Carl Schurz Exposes the Spoils men (1871)
The whiteness of the White House was blackened by the scramble for offices under the gullible Grant. Cigar-chomping politicians, like hogs at the swill-box, grunted and shoved for soft jobs. The reformers, soon to organize the Liberal Republican party, were prodded into protest. Conspicuous among them was the angular gadfly Carl Schurz, who had grown up under the efficient German civil service. Now a liberal senator from Missouri, he delivered the following indictment in the Senate. What evils does he find in the existing spoils system? Which one does he regard as the most serious?

After the incoming of this administration, a gentleman of my acquaintance who had strong "claims" desired to be appointed postmaster in a Western city. But the President happened to put one of his own friends into that office; and so the man to be provided for could not be postmaster. Then the [congressional] delegation of his state agreed to make him pension agent at the same place; but an influential member of that delegation opposed it, and so he could not be pension agent.

Then he took his case into his own hands, for he knew that he was a man to be provided for, and the President nominated him as minister resident to a South American republic. Having obtained that, he thought he could obtain more. He saw a chance to be appointed minister plenipotentiary to another government, and, sure enough, he received the nomination for that also. Then his nomination came into the Senate, and was rejected. There was a terrible disappointment! And yet the man to be provided for was provided for. He was finally sent as a governor to a territory.

Thus, sir, under the present intelligent system of making appointments, the same man aspired to a post office, a pension agency, a minister residentship, a full mission, and finally landed in the governorship of a territory. And the appointing power, yielding to the peculiar pressure characteristic of the existing system, declared him fit for these places consecutively. And all of this in seven days, save the territorial governorship, which was discovered for him afterward.

And with him there was a multitude of men to be provided for at the same time; there always are a good many more than places to put them in. Do you complain of the unnecessary multiplication of offices? That evil is unavoidable as long as we suffer under the system which recognizes men to be provided for.

Must it not be clear to every observing mind that our present mode of making appointments is a blindfold game, a mere haphazard proceeding? Was Mr. Lincoln very wrong when once, in a moment of despair, he said with grim humor: "I have discovered a good way of providing officers for the government: put all the names of the applicants into one pepper-box and all the offices into another, and then shake the two, and make appointments just as the names and the offices happen to drop out together."

Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 3d sess. (January 27, 1871), Appendix, p. 70.

Horace Greeley Praises Greeley (1872)
The voices of the liberals, including that of Carl Schurz, swelled to a roar. With scandals bursting like popcorn, the reformers clamored for a renovation of the civil service. With the most difficult phase of Reconstruction going forward, they demanded more lenient treatment of the vanquished. When the spoils men and regulars of the Republican party insisted on renominating the "old man," Grant, the reformers bolted and formed the short-lived Liberal Republican party. Meeting in a chaotic convention in Cincinnati, they emerged with a most unlikely nominee in the erratic and politically inept editor Horace Greeley. His own influential newspaper published the following appeal on the eve of the election. In reading this statement, note the extent to which the southern question was involved. What did the slogan "Reunion and Reform" mean?

We ask those who are accustomed to read and trust the Tribune to vote today for Horace Greeley for President of the United States--

Because he is the best man for the place. He is incomparably abler, better informed, safer than his antagonist.

Because his election would mean reconciliation with the South, an end of the war, a revival of Southern industry, increased markets for Northern products, a homogeneous country, with consequent safety and prosperity.

Because his election would mean reform at the North--an end of government patronage in elections, an end of administering the civil service not to do the government work but to defeat one party and help another--an investigation of the corruptions which have seemed to pervade all branches of the national government, and have made the rule at Washington as much worse than Tweed's* rule as its scope was wider and its power more resistless.

Because his election would mean an end of carpetbag governments at the South, propped up by Washington interference for yet longer robbery of already bankrupt communities.

Because, in a word, it would secure those great ends of Reunion and Reform for which the Cincinnati [Liberal Republican] movement was begun, and the triumph of which, whether today hastened or delayed, is as sure to come as the Republic is to endure.

*Tweed was the corrupt "boss" of New York City who filched millions of dollars.

New York Tribune, November 5, 1872.

The Democrats Arraign Ulysses S. Grant (1876)
"Eight long years of scandal" was the tag that the Democrats tellingly attached to the Grant era. Meeting in their national convention in St. Louis and nominating the reformer Samuel J. Tilden, they flayed the Republican regime in their platform, excerpted here. How realistic is the assumption that a change of administration will eliminate the evils described?

Reform is necessary in the civil service. Experience proves that efficient, economical conduct of the government is not possible if its civil service be subject to change at every election, be a prize fought for at the ballot-box, be an approved reward of party zeal instead of posts of honor assigned for proved competency and held for fidelity in the public employ; that the dispensing of patronage should neither be a tax upon the time of our public men nor an instrument of their ambition. Here, again, profession falsified in the performance attests that the party in power can work out no practical or salutary reform.

Reform is necessary even more in the higher grades of the public service. President, Vice-President, judges, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet officers--these and all others in authority are the people's servants. Their offices are not a private perquisite; they are a public trust. When the annals of this Republic show disgrace and censure of a Vice-President [Schuyler Colfax]; a late Speaker of the House of Representatives [James G. Blaine] marketing his rulings as a presiding officer; three Senators profiting secretly by their votes as law-makers; five chairmen of the leading committees of the late House of Representatives exposed in jobbery; a late Secretary of the Treasury [W. A. Richardson] forcing balances in the public accounts; a late Attorney-General [G. H. Williams] misappropriating public funds; a Secretary of the Navy [G. M. Robeson] enriched and enriching friends by a percentage levied off the profits of contractors with his department; an Ambassador to England [R. C. Schenck] censured in a dishonorable speculation; the President's Private Secretary [O. E. Babcock] barely escaping conviction upon trial for guilty complicity in frauds upon the revenue; a Secretary of War [W. W. Belknap] impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors--the demonstration is complete that the first step in reform must be the people's choice of honest men from another party, lest the disease of one political organization infect the body politic, and lest by making no change of men or parties we get no change of measures and no real reform.

All these abuses, wrongs, and crimes, the product of sixteen years' ascendancy of the Republican Party, create a necessity for reform, confessed by Republicans themselves; but their reformers are voted down in convention and displaced from the Cabinet. The party's mass of honest voters is powerless to resist the eighty thousand office-holders, its leaders and guides. Reform can only be had by a peaceful civic revolution. We demand a change of system, a change of administration, a change of parties, that we may have a change of measures and of men.

[The Republican platform of 1876 naturally praised Grant's "honorable work" as president, while stressing the rebellion-stained record of the Democrats. The scandals were dismissed in one brief paragraph: "We rejoice in the quickened conscience of the people concerning political affairs. We will hold all public officers to a rigid responsibility, and engage that the prosecution and punishment of all who betray official trusts shall be speedy, thorough, and unsparing." Yet precisely here Grant had failed tragically. In 1876 he had shielded his private secretary, Babcock (when tried for graft involving the whiskey revenue frauds), and also his secretary of war, Belknap (when involved in graft regarding Indian supplies). But Grant had nothing whatever to do with the scandals besmirching Speaker Blaine and Vice-President Colfax. Cabinet members Richardson, Williams, and Robeson were all his appointees, and to that extent he was responsible for their shortcomings. Minister Schenck in London, who used his popularity as the "high priest of draw poker" to sell bogus mining stock, also falls into this category.]

