself, and yet he assumed the supreme control of the struggle and directed it absolutely from start to finish. He was of heroic mould, and he wisely planned his own campaign tours to accomplish the best results. In point of fact, he had won his fight after stumping the country, and lost it by his stay in New York on his way home. He knew how to sway multitudes, and none could approach him in that important feature of a conflict; but he was not trained to consider the thousand intricacies which fall upon the management of every Presidential contest.

Three causes combined to lose New York by 1100 majority when the electoral vote of that State would have made him President. One was his implacable quarrel with Conkling, that lost him 1000 votes, cast directly for his opponent in Conkling’s county of Oneida. They had quarrelled when both were comparatively young and rivals for the leadership of the House. In a heated controversy between them Blaine unhorsed Conkling, and inflicted wounds which never healed, and they never spoke from that time during their lives. When both were members of the Senate, if either had occasion to refer to the remarks made by the other, instead of referring to the “Senator from Maine” or the “Senator from New York,” they would say: “It has been stated on this floor.” Many efforts were made to bring them together, but Conkling was an intense hater, and Blaine was willing to be broken rather than bend. He dined with Jay Gould during his brief stay in New York City, and that brought him no votes and lost him many.

The Burchard episode, that Blaine was blunderingly brought into in New York just on the eve of the election, was very generally accepted as costing him more than enough votes to have given him the State of New York, and thereby his election to the Presidency. It was miserably bad politics in its conception and could not have been more bunglingly executed. Blaine had suffered much from the attacks upon his public integrity, and some of his friends in New York assumed that it would be a great card to have him called upon by forty or fifty ministers of different denominations and congratulated as the candidate for President.

As originally planned it might have accomplished some good, and certainly would not have done any harm. It was intended that Rev. Dr. Tiffany should deliver the address to Blaine. He was one of the most eloquent divines of the country, was well up in politics, had been in active political movements in Pennsylvania as a leader in the American party when he was connected with Dickinson’s College, and was a candidate for United States Senator before the Legislature of 1855. Had he delivered the address to Blaine, it would have been an elegant and faultless congratulation, but when the ministers met some of them strenuously objected to Dr. Tiffany as the oracle of the party, and there were indications of considerable ill-feeling. There was little time for conference, and the dispute was suddenly ended by some one proposing that the oldest minister present should deliver the address to Blaine, and that was adopted to settle the dispute.

Dr. Burchard, unfortunately, happened to be the oldest minister in attendance, and he was rampant against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” but none supposed for a moment that he would make such a fearful break as to publicly denounce Romanism in an address of congratulation to a Presidential candidate, whose mother and sisters were devout Catholics. On his way home from the West he had visited his sister at a convent in Indiana, where she was Mother Superior. Burchard, of course, had no opportunity for preparation, and when the ministerial crowd came into the presence of Blaine he fired off his address in a manner not highly creditable, and proclaimed the fatal sentence against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”

Blaine in his reply made no reference to that feature of Dr. Burchard’s address, and he seems not to have appreciated its fearful import until the next day, when he gave out an interview, disclaiming sympathy with it; but it was accepted as an afterthought, and that deliverance of Dr. Burchard certainly drove away from Blaine more than the six hundred votes necessary to give him the State of New York and the Presidency. I saw Blaine soon after the election, and asked him why it was that he overlooked the expression at the time. He was a man of such keen perception and so ready in every emergency that I was amazed at his failure to turn the blunder to his advantage, as he could have done by a generous expression on the religious issue involved. He told me that he heard the expression distinctly, but that his mind was just then concentrated on his reply, as he generally spoke spontaneously, and that he thereby failed to become impressed with its importance. He said that when the proceedings were over, and he gave it a moment’s reflection, he saw what a fearful mistake had been made; but the emergency was extreme and called for immediate action, and he unfortunately hesitated until another day had passed. It was then too late, and Dr. Burchard certainly cost Blaine many more votes than would have given him his election. Had Blaine been under the command of a competent chairman of his national committee, he would never have been permitted to stop in New York after his great battle had been fought before the people, and had he gone directly from the West to his home in Maine, he would have been President instead of Cleveland.

