Party games: The art of stealing elections in the late-nineteenth-century United States

Journal of American History

Volumn 88, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 424-435

  Summers, Mark Wahlgren ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 12344280080     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2675098     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. William Ivy Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest: Louisiana Politics, 1877-1900 (Baton Rouge, 1969), 260;
2. John F. Reynolds, "The 'Silent Dollar': Vote Buying in New Jersey," New Jersey History, 98 (Fall-Winter 1980), 191-209;
3. Peter H. Argersinger, "New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age," Political Science Quarterly, 100 (Winter 1985-1986), 669-87.
4. Herbert J. Bass, "I Am a Democrat": The Political Career of David Bennett Hill (Syracuse, 1961), 121-25.
5. In fact, Grover Cleveland, not David Bennett Hill, did more in public to put distance between the two of them. Nor did Cleveland believe there was treachery, and his private secretary, Daniel S. Lament, suggested that without Hill's aid the president might have lost by thousands more votes than he did. See A. J. Cameron to David B. Hill, July 12, 1894, David B. Hill Papers (New York State Library, Albany);
6. Daniel S. Lamont to Hill, Nov. 7, 1888, David Bennett Hill Papers (Bixby Collection), ibid.;
7. and George F. Parker, Recollections of Grover Cleveland (New York, 1909), 342-44.
8. Robert D. Marcus, Grand Old Party: Political Structure in the Gilded Age, 1880-1896 (New York, 1971), 144-45;
9. Indianapolis News, Nov. 2, 3, 1888. The "blocks of five" method had been used by both parties for years.
10. See Memphis Commercial Appeal, Oct. 26, 1886.
11. For historians' skepticism about conspiratorial explanations of the 1888 election, see James L. Baumgardner, "The 1888 Presidential Election: How Corrupt?," Presidential Studies Quarterly, 14 (Summer 1984), 421-25;
12. and Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict. 1888-1896(Chicago, 1971), 28-30.
13. New York Sun, Nov. 18, 1888;
14. Wilmington Every Evening, Nov. 23, 1888;
15. James Henry Jacobs, "The Gubernatorial Contest of 1888-1890, Part I," West Virginia History, 7 (April 1946), 159-220;
16. James Henry Jacobs, "The Gubernatorial Contest of 1888-1890, Part II," West Virginia History, ibid. (July 1946), 263-311;
17. Richard McMahon to Samuel J. Randall, Nov. 27, 1888, Samuel J. Randall Papers (University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia).
18. Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest, 138-40;
19. Detroit Evening News, Oct. 26, 27, 1888;
20. Chicago Tribune, Oct. 10, 1888.
21. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sept. 7, 8, 14, 15, 1888;
22. House, Clayton vs. Breckinridge, 51 Cong., 1 sess., 1890, H. Rept. 2912, majority report, 4-5, minority report, 14-15, 26-66;
23. Logan S. Roots, "Assassination as a Political Argument," North American Review, 148 (March 1889), 280-81.
24. Keith lan Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1973), 201-31;
25. Joe Gray Taylor, Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877 (Baton Rouge, 1974), 241-49, 254-57, 484-99;
26. Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina (Columbia, S.C., 1996), 188201;
27. Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905), 754-59;
28. Cincinnati Commercial, May 14, 15, 1874;
29. House, Affairs in Arkansas, 43 Cong., 1 sess., 1874, H. Rept. 771;
30. William J. Cooper, The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877-1890 (Baltimore, 1968), 94-107;
31. E. M. Brayton to William E. Chandler, Dec. 17, 1888, William E. Chandler Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).
32. Peter H. Argersinger, "The Value of the Vote: Political Representation in the Gilded Age," Journal of American History, 76 (June 1989), 59-90;