K. H. Porter, comp., National Party Platforms (New York: Macmillan, 1924), pp. 89-90.

Grant's Farewell Apology (1876)
Grant had voted only once for a president prior to his own nomination. (Though a Republican, he had backed the Democrat James Buchanan in the hope of averting secession.) A regimented military life had not fitted him for civilian administration, and his blind loyalty to his thieving appointees was carried to an incredible point. In his last annual message to Congress he inserted a farewell apology that showed his increasing awareness of his own shortcomings. This remarkable statement has been called both naive and lacking in manliness. Where does he lay the blame for his failures?

It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of seventeen, I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible as a voter.

Under such circumstances, it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the government--in nearly every case selected without a personal acquaintance with the appointee, but upon recommendations of the representatives chosen directly by the people.

It is impossible, where so many trusts are to be allotted, that the right parties should be chosen in every instance. History shows that no administration from the time of Washington to the present has been free from these mistakes. But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.

My civil career commenced, too, at a most critical and difficult time. Less than four years before the country had emerged from a conflict such as no other had ever survived. . . . Immediately on the cessation of hostilities the then noble President, who had carried the country so far through its perils, fell a martyr to his patriotism at the hands of an assassin.

The intervening time of my first inauguration was filled up with wrangling between Congress and the new Executive [Andrew Johnson] as to the best mode of "reconstruction," or, to speak plainly, as to whether the control of the government should be thrown immediately into the hands of those who had so recently and persistently tried to destroy it, or whether the victors should continue to have an equal voice with them in this control. Reconstruction, as finally agreed upon, means this and only this, except that the late slave was enfranchised, giving an increase, as was supposed, to the Union-loving and Union-supporting votes. If free in the full sense of the word, they would not disappoint this expectation.

Hence at the beginning of my first administration, the work of Reconstruction, much embarrassed by the long delay, virtually commenced. It was the work of the legislative branch of the government. My province was wholly in approving their acts, which I did most heartily, urging the legislatures of states that had not yet done so to ratify the 15th Amendment [giving blacks the vote] to the Constitution.

The country was laboring under an enormous debt, contracted in the suppression of rebellion, and taxation was so oppressive as to discourage production. Another danger also threatened us--a foreign war.* The last difficulty had to be adjusted, and was adjusted without a war and in a manner highly honorable to all parties concerned.

*Grant here refers to troubles with Britain provoked by several unauthorized armed American incursions into British-held Canada, notably in 1866 and 1870.

J. D. Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), vol. 7, pp. 399-401.

Rutherford B. Hayes Believes Himself Defrauded (1876)
In 1876 the Republicans nominated, as Grant's successor, Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Hayes was a political puritan so serious-minded that at the age of twelve he had written in his diary that it was necessary to read law books rather than frivolous newspapers. The Democrats nominated a multimillionaire bachelor, Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York, a prominent corporation lawyer and a noted but overrated reformer. The first electoral returns, though not the later ones, indicated a Democratic landslide, and Hayes privately conceded defeat in his diary. Why does he feel that he would have won in a fair election?

Sunday, November 12.--The news this morning is not conclusive. The headlines of the morning papers are as follows: the News, "Nip and Tuck"; "Tuck has it"; "The Mammoth National Doubt"; and the Herald heads its news column, "Which?" But to my mind the figures indicate that Florida has been carried by the Democrats. No doubt both fraud and violence intervened to produce the result. But the same is true in many Southern states.

We shall, the fair-minded men of the country will, history will hold that the Republicans were by fraud, violence, and intimidation, by a nullification of the 15th Amendment, deprived of the victory which they fairly won. But we must, I now think, prepare ourselves to accept the inevitable. I do it with composure and cheerfulness. To me the result is no personal calamity.

I would like the opportunity to improve the civil service. It seems to me I could do more than any Democrat to put Southern Affairs on a sound basis. I do not apprehend any great or permanent injury to the financial affairs of the country by the victory of the Democrats. The hard-money wing of the party is at the helm. . . .

We are in a minority in the electoral colleges; we lose the administration. But in the former free states--the states that were always loyal--we are still in a majority. We carry eighteen of the twenty-two and have two hundred thousand majority of the popular vote. In the old slave states, if the recent Amendments were cheerfully obeyed, if there had been neither violence nor intimidation nor other improper interference with the rights of the colored people, we should have carried enough Southern states to have held the country and to have secured a decided popular majority in the nation.

Our adversaries are in power, but they are supported by a minority only of the lawful voters of the country. A fair election in the South would undoubtedly have given us a large majority of the electoral votes, and a decided preponderance of the popular vote.

C. R. Williams, ed., Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1924), vol. 3, pp. 377-378.

Zachariah Chandler Assails the Solid South (1879)
With the electoral vote of three southern states in hot dispute, the Hayes-Tilden deadlock of 1876 was broken in 1877 by the specially constituted Electoral Commission of fifteen men. Its questionable decision for Hayes was grudgingly accepted by the Democrats. But they did not yield until they had received assurances that federal bayonets would no longer prop up Republican regimes in Louisiana and South Carolina--the last of the states under military reconstruction. Hayes honored this pledge and withdrew the troops, despite Republican outcries. The two states then went over to the Democratic solid South. Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, who had been an outspoken antislaveryite, deplored these developments in a fiery speech in Chicago. (He died the next day.) The Democrats at that time controlled both houses of Congress. Why does Chandler regard the southern states as grossly overrepresented?

They [the Confederates] have forfeited all their property--we gave it back to them. We found them naked, and we clothed them. They were without the rights of citizenship, and we restored to them those rights. We took them to our bosoms as brethren, believing that they had repented of their sins. We killed for them the fatted calf and invited them to the feast, and they gravely informed us that they had always owned that animal, and were not grateful for the invitation.

By the laws of war, and by the laws of nations, they were bound to pay every dollar of the expense incurred in putting down that rebellion. But we forgave them that debt, and today you are being taxed heavily to pay the interest on the debt that they ought to have paid. Such magnanimity as was exhibited by this nation to these rebels has never been witnessed on the earth since God made it, and, in my humble judgment, it will never be witnessed again.

Mistakes we undoubtedly made, errors we committed, but, in my judgment, the greatest mistake we made, and the gravest error we committed, was in not hanging enough of these rebels to make treason forever odious.

Today, in Congress, the men have changed but not the measures. Twenty years ago they said: "Do this, or fail to do that, and we will shoot your government to death." If I am to die, I would rather be shot to death with musketry than starved to death. These rebels (for they are just as rebellious now as they were twenty years ago; there is not a particle of difference--I know them better than any other living mortal man; I have summered and wintered with them)--these rebels today have thirty-six members on the floor of the House of Representatives. Without one single constituent, and in violation of law, those thirty-six members represent 4,000,000 people, lately slaves, who are absolutely disfranchised as if they lived in another sphere, through shotguns, and whips, and tissue-ballots. For the law [the Fourteenth Amendment] expressly says that wherever a race or class is disfranchised, they shall not be represented upon the floor of the House. And these thirty-six members thus elected constitute three times the whole of their majority upon the floor.*

This is not only a violation of the law, but it is an outrage upon all the loyal men of the United States. It ought not to be. It must not be. And it shall not be. Twelve members of the Senate--more than their whole majority--occupy their seats upon the floor by fraud and violence; and I am saying no more to you than I said to those rebel generals. With majorities thus obtained by fraud and violence in both Houses, they dared to dictate terms to the loyal men of these United States. . . .

What they want is not free elections, but free fraud at elections. They have got a Solid South by fraud and violence. Give them permission to perpetrate the same fraud and violence in New York City and Cincinnati, and New York and Ohio, with the Solid South, will give them the Presidency, and that once obtained by fraud and violence, they would hold it for a generation. Today 8,000,000 of people in the Southern states control the legislation of the country through caucus dictation, as they controlled their slaves when slavery existed.

