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| 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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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. 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). New York decided the election, awarding Governor Cleveland the state's 36 electors by a margin of just 1,047 out of 1,167,003 votes cast. The campaign was marred by exceptional political acrimony and personal invective.
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Republican candidates:
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. 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."
Democratic candidates:
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).
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. Belva Ann Lockwood, an attorney in Washington, D.C., agreed to be its 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.
The Prohibitionists chose their third presidential ticket with John St. John for president and William Daniel for vice-president. The straightforward single-issue Prohibition Party platform advocated the criminalization of alcoholic beverages.
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.
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.[2]
| 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).
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