Blaine and Tilden are the only men I can recall who undertook to manage a Presidential contest for themselves, and both suffered defeats, for which they were wholly responsible.

Blaine committed many serious blunders during the campaign of 1884. He and Cleveland were both made the targets of flagrant scandals, and when the Cleveland scandal was sent to Blaine in the early part of the contest, instead of peremptorily forbidding its use as a campaign factor, as would have been most wise, he sent it to his national committee, and it was given publicity. The Blaine scandal was sent to Cleveland early in the fight, and he at once gave notice to those in charge of his campaign that any personal scandals against Blaine should not have the sanction of the Democratic organization. Blaine never would have committed such a mistake if he had been managing a Presidential campaign for another, and had he been such responsible manager, he never would have permitted a libel suit to be instituted against a newspaper publisher for any scandal, however false and malignant. He was a man of intense earnestness, and the intensity of his interest in his own election for the Presidency unbalanced his judgment and made him often the creature of impulse when he should have been most dispassionate and philosophical. The scandals did not affect a thousand votes out of the many millions cast for President, and Blaine suffered vastly more than Cleveland, because he dignified the scandal against himself by legal proceedings for defamation. The fact that he voluntarily discontinued the suit after the election is the best evidence of the error committed against himself.

Charles A. Dana, then editor of the New York _Sun_, became estranged from Mr. Cleveland the year before the Presidential election of 1884. He had earnestly supported Cleveland for Governor in 1882, but when a movement was made by Mr. Manning to organize the State for Cleveland in 1884 Dana was implacable in his opposition. I met him several times before Cleveland was nominated, and he always discussed the question with an unusual degree of acrimony. He believed that Cleveland was not available; that he was unworthy of the position, and that if nominated he would be overwhelmingly defeated. He gave me no reason for his changed relations with Cleveland, and I did not learn the true cause until after Cleveland had been elected President.

Soon after Cleveland’s nomination I was spending a few days at Saratoga, and was watching Dana’s paper with much interest, for he was very much disgruntled. He did not at first declare himself aggressively against Cleveland’s election, but one morning at Saratoga, in taking up the Sun, I found one of Dana’s terrible deliverances against Cleveland, that left no possible chance for a reconciliation. I telegraphed to Mr. Dana and asked him to meet me at his office at three o’clock that afternoon, and called there on my way home. Mr. Dana had gone too far to recede, but I tried to temper his bitterness, as I thought it would do great harm, not only to Cleveland, but to his own newspaper as well, then one of the most prosperous in the country.

Mr. Dana was petulant and violent in his expressions against Cleveland, and said that he had decided to support General Butler, who was the candidate of the Labor-Socialistic element, and who, he said, would receive not less than 25,000 votes in New York City. I told him that Butler might receive 2500, and if there were 25,000 disgruntled Democrats who wanted to defeat Cleveland, they would certainly vote for Blaine.

The result was about as I had predicted. Butler received only a few thousand votes, and Dana and his following, while ostensibly supporting Butler, voted squarely for Blaine. Dana’s paper was the most aggressive of all the anti-Cleveland newspapers in the country, and it doubtless exerted great influence, but not sufficient to lose Cleveland the State.

Charles A. Dana was the ablest editor ever developed by American journalism. Horace Greeley was more pungent and telling in his political articles, and Henry Watterson is more brilliant, but Charles A. Dana was the strongest editorial writer this country has ever produced. He was versatile, powerful, and elegant, but an unfortunate personal estrangement made him the bitterest of Cleveland’s enemies, and paved the way for the _Sun_ to be transformed from an out-and-out Tammany organ to the most aggressive of Republican organs.

It was not until I met Cleveland at Albany, soon after his election, that I learned the cause of the estrangement between Cleveland and Dana, and the statement given by Mr. Cleveland was subsequently confirmed by Mr. Dana. Dana had very earnestly supported Cleveland’s nomination and election for Governor in 1882, and after the election he wrote a personal letter to Cleveland asking the appointment of a friend to the position of Adjutant-General. His chief purpose was to give a position on the staff to his son, Paul Dana, who is now his successor in the editorial chair. Cleveland received that letter as he received thousands of other letters recommending appointments, instead of recognizing the claim Mr. Dana had upon him for the courtesy of an answer. Beecher had a candidate for the same position, and Cleveland gave it to Beecher’s man without any explanation whatever to Dana, who felt that he had been discourteously treated by Cleveland.

