Presidential Elections

Presidential Elections

Sources

Close Elections. Between the disputed presidential election of 1876 and the dramatic contest of 1896, presidential elections were close contests in which minor-party candidates drew enough votes away from the Republicans and Democrats to ensure that neither major party candidate won a majority of the popular vote. The two major parties did all they could—legally and ille-gally—to ensure their own candidate’s victory. Presidential elections in the 1880s were battles over political patronage, with little disagreement over issues between the two major parties.

Third Parties. The issues-oriented politics of the 1880s came from a series of third parties that gained national followings with single-issue campaigns that pulled votes away from the major party candidates. The 1880 and 1884 elections marked the gradual decline of the Greenback-Labor Party, which favored increasing the supply of paper money and opposed a return to the gold standard. The party had its strongest showing in the 1878 congressional elections, winning more than one million votes and fourteen seats in the House of Repre-sentatives. In 1880 its presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, garnered more than three hundred thousand votes (3.32 percent). After Greenback-Laborite Benjamin Franklin Butler won just over 175,000 votes (1.7 percent) in 1884, the party became largely defunct, with some members later joining the Populist Party. In 1885 Adin Thayer concluded that “the result of the election settles the question that one of the two great parties will continue to control the government, and that there will be no new national party for a generation to come that will have any considerable influence in politics.” The next third party to gain a national voice was the single-issue Prohibition Party. In 1884 Prohibition candidate John P. St. John of Kansas received nearly 150,000 votes (1.47 percent) in a close election in which Democrat Grover Cleveland defeated Republican James G. Blaine in the popular voting by less than twenty-six thousand I votes. In 1888 Prohibition candidate Clinton Fisk received nearly 250,000 votes (2.19 percent), and in 1892 Prohibitionist John Bidwell won more than 270,000 votes (2.25 percent). The party exerted strong pressure on Republican platforms and candidates throughout the Midwest and found supporters among churchgoing rural areas in the North and among middle-class southerners who feared the effects of liquor on blacks and poor whites. Prohibition was too narrow an issue to carry the country, but the Populists absorbed many of the concerns of the Prohibition Party in the 1890s.

The People’s Party, or Populists. In July 1892 the first formal Populist national convention brought together an impressive group of speakers, including Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, Jeremiah “Sockless Jerry” Simpson of Kansas, and Tom Watson of Georgia. As their presidential candidate the convention nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa, who had run for president of the Greenback ticket in 1880, and for his running mate they chose James G. Field of Virginia, a former Confederate general. This ticket earned more than one million popular votes (8.5 percent) of the roughly twelve million cast in the 1892 presidential election and won five states outright for a total of twenty-two electoral votes. The Populists also did well in the 1894 congressional elections. Support for the party faded after the 1896 presidential election, in which the Populists backed Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, but much of their platform was coopted by the Democrats.

The Election of 1880. With President Hayes keeping a promise to serve only one term, the Republicans were divided over the presidential nomination, with various factions supporting former president Ulysses S. Grant, Sen. James G. Blaine of Maine, and Treasury Secretary John Sherman of Ohio. On the thirty-fourth ballot, however, a darkhorse candidate emerged: Sherman’s campaign manager, James A. Garfield, former speaker of the House and senator-elect from Ohio. Despite his protests that he was not a candidate, Garfield, who had a distinguished military record as brigadier general in the Union army, won the nomination on the thirty-sixth ballot. Chester A. Arthur of New York was chosen as Gar-field’s running mate on the first ballot. To prevent the Republicans from “waving the bloody shirt” at them as the party of southern whites and Confederate sympa-thizers, the Democrats turned to another distinguished Union general, Winfield Scott Hancock. His only real opposition came from supporters of the 1876 Democratic standard-bearer, Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who announced after the first ballot that he was not a candidate. Hancock won the nomination easily on the third ballot, and Rep. William H. English of Indiana was the Democrats unanimous choice for the second spot on the ticket. In the November election Garfield narrowly edged out Hancock in the popular voting, garnering 4,446,158 votes (48.27 percent) to 4,444,260 (48.25 percent) for Hancock. Yet Garfield swept the heavily populated northeastern and midwestern states, winning in the electoral college by a margin of 214-155.

