Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/685

1884-5] The election of 1884. 653 aspirant, Elaine. He was one of the few great Reconstruction leaders left in politics, and in spite of his ability and personal popularity he was tainted, whether justly or not, by the suspicion of unscrupulousness which attached to so many of the Republican leaders of Grant's time. The Democrats, with greater wisdom, imitated their procedure of 1876 by nominating Grover Cleveland, Governor of New York, who had a reputation as a practical, business-like reformer ; and they were at once joined by a great number of prominent and influential Independents who declined to trust Elaine's integrity or good judgment. Many of these "Mugwumps'" were free-traders, whose discontent in Republican ranks made them the more ready to use this method of escape. The personality of the candidates was the main issue in the campaign, since the platform, verbose beyond all precedent, contained little of significance or of difference, except a demand for Protection on the part of the Republicans and a laboured and hopelessly obscure advocacy of tariff reform on that of the Democrats. The contest involved the tariff to some extent, but soon centred in the candidates' respective merits, and finally sank into personal defamation and vulgarity beyond all bounds of decency. In an extremely close election, the "Mugwump" defection and the financial stringency of the year turned the tide; and Cleveland succeeded by 219 to 182. The party vote in general remained unaltered from the preceding two elections, showing that party rigidity still continued; but the slight change of a few Independents in a few States decided the result. The election of Grover Cleveland and his inauguration in 1885 mark the end of an epoch in the history of the United States. The long Republican control, lasting since Lincoln, was broken ; and the accession of a Democratic President elected by the votes of the " solid South," with the aid of a comparatively few Northerners, over one of the leaders of the Reconstruction period, presents the very result which the Radicals of 1867 meant to render impossible. The North, in fact, had accepted the failure of Reconstruction as it had accepted the other positive results of the war, and showed its readiness to dismiss the whole subject by electing a Democrat upon the single issue of good government, with the tariff in the background. By this time the old issues were shelved by the action of the Supreme Court, the failure of the " Greenback " party, and the success of specie resumption, and still more by the disappearance of the Reconstruction leaders of an earlier generation. The earlier statesmen on both sides Stevens, Wade, Chase, Seward, Stanton, Sumner, Greeley all died while the contest was raging, and by 1885 nearly all of the others were out of politics. Johnson, Chandler, Colfax, and Garfield were dead; Grant, Conkling, Thurman, and Schurz were in retirement. Edmunds, Sherman, Bayard, and a few other older senators were still active, but were out- numbered by younger colleagues; and Elaine, most prominent of all, CH. XX.