[Chandler was partially correct. The Democratic party that finally won the White House under Cleveland, Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt was basically the solid South plus the Democratic machines of the large northeastern and Midwestern cities.]

*The House numbered 149 Democrats and 130 Republicans; the Senate, 42 Democrats and 33 Republicans.

C. M. Depew, ed., The Library of Oratory (New York: The Globe Publishing Company, 1902), vol. 8, pp. 448-451 (October 31, 1879).

A Southern Senator Defends Jim Crow (1900)

Following Rutherford B. Hayes's election, the last federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and Reconstruction effectively ended. The white South proceeded rapidly to roll back the political, economic, and social gains that the freedmen had achieved with federal help in the Reconstruction era. In the following speech, a notorious racist, South Carolina senator "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, unabashedly defends the disfranchisement of African-Americans and mocks the philanthropic educational work of northern whites in the South. On what premises about Africans and African-Americans does his defense rest? What is his attitude toward the institution of slavery itself?

The slaves of the South were a superior set of men and women to freedmen of today, and . . . the poison in their minds--the race hatred of the whites--is the result of the teachings of Northern fanatics. Ravishing a woman, white or black, was never known to occur in the South till after the Reconstruction era. So much for that phase of the subject. . . .

As white men we are not sorry . . . for anything we have done. . . . We took the government away from [the carpetbag Negro government] in 1876. We did take it. If no other Senator has come here previous to this time who would acknowledge it, more is the pity. We have had no fraud in our elections in South Carolina since 1884. There has been no organized Republican party in the State.

We did not disfranchise the Negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the Negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got. As to his "rights"--I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. I would to God the last one of them was in Africa, and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. . . .

Some people have been ready to believe and to contend that the Negro is a white man with a black skin. All history disproves that. Go to Africa. What do you find there? From one hundred and fifty million to two hundred million savages.

I happened in my boyhood, when I was about 12 years old, to see some real Africans fresh from their native jungles. The last cargo of slaves imported into this country were brought here in 1858 on the yacht Wanderer, landed on an island below Savannah, and sneaked by the United States marshal up the Savannah River and landed a little distance below Augusta, and my family bought some thirty of them.

Therefore I had a chance to see just what kind of people these were, and to compare the African as he is to-day in Africa with the African who, after two centuries of slavery, was brought side by side to be judged. The difference was as "Hyperion to a satyr." Those poor wretches, half starved as they had been on their voyage across the Atlantic, shut down and battened under the hatches and fed a little rice, several hundred of them, were the most miserable lot of human beings--the nearest to the missing link with the monkey--I have ever put my eyes on. . . .

Then if God in His providence ordained slavery and had these people transported over here for the purpose of civilizing enough of them to form a nucleus and to become missionaries back to their native heath, that is a question. . . . But the thing I want to call your attention to is that slavery was not an unmitigated evil for the Negro, because whatever of progress the colored race has shown itself capable of achieving has come from slavery; and whether among those four million there were not more good men and women than could be found among the nine million now is to my mind a question. I would not like to assert it; but I am strongly of that belief from the facts I know in regard to the demoralization that has come to those people down there by having liberty thrust upon them in the way it was, and then having the ballot and the burdens of government, and being subjected to the strain of being tempted and misled and duped and used as tools by designing white men who went there among them. . . .

All of the millions that are being sent there by Northern philanthropy has been but to create an antagonism between the poorer classes of our citizens and these people upon whose level they are in the labor market. There has been no contribution to elevate the white people in the South, to aid and assist the Anglo-Saxon Americans, the men who are descended from the people who fought with Marion and Sumter. They are followed to struggle in poverty and in ignorance, and to do everything they can to get along, and they see Northern people pouring in thousands and thousands to help build up an African domination.

The Congressional Record, March 29, 1900, February 24, 1903.

A Spokesman for the "New South" Describes Race Relations in the 1880s (1889)
Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, championed the cause of the "New South"--a South that would emulate its northern neighbors by industrializing and modernizing its economy. Grady and other New South advocates knew that they needed the goodwill, the markets, and the capital of the North if they were to succeed. Overshadowing northern attitudes toward the region was the question of race relations in the decades after slavery's end. In the following speech delivered in Boston in 1889, how does Grady describe the condition of the recently emancipated African-Americans? Why did the North generally prove willing to believe him, and to acquiesce in the discriminatory arrangements that were directed against blacks?

I thank God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone forever from the American soil.

But the freedman remains. With him a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil; with equal political and civil rights, almost equal in numbers but terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility; each pledged against fusion, one for a century in servitude to the other and freed at last by a desolating war; the experiment sought by neither, but approached by both with doubt--these are the conditions. Under these, adverse at every point, we are required to carry these two races in peace and honor to the end. Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal stewardship. Never before in this republic has the white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The red man was cut down as a weed because he hindered the way of the American citizen. The yellow man was shut out of this republic because he is an alien and inferior. The red man was owner of the land, the yellow man highly civilized and assimilable--but they hindered both sections and are gone!

But the black man, affecting but one section, is clothed with every privilege of government and pinned to the soil, and my people commanded to make good at any hazard and at any cost, his full and equal heirship of American privilege and prosperity. . . . It matters not that wherever the whites and blacks have touched, in any era or any clime, there has been irreconcilable violence. It matters not that no two races, however similar, have lived anywhere, at any time, on the same soil with equal rights in peace. In spite of these things we are commanded to make good this change of American policy which has not perhaps changed American prejudice; to make certain here what has elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks; and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay, a rigor that accepts no excuse, and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sincerity. . . .

We give to the world this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth $45 million, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses, and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry and contentment runs with the singing plow.

It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I present the tax books of Georgia, which show that the Negro, twenty-five years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10 million of assessed property, worth twice that much. Does not that record honor him and vindicate his neighbors? What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand Negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their state sends them from the schoolhouse door.

And the schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia we added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a total of more than $1 million--and this in the face of prejudice not yet conquered--of the fact that the whites are assessed for $368 million, the blacks for $10 million, and yet 49 percent of their beneficiaries are black children--and in the doubt of many wise men if education helps, or can help, our problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut half in two since 1860, pays more in proportion for public schools than Boston. . . . The South since 1865 has spent $122 million in education, and this year is pledged to $37 million for state and city schools, although the blacks, paying one-thirtieth of the taxes, get nearly one-half of the fund.

Go into our fields and see whites and blacks working side by side, on our buildings in the same squad, in our shops at the same forge. Often the blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages by greater need or simpler habits, and yet are permitted because we want to bar them from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not there be elected orators of the white universities, as they have been here, but they do enter there a hundred useful trades that are closed against them here. We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the garden than to water the exotic in the window.

In the South, there are Negro lawyers, teachers, editors, dentists, doctors, preachers, multiplying with the increasing ability of their race to support them. In villages and towns they have their military companies equipped from the armories of the state, their churches and societies built and supported largely by their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime that we might save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own weakness. In our penitentiary record 60 percent of the prosecutors are Negroes, and in every court the Negro criminal strikes the colored juror, that white men may judge his case. In the North, one Negro in every 466 is in jail; in the South only one in 1,865. In the North the percentage of Negro prisoners is six times as great as native whites; in the South, only four times as great. If prejudice wrongs him in Southern courts, the record shows it to be deeper in Northern courts. . . .

Now, Mr. President, can it be seriously maintained that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing hands come every year $1 billion of farm crops? Or have robbed a people, who twenty-five years from unrewarded slavery have amassed in one state $20 million of property?

