Gilded Age Set Precedent for Close Presidential Elections
Contact information:Rebecca Edwards845-473-3929 (work/home)[email protected]
Diane Pineiro-Zucker845-437-7404 [email protected]
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. (November 9, 2000) -- In the 1884 presidential election between Democrat Grover Cleveland and Republican James Blaine, the upstart Prohibitionist Party won enough votes in New York -- mostly from Republicans -- to throw that state to Cleveland, who won the presidency. Prohibitionist candidate John St. John was so widely vilified that the Republican Kansas legislature changed the name of their state's St. John County to Logan County. St. John joked that he could drive a carriage from New York to Kansas by the light of his burning effigies.
Four years later, Cleveland won the popular vote and Benjamin Harrison the electoral vote. This era of intense competition provided opportunities not only for the Prohibition Party, but also the Populist Party in 1892, supporters of women's suffrage, and other reformers. Their role in elections precipitated bitter debates about party loyalty and third-party strategies. It temporarily divided and demoralized reformers, though it also brought new issues onto the nation's political table.
Rebecca Edwards, assistant professor of history at Vassar College, has written about the 1884, 1888, and 1892 presidential campaigns, especially the role of third parties in these extremely close elections. She is the author of "Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era" (Oxford University Press, 1997).
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