U.S. presidential election, 1888
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The United States Presidential Election of 1888 was held on November 6, 1888. The tariff was the main issue in the election of 1888. Benjamin Harrison, the Republican candidate, opposed tariff reduction. Neither Cleveland nor the Democratic Party waged a strong campaign. Cleveland's attitude toward the spoils system had antagonized party politicians. His policies on pensions, the currency, and tariff reform had made enemies among veterans, farmers, and industrialists. Even with these enemies, Cleveland had more popular votes than Harrison. However, Harrison received a larger electoral vote and won the election.
This was the third of only four U.S. elections in which the President-elect did not receive a majority or plurality of the popular vote. The first was the 1824 election; the second had been just 12 years earlier in the 1876 election, while the fourth would happen 112 years later in the 2000 election.
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Nominations
Democratic Party nomination
Democratic candidates:
- Grover Cleveland, President of the United States from New York
Candidates gallery
The Democratic national convention held in St. Louis in June 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 Hendricks. Hendricks was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for vice president in 1876 before winning 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. Gray lost the nomination to Thurman primarily because his enemies again brought up his actions while a Republican.
The Democratic platform largely confined itself to a defense of the Cleveland administration, while supporting reduction in the tariff and taxes generally as well as statehood for the western territories.
Republican Party nomination
Republican candidates:
- Benjamin Harrison, former U.S. senator from Indiana
- John Sherman, U.S. senator from Ohio
- Russell A. Alger, former governor of Michigan
- Walter Q. Gresham, former U.S. Treasury Secretary from Indiana
- William B. Allison, U.S. senator from Iowa
- Chauncey Depew, president of the New York Central Railroad from New York
Candidates gallery
By the time Republicans convened in Chicago in June 1888, front-runner 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 Grover 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 nominated 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 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 W. Phelps, his nearest rival.
Other nominations
The Prohibition Party ticket of Clinton B. Fisk and John Brooks captured nearly a quarter million popular votes as the prohibition movement gained steam. Another group, the Union Labor Party, was formed with Alson Streeter as their nominee. The Union Labor Party garnered nearly 150,000 popular votes, but failed to gain widespread national support.
General election
Campaign
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, guaranteeing high wages, high profits, and high 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 thereby losing the swing 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 which were covered by the newspapers. Cleveland adhered to the tradition that presidential candidates did not campaign, 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 “blocs of five” with the suggestion that pious General Harrison was trying to buy the election did enliven the Democratic campaign, and stimulated the nationwide movement to replace ballots printed and distributed by the parties with the secret Australian ballot.
The Murchison letter
In the Murchison letter, a California Republican named George Osgoodby wrote a letter to Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the U. S., under the assumed name of "Charles F. Murchison". "Murchison" described 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 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 state and the presidency and Sackville-West was sacked as British ambassador.
Results
Cleveland was defeated. He actually led in the popular vote over Benjamin Harrison (48.6% to 47.8%), but Harrison won the Electoral College by a 233-168 margin, largely by virtue of his 1% 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% (Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia).
Cleveland thus became one of only four men (Andrew Jackson in 1824, Samuel Tilden in 1876, and Al Gore in 2000) to win the popular vote but lose the presidency. As Frances Cleveland and the outgoing president left the White House, she assured the staff that they would return in four years, which they did.
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
- 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
Notes
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.
- Morgan, H. Wayne (1969). From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
- 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
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