Or that we intend to oppress the people we are arming every day? Or deceive them when we are educating them to the utmost limit of our ability? Or outlaw them when we work side by side with them? Or reenslave them under legal forms when for their benefit we have imprudently narrowed the limit of felonies and mitigated the severity of law? My fellow countryman, as you yourself may sometimes have to appeal to the bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give to my people tonight the fair and unanswerable conclusion of these incontestable facts. . . .

When will the black cast a free ballot? When ignorance anywhere is not dominated by the will of the intelligent; when the laborer anywhere casts a vote unhindered by his boss; when the vote of the poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the rich; when the strong and the steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless--then and not till then will the ballot of the Negro be free. . . .

Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote--clannish, credulous, impulsive, and passionate--tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and taught to rely on the protection of an outside force, it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties through logical currents, for it lacks political conviction and even that information on which conviction must be based. It must remain a faction, strong enough in every community to control on the slightest division of the whites. Under that division it becomes the prey of the cunning and unscrupulous of both parties. Its credulity is imposed on, its patience inflamed, its cupidity tempted, its impulses misdirected, and even its superstition made to play its part in a campaign in which every interest of society is jeopardized and every approach to the ballot box debauched.

It is against such campaigns as this--the folly and the bitterness and the danger of which every Southern community has drunk deeply--that the white people of the South are banded together. Just as you in Massachusetts would be banded if 300,000 black men--not one in a hundred able to read his ballot--banded in a race instinct, holding against you the memory of a century of slavery, taught by your late conquerors to distrust and oppose you, had already travestied legislation from your statehouse, and in every species of folly or villainy had wasted your substance and exhausted your credit. . . .

Edwin DuBois Shurter, ed., The Complete Orations of Henry W. Grady (New York: 1910), pp. 192-220.

An African-American Minister Answers Henry Grady (1890)
The Reverend Joshua A. Brockett, pastor of St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was deeply offended by Grady's description of life in the South and made this reply in January 1890. To which of Grady's arguments is his response most vigorous? Why do those particular issues bother him? What are his most telling rebuttals?

Henry W. Grady, of Atlanta, Ga., delivered an address before the Boston Merchants' Association at their annual banquet, on Thursday evening, December 13, 1889. . . . In that address, beneath the glamour of eloquence, the old rebel spirit, and the old South is seen throughout. In every expression of every line in which the Negro is mentioned the old spirit of Negro hatred is manifest. . . .

The gentleman asks the question when will the black cast a free ballot? His reply is, when ignorance anywhere is not dominated by the will of the intelligent; when the laborer casts his vote unhindered by his boss; when the strong and steadfast do not everywhere control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless. Then and not till then will the Negro be free. He also says that the Negro vote can never again control in the South. He asks of the North, "Can we solve this question?" and answers, "God knows."

Consistency, thou art a jewel! It is declared that the Negro is peaceful and industrious on the one hand, weak and shiftless on the other. If he is peaceful surely the South has small need to fear an uprising. Politics, then, is the only source whence danger can come to the whites. If the black vote is never to control again, why should Mr. Grady state that the condition of the people is fraught with danger from the presence of a shiftless people? Whence the need of that wail for sympathy, if, as Mr. Grady says, the colored man must down, and the white partisan might as well understand it? If the colored man is never to rise, why waste so much eloquence upon a useless subject? The problem is already solved.

Mr. Grady asserts that nearly one-half of the school fund is used to educate the Negro. If the South is leagued together to maintain itself against this beleaguering black host, why educate it?

Has Mr. Grady to learn that education and power are inseparable? I will give Mr. Grady fair warning if they continue to give one-half or thereabouts to the school fund to educate a black man, then he will rise against the greatest odds that the South can oppose; not God alone, but even I know when the black man will be free.

Mr. Grady says that the Negro has not a basis upon which to rest his political conviction, and that of 300,000 voters, not 1 in 100 can read his ballot. That is a splendid compliment to the educational system which costs the South so dear. Either the South is amazingly stupid to pay so dearly for such meager results, or the Negro is incapable of learning, or the money is not paid.

Mr. Grady states that the Negro, by every species of villainy and folly, has wasted his substance and exhausted his credit. By the side of that statement I will place another of Mr. Grady's statements, namely, that from the Negroes' willing hands comes $1 billion of farm crops. If the latter statement is true, then the character of the Negro in the former statement has been falsified. Does Mr. Grady desire to make a strong case against this villainous race at the expense of the truth? And if the former statement is true, that the Negro is villainously wasteful, the $1 billion crops are but a creation of fancy, and the Northern sons with their modest patrimony would do well to remain standing in their doors, or turn their gaze in any direction but southward.

Again, with childlike innocence, Mr. Grady asks, can it be seriously maintained that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing hands comes every year $1 billion in crops? Or that we have robbed a people who, twenty-five years from unrewarded slavery, have amassed in one state $20 million worth of property?

In Georgia, Mr. Grady's own state, the Negro's real wealth accumulated since the war, is $20 million. Its population of Negroes is 725,132. Twenty millions of dollars divided among that number will give to each person $27.58. Upon the same basis of calculation the total wealth of the Negro in the 15 Southern states, including the District of Columbia, is $146,189,834. The colored population of these states is 5,305,149. It seems an enormous sum. In those 15 states the Negro has, by the exceedingly friendly aid of their best friends, amassed a fortune of $1 a year.

Should they not, because of this rapid accumulation of wealth, balance their little account, clutch to the mule, jog down the furrow, and let the world wag on?

Look now for a moment at those billion-dollar yearly crops accumulating for 27 years, giving us the almost inconceivable sum of $27 billion, which, divided between a number of whites equal to that of blacks, each one would from this $27 billion, receive $5,089.39. Thus the blacks receive for their willing toil through 27 years $27.58, while the whites receive $5,089.39. These are both sides of the Grady picture of Negro wealth which was intended to deceive the North. Gaze upon it. . . .

Philadelphia Christian Recorder, January 16, 1890.

Booker T. Washington Portrays the Plight of Black Tenant Farmers (1889)
In the late nineteenth century, most southern blacks remained unskilled agricultural workers--especially in the cotton fields--just as they had been under slavery. Many became tenant farmers, renting plots of land from big landholders and paying their rent by the delivery of some share of their crops. Financing for the tenant farmers was often provided by local merchants, who were also often their landlords. Frequently criticized as shiftless and lacking in ambition, tenant farmers (white as well as black) were among the poorest and sorriest southerners in the post-Civil War years. Here noted black leader Booker T. Washington describes their plight, and especially the role of the merchant in perpetuating it. What are the most objectionable features of the system Washington depicts?

. . . When the [Civil] war ended the colored people had nothing much on which to live. . . . They had to get the local merchant or someone else to supply the food for the family to eat while the first crop was being made. For every dollar's worth of provisions so advanced the local merchant charged from 12 to 30 per cent interest. In order to be sure that he secured his principal and interest a mortgage or lien was taken on the crop, in most cases not then planted. Of course the farmers could pay no such interest and the end of the first year found them in debt--the 2nd year they tried again, but there was the old debt and the new interest to pay, and in this way the "mortgage system" has gotten a hold on everything that it seems impossible to shake off. Its evils have grown instead of decreasing, until it is safe to say that 5/6 of the colored farmers mortgage their crops every year. Not only their crops before, in many cases, they are actually planted, but their wives sign a release from the homestead law and in most every case mules, cows, wagons, plows and often all household furniture is covered by the lien.

