United States presidential election, 1884

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United States presidential election, 1884
United States
1880 ←
 November 4, 1884
 → 1888
  StephenGroverCleveland.png JamesGBlaine.png
Nominee Grover Cleveland James G. Blaine
Party Democratic Republican
Home state New York Maine
Running mate Thomas A. Hendricks John A. Logan
Electoral vote 219 182
States carried 20 18
Popular vote 4,874,621 4,848,936
Percentage 48.5% 48.2%

ElectoralCollege1884.svg
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Blaine/Logan, Blue denotes those won by Cleveland/Hendricks. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election

Chester Alan Arthur
Republican

 Elected President

Grover Cleveland
Democratic

The United States presidential election of 1884 saw the first election of a Democrat as President of the United States since the election of 1856. The campaign was marred by exceptional political acrimony and personal invective.

New York Governor Grover Cleveland narrowly defeated Republican former United States Senator James G. Blaine of Maine to break the longest losing streak for any major party in American political history (six consecutive presidential elections). However, the winner of the heavily disputed 1876 presidential election may never be conclusively proven.

New York decided the election, awarding Governor Cleveland the state's 36 electors by a margin of just 1,047 out of 1,171,312 votes cast.

Contents

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Republican Party nomination

Main article: 1884 Republican National Convention

Republican candidates:

[edit] Candidates gallery

Blaine/Logan campaign poster

The 1884 Republican National Convention was held in Chicago, Illinois, on June 3-6, with former United States Senator and former Speaker of the House James G. Blaine of Maine, President Chester A. Arthur, and Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont as the frontrunners. Though he was still popular, Arthur did not make a serious bid for re-nomination, knowing that his increasing health problems meant he would probably not survive a second term (he ultimately passed away in November 1886). Blaine led on the first ballot, with Arthur second, and Edmunds third. This order did not change on successive ballots as Blaine increased his lead, and he won a majority on the fourth ballot. After nominating Blaine, the convention chose Senator John A. Logan of Illinois as the vice-presidential nominee.

Famed Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman was considered a possible Republican candidate, but ruled himself out with what has become known as the Sherman pledge: "If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve."

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

Main article: 1884 Democratic National Convention

Democratic candidates:

[edit] Candidates gallery

Cleveland/Hendricks campaign poster

The Democrats convened in Chicago on July 8-11, 1884, with New York Governor Grover Cleveland as clear frontrunner, the candidate of northern reformers and sound-money men (as opposed to inflationists). Although Tammany Hall bitterly opposed his nomination, the machine represented a minority of the New York delegation. Its only chance to block Cleveland was to break the unit rule, which mandated that the votes of an entire delegation be cast for only one candidate, and this it failed to do. Daniel N. Lockwood of New York placed Cleveland's name in nomination. But this rather lackluster address was eclipsed by the seconding speech of Edward S. Bragg of Wisconsin, who roused the delegates with a memorable slap at Tammany. "They love him, gentlemen," Bragg said of Cleveland, "and they respect him, not only for himself, for his character, for his integrity and judgment and iron will, but they love him most of all for the enemies he has made." As the convention rocked with cheers, Tammany boss John Kelly lunged at the platform, screaming that he welcomed the compliment.

On the first ballot, Cleveland led the field with 392 votes, more than 150 votes short of the nomination. Trailing him were Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, 170; Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, 88; Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, 78; and Joseph E. McDonald of Indiana, 56; with the rest scattered. Randall then withdrew in Cleveland's favor. This move, together with the Southern bloc scrambling aboard the Cleveland bandwagon, was enough to put him over the top of the second ballot, with 683 votes, to 81.5 for Bayard and 45.5 for Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana. Hendricks was nominated unanimously for vice-president on the first ballot after John C. Black, William Rosecrans, and George Washington Glick withdrew their names from consideration.[1]

Presidential Ballot
Ballot 1st 2nd After Shifts
Grover Cleveland 392 683
Thomas F. Bayard 170 81.5
Thomas A. Hendricks 1 45.5
Allen G. Thurman 88 4
Samuel J. Randall 78 4
Joseph E. McDonald 56 2
Others 35 0

Source: US President - D Convention. Our Campaigns. (August 26, 2009).

Vice Presidential Ballot
Thomas A. Hendricks 816
Abstaining 4

Source: US Vice President - D Convention. Our Campaigns. (August 26, 2009).