The Election of 1884. After the assassination of President Garfield in 1881, Vice President Arthur became president. His efforts to reform the civil-service system had earned him the enmity of the Stalwarts in his party. Republicans turned to James G. Blaine, who had served as Speaker of the House and secretary of state under Garfield and Harrison. As the “plumed knight” of reform and a leader among the Half Breeds in 1876, he had been a presidential contender until charges that he had taken bribes from the railroads destroyed his chances for the presidential nomination. Yet despite the allegations against him, he had remained popular in his party. After Blaine defeated Arthur on the fourth ballot, the party nominated Stalwart John A. Logan, a senator from Illinois, for the vice presidency. The Democrats nominated a reform candidate, Gov. Grover Cleveland of New York, who arrived at the convention as the front-runner and won on the third ballot. The party nominated Sen. Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana for his running mate. The ensuing presidential campaign was one of the dirtiest in American history. Democratic newspapers reprinted the old charges against Blaine, as well as new letters with more embarrassing disclosures. The Republican press responded by revealing that as a young bachelor Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child. Cleveland admitted paternity. As Democrats chanted “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine,” Republicans responded with “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa?” (After Cleveland won the election, Democrats gleefully added: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.”) Blaine was also hurt when a visitor to his New York headquarters, the Reverend Samuel D. Bur-chard, referred to the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” Blaine, who heard the remark; did not repudiate it, severely damaging his chances with Irish Americans, whose vote he had been courting. The various charges and countercharges hurt Blaine more than Cleveland, as disillusioned Republican Mugwumps defected to the Democratic camp. Cleveland defeated Blaine by fewer than twenty-six thousand popular votes (48.5 percent to 48.25 percent) and thirty-seven electoral votes (219-182), becoming the first Democratic president since before the Civil War.

The Election of 1888. The Democrats renominated incumbent president Grover Cleveland by acclamation and easily agreed on former senator Allen G. Thurman of Ohio as his running mate, to replace Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks, who had died in 1885. When the Republican National Convention began in late June the front-runner was Sen. John Sherman of Ohio, who led the voting on the first six ballots but lacked the necessary votes to secure the nomination. With the fourth ballot, however, a groundswell of support began for a grandson of President William H. Harrison, a little-known Indiana lawyer and former senator named Benjamin Harrison. After supporters of James G. Blaine gave up hope that he would recant his refusal to run again, they shifted their votes to Harrison on the seventh ballot. Harrison took the lead in the voting and won the nomination easily on the next roll call. Former congressman Levi P. Morton of New York won the vice-presidential nomination easily on the first round of balloting. Both Harrison and Cleveland were equally uncharismatic and relied on their respective party organizations for voter appeals. The Republicans scored points by attacking Cleveland for his advocacy of lower tariffs, his veto of veterans’ pension bills, and his signing of an order to return Confederate battle flags to the South. Rumors also circulated that he was a drunkard and a wife beater. Cleveland won in the popular voting by a margin of less than one hundred thousand votes (48.62 percent to 47.82 percent), but Harrison took most of the heavily populated northern and midwestern states, including the key states of Indiana and New York, winning the election in the electoral college by a vote of 233-168.

The Election of 1892. Despite opposition within their own parties Harrison and Cleveland easily won the nominations of their respective parties on the first ballots. The Republicans replaced incumbent vice president Levi P. Morton on the ticket with Whitelaw Reid, ambassador to France and former editor of The New York Tribune. Adlai Ewing Stevenson of Illinois (grandfather of the Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956) won the second spot on the Democratic ticket. With Populist candidate Weaver waging the most successful third-party campaign of the nineteenth century, Cleveland defeated Harrison by more than 370,000 popular votes (46.05 percent to 42.96 percent) and 132 electoral votes (277-145).

The Election of 1896. Discontent with the Bourbon Democrats in general, and particularly Cleveland and the depressed economy over which he presided, culminated in the emergence of a different Democratic Party in 1896. No one shaped this new direction more than Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld, who seized control of the party platform and attempted to cut the party free of Bourbon Democrat machines and the gold standard.

