A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [118]
Standing next to Blaine was the master of ceremonies, Dr. Samuel D. Burchard, a Presbyterian minister from New York. He was a last-minute replacement for a minister from Philadelphia who was supposed to introduce Blaine but had been delayed. Burchard had been given the duty because, at age seventy-two, he was the oldest minister present, and deemed to be a nonthreatening compromise with the clergy of other denominations who were angling for the role. Not much was known about Burchard. He came from an obscure redbrick church in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. He was bald, with a long pair of side-whiskers, and weighed about two hundred pounds.
When Burchard took the podium, everyone quieted down.
Burchard spoke directly to Blaine. “We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion. We are loyal to our flag. We are loyal to you.” The remark didn’t register with most people in the crowd. Supposedly, just one fellow hissed. Associated Press correspondent Frank Mack, apparently the only reporter present, wasn’t sure he’d heard what he thought he heard. He turned to the Democratic Party stenographer who was at his side and asked in a whisper, “Did you get that?”
“Bet your life—the old fool.”
Blaine later claimed that he never heard the phrase, “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” explaining that Burchard was an old man with a shaky voice and he, Blaine, had been focused on thinking about the remarks he had been about to make, not on what Burchard was saying. Blaine must have known he was facing a political calamity because right after the event, he sought out Frank Mack to get the AP reporter to confirm the contents of Burchard’s speech. When Mack said that a stenographer had already left, a “flicker of annoyance” passed over the candidate’s face. All Blaine could do then was hope for the best.
“Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” spread like a virus across the nation. Burchard was denounced as a Know-Nothing bigot while Blaine was assailed for failing to immediately disassociate himself from Burchard’s anti-Catholic sentiments. Disregarded in the abuse heaped on Blaine were these relevant facts about his personal history: Blaine’s mother was a devout Catholic, his father had converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, and his sister was the mother superior at a Catholic convent. Blaine didn’t speak out about the controversy until seventy-two hours later, at a speech in New Haven. By then, there was very little that he could do to stem the damage.
“I am the last man in the United States who would make a disrespectful allusion to another man’s religion.” He called Catholicism an “ancient faith in which my revered mother lived and died.”
Until the morning of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” Blaine had been steadily chipping away at the half million voters of Irish descent who appreciated Blaine’s Catholic heritage and his anti-British foreign policy sentiments. All that was now in the past. Wavering Irish Catholic voters stampeded back to the Democratic fold. Tammany Hall’s Boss Kelly also came around, decreeing that he must “now swallow the Cleveland pill” and urged his Tammany braves to go all out for the Democratic ticket.
At Wells College in Aurora, New York, Frances Folsom was giddy with anticipation as she diligently followed the final days of the 1884 election. Her friendship with the Democratic presidential candidate was the talk of the campus.
“I must tell you about one girl here, a Ms. Folsom (not to be at all conceited, she is ‘gone’ on me, to use a common expression), who is awfully nice,” a gossipy Wells student wrote her friend on October 23, 1884. “She is very handsome and, my dear, I want you to understand Governor Cleveland is perfectly