A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [122]
Downstate, it was another story. In Manhattan, the Board of Aldermen met as board of canvassers. The air was so thick with tobacco smoke, it seemed to envelop everyone in a toxic brown haze. Democratic ward heelers and the rank and file sat on one side, Republicans on the other. Everyone watched as the sergeant at arms carried in armfuls of immense manila envelopes stuffed with the original election-night ballots. To the surprise of many who had feared Tammany Hall mischief, only a few were found to be defective. It was a rout for Cleveland—he took Manhattan by 43,000 votes.
When the recount was finally certified, Cleveland had won the national popular vote by just 25,000 out of 10,000,000 cast. He had taken New York State by a scant 1,246 votes. A turnover of just over 600 votes would have made Blaine the president. As it was, New York went to Cleveland, giving him a total of 219 votes in the Electoral College, versus Blaine’s 182. One observer estimated that Reverend Burchard’s “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” crack had cost Blaine 50,000 votes in New York alone. Others put the figure at 30,000. In any event, it turned the tide in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A shower of insults came down on Burchard, and no one held him in more contempt than the man whose presidential ambitions he had unintentionally dashed. “An ass in the shape of a preacher” had cost him the election, said Blaine. Overnight, Burchard became a pariah. On Broadway, actors tossed his name into their routines for an “easy laugh”; his own congregation abandoned him, and church elders forced him into early retirement. To his dying day, in 1891, Burchard maintained that “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” should never have been regarded as more than a clever turn of phrase; he just liked its alliteration. But he came to be indelibly marked as the man who “opened his mouth and swallowed a presidency.”
As for Maria Halpin, joyous Democrats took to the streets, chanting this memorable couplet:
Hurray for Maria, hurrah for the kid!
We voted for Grover, and damned glad we did!
Another little verse also swept the country, a spiteful, in-yourface rhyme that turned on its head that famous Judge cartoon caption from the early days of the campaign:
Ma, Ma, where’s your pa?
Gone to the White House, Ha Ha, Ha!
The Southern states celebrated. In Richmond, the old capital of the Confederacy, crowds sang hymns. In Atlanta, five thousand people poured into the state legislative building and cheered the rebirth of the Democratic Party. But Southern blacks expressed real anxiety, and some of them even fear, that slavery would be restored.
In Albany, Cleveland could finally relax. He was the president-elect. It was official, and Blaine finally conceded defeat. “I am glad they yield peaceably,” Cleveland remarked. “If they had not, I should have felt it my duty to take my seat anyhow.”
But the bitterness of the Halpin scandal and its chief architect George Ball were still in his thoughts even in these days of triumph.
“It’s quite amusing to see how profuse the professions are of some who stood aloof when most needed,” he wrote his truest friend, Wilson Bissell. “I intend to cultivate the Christian virtue of charity toward all men except the dirty class that defiled themselves with filthy scandal and Ballism. I don’t believe God will ever forgive them, and I am determined not to do so.”
Cleveland also aimed his wrath at the Evening Telegraph and asked Bissell, “Is there any chance of having a decent and ably conducted Democratic paper in Buffalo?”—overlooking the fact that he already had the Courier and the Evening News in his corner. Ten days later, the issue still nagged him. “How much would it cost to start an evening Democratic paper in Buffalo? Something ought to be done, but I suppose the expense will stand in the way.”