William Jennings Bryan. While Altgeld shaped the platform for the upcoming election, William Jennings Bryan was the spokesman for the new Democrats. A charismatic Nebraska lawyer, Bryan earned a national reputation in the early 1890s with an assault on the McKinley Tariff of 1890, which set import duties at an all-time high. Skillfully responding to the growing agrarian discontent, Bryan took up the free-silver issue with a vengeance, and by 1896 he was the leading champion of farmers. Adopting the populist slogan “Equal Rights to All and Special Privileges to None,” Bryan brought some of the vitality of the Populist Party to the divided Democratic Party. His capacity to draw crucial support from both Populists and “Silver Democrats” made him a powerful player in the 1896 political season.

“Cross of Gold.” At the 1896 party convention, the thirty-six-year-old Bryan regaled Democrats with his famous “Cross of Gold” speech during the floor debate on the currency plank in the platform. Announcing that the country could not exist without farmers, Bryan called for an end to the single gold standard and unrestricted coin-age of silver and gold, saying: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” The speech electrified the convention and was instrumental in winning him the presidential nomination on the fifth ballot at the divided convention. Arthur Sewall of Maine was the Democrats’ choice for the second slot on the ticket.

New Divisions. Bryan’s position on silver divided the party, and some Democrats who favored the gold standard bolted for the Republican Party while others organized the National Democratic Party, which nominated John M. Palmer of Illinois and Simon B. Buckner of Kentucky to run on a platform that supported the gold standard. Western Republicans who supported free silver formed the National Silver Party and endorsed Bryan and Sewall. The Populists were divided as well. To avoid splitting the free-silver vote between two candidates, they eventually gave their presidential nomination to Bryan. Yet some Populists feared that the free-silver issue would overshadow their broader reform goals. Western Populists supported joining with Silver Democrats while southern Populists held out for a third-party campaign. The Populists chose Thomas E. Watson of Georgia rather than Sewall as their vice-presidential candidate.

The Republicans. Under the leadership of Mark Hanna, an Ohio businessman-turned-politician, the GOP also set a new course, becoming the party of industrial capitalism. As campaign manager for Gov. William McKinley of Ohio, Hanna had spent more than a year before the convention courting delegates for his candidate, especially in the South. His hard work paid off when McKinley won the presidential nomination handily on the first ballot. McKinley supporter Garret A. Hobart of New Jersey won the vice-presidential nomination almost as easily. Lacking Bryan’s charisma, McKinley had quiet dignity and an impressive record of service in the Civil War. Running on the promise of the “full dinner pail,” McKinley argued that high tariffs and adherence to the gold standard protected American companies as well as the jobs and wages of their employees.

The Campaign. Both Bryan and McKinley set new records for campaigning. Bryan’s speaking tours covered an unprecedented twenty-seven states. He traveled some eighteen thousand miles by train, speaking up to thirty-six times a day and reaching about five million people. Bryan took on a messianic aura with crowds of people pressing close to him just to touch his clothes. His opponents tried to depict him as a radical antichrist who would plunge the nation into anarchy. McKinley did not travel but also reached substantial numbers of voters. Hanna ran an organized, efficient campaign, using opinion polls to pinpoint areas in which to concentrate campaign efforts and producing hundreds of millions of pamphlets, fliers, and books depicting McKinley as an exemplar of solid middle-class and working-class values.

Republican Dominance. McKinley became the first presidential candidate since Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 to win a majority of the popular vote (51.01 percent to 46.73 percent for Bryan). Bryan did well in the West and the South, but with a strong showing in the more populous Northeast and Midwest McKinley defeated Bryan in the electoral college by a vote of 271-176. The election solidified Republican gains in the 1894 congressional elections, assured the national supremacy of the party for a generation, and established its position as the voice of industrial, middle-class America. Until 1912 Bryan remained nearly unchallenged as the leader of the Democratic Party, an uneasy coalition of his western and southern populist and agrarian supporters and Altgeld’s northern liberals. With the exception of Woodrow Wil-son’s two terms in 1913-1921, Republicans controlled the White House until 1933.

Sources

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Knopf, 1955);

Stanley Llewellyn Jones, The Presidential Election of 1896 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964);

Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977);

Gil Troy, See How They Run: The Changing Role of the Presidential Candidate (New York: Free Press, 1991).