United States presidential election, 1888

United States presidential election, 1888

1884 ← November 6, 1888 → 1892

Nominee Benjamin Harrison Grover Cleveland Party Republican Democratic Home state Indiana New York Running mate Levi P. Morton Allen G. Thurman Electoral vote 233 168 States carried 20 18 Popular vote 5,443,892 5,534,488 Percentage 47.8% 48.6%

Presidential election results map. Blue denotes states won by Cleveland/Thurman, Red denotes those won by Harrison/Morton. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.

President before election Grover Cleveland Democratic Elected President Benjamin Harrison Republican

The 1888 election for President of the United States saw Grover Cleveland of New York, the incumbent president and a Democrat, try to secure a second term against the Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison, a former U.S. Senator from Indiana. The economy was prosperous and the nation was at peace, but Cleveland lost reelection in the Electoral College, even though he won a plurality of the popular vote by a narrow margin.

Tariff policy was the principal issue in the election. Harrison took the side of industrialists and factory workers who wanted to keep tariffs high, while Cleveland strenuously denounced high tariffs as unfair to consumers. His opposition to Civil War pensions and inflated currency also made enemies among veterans and farmers. On the other hand, he held a strong hand in the South and border states, and appealed to former Republican Mugwumps.

Harrison swept almost the entire North and Midwest (losing only Connecticut and New Jersey), but carried the swing states of New York and Indiana to achieve a majority of the electoral vote. Unlike the election of 1884, the power of the Tammany Hall political machine in New York City helped deny Cleveland the electoral votes of his home state.

This was the third of only four U.S. elections in which the winner did not come in first in the popular vote. The first was the election of 1824; the second was just 12 years earlier in 1876; while the fourth would occur 112 years later in the year 2000.

Nominations

Democratic Party nomination

Main article: 1888 Democratic National Convention

Cleveland/Thurman campaign poster

The Democratic National Convention held in St. Louis, Missouri on June 5-7, 1888, was harmonious. Incumbent President Cleveland was renominated unanimously without a formal ballot. This was the first time an incumbent Democratic president had been renominated since Martin Van Buren in 1840.

After Cleveland was renominated, Democrats had to choose a replacement for Thomas A. Hendricks. Hendricks ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 1876, but won the office when he ran again with Cleveland in 1884. Hendricks served as vice-president for only eight months before he died in office on November 25, 1885. Former Senator Allen G. Thurman of Ohio was nominated for vice-president over Isaac P. Gray, his nearest rival, and John C. Black, who trailed behind. Gray lost the nomination to Thurman primarily because his enemies brought up his actions while a Republican.

The Democratic platform largely confined itself to a defense of the Cleveland administration, supporting reduction in the tariff and taxes generally as well as statehood for the western territories.

Vice Presidential Ballot
Ballot	1st Before Shifts	1st After Shifts
Allen G. Thurman	684	822
Isaac P. Gray	101	0
John C. Black	36	0
Not voting	1	0

Republican Party nomination

Main article: 1888 Republican National Convention

• 

  Former Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana

• 

  Senator John Sherman of Ohio

• 

  Former Governor Russell A. Alger of Michigan

• 

  Former Secretary of the Treasury Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana

• 

  Senator William B. Allison of Iowa

• 

  New York Central Railroad President Chauncey Depew of New York

Harrison/Morton campaign poster

The Republican candidates were former Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana; Senator John Sherman of Ohio; Russell A. Alger, the former governor of Michigan; Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana, the former Secretary of the Treasury; Senator William B. Allison of Iowa; and Chauncey Depew of New York, the president of the New York Central Railroad.

By the time Republicans met in Chicago on June 19-25, 1888, frontrunner James G. Blaine had withdrawn from the race because he believed that only a harmonious convention would produce a Republican candidate strong enough to upset incumbent President Cleveland. Blaine realized that the party was unlikely to choose him without a bitter struggle. After he withdrew, Blaine expressed confidence in both Benjamin Harrison and John Sherman. Harrison was nominated on the eighth ballot.

The Republicans chose Harrison because of his war record, his popularity with veterans, his ability to express the Republican Party's views, and the fact that he lived in the swing state of Indiana. The Republicans hoped to win Indiana's 15 electoral votes, which had gone to Cleveland in the previous presidential election. Levi P. Morton, a New York City banker, was nominated for vice-president over William Walter Phelps, his nearest rival.