33. Charles Stewart III and Barry R. Weingast, "Stacking the Senate, Changing the Nation: Republican Rotten Boroughs, Statehood Politics, and American Political Development," Studies in American Political Development, 6 (Fall 1992), 223-71.
34. George Frederick Howe, Chester A. Arthur: A Quarter-Century of Machine Politics (New York, 1935), 12930.
35. On Maine, see Bangor Whig and Courier, Dec. 27, 1879, Jan. 2, 1880;
36. Lewiston Evening Journal, Jan. 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 1880;
37. "This Week," Nation, Jan. 1, 1880, p. 1;
38. "This Week," Nation, ibid., Jan. 8, 1880, p. 19;
39. and "This Week," Nation, ibid., Jan. 15, 1880, p. 35-
40. On New Hampshire, see Leon Burr Richardson, William E. Chandler, Republican (New York, 1940), 421-24;
41. New York Herald, June 9, 1875;
42. and Concord Monitor, June 7, 9, 14, 1875.
43. On Connecticut, see Terry A. Baney, "Yankees and the City: Struggling over Urban Representation in Connecticut, 1880 to World War I" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1989), 147-55;
44. Hartford Daily Times, Nov. 12, 17, 26, Dec. 27, 1890;
45. and Argersinger, "Value of the Vote," 73-78.
46. See Peter J. Argersinger, "'A Place on the Ballot': Politics and Antifusion Laws," American Historical Review, 85 (April 1980), 287-306;
47. and J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (New Haven, 1974).
48. In re contested election of Walker, 3 Luz. Reg. 130 (Pa. 1874); Marks v. Park, 7 Leg. Gaz. 70 (Pa. 1875); Clark v. Leathers, 5 S.W. 576 (Ky. 1887); Indianapolis Sentinel, Aug. 20, 1872. On the discretion to interpret and count misspelled names of candidates, see Behrensmeyer v. Kreitz, 135 111. 591 (1891); In re Opinion of Justices, 64 Me. 596 (1875); People v. Cicott, 16 Mich. 283 (1867); Newton v. Newell, 26 Minn. 529 (1880); Rodenbough v. Wolverton, 2 Lehigh Val. Law Rep. 285 (Pa. 1883); Rienyder v. Masser, 12 Wkly. Notes Cas. 155 (Pa. 1881); and Stephen M. White to J. F. Sullivan, Nov. 8, 1888, Stephen Mallory White Papers (Stanford University Library, Stanford, Calif.).
49. "The Republican Party and a Third Term," Harper's Weekly, Jan. 31, 1880, p. 66;
50. "Maine and Louisiana," Nation, Dec. 25, 1879, p. 434.
51. New York Herald. Nov. 4, 1888;
52. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Nov. 14, 1888.
53. J. A. Sullivan to William C. Whitney, July 8, 1892, William C. Whitney Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress);
54. Trenton Daily True American, Sept. 10, 1892;
55. Philadelphia Record, Oct. 13, 1892;
56. Baney, "Yankees and the City," 156.
57. For similar results in Maine, where a desire for vindication overcame doctrinal differences between Greenbackers and Democrats after the coup of 1879, see Portland Eastern Argus, Sept. 4, 8, 9, 13, 1880;
58. and "The 'Boss' System and the Maine Election," Nation, Sept. 23, 1880, p. 214.
59. William W. Bishop to Chandler, Feb. 21, 1868, Chandler Papers; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 9, 1885;
60. Hartford Daily Times, Nov. 12, 1890;
61. Concord Monitor, Aug. 16, 1881. On North Carolina's possible Republican plurality in 1888, see W. A. Lemly to Chandler, July 15, 1890, Chandler Papers; and Daniel L. Russell to Chandler, Feb. 25, 1890, ibid.
62. Cincinnati Gazette, Nov. 8, 1870;
63. Cincinnati Commercial, Nov. 12, 1870;
64. New York World, Nov. 1, 2, 7, 1870.
65. For the Evansville paper's warning and the response to it, sec Indianapolis Journal, Oct. 12, 1880.
66. For three impressions of how the party period ended, see John F. Reynolds, Testing Democracy: Electoral Behavior and Progressive Reform in New Jersey, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1988);
67. Michael McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 (New York, 1986);
68. and Joel H. Silbey, The American Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, 1991), 224-41.