History repeats the 1884 election

Barack Obama’s former pastor isn’t the first man of the cloth whose rants have sabotaged a presidential candidate, either by accident or design. One defeated candidate, James G. Blaine, even allowed that he would have been president, had it not been for “one asinine sentence by a preacher.†And it wasn’t even a complete sentence.

More than a century ago, long before Jeremiah Wright, cable news and the invention of the sound bite, just four words spoken by a New York Presbyterian minister did in Blaine’s candidacy and ended a quarter century of Republican rule.

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The words were “rum, Romanism and rebellion,†thundered by the Rev. Samuel Burchard, pastor of a prominent New York Presbyterian congregation, in a pep talk to a gathering of fellow Republican Protestant clergymen. He spoke just before the 1884 election, which had developed into a close and nasty race between Blaine and Democrat Grover Cleveland.

The complete text of Burchard’s “asinine sentence†was, “We are Republicans and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents are rum, Romanism and rebellion.† He was characterizing Democrats as a bunch of hard-drinking immigrants who answered to the pope of Rome and to a party whose strength was centered in the states of the former Confederacy.  

It was not helpful that Burchard spoke in New York, a swing state with a growing population of Irish and other Catholic voters, who were scorned by the Protestant elite for clinging to their religion and their rum.

“Rum, Romanism and rebellion†was one of several memorable slogans to come out of that colorful campaign.  Blaine, who had been accused of corruptly influencing legislation dealing with railroads whose stock he owned, was defamed as “James G. Blaine, continental liar from the state of Maine.â€

And when a letter from Blaine confirming his railroad deals surfaced, along with Blaine’s admonition to the recipient to “burn this letter,†the continental liar refrain was amended with the shouted postscript, “burn this letter.â€

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Cleveland’s honesty was unquestioned, but his private life became an issue when a newspaper in his hometown of Buffalo reported he had fathered a son out of wedlock. Cleveland responded with a novel strategy, rarely attempted before or since.  

“Above all, tell the truth,†he told his supporters as he admitted responsibility for the child even though he and the mother, Maria Halpin, were so uncertain of Cleveland’s paternity, they named the child Oscar Folsom Cleveland after a Cleveland associate who was also friendly with Ms. Halpin.

News of Cleveland’s youthful indiscretion inspired Blaine supporters to chant the long remembered “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa?†with Cleveland partisans providing a bit of oneupmanship with, “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.â€

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With two somewhat flawed candidates limping to Election Day, the Reverend Burchard picked the morning of Oct. 29, 1884, six days before the election, to launch his alliterative attack.

His four little words weren’t noticed by reporters at the meeting, but a Democratic operative was there and the party quickly spread word of the insult to Catholic voters.

Two days before the election, The New York Times reported that “No utterance of any politician during the campaign now ending has so aroused the community and especially the Roman Catholics as the declaration made a few days ago by the Rev. Dr. Burchard in addressing Mr. Blaine for a body of clergymen, in which he characterized the Democratic party as the party of ‘rum, Romanism and rebellion.’â€

The election was as close as elections get, with Cleveland winning the popular vote by 25,685 out of nearly 10 million.  The Irish vote helped him carry New York by just over 1,000 votes out of more than a million cast. The state’s 36 electoral votes provided Cleveland’s victory margin.

Cleveland’s election gave the Romans and rummies the last word with a raucous, if somewhat inelegant victory ditty:  

“Hurrah for Maria, hurrah for the kid!  We voted for Grover and damned glad we did!â€

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist.  E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.