NOVEMBER 8, 1892.
November the 8th, 1892, will be noted, by the historian of the future,
as a date constituting a milestone to mark the road and journey of
struggling humanity. What July the 14th is to the French, July the 4th
is, and November the 8th will be, to the American people.
The surface of the waters of public opinion presented a peaceful
appearance at the dawning of that autumn day, but beneath the tranquil
surface there raged subterranean and powerful forces, moving the deep
waters of public sentiment. The much-discussed “general apathy” was the
silent, sullen wrath, dangerous in individuals as it is in the masses.
The silent fighter is tireless and terrible. The people had ceased to
be moved by oratorical effort, brass bands, and torchlight processions.
They had become surfeited with argument upon the subject of Protection.
The changes had been rung upon the effect of the passage of a Force
Bill, until the people had become as accustomed to the beating of the
flanges of the newspapers upon the rails of this somewhat attenuated
subject, as a slumbering passenger on a railway train. In fact, the
cessation of the clangor would have attracted more attention than the
continuation of the monotonous drumming.
The leading journal in the Force Bill camp had been that preëminently
vigorous newspaper, the New York _Sun_. Under the guidance of the
genius of the Hon. Charles A. Dana, the New York _Sun_ had seized the
most attractive, because the most novel, instrument of noise presented
in this campaign of education. It had blown such vigorous blasts, that
a large portion of newspaperdom, who regarded the opinions expressed
by Mr. Dana as apt to be eminently reasonable, had joined in the
chorus of the Force Bill farce, and created discordance and noise
enough to have nauseated the masses with weariness of the subject. The
pot-house politician, as well as his more exalted brother of the Fifth
Avenue palatial political headquarters, was abashed and confused, by
the fact that his efforts to arouse enthusiasm among the masses were
utterly fruitless. They neither agreed with him nor disagreed with him.
There was no room for argument. It was like the professional pugilist
descanting on the beauties of the bruiser’s art to a Whittier, Holmes,
or Longfellow; the subjects, upon which the politicians of all degrees
and kinds had exhausted themselves, were not interesting.
The issue before the people was sentimental. The detestation of the
prevalence and growth of a pretended and sham aristocracy, became the
important and all-absorbing theme within their hearts. They heard the
talk; they read the dissertations of learned editors, and while it was
all, doubtless, the product of powerful brains, it was not the most
important matter in the struggle to be decided that November morning,
between the masses and an assumption of “caste” in free America.
Mr. Thomas Dolan, at the Clover Club, in Philadelphia, in referring
to the result of the election, had at least the candor to admit the
cause of the Republican party’s defeat. Had he, and gentlemen of his
doubtless aristocratic tendencies, realized the impression that their
course of conduct was making upon the minds of the mass of the Common
People prior to that eventful day, November the 8th, and had they
taken warning by the signs of the times, had they believed less in the
Burchard theory of Blaine’s defeat in ’84, and more in the efficacy of
the impression, prejudicing the minds of the people against Mr. Blaine
and his party by that banquet,--which has been dubbed in political
parlance, “the Belshazzar feast,”--they might have been forewarned. But
those who have been, for the last thirty years, attempting to create
an artificial order to govern society, “caste,” have become so puffed
up by wealth, and blinded by the ever-narrowing view they are able
to obtain from their assumed exalted position, that they have lost
sight of every other consideration; becoming absorbed in their own one
overmastering emotion--love of money. Before this god of Mammon they
had performed such obsequious service, that they imagined the only
appeal necessary to make to the people, was the one so much paraded
by the Republican press, _i. e._, the advantage of Protection to the
pocket of the poor man. Upon this day, November 8th, which was to
decide, in no doubtful manner, the destiny of the nation with regard
to its social life, in the silence, communing only with their outraged
sense of the rights of man and the equality of all mankind, the voters
sought the confessional-like closets in the booths, established by
the introduction of the Australian system of voting. There was no
hurrah, no noise, no violence, but a tremendous outpouring of men,
filling every voting precinct in the land, creating a larger percentage
of voters who exercise their right of franchise than on any former
election ever held in America.
As the hours of the day passed, some of the keen observers and astute
party leaders began to realize that the existence of a general “feeling
of apathy” had been more apparent than real; else what was the meaning
of this outpouring of voters, who, silently and with determined, fixed
certainty of purpose, sought to exercise their right as citizens?
