Volume V Part 8 (2/2)
Mr. Cleveland's willingness to return to their respective States the Confederate flags captured by Union regiments in the civil war; his fis.h.i.+ng trip on Memorial Day; the choice of Mr. Mills, a Texan, to lead the tariff fight in Congress; and the prominence of southerners among the Democratic campaign orators at the North, were themes of countless diatribes.
A clever Republican device, known as ”the Murchison letter,” did a great deal to impress thoughtless voters that Mr. Cleveland was ”un-American.”
The incident was dramatic and farcical to a degree. The Murchison letter, which interested the entire country for two or three weeks, purported to come from a perplexed Englishman, addressing the British Minister at Was.h.i.+ngton, Lord Sackville-West. It sought counsel of Her Majesty's representative, as the ”fountainhead of knowledge,” upon ”the mysterious subject” how best to serve England in voting at the approaching American election. The seeker after light recounted President Cleveland's kindness to England in not enforcing the retaliatory act then recently pa.s.sed by Congress as its ultimatum in the fisheries dispute, his soundness on the free trade question, and his hostility to the ”dynamite schools of Ireland.” The writer set Mr.
Harrison down as a painful contrast to the President. He was ”a high-tariff man, a believer on the American side of all questions, and undoubtedly, an enemy to British interests generally.” But the inquirer professes alarm at Cleveland's message on the fishery question which had just been sent to Congress, and wound up with the query ”whether Mr.
Cleveland's policy is temporary only, and whether he will, as soon as he secures another term of four years in the presidency, suspend it for one of friends.h.i.+p and free trade.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Lord L. S. Sackville-West.
The Minister replied:
”Sir:--I am in receipt of your letter of the 4th inst., and beg to say that I fully appreciate the difficulty in which you find yourself in casting your vote. You are probably aware that any political party which openly favored the mother country at the present moment would lose popularity, and that the party in power is fully aware of the fact. The party, however, is, I believe, still desirous of maintaining friendly relations with Great Britain and still desirous of settling questions with Canada which have been, unfortunately, reopened since the retraction of the treaty by the Republican majority in the Senate and by the President's message to which you allude. All allowances must therefore be made for the political situation as regards the Presidential election thus created. It is, however, impossible to predict the course which President Cleveland may pursue in the matter of retaliation should he be elected; but there is every reason to believe that, while upholding the position he has taken, he will manifest a spirit of conciliation in dealing with the question involved in his message. I enclose an article from the New York 'Times' of August 22d, and remain, yours faithfully, ”L. S. SACKVILLE-WEST.”
This correspondence, published on October 24th, took instant and universal effect. The President at first inclined to ignore the incident, but soon yielded to the urgency of his managers, and, to keep ”the Irish vote” from slipping away, asked for the minister's recall.
Great Britain refusing this, the minister's pa.s.sports were delivered him. The act was vain and worse. Without availing to parry the enemy's thrust, it incurred not only the resentment of the English Government, but the disapproval of the Administration's soberest friends at home.
Influences with which practical politicians were familiar had their bearing upon the outcome. In New York State, where occurred the worst tug of war, Governor Hill and his friends, while boasting their democracy, were widely believed to connive at the trading of Democratic votes for Harrison in return for Republican votes for Hill. At any rate, New York State was carried for both.
It is unfortunately necessary to add that the 1888 election was most corrupt. The campaign was estimated to have cost the two parties $6,000,000. a.s.sessments on office-holders, as well as other subsidies, replenished the Democrats' campaign treasury; while the manufacturers of the country, who had been pretty close four years before, now regarding their interest and even their honor as a.s.sailed, generously contributed often as the Republican hat went around.
In Indiana, Mr. Harrison's home State, no resource was left untried. The National Republican Committee wrote the party managers in that State: ”Divide the floaters into blocks of five, and put a trusted man with necessary funds in charge of these five, and make him responsible that none get away, and that all vote our ticket.” This mandate the workers faithfully obeyed.
So far as argument had weight the election turned mainly upon the tariff issue. The Republicans held that protection was on trial for its life.
Many Democrats cherished the very same view, only they denounced the prisoner at the bar as a culprit, not a martyr. They inveighed against protection as pure robbery. They accused the tariff of causing Trusts, against which several bills had recently been introduced in Congress.
Democratic extremists proclaimed that Republicans slavishly served the rich and fiendishly ground the faces of the poor. Even moderate Democrats, who simply urged that protective rates should be reduced, more often than otherwise supported their proposals with out and out free trade arguments. As to President Cleveland himself no one could tell whether or not he was a free trader, but his discussions of the tariff read like Cobden Club tracts. The Mills bill, which pa.s.sed the House in the Fiftieth Congress, would have been more a tariff for revenue than in any sense protective. Republican orators and organs therefore pictured ”British free trade” as the dire, certain sequel of the Cleveland policy if carried out, and, whether convinced by the argument or startled by the ado of Harrison's supporters, people, to be on the safe side, voted to uphold the ”American System.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Joseph B. Foraker.
More than eleven million ballots were cast at the election, yet so closely balanced were the parties that a change of 10,000 votes in Indiana and New York, both of which went for Harrison would have reelected Cleveland. As it was, his popular vote of 5,540,000 exceeded by 140,000 that of Harrison, which numbered 5,400,000. Besides bolding the Senate the Republicans won a face majority of ten in the House, subsequently increased by unseating and seating. They were thus in control of all branches of the general government.
CHAPTER III.
MR. HARRISON'S ADMINISTRATION.
[1888]
The new President, of course, renounced his predecessor's policy upon the tariff, but continued it touching the navy. He advocated steams.h.i.+p subsidies, reform in electoral laws, and such amendment to the immigration laws as would effectively exclude undesirable foreigners.
A chief effect of the Kearney movement in California, culminating in the California const.i.tution of 1879, was intense opposition throughout the Pacific States to any further admission of the Chinese. The const.i.tution named forbade the employment of Chinese by the State or by any corporation doing business therein. This hostility spread eastward, and, in spite of interested capitalists and disinterested philanthropists, shaped all Subsequent Chinese legislation in Congress. The pacific spirit of the Burlingame treaty in 1868, shown also by President Hayes in vetoing the Anti-Chinese bill of 1878, died out more and more.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Speaker exhorting a crowd.]
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