[edit] Prohibition Party nomination

Main article: 1884 Prohibition Party National Convention

Prohibition candidates:

[edit] Candidates gallery

The 4th Prohibition Party National Convention assembled in Lafayette Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There were 505 delegates from 31 states and territories at the convention. The national ticket was nominated unanimously: John St. John for President and William Daniel for Vice President. The straightforward single-issue Prohibition Party platform advocated the criminalization of alcoholic beverages.

Presidential Ballot
Ballot 1st
John St. John 505

Source: US President - P Convention. Our Campaigns. (February 11, 2012).

[edit] Greenback Party nomination

Main article: 1884 Greenback Party National Convention

Greenback candidates:

[edit] Candidates gallery

The 3rd Greenback Party National Convention assembled in English's Opera House in Indianapolis, Indiana. Delegates from 28 states and the District of Columbia were in attendance. The convention nominated Benjamin F. Butler for President on the first ballot. Absolom M. West was nominated unanimously for Vice President.

Presidential Ballot
Ballot 1st
Benjamin F. Butler 323
Jesse Harper 98
Edward Phelps Allis 2
Solon Chase 2
David Davis 1

Source: US President - G Convention. Our Campaigns. (February 11, 2012).

[edit] Anti-Monopoly Party nomination

Main article: 1884 Anti-Monopoly Party National Convention

Greenback candidates:

[edit] Candidates gallery

The Anti-Monopoly National Convention assembled in the Hershey Music Hall in Chicago, Illinois. The party had been formed to express opposition to the business practices of the emerging nationwide companies. There were delegates present from 16 states, but half of the delegates came from Michigan and Illinois.

Alson Streeter was the temporary chairman and John F. Henry was the permanent chairmen.

Benjamin F. Butler was nominated for President on the first ballot. Delegates from New York and Maryland bolted the convention when it appeared that no discussion of other candidates would be allowed.

The convention chose not to nominate a candidate for Vice President, hoping that other conventions would endorse a similar platform and name a suitable Vice Presidential nominee.

Presidential Ballot
Ballot 1st
Benjamin F. Butler 124
Allen G. Thurman 7
Solon Chase 1

Source: US President - A-M Convention. Our Campaigns. (February 14, 2012).

[edit] American Party nomination

The American (Prohibition) Party held its national convention in the YMCA building in Chicago, Illinois. There were 150 delegates, including many non-voting delegates. The party sought to merge the reform movements of anti-masonry, prohibition, anti-polygamy, and direct election of the President into a new party.

Blanchard was a leader of the party. He traveled throughout northern states in the spring and gave an address entitled "The American Party - Its Principles and Its Claims."

During the convention, the party name was changed from the American Party to the American Prohibition Party. The party name had been the Anti-Masonic Party in 1880.

The party nominated S.C. Pomeroy for President on the first ballot and John A. Conant of Connecticut for Vice President. [2]

[edit] Equal Rights Party nomination

Dissatisfied with resistance by the men of the major parties to women's suffrage, a small group of women announced the formation in 1884 of the Equal Rights Party.

The Equal Rights Party held its national convention in San Francisco, California. The convention nominated Belva Ann Lockwood, an attorney in Washington, D.C., for President. Chairman Marietta Stow, the first woman to preside over a national nominating convention, was nominated for Vice President.[3]

Lockwood agreed to be the party's presidential candidate, even though most women in the United States did not yet have the right to vote. She said, "I cannot vote but I can be voted for." She was the first woman to run a full campaign for the office (Victoria Woodhull conducted a more limited campaign in 1872). The Equal Rights Party had no treasury, but Lockwood gave lectures to pay for campaign travel. She won fewer than 500 votes.

[edit] General election

[edit] Campaign

Campaign poster attacking Cleveland's morals

The issue of personal character marked was paramount in the 1884 campaign. Former Speaker of the House James G. Blaine had been prevented from getting the Republican presidential nomination during the previous two elections because of the stigma of the “Mulligan letters”: in 1876, a Boston bookkeeper named James Mulligan had located some letters showing that Blaine had sold his influence in Congress to various businesses. One such letter ended with the phrase "burn this letter", from which a popular chant of the Democrats arose - "Burn, burn, burn this letter!" In just one deal, he had received $110,150 (over $1.5 million in 2010 dollars) from the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad for securing a federal land grant, among other things. Democrats and anti-Blaine Republicans made unrestrained attacks on his integrity as a result. New York Governor Grover Cleveland, on the other hand, was known as “Grover the Good” for his personal integrity; in the space of the three previous years he had become successively the mayor of Buffalo and then the governor of the state of New York, cleaning up large amounts of Tammany Hall's graft.