Mr. Dana gave no open sign of his disappointment, but some time after Cleveland’s inauguration, when it became known that Dana felt grieved at the Governor, some mutual friends intervened and proposed to Cleveland that he should invite Dana to join with some acquaintances at the Executive Mansion. To this Cleveland readily assented. Dana was informed that Cleveland would tender such an invitation if it would be accepted, and he promptly assented. Cleveland then became involved in the pressing duties of the Legislature, and allowed the session to close without extending the promised and expected invitation to Dana. Mr. Cleveland told me that he was entirely to blame for neglect in both instances, as Dana would doubtless have been satisfied if he had courteously informed him of his convictions which required him to appoint another for Adjutant-General; and he had no excuse to offer but that of neglect for not inviting Dana to dinner.

Dana naturally assumed that Cleveland had given him deliberate affront, and Cleveland could make no satisfactory explanation. As Governor and as President he was first of all devoted to his official duties, which he discharged with rare fidelity, and he gave little time even to the common courtesies which most Governors and Presidents would recognize as justly belonging to their friends. Efforts were made to conciliate Dana, but he never would discuss the question, and he sacrificed half the circulation of his paper in the campaign of 1884 in his battle against Cleveland. When Cleveland’s election was announced, and the Republicans were disposed to dispute the vote of New York, Dana came out boldly and declared that Cleveland was elected and that no violent measures should be tolerated to deprive him of the honor conferred upon him by the people.

It is quite possible that Dana got even with Cleveland in 1888. His paper gave a nominal support to Cleveland, but did more damage to the Cleveland cause than any other newspaper in the country by subtle and persistent attacks upon the administration and the party, though never exhibiting on the surface a trace of personal hostility to the President. The _Sun_ was then the organ of Tammany, and Tammany certainly defeated Cleveland in 1888 by giving the State to Harrison, when Hill, the Democratic candidate for Governor on the same ticket, was elected by nearly 20,000. It is not a strained conclusion that Dana defeated Cleveland’s re-election in 1888. The estrangement between Dana and Cleveland continued, as they never met or had any intercourse.

Blaine’s nomination was possible in 1888 when Harrison was made the candidate, but after hesitating for three days, during which time he freely conferred by cable with his friends, as he was then in Europe, he finally decided to decline.

His belief that he was fated not to be President was not weakened by advancing age, and his final assent to the use of his name in 1892, at the Minneapolis convention that renominated Harrison, was the first exhibition of decay in one who had been a giant among the giants in the most eventful history of the Republic. He had been a possibly successful candidate in four national conventions; had once been nominated and defeated, and it was a sad spectacle to see him, like a great oak with its green boughs fall and its heart corroding from the storms of many winters, broken in a tempest of political resentments and in a struggle that had not so much as a silver lining to the cloud of despair that hung over him. His nomination was hopeless; his defeat, if nominated, inevitable, and thus ended the life tragedy of one of the ablest, bravest, and most beloved of our public men.

THE HARRISON-CLEVELAND CONTEST

1888

The Democratic National Convention of 1888 met at St. Louis on June 5, and it was the most perfunctory body of the kind I have ever witnessed. I never saw a national political body so entirely devoid of enthusiasm; yet it was entirely fixed in its purpose to renominate President Cleveland. He appealed strongly to the convictions and judgment of the party, but not to its affection or enthusiasm. He was nominated by a unanimous vote without the formality of a ballot, and it had been settled long before the convention met that the sturdy old Roman of Ohio, ex-Senator Thurman, should be the candidate for the second place, as Vice-President Hendricks had died in office.

[Illustration: BENJAMIN HARRISON]

Patrick A. Collins, of Massachusetts, was permanent president of the body, and there were no questions of rules or party policy to excite discussion. Cleveland’s nomination was unanimous, and on the single ballot for Vice-President, Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, had 690 votes to 105 for Isaac B. Gray, of Indiana, and 25 for John C. Black, of Illinois. The following platform was unanimously adopted: