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“The Heat of the Last Political Campaign”
The Innocent Hewitt Always Gets Hold of the Wrong End.
During
the presidential campaign of 1880, Republicans emphasized the lack of
political experience of the Democratic nominee,
Winfield S. Hancock. The Democrats
stayed with the strategy of mudslinging against the Republican nominee,
James A. Garfield. The most
damaging slander was the forged “Chinese letter” (on the top-left in
the cartoon), as the newspapers labeled it, in which Garfield
supposedly endorsed unlimited Chinese immigration, and attacked the
rights of American workers. It
was published in Tammany Hall’s newspaper, The
Truth, a few weeks before the election and hit the West Coast, where
Chinese immigration was vehemently opposed, like an
earthquake. The “Chinese
letter” probably cost the Republicans a senate seat in California and
may have undermined support for Garfield in the Far West.
He lost California and Nevada by slim margins, narrowly captured
Oregon, and won the national vote by only one-tenth of a percent.
In the November 13 issue of Harper’s
Weekly editor George William Curtis blamed Senator William Barnum of
Connecticut, chairman of the Democratic National Convention, for
approving the release of the “Chinese letter,” even if he thought it
was true at the time. “He was wholly unfit for his position if he did not know
that every such disclosure upon the eve of election is presumptively
false, and that as an honorable man he could not adopt it until he had
taken pains to verify it.” The
featured cartoon announces “Barnum’s Fraud Show” (top-right),
associating the chairman with both the forged letter and the hoaxes
perpetrated by his distant cousin, showman P. T. Barnum.
William Barnum is dressed in a clown’s outfit, with his back to
viewers, reading the “Chinese letter.”
The line “Morey the Myth” refers to the alleged recipient of
the letter.
Despite
Barnum’s leadership position, Republican ire soon focused on Abram
Hewitt, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former
(and newly elected) congressman from New York.
Although Garfield had immediately issued a strong denial of
authorship, Hewitt connected the Republican candidate to the “Chinese
letter” in campaign speeches. A
few days after the election, Hewitt joined the rest of the Democratic
National Committee in announcing that Garfield’s word, without other
evidence, was not sufficient to prove a forgery.
Alone among the committee members, Hewitt went even further by
refusing to accept Garfield’s denial unless the president-elect swore
to it “on the witness stand, and subjected to cross-examination.” Therefore, by the December 4 issue, editor Curtis was holding
Hewitt “chiefly responsible for the circulation of this foul
calumny.” Hewitt, also
appearing as a clown, is the central figure in the featured cartoon, and
the artist has written, “Hewitt endorsed this letter” at the bottom
of the forgery being read by Barnum.
In addition, Nast incorporates
references to Hewitt’s involvement in the Electoral College
controversy of 1876-1877 when the New York congressman was
chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Hewitt’s claims that the Democratic presidential nominee,
Samuel J. Tilden, won the Oregon electoral vote and the national
election appear on signs in the upper-left. Nast implicitly links Hewitt to that election’s
“cipher
telegram” scandal by depicting the script of the 1880
“Chinese letter,” being read by Barnum, in the hieroglyphics the
cartoonist used to mock the coded telegrams sent between Tilden’s
corrupt nephew, Colonel William Pelton, and election officials he was
trying to bribe in order to buy the election for his uncle.
After Congress had attained confessions from the guilty parties
in early 1879, Hewitt delivered a public address in which he defended
Tilden and the Democratic Party, downplaying the crime as “the
mistaken zeal of some of his [Tilden’s] indiscreet friends to secure
his just rights by wrong methods.”
Abram Stevens Hewitt was born
on July 31, 1822 in Haverstraw, New York.
He attended public school in New York City until 13 years old,
when he transferred to the Grammar School of Columbia College.
Three years later he entered Columbia College on a scholarship,
graduating first in the class of 1842.
Next, he worked as an instructor of mathematics at the Grammar
School, while studying law. In
1844, he and a student-companion, Edward Cooper, the son of wealthy
industrialist Peter Cooper, were briefly shipwrecked on their return
voyage from Europe. The
next year, the elder Cooper backed his son and Hewitt’s founding of
the Trenton Iron Works. In
1855, Hewitt married Peter Cooper’s only daughter.
During the Civil War, Hewitt
was a War Democrat whose iron foundry sold gun barrels to the Union
government at just above production cost.
In 1867, he served as one of ten scientific commissioners
representing the United States at the Paris Exhibition, after which he
wrote a well-received government report on European iron and steel
production. He then
introduced the open-hearth method at his own steel plant.
In 1871, Hewitt joined Tilden and other prominent New York
Democrats to oust the corrupt Tweed Ring from the Tammany Hall political
machine and help bring them to justice.
Three years later, Hewitt was
elected to the first of two consecutive terms in the U.S. House of
Representatives (March 1875-March 1879), where he sponsored legislation
creating the U.S. Geological Survey and lobbied unsuccessfully for lower
tariffs. He served as
chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Tilden’s 1876
presidential race, during which his father-in-law, Peter Cooper, ran for
president on the Greenback ticket.
A dispute with Tammany Hall’s new boss, John Kelly ,
led to Hewitt’s defeat for renomination to Congress in 1878.
In reaction to the rift, Hewitt and other Democrats established a
rival organization, the County Democracy, and he was reelected to the
first of three consecutive terms in Congress in November 1880, a few
weeks before this cartoon was published.
Hewitt
resigned from Congress in 1886 to run for mayor of New York City,
defeating Republican Theodore Roosevelt and independent
Henry George. During his
term Hewitt angered many voters by fighting Tammany Hall over patronage,
trying to enforce the Sunday closing law on saloons, and refusing to
participate in the
St. Patrick’s Day parade.
His accomplishments included initiating plans for an underground
mass transit system and promoting small neighborhood parks, but he lost
a bid for reelection in 1888 to the Tammany candidate, Hugh Grant.
Thereafter, Hewitt turned his attention to public charities,
particularly devoting much time to Cooper Union, a tuition-free college
for the city’s working class, founded by his father-in-law in 1859.
Robert C. Kennedy
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