Results by county explicitly indicating the percentage of the winning candidate in each county. Shades of blue are for Cleveland (Democratic), shades of red are for Blaine (Republican), shades of green are for Butler (Straight Greenback), and shades of yellow are for bolting electors (Whig Republican).

It came as a tremendous shock when, on July 21, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph reported that Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock, that the child had gone to an orphanage, and that the mother had been driven into an asylum. Cleveland's campaign decided that candor was the best approach to this scandal: they admitted that Cleveland had formed an “illicit connection” with the mother and that a child had been born and given the Cleveland surname. They also noted that there was no proof that Cleveland was the father, and claimed that, by assuming responsibility and finding a home for the child, he was merely doing his duty. Finally, they showed that the mother had not been forced into an asylum; her whereabouts were unknown. Blaine's supporters condemned Cleveland in the strongest of terms, singing "Ma, Ma, Where's my Pa?" (After Cleveland's victory, Cleveland supporters would respond to the taunt with: "Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha.") However, the Cleveland campaign's approach worked well enough and the race remained close through Election Day. In fact, many Republican reformers, put off by Blaine's scandals, worked for the election of Cleveland; these reformers were known as “Mugwumps”.

In the final week of the campaign, the Blaine campaign suffered a catastrophe. At a Republican meeting attended by Blaine, a group of New York preachers castigated the Mugwumps. Their spokesman, Reverend Dr. Samuel Burchard, made this fatal statement: “We are Republicans, and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Blaine did not notice Burchard's anti-Catholic slur, nor did the assembled newspaper reporters, but a Democratic operative did, and Cleveland's campaign managers made sure that it was widely publicized. The statement energized the Irish and Catholic vote in New York City heavily against Blaine, costing him New York state and the election by the narrowest of margins.

In addition to Rev. Dr. Samuel Burchard's statement, it is also believed that John St. John's campaign was responsible for winning Cleveland the election in New York. Since Prohibitionists tended to ally more with Republicans, the Republican Party attempted to convince John St. John to drop out. When they failed, they resorted to slandering him. Because of this, he redoubled his efforts in upstate New York, where Blaine was vulnerable on his prohibition stance, and took votes away from the Republicans.[4]

[edit] Results

In Burke County, Georgia, 895 votes were cast for bolting "Whig Republican" electors for President (they were not counted for Blaine).[5]

Presidential candidate Party Home state Popular vote Electoral
vote		 Running mate
Count Pct Vice-presidential candidate Home state Elect. vote
Grover Cleveland Democratic New York 4,874,621 48.5% 219 Thomas A. Hendricks Indiana 219
James G. Blaine Republican Maine 4,848,936 48.2% 182 John A. Logan Illinois 182
Benjamin Franklin Butler Greenback/Anti-Monopoly Massachusetts 175,096 1.7% 0 Absolom M. West Mississippi 0
John St. John Prohibition Kansas 147,482 1.5% 0 William Daniel Maryland 0
Other 3,619 0.0% — Other —
Total 10,049,754 100% 401 401
Needed to win 201 201

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1884 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 27, 2005). Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, Gramercy 1997
  2. ^ http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=272818
  3. ^ http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=272820
  4. ^ http://elections.harpweek.com/1884/Overview-1884-3.htm
  5. ^ An American Almanac and Treasury of Facts, Statistical, Financial, and Political, for the year 1886., Ainsworth R. Spofford, http://books.google.com/books?id=1ZcYAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (pg. 207)

[edit] References

  • Hirsch, Mark. "Election of 1884," in History of Presidential Elections: Volume III 1848-1896, ed. Arthur Schlesinger and Fred Israel (1971), 3:1578.
  • Josephson, Matthew (1938). The Politicos: 1865–1896. 
  • Keller, Morton (1977). Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America. 
  • Kleppner, Paul (1979). The Third Electoral System 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures. 
  • Lynch, G. Patrick "U.S. Presidential Elections in the Nineteenth Century: Why Culture and the Economy Both Mattered." Polity 35#1 (2002) pp 29–50. in JSTOR, focus on voting behavior in 1884
  • Norgren, Jill. Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would be President (2007). online version, focus on 1884
  • Morgan, H. Wayne (1969). From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896. 
  • Rhodes, James Ford (1920) (8 vols.). History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the Roosevelt-Taft Administration. 
  • Mark Wahlgren Summers. Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 (2000) online version
  • "1884 Election Cleveland v. Blaine Overview", HarpWeek, July 26, 2008.
  • Roberts, North (2004). Encyclopedia of Presidential Campaigns, Slogans, Issues, and Platforms. 

[edit] Primary sources

Dance card cover depicting the candidates

[edit] External links

[edit] Navigation
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