At a glance one is not likely to get the full force of the figures representing the amount of interest charged. Example, if a man makes a mortgage with a merchant for $200 on which to "run" during the year the farmer is likely to get about $50 of this amount in February or March, $50 in May, $50 in June or July and the remainder in Aug. or Sept. By the middle of September the farmer begins returning the money in cotton and by the last of Oct. whatever he can pay the farmer has paid, but the merchant charges as much for the money gotten in July or Aug. as for that gotten in Feb. The farmer is charged interest on all for the one year of 12 months. And as the "advance" is made in most cases in provisions rather than cash, the farmer, in addition to paying the interest mentioned, is charged more for the same goods than one buying for cash. If a farmer has 6 in a family, say wife and 4 children, the merchant has it in his power to feed only those who work and sometimes he says to the farmer if he sends his children to school no rations can be drawn for them while they are attending school.

After a merchant has "run" a farmer for 5 or 6 years and he does not "pay out" or decides to try mortgaging with another merchant the first merchant in such cases usually "cleans up" the farmer, that is takes everything, mules, cows, plows, chicken's fodder--everything except wife and children. . . .

The result of all this is seen in the "general run down" condition of 4/5 of the farms in Alabama--houses unpainted--fences tumbling down, animals poorly cared for, and the land growing poorer every year. Many of the colored farmers have almost given up hope and do just enough work to secure their "advances." One of the strongest things that can be said in favor of the colored people is, that in almost every community there are one or two who have shaken off this yoke of slavery and have bought farms of their own and are making money--and there are a few who rent land and "mortgage" and still do something. . . .

Booker T. Washington to George W. Cable, October 8, 1889, in Journal of Negro History 17 (April 1948). Reprinted with permission from the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Inc.

A Southern Black Woman Reflects on the Jim Crow System (1902)
Political disfranchisement and economic impoverishment were not the only penalties endured by southern blacks after Reconstruction ended. Blacks felt the stigma of discrimination and restriction in all aspects of social life. How did "Jim Crow" affect the life of this southern black woman? How--or why--did she put up with the conditions she describes?

. . . I am a colored woman, wife and mother. I have lived all my life in the South, and have often thought what a peculiar fact it is that the more ignorant the Southern whites are of us the more vehement they are in their denunciation of us. They boast that they have little intercourse with us, never see us in our homes, churches or places of amusement, but still they know us thoroughly.

They also admit that they know us in no capacity except as servants, yet they say we are at our best in that single capacity. What philosophers they are! The Southerners say we Negroes are a happy, laughing set of people, with no thought of tomorrow. How mistaken they are! The educated, thinking Negro is just the opposite. There is a feeling of unrest, insecurity, almost panic among the best class of Negroes in the South. In our homes, in our churches, wherever two or three are gathered together, there is a discussion of what is best to do. Must we remain in the South or go elsewhere? Where can we go to feel that security which other people feel? Is it best to go in great numbers or only in several families? These and many other things are discussed over and over. . . .

I know of houses occupied by poor Negroes in which a respectable farmer would not keep his cattle. It is impossible for them to rent elsewhere. All Southern real estate agents have "white property" and "colored property." In one of the largest Southern cities there is a colored minister, a graduate of Harvard, whose wife is an educated, Christian woman, who lived for weeks in a tumble-down rookery because he could neither rent nor buy in a respectable locality.

Many colored women who wash, iron, scrub, cook or sew all the week to help pay the rent for these miserable hovels and help fill the many small mouths, would deny themselves some of the necessaries of life if they could take their little children and teething babies on the cars to the parks of a Sunday afternoon and sit under trees, enjoy the cool breezes and breathe God's pure air for only two or three hours; but this is denied them. Some of the parks have signs, "No Negroes allowed on these grounds except as servants." Pitiful, pitiful customs and laws that make war on women and babes! There is no wonder that we die; the wonder is that we persist in living.

Fourteen years ago I had just married. My husband had saved sufficient money to buy a small home. On account of our limited means we went to the suburbs, on unpaved streets, to look for a home, only asking for a high, healthy locality. Some real estate agents were "sorry, but had nothing to suit," some had "just the thing," but we discovered on investigation that they had "just the thing" for an unhealthy pigsty. Others had no "colored property." One agent said that he had what we wanted, but we should have to go to see the lot after dark, or walk by and give the place a casual look; for, he said, "all the white people in the neighborhood would be down on me." Finally, we bought this lot. When the house was being built we went to see it. Consternation reigned. We had ruined his neighborhood of poor people; poor as we, poorer in manners at least. The people who lived next door received the sympathy of their friends. When we walked on the street (there were no sidewalks) we were embarrassed by the stare of many unfriendly eyes.

Two years passed before a single woman spoke to me, and only then because I helped one of them when a little sudden trouble came to her. Such was the reception, I a happy young woman, just married, received from people among whom I wanted to make a home. Fourteen years have now passed, four children have been born to us, and one has died in this same home, among these same neighbors. Although the neighbors speak to us, and occasionally one will send a child to borrow the morning's paper or ask the loan of a pattern, not one woman has ever been inside of my house, not even at the times when a woman would doubly appreciate the slightest attention of a neighbor. . . .

A colored woman, however respectable, is lower than the white prostitute. The Southern white woman will declare that no Negro women are virtuous, yet she placed her innocent children in their care. . . .

White agents and other chance visitors who come into our homes ask questions that we must not dare ask their wives. They express surprise that our children have clean faces and that their hair is combed. . . .

We were delighted to know that some of our Spanish-American heroes were coming where we could get a glimpse of them. Had not black men helped in a small way to give them their honors? In the cities of the South, where these heroes went, the white school children were assembled, flags waved, flowers strewn, speeches made, and "My Country, 'tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty," was sung. Our children who need to be taught so much, were not assembled, their hands waved no flags, they threw no flowers, heard no thrilling speech, sang no song of their country. And this is the South's idea of justice. Is it surprising that feeling grows more bitter, when the white mother teaches her boy to hate my boy, not because he is mean, but because his skin is dark? I have seen very small white children hang their black dolls. It is not the child's fault, he is simply an apt pupil. . . .

"The Negro Problem: How It Appears to a Southern Colored Woman," Independent 54 (September 18, 1902).

Oliver Morton Praises the Spoils System (1871)
Oliver P. Morton, Indiana's able war governor, had labored so zealously against hostile Copperhead Democrats that his exertions were blamed for the paralytic stroke that crippled him in 1865. As a devoted Republican, he could see little good in the Democrats and consequently favored appointing fellow partisans to office. His speech in the U.S. Senate in 1871 against the proposed civil service reform is a classic argument for the spoils system. How does he defend it?

The Senator [Trumbull of Illinois] says that he is in favor of organizing the civil service so that officers shall be appointed without regard to politics. . . . Now, sir, to have appointments made without regard to politics will suit our Democratic friends remarkably well while they are not in power, but it would not suit them one moment after they came into power. . . .

The Senator from Illinois praises the civil service system of Great Britain. A system that might be appropriate to Great Britain would not be appropriate here; our institutions are different. In England the tenure of office in the civil service is for life. They hold their offices during good behavior; that is to say, during life. Can we adopt the life tenure here?

Why, sir, ten thousand men in this city [Washington] holding office for life would form a privileged class that would revolutionize the very foundation principle of this government. We have put one life tenure under our Constitution, and if we had it to make over again we would not have that. I refer to the Supreme Court of the United States. . . . If a man has an office for life, it takes a very serious cause to get him out. An ordinary delinquency, an ordinary neglect or abuse or failure, is never sufficient to oust a man who holds an office for life.

No, sir, we cannot afford to adopt the English system under any circumstances; it is anti-republican; it is contrary to the fundamental principles of this government; and yet the Senator held up to us the beauties of the English system!