Even in those sections of the large cities where the wealthy reside,
and in the back country, where it is difficult for the voter, often,
to find the time, opportunity, and the means of getting to the polls
on election day, it was the same story. The nation had been aroused in
some magical and mysterious manner, which was beyond the expectation
and prognostication of the politicians and party leaders. The people
had taken the matter out of their hands. They had simply taken the ship
of State into their own keeping, and the professional politician had to
cling to the life-line in the wake thereof.
Wonderment seized these gentlemen of supposed miraculous political
perspicacity. They asked one another, by their silent and inquiring
glances: “What does this mean? Is our occupation, like Othello’s, gone?”
The people, regardless of their mistaken mouthing, like some massive
Percheron horse, had taken the bit; and, regardless of all attempts
at guidance, were exerting the strength which, when aroused, they
possess, contrary to the expectations of the learned gentlemen of the
political profession. When the sun went down, November 8, 1892, none
were less able to predict the result of this tremendous uprising of the
people than those who by their diplomacy had arrived at that position,
so enviable in the minds of petty politicians, Chairmen of various
Campaign Committees. Chairman Carter might have exclaimed, with the
drowning people at Johnstown, as he sank beneath the flood of indignant
“Common People,” “Whence comes this water?” Chairman Harrity might well
have been drunk and delirious, as the result of his own good fortune,
for as surprising to him as to Chairman Carter was the existence of
this slumbering volcano of indignation which had brought about the
overwhelming success of the candidate who represented, in the minds of
the people, the opposition to the growing aristocracy which had become
engrafted upon the Republican party. Chairman Harrity might well have
been dazed by the remarkable results of his own endeavors, had he not
realized that his efforts had been incidental to, and not the cause of,
the success of Cleveland.
It is not presumed to criticise the conduct of the campaign as managed
by the campaign committees of both sides. Their duties, without
doubt, were performed in a most masterly manner. The organizations
with which both committees worked with tireless energy to achieve
success for their respective sides, cannot fail to impress even a
very tyro in politics. It was, however, like two learned physicians,
disputing over the disease of a patient, and both being in error; each
applying established remedies that experience had taught him were
efficacious in the disease he had imagined it to be; both equally in
error because they had mistaken the complaint of the patient. To the
average politician of the present day, Tariff Reform and Protection
constitute the sum of all evils and diseases of the body politic.
Like Dr. Sangrado’s instruction to Gil Blas, they have only two
remedies: phlebotomy and plenty of hot water. And the astonishment
expressed by them at the possible existence of some other disease
and some other remedy, was productive of as much consternation as
that in the breast of Gil Blas, at the result of the treatment of his
patients at Valladolid. As the returns from the different States began
to arrive at the headquarters of the different committees; as the
result of the opinion of the people upon this momentous occasion (so
fraught with disappointment to the aristocratic believers in “caste”)
became apparent, surprise and astonishment were depicted upon every
countenance; while, mingled with unalloyed delight in the breasts of
the Democrats, and with mortification in the hearts of the Republicans,
the same surprise and astonishment existed. That Illinois, a State that
had sent over 200,000 men to fight under the Federal flag, and in which
such large sums of pension money had been annually distributed to the
disabled veterans for many years, should have been so unmindful and
heedless of the display of the time-honored and ensanguined garment,
the “Bloody Shirt,” and the howling of the Republican press about
Cleveland’s vetoes of pension bills, was simply outrageous to the minds
of the stupefied Republican leaders.
Could it be possible that their so often victorious shout of
sectionalism, and constant address to the pocketbook of the veteran,
had been relegated to the shadowy shelf of “innocuous desuetude”?
They looked aghast at the result of the counting of votes in Indiana.
That much-talked-of, recently-discovered Gas belt, in which had
sprung up innumerable manufactories, whose workshops were filled with
“Common People,” had failed to find an all-obscuring attraction in
the glittering gold that the magnates of wealth had held out to them
as an inducement to perpetuate the power of the rich and to increase
those privileges and class distinctions that they fondly hoped would
be accorded to them by the American people. Verily, like DeFarge, in
Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities,” the workman of the manufacturers in
Indiana had presumed to hurl the magical Louis piece back into the
carriages of the wealthy, rejecting with indignation the attempt to
bribe their honor, and their sense of the equality of man.
The negro of Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia, upon whom these
bondholders thought they had a mortgage, by their claimed procurement
of his emancipation, had, even in spite of his color, previous
condition, and gratitude, joined with his fellow-citizens, the “Common
People,” taking as the representative of those who had most benefited
him and his race, the immortal Abraham Lincoln, a man of the “Common
People”; and, by the negro’s vote, was added strength to the blow,
struck by the white Democracy of the Union, at this arrogant assumption
of that thing which the negro, along with the white man, had learned to
hate and resent--the assumption of “caste” upon the part of any set of
citizens in the United States of America.
The wool-grower of Ohio, the home of the popular McKinley, added sorrow
to the cup held to the lips of the would-be aristocrats. He no longer
felt bound to bow his head before the advantages held out by the party
of wealth. He preferred to take a little less for his wool, and a
little more respect for himself, his wife, and children in the social
world, where every landmark of equality was being washed away by the
tide of aristocratic tendencies. The bewildered Republican leaders
gazed with terror upon the transmogrified weapons with which they had
waged war. The sword of steel, when held by the hand clad in a golden
gauntlet, had become a weapon of straw. They murmured to one another:
“If these weapons have failed us, in what shall we seek safety?”
Consternation was in the council of the great of that party who, for
more than a quarter of a century, had controlled the legislation of
the Republic, and by whom was created, in the minds of the people,
the errors of social distinction and “caste” that have crept into the
country. The Republicans, assembled at their headquarters, became more
bewildered at each new piece of evidence of the disapprobation and
rejection of those doctrines, the understanding of which they deemed
such conclusive argument to the minds of the people. The oncoming storm
had no centre. It was blowing in all directions of the Union. Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, even manufacturing Pennsylvania, were sending a
horrible howling of destructive wind, which would sweep away all their
carefully-prepared barriers. At the Democratic headquarters, no less
was the degree of wonder stamped, though with joyous imprint, upon the
faces of the party leaders. Could it be possible that Illinois had cast
the majority of its vote for the leaders of the Democratic party, those
standard-bearers against whom so much had been said to prejudice the
mind of that great Soldier State, the home of Lincoln, the birthplace
of the Republican party and of the Grand Army of the Republic?
It was hard for the most hopeful to realize. Had the vaunted undoing
of the Democratic party in the State of Indiana, the increase of
the manufactures, and the personal popularity of a President, one
of Indiana’s chosen sons, been proved false and groundless? Had the
negroes in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia joined the Democratic
“Common People,” in spite of the promised covenant of their salvation,
The Force Bill, and added to the majorities in those Southern States?
Connecticut--much-protected Connecticut; could it be possible that she
would increase the few hundred majority accorded to the Democratic
candidate four years ago?
All seemed so utterly out of keeping with the fondest hopes and
expectations of the sagacious chieftains of Democracy, that incredulity
was stamped upon every countenance. It seemed to be utterly beyond the
comprehension of the wisest of the political world of both parties,
that, possibly, they had been treating an unknown and unappreciated
disease, the nature whereof they had failed to recognize. The result
was not compatible with any established theory of either party. The
people had evinced such utter disregard for all the old arguments and
well-tried remedies, that it dumbfounded the physicians who pretend to
minister to the wants of the nation. From such unsuspected quarters,
and in such ridiculous proportions, had come the disapproval of the
people, that all were at sea; some wrapping themselves in their own
glory, proclaiming, like Cock Robin, “I did it, with my little bow and
arrow;” others, seeking to shield themselves behind the transparent,
fragile shield of another’s fault: “He did it, his unpopularity;”
“Protection did it; it was his policy;” each trying to escape the
general stampede, occasioned by the long-suppressed indignation of
the people who objected, not so much to the economic doctrines of the
Republican party (not that they had become converted to the tenets
of the Democratic faith), but to that crime of “caste” which, with
its many ramifications in the whole mass of society, was causing them
unhappiness.
It is not well for the Democratic party to lay the flattering unction
to its soul, that the mass of the people had become converted to the
principles enunciated by that party in Chicago, at the Convention where
Mr. Cleveland was nominated. It would be as delusive and disappointing
to them, in some future election, as it has proved to the Republican
party upon the occasion of their late discomfiture. On the other hand,
the Republican party should be well convinced, by its downfall, that
the people will not endure the wrapping up, in silken garments, of the
progeny of the deformed and diseased state of European society, palming
the enshrouded babe off as an offspring of that land that lit the torch
of freedom for the world.