Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion

by Summers, Mark Wahlgren

• ISBN13: 9780807825242
• ISBN10: 0807825247
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

The presidential election of 1884, in which Grover Cleveland ended the Democrats' twenty-four-year presidential drought by defeating Republican challenger James G. Blaine, was one of the gaudiest in American history, remembered today less for its political significance than for the mudslinging and slander that characterized the campaign. But a closer look at the infamous election reveals far more complexity than previous stereotypes allowed, argues Mark Summers. Behind all the mud and malarkey, he says, lay a world of issues and consequences. Summers suggests that both Democrats and Republicans sensed a political system breaking apart, or perhaps a new political order forming, as voters began to drift away from voting by party affiliation toward voting according to a candidate's stand on specific issues. Mudslinging, then, was done not for public entertainment but to tear away or confirm votes that seemed in doubt. Uncovering the issues that really powered the election and stripping away the myths that still surround it, Summers uses the election of 1884 to challenge many of our preconceptions about Gilded Age politics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
Prologue: Judgment Day	1	(12)
No Business To-Day Other Than Politics	13	(14)
The Dispirit of'76	27	(14)
The Bloody Shirt--In Hoc Signo Vinces	41	(18)
The Politics of Personality	59	(18)
O Temperance, O Mores!	77	(14)
The Protection Racket	91	(17)
The Democrats Rise from the Dead	108	(16)
The Passing of Arthur	124	(19)
We Love Him for the Enemies He Has Made	143	(19)
The Public Be Crammed!	162	(17)
Love's Libels Lost	179	(18)
Windypendents' Day	197	(13)
Ireland Sold for Gold!	210	(13)
Sideshows	223	(17)
Carrying the War into Africa	240	(15)
Local All Over	255	(17)
Clerical Errors	272	(17)
Lord! But We Skirted the Edge!	289	(15)
Justice at Last!	304	(13)
Notes	317	(36)
Bibliography	353	(16)
Index	369