Sir, what is the fact there? Are the English clerks better qualified than those in our departments are? From the evidence I have, they are not. But they have one quality that our clerks have not got: that is, they have "the insolence of office" that results from a life tenure. I could refer to the facts on this point. You have all read Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens, where he described the Circumlocution Office and the Somerset House. . . .

I am not arguing against competitive examinations. I am in favor of them; but they are not infallible by any means. Men may pass an examination, and a first-rate examination, and yet be utterly unqualified for the position. How does it happen so often that the young men who graduate at law schools and carry off the first prizes fail in the practice of the law? So in regard to medicine. And how often does it happen that those who take the honors of the class at West Point do not succeed upon the field of battle or in the Army? You can adopt no system that will guard against exceptional cases. . . .

But the Senator says that officers ought to be appointed without regard to politics. Whenever you can carry on this government without regard to politics, that doctrine will do. But this is a government of the people and a government of public opinion, in which the mass of the people take a deep interest, as they do not in England and in countries on the continent of Europe. Just so long as the character of this government continues as it is, appointments will continue to be made with reference to politics; and no system can be devised that will prevent it. I do not care how many competitive examinations you institute, or whether you make the tenure for life or a tenure for ten years, you cannot change that thing unless you change the character of the government.

But what propriety is there in it? A man high in office, who has climbed up the political ladder, may then turn around and slap the faces of his friends who helped him up, if they should want appointments, and call that virtue! Would it make it a virtue? . . .

I have been in the Senate now nearly four years, and, so far as I know, there have been but three clerks appointed upon my recommendation. . . . As far as I am personally concerned, I would be glad to be relieved of all this labor. But what right have I to be relieved? My friends have the same right to call upon me that I have had in times past to call upon them, and, if they are respectable, and capable, and honest, why should I refuse to give them that legitimate aid which may be within my power? Why, sir, men act upon this principle in all conditions of life, whether in regard to politics or in regard to business; and you cannot change it by any enactment which you can make.

Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 3d sess. (January 12, 1871), part I, pp. 458, 460-461.

Harper's Weekly Hails a New Era (1883)
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act finally passed Congress in 1883. Most of the opposition came from spoils-hungry Democrats, who now resented the deathbed repentance of the Republicans. The new law forbade obligatory political contributions from officeholders and authorized competitive examinations to ascertain fitness. But the act was initially applied to only about 10,000 officials in the "classified service," out of some 130,000 federal employees. The passage of the measure was unwittingly assisted by Congressman J. A. Hubbell, chairman of the Republican Congressional Committee, who had given ammunition to the reformers by brazenly demanding contributions from federal officers as office insurance. Harper's Weekly, whose editor (George W. Curtis) was a leading civil service reformer, here comments on the passage of the bill by the Senate, before its approval by the House. Why was the measure enacted at this particular time?

The passage of the Pendleton bill by the Senate is an important event in our political history. It is the first practical legislative step toward the correction of abuses of administration involving dangerous consequences which are plainly perceived and universally acknowledged. It is a measure which, should it become law, will overthrow the aristocracy of patronage and spoils, and open the public service to all the people.

It will not, indeed, purify politics at a blow. There will still be corruption and demagoguism, and no good citizen can put off his armor of diligent watchfulness and effort. But it is not an argument against sanitary regulations that they do not abolish disease, nor against penal laws that crime still continues. It is no reason for refusing to try to improve a situation that still further improvement may be possible.

The passage of this bill by the Senate is a prompt response to a public demand unmistakably expressed at the autumn election, and it is a significant sign of the immediate influence of sound public opinion upon legislation. . . .

The awakening of public sentiment which has produced this great result is largely due to two very different events--the murder of Garfield and the assessments of Hubbell. Last spring Mr. Hubbell issued his circulars as a matter of course. The storm that followed showed how truly the public mind attributed the murder of Garfield to the spoils system. The result was impressive. Before the year ended, the action of Hubbell had been condemned by the Supreme Court, and the Senate of the United States had unanimously made it a penal offense.

The history of the year upon this subject exhorts every friend of wise progress to trust the people, and never to despair.

Harper's Weekly 27, no. 3 (January 6, 1883).

Schurz Applauds Partial Gains (1893)
The liberal German-American reformer and orator Carl Schurz was regarded by spoilsmen as a foreign busybody trying to "Prussianize" the civil service. Here he speaks eloquently in New York City as president of the Civil-Service Reform League. Ten years after the much-heralded birth of the Pendleton Act, he finds much to deplore and something to praise. Does he feel that the gains outweigh the drawbacks?

The Fourth of March last [1893] a new administration went into power. Untold thousands of men poured into the national capital clamoring for office; not for offices that were vacant, but to be vacated in order to make room for the clamorers. No matter whether he was ever so good a public servant, the man who was in was to be kicked out, to let him in who was out, no matter whether he would be not half so good a public servant.

The office-hunting throng swept into the White House and into the departments like a cloud of locusts. . . . The Cabinet ministers, all new men in their places, who felt the urgent need of studying somewhat their departmental duties, were hunted down so that they had hardly time to eat and to sleep, much less to study. When their cry for pity availed nothing, they at last barricaded their doors with strict regulations. They went into hiding in order to save some hours for the business of the government.

The Post Office Department was not only overrun by the crowd, but snowed under with written applications and recommendations for office, which in huge heaps covered the floors of the rooms, and the whole force of the department had to work after business hours merely to open and assort them. Senators and members of the House of Representatives ran wildly about like whipped errand boys to press the claims of greedy constituents or mercenary henchmen. . . .

But there is one part of the public service which now remains untouched by the tumultuous debauch of the spoils carnival. It is like a quiet, peaceable island, with a civilized, industrious population, surrounded by the howling sea. The President and the chiefs of the government departments contemplate this part of the service with calmness and contentment, for it gives them no trouble while the turmoil of the office hunt rages all around it. The good citizen, anxious for the honor of his country, beholds it with relief and satisfaction, for here he finds nothing to be ashamed of, and much that is worthy of this free and great nation. This is the "classified service," covered by the Civil Service Law, the creation of Civil Service Reform. On the portals the words are written: "Nobody enters here who has not proved his fitness for the duties to be performed." The office-hunting mob reads this and recoils. The public servant within it calmly walks the paths of his duty, undisturbed by the thought of the greedy cormorant hungering for his place. He depends upon his merit for his security and advancement, and this consciousness inspires his work. This is the application of common sense and common honesty to the public service. It is Civil Service Reform. . . .

At the close of President Arthur's administration in 1885 the number of places classified--that is, covered by the Civil Service Law--was about 15,500. At the close of President Cleveland's administration in 1889, it was about 27,300. At the close of President Harrison's administration in 1893 it was about 43,400, to which should be added several thousand laboring men in the navy yards placed under similar rules by the voluntary and most laudable act of Secretary [Benjamin F.] Tracy.

As the whole number of places under the national government amounts to about 180,000, we may say that more than one-fourth of the service of the national government has ceased to be treated as mere spoils of party warfare. In one-fourth the party boss has lost his power. One-fourth is secure from the quadrennial loot. In one-fourth influence and favoritism go for nothing. One-fourth has been rescued from barbarism. One-fourth is worthy of a civilized country. So much, Civil Service Reform has accomplished in the time of three presidential terms.

But great and encouraging as its progress has been, Civil Service Reform, having conquered only one-fourth of the service, has done only one-fourth of its work. . . . Civil Service Reform has undertaken to open the offices to all according to their ability to serve the people.

The spoils system asks the candidate for office: "Does your member of Congress recommend you, or does the party boss in your state or your county ask for your appointment? Or are you backed by a man who gives much money to our campaign fund? What men of influence have you behind you? If you have none, you can have no place." Civil Service Reform asks the candidate: "Are you a man of good character, and what can you show to prove it? What do you know? What can you do? What qualifications have you for serving the people? Have you more than other candidates for the place?"

