Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 82.4.220.242 (talk) at 15:23, 10 April 2009. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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 United States Presidential Election of 1888 was held on November 6, 1888. Incumbent President Grover Cleveland received the greatest number of popular votes, but Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison's 233 electoral votes topped Cleveland's 168 to win the election. Just 12 years earlier, in the election of 1876, the same thing had happened where the President-elect had failed to win the popular vote. It would not happen again until the election of 2000, 112 years later.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

• Benjamin Harrison, former U.S. senator from Indiana
• John Sherman, U.S. senator from Ohio
• Russell A. Alger, former U.S. 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

• Former Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana
• Senator John Sherman of Ohio
• Former Governor Russell A. Alger of Michigan
• Former Treasure Secretary Walter Q. Gresham of Indiana
• Senator William B. Allison of Iowa
• New York Central Railroad President Chauncey Depew of New York

Democratic Party nomination

• Grover Cleveland, President of the United States from New York

Candidates gallery

• President Grover Cleveland of New York

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

One of the most notorious electoral frauds was perpetrated for this election in Indiana. William Wade Dudley, Treasurer of the Republican National Committee, 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."

A Purchased Presidency

Grover Cleveland at the time might not have been in the best graces with his home state of New York with Tammany Hall against him, but he did have a prominent reputation with that state since he became a politician. With his home state being a swing state, as well as the state with the most electoral votes, the Republican Party could not sit by and allow him to obtain such a valuable state during the election. Because of that, the Republicans set out to gain funds to buy ballots in New York. Thomas C. Platt, with the hopes of becoming Secretary of Treasury, set out to obtain $150,000 for the Republican Party. The money generated was then used to buy numerous ballots in the state of New York, further hindering Cleveland’s chances of winning the state as well as the election.

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 clearly 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. Retrieved July 27, 2005. Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved 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).

The album Hail to the Thief by Radiohead is named after the 1888 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

1. Gaines 2001.
2. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=980CEEDA1E30E333A25752C1A9659C946196D6CF
3. and

References

Primary sources

• Dawson, George Francis (1888). The Republican Campaign Text-book for 1888. New York: Brentano's.

Secondary sources

Books

• Butterfield, Roger (1947). The American Past: A History of the United States from Concord to Hiroshima, 1775–1945. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Calhoun, Charles W. Minority Victory: Gilded Age Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888. (2008). 240 pages, 978-0-7006-1596-4
• Jensen, Richard (1971). The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896.
• Morgan, H. Wayne (1969). From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896.
• Reitano, Joanne R. (1994). The Tariff Question in the Gilded Age: The Great Debate of 1888.
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren (2004). Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics.

Journal articles

• Baumgarden, James L. (1984). "The 1888 Presidential Election: How Corrupt?". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 14: 416–27. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Gaines, Brian J. (2001). "Popular Myths about Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits". PS: Political Science and Politics. 34: 70–75. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

Websites

• Shenkman, Rick (2004). "Who Played the First Dirty Tricks in American Presidential Politics?". History News Network. Retrieved April 4 2005. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |dateformat= ignored (help)

External links

• 1888 popular vote by counties
• Wrong way elections table at the Center for Range Voting
• How close was the 1888 election? - Michael Sheppard, Michigan State University

This history article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• United States presidential election, 1888
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• History stubs