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“The Blaine and Butler Combination”
We hope Butler will catch him this time, if he makes any promises.
Thomas
Nast drew several cartoons for Harper’s
Weekly during the 1884 presidential campaign that featured Republican
nominee James G. Blaine and Greenback-Labor nominee Benjamin Butler in
tandem. Here, Butler enters the room as Blaine tries to avoid him
by climbing out the window. Unlike
most nineteenth-century presidential nominees,
Blaine and Butler took to the stump personally, covering much of the same ground
as they courted the vote of workingmen, especially
Irish-Catholics.
The Irish-Catholic vote was an
important part of the Democratic coalition in the late-nineteenth
century, particularly in the urban North. Irish-Catholics were repelled by the Republican Party faction
that backed the prohibition of alcohol, state-mandated Sunday closing of
businesses, and denial of public funds to parochial schools.
By the mid-1880s, though, the divisiveness of the education issue
had dissipated somewhat.
In 1884, Blaine believed that
he could make inroads into the Irish voting bloc by criticizing British
policies toward Ireland, by appealing to workingmen through the issue of
tariff protection, and by capitalizing on Democratic presidential
nominee Grover Cleveland’s alienation of Tammany Hall, long associated
with the New York Irish. Given
the expected (and actual) closeness of the election, New York was
crucial to each nominee. Furthermore,
the Blaine camp spread rumors that Cleveland was an anti-Catholic bigot,
and emphasized the fact that Blaine’s mother was an Irish-Catholic.
Meanwhile, Butler's popularity
with Irish Americans and workingmen made him a threat to draw votes away
from the Democratic Party. Democratic
leaders offered him promises of patronage and a possible cabinet
position if he turned down the Greenback-Labor nomination.
Butler rejected the Democratic overtures because he could not
abide the views of Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland.
The Republicans, on the other
hand, wanted Butler to enter the presidential race, and offered to
support his campaign with $5,000 per week until the election.
(Democrats were secretly funding the campaign of the Prohibition Party
nominee, John St. John.) In August, Butler accepted the
Republican offer and the Greenback-Labor nomination, and then set out on
the campaign trail where he attracted large, enthusiastic crowds. He soon asked for more money from the Republicans, but they
refused.
On November 4, 1884,
78.5 percent of the American electorate cast ballots for
president, a figure down only slightly from the turnout in 1880. The election in New York
State was
so close that the results were not known until several days after the polls closed.
In the end, Cleveland narrowly won his home state of New York and,
hence, the presidency, 219-182 in the Electoral College, and
48.5%-48.26% in the national popular vote. Butler received only 1.8%.
Robert C. Kennedy
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