On the one side, under the spoils system, the aristocracy of influence--and a very vulgar aristocracy it is--robbing the man who has only merit, unbacked by power, of his rightful chance. On the other hand, Civil Service Reform, inviting all freely to compete, and then giving the best chance to the best man, be that man ever so lowly, and be his competitor ever so great a favorite of wealth and power. On that side the aristocracy of "pull"; on this the democracy of merit. . . .

The spoils politician is fond of objecting that civil service examinations do not always point out the fittest man for the place. Perhaps not always. The best marksman does not hit the bull's-eye every time; but he misses it rarely. The civil service examinations may have a small record of failures. But what the system, fairly conducted, always does is to snatch public office from the undemocratic control of influence and favoritism. And there is the point which stings the spoils politician.

National Civil-Service Reform League, Proceedings (New York: National Civil Service Reform League, 1893), pp. 7-8, 10, 11-12, 16-17.

The Moralists Condemn Grover Cleveland (1884)
The Republicans nominated for the presidency in 1884 their premier personality and orator, James G. Blaine of Maine. In so doing they brushed aside suspicions that he had prostituted the speaker ship of the House for private gain. Republican reformers, sneeringly dubbed "Mugwumps," turned their backs on the nominee. The Democrats gleefully nominated their reformist New York governor, bachelor Grover Cleveland. The crusade of the Clevelandites against immorality in public life faltered badly when Republican scandal seekers revealed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate son eight years earlier in Buffalo. The accused candidate, courageously confessing his guilt, responded, "Tell the truth." The burning issue then became one of alleged public immorality versus private immorality. A leading Republican religious journal, the Independent, righteously turned its back on both candidates, especially Cleveland. What force is there in the argument that weakness of character in private life indicates weakness in public life, and that the Democrats, in their own interests and in the interests of the high office, should have replaced Cleveland as soon as the scandal broke?

Some of Mr. Cleveland's supporters try to comfort themselves with the idea that the offense charged against him, being a delinquency in his private life, has nothing to do with the question of his fitness or unfitness for the Presidency. Though his morals in this respect may be bad, he may, nevertheless, be trusted with the duties of the office. . . .

The plain truth is that licentiousness is one of the very worst of vices, that a man's real character is the one shown by his private life, and that this is the character which he will carry with him into his public life, if elected thereto. The connection between the two lives is direct and intimate; and, hence, no one who is bad in his private character is fit to be trusted with public duties.

No decent man surely would think of voting for a horse-thief; and, for an equally good reason, no one should vote for the lecherous corrupter of womanhood. Both are essentially rotten at the seat of moral life. It is bad enough to have them in private life, and will be much worse to have them in public life, especially when the latter would carry with it the virtual acceptance and endorsement of a gross immorality. A nation that, with its eyes open, will select a libertine for its chief magistrate must be in the worst stage of moral decay.

It is, however, urged by some of the Cleveland supporters, who find it difficult to adopt this new philosophy, that he has sincerely repented of what the law of God makes a grievous sin, and the law of man in some states makes a crime.

The first answer is that there is no evidence before the public to show the fact of such repentance, and that, in the absence of such evidence, the presumption is exactly the reverse. It will be time enough to reason from Mr. Cleveland's assumed repentance when the fact itself is established.

A second answer is that, if we admit the repentance alleged, this would not cancel the wrong to such an extent as to render him a fit candidate for President. We take it that repentant debauchees, though they may be forgiven by both God and man, are not, any more than repentant thieves and robbers, to be deemed morally eligible to the supreme magistracy of this great nation. Their past record is a fatal objection to them. The people can and should do better with the office than to burlesque it with such a palpable incongruity. The interests of sound morality sternly demand that this office should not be associated with an admitted bastardy on the part of its incumbent.

It was, hence, the duty of the Democratic Party, the moment the uncleanness in Mr. Cleveland's private character was made known, to withdraw him from the field, and put a decent, pure, and competent candidate in his place. The continuance of his candidacy with this knowledge is a disgrace to the party; and his election would be a burning disgrace to the whole country. The example of his success would be a moral calamity. His defeat is an imperative duty.

Independent 36, no. 16 (October 30, 1884).

The Mugwumps Condone Cleveland (1884)
Blaine, in sharp contrast to bachelor Cleveland, appears to have been a model husband and father. A Democratic orator, noting that the allegedly dishonest Blaine was a splendid family man and that the once-immoral Cleveland was a spotless public servant, proposed that "we should elect Cleveland to the public office which he is so admirably qualified to fill and remand Mr. Blaine to the private life which he is so eminently fitted to adorn." Harper's Weekly, a leading Mugwump journal, here puts the best face it can on the dilemma. Evaluate its most convincing argument in support of Cleveland. Would a throwaway vote for a third-party candidate have been the proper course?

Undoubtedly every good citizen would prefer a choice between two candidates absolutely irreproachable in every respect, and there are many honest persons who will prefer not to vote for a candidate of whom any kind of irregularity at any time can be justly alleged. Such voters, however, if they cannot support Mr. Cleveland, who said at once, "Tell the truth," can still less support Mr. Blaine, who said, "Let my private [financial] affairs alone," and tried in vain to deceive the country.*

In the actual situation the practical alternative seems to us to lie between a candidate whose offense is wholly in the past, and was of a kind which does not necessarily disqualify him for the highest public trusts, and a candidate who deliberately prostituted public office to private gain. No such man . . . has even been nominated or elected to a great office in this country. But Franklin and Hamilton and Jefferson and Webster and Clay, and other eminent men still nearer our own time, were held by their fellow citizens to be worthy of the highest public responsibilities, although it was known that their prize lives had not been always without stain. It was not that the people were indifferent to morality, but that they wisely discriminated between conduct which justly and necessarily unfits a man for public trusts, and that which experience and the general consciousness prove to be compatible with the utmost personal honesty and official fidelity.

The allegation that Mr. Cleveland is at this time a libertine and a drunkard is unquestionably, upon any kind of evidence known to us, false. His official career has been open to the eyes of all men, and if during the time that he has faithfully executed great public trusts his private life has disgraced his public office, the fact is wholly unknown to us, and certainly no evidence of it has been submitted to the public.

No honest man will mistake us as defending moral irregularities of any kind, nor, on the other hand, will he doubt our hearty contempt of those who affect horror at private immorality in order to divert public attention from official corruption. . . . The supporters of Mr. Blaine have chosen by his nomination to raise the question of official integrity as an indispensable qualification for the chief office in the government. Such an issue cannot be evaded, and it is the paramount issue of this election. But if those who are utterly unable to impeach Mr. Cleveland's official integrity, or to establish that of Mr. Blaine, should invite a contest of the comparative decency of their past and private lives, the contest must be declined for the honor of the American name. A controversy for the Presidency which should turn upon such a discussion would be the most disgusting and degrading in our history.

[The hope expressed by this journal proved futile. Panicky Democrats, with no encouragement from Cleveland, discovered a disconcerting date on the headstone over the grave of the firstborn Blaine child. It indicated that the baby had arrived within three months of the marriage. Blaine hastened to explain this irregularity by pointing to two wedding ceremonies several months apart. He also brought a libel suit against an Indiana newspaper, but subsequently dropped it. Someone--presumably a Republican--thoughtfully and surreptitiously destroyed the evidence by chiseling away the offensive date.]

