During the last few years it's become popular to criticise the presidential election process in this country as rancorous and mean-spirited. Self-important guardians of the public taste take to the television airways and explain how the American people are turned off by the attack ads and the harsh rhetoric. They talk of a divided America in tones that suggest they believe it may lead to the country's downfall. For those whose knowledge of U.S. Presidential elections is limited to within living memory, this is at least partially understandable. But spend a little time researching American political history in the late Nineteenth Century and one quickly discovers that the divided America today and the resultant politcal brawling is like a church supper in comparison.
So you think George W. Bush was see-lected, not ee-lected? Then you would love the 1876 campaign. The Democrats were called the party of treason as Republicans "waved the bloody shirt" of the Union war dead to deny them votes. It didn't work as Samuel Tilden defeated Rutherford B. Hayes by more than 250,000 votes, but was denied the Presidency when disputes about the validity of the electoral votes of South Carolina, Louisiana and, yes, Florida led to a Congressional Committee awarding the election to Hayes by an Electoral College vote of 185 to 184..
How about 1880? Hayes declined even to seek the re-nomination of his party. A fractured GOP took 36 ballots at their convention (those were the days when political conventions actually decided things of importance) to nominate James Garfield who went on to defeat Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock by only 1,898 votes out of over 9 million cast (although the Electoral College margin wasn't that close - 214 to 155). It didn't work out very well for the unfortunate Garfield who was later assasinated by a deranged office-seeker. His Vice-President, Chester Arthur, served out his term.
What about 1884? President Arthur couldn't get the GOP nomination and one of America's most famous Republicans at the time, General William Tecumseh Sherman, didn't want it. (When asked about the nomination Sherman uttered one of the most famous lines in American political history, "If nominated I will not accept. If elected I will not serve.") The Republicans settled on James Blaine of Maine who squared off against Grover Cleveland in a campaign marked by charges of corruption and bribery (against Blaine) and fathering an illegitmate child (against Cleveland). Cleveland won by less than 26,000 votes out of over 9.5 million cast. (During the campaign Cleveland supporters were met by shouts of "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?". After the victory exultant supporters finished the ditty with "Gone to the White House...Haw....Haw...Haw!").
The Electoral College decided the contest again in 1888. The GOP nominated Benjamin Harrison to take on President Cleveland. While Cleveland again won a narrow margin in the popular vote, beating Harrison by more than 95,000 votes, the Republican secured the victory in large part because Cleveland's Tammany Hall enemies in New York swung that states 34 electoral votes to Harrison. Cleveland got his revenge in 1892 when he defeated Harrison in the rematch, winning the popular vote by over 350,000 and securing a 132 electoral vote margin of victory.
What is to be learned by all of this? The rough and tumble politics of late Nineteenth Century America that led to so many close elections (and twice to Presidents elected without benefit of victory in the popular vote) resulted from real divisions in the body politic. The United States had just fought a bloody civil war and the politics of that war and it's aftermath dominated the era. The country was also facing radical economic change and an unprecedented level of immigration which would, in time, change the face of American culture. There were major social reform movements that gained prominence in that era, from the drive for universal public education, to the enfranchisement of women, to the prohibition of alcohol. During that time African-Americans gained their civil rights, and lost them again. The conquest of a continent concluded with the official closing of the frontier in 1890. Americans began to look across the oceans for the satisfaction of their imperial ambitions.
Questions of great consequence lead to divisions of great significance. Weighty issues often lead to violent conflict. The true greatness of the American system is that far more often than not, we answer our great questions and resolve our weighty disputes inside the political system created by those dead white males some of us still call the Founding Fathers. Only once in our history have we resorted to massive violence to solve a political dispute. So while you may still be disgusted by the virulent rhetoric, the charges and counter-charges, the attack ads and the psuedo-scandals, try to keep it all in perspective. If we survived "Ma, Ma...where's my Pa?", I think we can handle "Unfit for Command" and "Farenheit 911".