Presidential Ballot
Ballot	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th
Benjamin Harrison	80	91	94	217	213	231	278	544
John Sherman	229	249	244	235	224	244	231	118
Russell A. Alger	84	116	122	135	142	137	120	100
Walter Q. Gresham	111	108	123	98	87	91	91	59
William B. Allison	72	75	88	88	99	73	76	0
Chauncey Depew	99	99	91	0	0	0	0	0
James G. Blaine	35	33	35	42	48	40	15	5
John James Ingalls	28	16	0	0	0	0	0	0
Jeremiah McLain Rusk	25	20	16	0	0	0	0	0
William Walter Phelps	25	18	5	0	0	0	0	0
Edwin Henry Fitler	24	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
William McKinley	2	3	8	11	14	12	16	4
Robert Todd Lincoln	3	2	2	1	0	0	2	0
Samuel Freeman Miller	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0
Joseph B. Foraker	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	0
Frederick Douglass	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
Frederick Dent Grant	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
Creed Haymond	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0

Vice Presidential Ballot
Ballot	1st
Levi P. Morton	591
William Walter Phelps	119
William O'Connell Bradley	103
Blanche K. Bruce	11
Walter F. Thomas	1

Prohibition Party nomination

Main article: 1888 Prohibition Party National Convention

Prohibition candidates:

• Clinton B. Fisk, U.S. Brigadier General from New Jersey

Candidates gallery

• 

  Brigadier General Clinton B. Fisk of New Jersey

Prohibition campaign poster

The 5th Prohibition Party National Convention assembled in Tomlinson Hall in Indianapolis, Indiana. There were 1,029 delegates from all but three states.

Clinton B. Fisk was nominated for President unanimously. John A. Brooks was nominated for Vice President.

The Prohibition ticket went on to capture nearly a quarter million popular votes as the prohibition movement gained steam.

Union Labor Party nomination

Main article: 1888 Union Labor Party National Convention

Union Labor candidates:

• Alson Streeter, of Illinois

• 

  Alson Streeter of Illinois

Streeter/Cunningham campaign poster

The Union Labor Party National Convention assembled in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Union Labor Party had been formed in 1887 in Cincinnati.

The United Labor Party held its national convention in Cincinnati at the same time. An attempt to nominate a joint ticket failed.

The convention nominated Alson Streeter for President unanimously. Samuel Evans was nominated for Vice President but declined the nomination. Charles R. Cunningham was later selected as the Vice Presidential candidate.

The Union Labor Party garnered nearly 150,000 popular votes, but failed to gain widespread national support. The party did, however, win two counties.

Presidential Ballot
Ballot	1st
Alson Streeter	220

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

Greenback Party

The Greenback Party was in decline throughout the entire Cleveland administration. In the election of 1884, the party failed to win any House seats outright, although they did win one seat in conjunction with Plains States Democrats (James B. Weaver) and a handful of other seats by endorsing the Democratic nominee. In the election of 1886, only two dozen Greenback candidates ran for the House, apart from another six who ran on fusion tickets. Again, Weaver was the party's only victory. Much of the Greenback news in early 1888 took place in Michigan, where the party remained active.

In early 1888, it was not clear if the Greenback Party would hold another national convention. The 4th Greenback Party National Convention assembled in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 16, 1888. There were so few delegates who attended that no actions were taken. On August 16, 1888, George O. Jones, chairman of the national committee, called a second session of the national convention. The second session of the national convention met in Cincinnati on September 12, 1888. Only seven delegates attended. Chairman Jones issued an address criticizing the two major parties, and the delegates made no nominations.

With the failure of the convention, the Greenback Party ceased to exist.

General election campaign

Issues

Cleveland set the main issue of the campaign when he proposed a dramatic reduction in tariffs in his annual message to Congress in December 1887. Cleveland contended that the tariff was unnecessarily high and that unnecessary taxation was unjust taxation. The Republicans responded that the high tariff would protect American industry from foreign competition and guarantee high wages, high profits, and high economic growth. The argument between protectionists and free traders over the size of the tariff was an old one, stretching back to the Tariff of 1816. In practice, the tariff was practically meaningless on industrial products, since the United States was the low-cost producer in most areas (except woolens), and could not be undersold by the less efficient Europeans. Nevertheless, the tariff issue motivated both sides to a remarkable extent.

Besides the obvious economic dimensions, the tariff argument also possessed an ethnic dimension. At the time, the policy of free trade was most strongly promoted by the British Empire, and so any political candidate who ran on free trade instantly was under threat of being labelled pro-British and antagonistic to the Irish-American voting bloc. Cleveland neatly neutralized this threat by pursuing punitive action against Canada (which was still viewed as part of the British Empire) in a fishing rights dispute.

Harrison was well-funded by party activists and mounted an energetic campaign by the standards of the day, giving many speeches from his front porch in Indianapolis that were covered by the newspapers. Cleveland adhered to the tradition of presidential candidates not campaigning, and forbade his cabinet from campaigning as well, leaving his 75-year-old vice-presidential candidate Thurman as the spearhead of his campaign.

Blocks of Five

William Wade Dudley (1842–1909), an Indianapolis lawyer, was a tireless campaigner and prosecutor of Democratic election frauds. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison made Dudley Treasurer of the Republican National Committee. The campaign was the most intense in decades, with Indiana dead even. Although the National Committee had no business meddling in state politics, Dudley wrote a circular letter to Indiana's county chairmen, telling them to "divide the floaters into Blocks of Five, and put a trusted man with the necessary funds in charge of these five, and make them responsible that none get away and that all vote our ticket." Dudley promised adequate funding. His preemptive strike backfired when Democrats obtained the letter and distributed hundreds of thousands of copies nationwide in the last days of the campaign. Given Dudley's unsavory reputation, few people believed his denials. A few thousand “floaters” did exist in Indiana—men who would sell their vote for $2. They always divided 50-50 (or perhaps, $5,000-$5,000) and had no visible impact on the vote. The attack on “blocks of five” with the suggestion that pious General Harrison was trying to buy the election did enliven the Democratic campaign, and it stimulated the nationwide movement to replace ballots printed and distributed by the parties with secret ballots.