*Blaine had acquired wealth out of all proportion to his known salaries and had resisted all attempts "to expose his private business." A decision that he had rendered as Speaker of the House in 1869 had saved a grant of land for the Little Rock and Forth Smith Railroad. He subsequently sought and secured a financial favor from the company. The accusation was that he had made his ruling after entering into the secret deal. Proof of his guilt or innocence presumably lay in a packet of letters (the "Mulligan letters") that he had written but that he refused to make public in their entirety.

Harper's Weekly 28, no. 528 (August 16, 1884).

Cleveland Pleads for Tariff Reduction (1885)
The financial embarrassments of Cleveland's first administration, oddly enough, stemmed from too much money in the Treasury. The great bulk of federal revenue then came from tariff duties, which the consumer repaid as a hidden tax in the increased price of the import. The only feasible way to reduce the unnecessarily large inflow to the Treasury was to reduce the tariff, and such a reduction was bound to arouse the high-protectionists, mostly Republicans but some Democrats as well. Cleveland, never one to shrink from disagreeable duty, courageously recommended such a remedy in his first annual message to Congress. Is he really hostile to protection? Why does he single out a certain class of items for reduction?

The fact that our revenues are in excess of the actual needs of an economical administration of the government justifies a reduction in the amount exacted from the people for its support. Our government is but the means established by the will of a free people, by which certain principles are applied which they have adopted for their benefit and protection. And it is never better administered, and its true spirit is never better observed, than when the people's taxation for its support is scrupulously limited to the actual necessity of expenditure, and distributed according to a just and equitable plan.

The proposition with which we have to deal is the reduction of the revenue received by the government, and indirectly paid by the people, from customs duties. The question of free trade is not involved, nor is there now any occasion for the general discussion of the wisdom or expediency of a protective system.

Justice and fairness dictate that, in any modification of our present laws relating to revenue, the industries and interests which have been encouraged by such laws, and in which our citizens have large investments, should not be ruthlessly injured or destroyed.

We should also deal with the subject in such manner as to protect the interests of American labor, which is the capital of our workingmen. Its stability and proper remuneration furnish the most justifiable pretext for a protective policy.

Within these limitations a certain reduction should be made in our customs revenue. The amount of such reduction having been determined, the inquiry follows: Where can it best be remitted and what articles can best be released from duty in the interest of our citizens?

I think the reductions should be made in the revenue derived from a tax upon the imported necessaries of life. We thus directly lessen the cost of living in every family of the land, and release to the people in every humble home a larger measure of the rewards of frugal industry.

J. D. Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Presidents (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), vol. 8, p. 341.

Philadelphians Criticize Cleveland (1887)
To Cleveland's repeated pleas for tariff reduction, the protectionists, both Republicans and Democrats, turned a deaf ear. The president finally decided to arouse the country by taking the unprecedented step of devoting his entire annual message to one subject--the tariff and its implications. Old-line Democratic politicians, fearful that such boat-rocking tactics would lose the next presidential election, in vain urged him to reconsider. But, as one of his critics remarked, he would rather be wrong than be president. In his sensational tariff message of 1887, he declared that the surplus confronted the nation with a "condition" and "not a theory." He called for a "slight reduction" of the tariff and branded as "irrelevant" and "mischievous" Republican charges of "free trade." In what particular is the following reaction of the Philadelphia Press (Republican) most unfair?

A thousand thanks to President Cleveland for the bold, manly, and unequivocal avowal of his extreme free-trade purposes! And a thousand rebukes and defeats for the false, dangerous, and destructive policy which he thus frankly and unreservedly proclaims!

The message deserves all the glory of courage, all the praise of high public issue, all the condemnation of utter, ruinous heresy.

It is a surprise in its method and a still greater surprise in its matter. It comes like the sudden, echoing boom of a great gun signaling a crucial fight on unexpected ground. In its immediate flash of light and in its broad bearings it looms up as one of the most momentous political events since the war.

It plants the President and his party squarely on free trade; it clarifies the next presidential battle as by a lightning stroke; it makes free trade vs. protection the overshadowing issue; it dwarfs and dismisses all other questions; it clears away all cowardly evasions and juggling subterfuges; it ends all pitiful personal bespattering; and it summons the American people to decide the supreme question whether the grand protective system which has built up our splendid industries shall be overthrown or not!

For the distinct and emphatic manner in which the President has faced and forced this paramount issue he deserves all credit; for the wrongs, the perils, and the inevitable disasters of his policy he must be crushed unless the people would have their own vital interests crushed.

Quoted in Public Opinion 4, no. 193 (December 10, 1887).

The New York Times Acclaims Courage (1887)
The New York Times, an independent newspaper with Democratic leanings, regarded Cleveland's tariff message as statesmanlike but politically unwise. Explain why, in the light of this editorial.

Mr. Cleveland has done an act of statesmanship in the best sense. Recognizing a great duty, he has performed it with courage, with firmness, and at the right time. And he has performed it so that every honest man must see that it is an honest act--disinterested, faithful to the requirements of conscience, without hope or purpose of personal or party advantage except such as comes from the public recognition of public service.

Judged by an ordinary standard of political expediency the President's act is inexpedient. He has forced upon his party an issue as to which the party is divided, and so divided that unless the minority yield, it can defeat the will of the majority. He has done this on the eve of a national context in which a considerable number of men of influence in the party have been urging him to avoid this issue, and threatening him and the party with disaster if he did not avoid it.

On the other hand, there is nothing in this issue, thus presented, by which Mr. Cleveland could hope to draw from the Republican Party any votes to compensate those he is in danger of losing, and which he has been warned over and again by leaders of his own party that he would lose.

Nor this alone, for if the protectionist faction in the Democratic Party carry out their own desires, or do what they have continually declared that they would do, Mr. Cleveland has done the one thing by which he could imperil the prospect of his own renomination. From the point of view of the politician, he has shown a courage that is temerity in the pursuit of an end of no value to himself.

[The Cleveland-Harrison presidential canvas of 1888 hinged on the tariff, not the private morals of the candidates and the Republican Harrison won. The tariff message of 1887 is commonly blamed for the Democratic defeat. But Cleveland actually polled in excess of 100,000 more popular votes than his opponent, and he showed increased strength in states like New Jersey and Rhode Island, where manufacturing was strong. Other factors were no doubt important in tipping the scales, notably the blundering interference of the British minister in Washington, Sackville-West, who declared in effect that a vote for Cleveland was a vote for England.]

New York Times, December 7, 1887.

The New York Times Acclaims Courage (1887)
War hero Ulysses S. Grant came to the White House in 1869, when corruption abounded at many levels of government. A great general, the politically infantile Grant proved to be a great disappointment as president. Disaffected Republicans, unable to stomach Grant for a second term, organized the Liberal Republican party in 1872 and, together with the Democrats, chose the outspoken--and outrageous--Horace Greeley as their presidential standard-bearer. Greeley went down to inglorious defeat. Politics at the national level turned into a petty and highly partisan stalemate, as the delicately balanced major parties hesitated to upset the shaky electoral standoff by emphasizing controversial issues. Rutherford B. Hayes narrowly triumphed over Democrat Samuel Tilden in 1877. As part of the arrangements that eventually secured his election, Hayes effectively ended Reconstruction in the South. The assassination of newly elected President Garfield in 1881 dramatized the need for civil service reform. Former spoilsman President Arthur, unexpectedly elevated to the highest office in the land after Garfield's death, cooperated with reformers in launching the Pendleton Act, which brought badly needed changes to the civil service. The widening reform movement was further strengthened by the outcome of the gutter-low presidential contest of 1884, from which Grover Cleveland emerged triumphant. Cleveland, the first Democratic president since 1861, displayed a fierce commitment to fiscal orthodoxy and to lowering sky-high Republican-passed tariffs.