Murchison letter

A California Republican named George Osgoodby wrote a letter to Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the United States, under the assumed name of "Charles F. Murchison," describing himself as a former Englishman who was now a California citizen and asked how he should vote in the upcoming presidential election. Sir Lionel wrote back and in the "Murchison letter" indiscreetly suggested that Cleveland was probably the best man from the British point of view.

The Republicans published this letter just two weeks before the election, where it had an effect on Irish-American voters exactly comparable to the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" blunder of the previous election: Cleveland lost New York (and the presidency). Sackville-West was sacked as British ambassador.

Election results

Cleveland led in the popular vote over Benjamin Harrison, 48.6 percent to 47.8 percent, but Harrison won the Electoral College by a 233-168 margin, largely by virtue of his 1 percent win in Cleveland's home state of New York. Had Cleveland won his home state, he would have won the electoral vote by a count of 204-197 (201 votes being then needed for victory). Cleveland earned 24 of his electoral votes from states that he won by less than 1 percent: Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia. Cleveland thus became one of only four men (Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel J. Tilden in 1876, and Al Gore in 2000) to win the popular vote, but lose the presidency.

As First Lady Frances Cleveland and the outgoing president left the White House, she assured the staff that they would return in four years, which they did.

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Pct		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Elect. vote
Benjamin Harrison	Republican	Indiana	5,443,892	47.8%	233	Levi P. Morton	New York	233
Grover Cleveland	Democratic	New York	5,534,488	48.6%	168	Allen G. Thurman	Ohio	168
Clinton B. Fisk	Prohibition	New Jersey	249,819	2.2%	0	John A. Brooks	Missouri	0
Alson Streeter	Union Labor	Illinois	146,602	1.3%	0	Charles E. Cunningham	Arkansas	0
Robert Hall Cowdrey	United Labor	Illinois	2,818	0.02%	0	William H.T. Wakefield	Kansas	0
James Langdon Curtis	American Party	New York	1,591	0.01%	0	Peter D. Wigginton	California	0
Belva Ann Lockwood	National Equal Rights	Washington, D.C.	0	0.00%	0	Alfred H. Love	Pennsylvania	0
Other			4,110	0.04%	—	Other		—
Total			11,383,320	100%	401			401
Needed to win					201			201

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1888 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).

In popular culture

In 1968 the Michael P. Antoine Company produced the Walt Disney Company musical film The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band which centers around the election of 1888 and the annexing and subdividing of the Dakota Territory into states (which was a major issue of the election).

See also

Business advertising card with an election theme

• American election campaigns in the 19th century
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• History of the United States Democratic Party
• The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band
• History of the United States Republican Party
• Third Party System

References

Secondary sources

• Baumgarden, James L. (Summer 1984). "The 1888 Presidential Election: How Corrupt?". Presidential Studies Quarterly 14: 416–27. 
• Calhoun, Charles W. (2008). Minority Victory: Gilded Age Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 9780700615964. 
• Calhoon, Robert M. "Gilded Age Statecraft," Reviews in American History Volume 38, Number 1, March 2010 in Project MUSE
• Gaines, Brian J. (March 2001). "Popular Myths about Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits". PS: Political Science and Politics 34: 70–75. 
• Jensen, Richard (1971). The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226398250.  online free
• Morgan, H. Wayne (1969). From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815621361. 
• Nevins, Allan. Grover Cleveland: a study in courage (1933), the standard biography
• Reitano, Joanne R. (1994). The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The Great Debate of 1888. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0271010355. 
• Sievers, Harry. Benjamin Harrison: from the Civil War to the White House, 1865-1888 (1959), standard biography
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren (2004). Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807828629.  excerpt and text search

Primary sources

• Dawson, George Francis (1888). The Republican Campaign Text-book for 1888. New York: Brentano's. http://books.google.com/?id=oOZ1KwhC8xAC&dq=Democratic+%22campaign+text+Book%22&pg=PP12&printsec=2&lpg=PP12. 
• The campaign text book of the Democratic party of the United States, for ...1888 (1888) full text online, the compilation of data, texts and political arguments used by stump speakers across the country
• Cleveland, Grover. Letters and Addresses of Grover Cleveland (1909) online edition
• Cleveland, Grover. The Letters of Grover Cleveland (1937), edited by Allan Nevins.
• Harrison, Benjamin. Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, twenty-third President of the United States (1890), contains his 1888 campaign speeches full text online

External links

• Shenkman, Rick (2004). "Who Played the First Dirty Tricks in American Presidential Politics?". History News Network. http://hnn.us/articles/3593.html. Retrieved April 4, 2005. 

External links

• 1888 popular vote by counties
• How close was the 1888 election? — Michael Sheppard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology