After the protracted controversy revolving around the election of 1876, the campaign and general election of 1880 seem bland by comparison. Reconstruction was dead, and the candidates that the two major parties selected tended either to agree or to hold similar views on those important issues that remained: the tariff, immigration, and currency. This is not to say that politics on all levels had somehow been cured of conflict—there was certainly enough of it within the parties—but the similarities shared by the two major candidates for the presidency in 1880 reveal a level of consensus not seen since the Era of Good Feelings, or at least they successfully hid the most pressing social problems (i.e., deeper racial and economic questions) behind safer issues such as monetary policy and tariff levels. After the antebellum divisions of the late 1840s and throughout the 1850s, the bloodshed and destruction of the Civil War, and the struggles over Reconstruction in the aftermath, it seems almost as if the electorate, needing a reprieve, sought to return to a less dramatic, less urgent political mood.
Many historians view the Campaign of 1880 as the last campaign dominated by the legacy of the Civil War. Both the Republican and Democratic parties largely ignored the visible impact of the Industrial Revolution and the way it was reshaping the economic and social life of the country. Instead of looking forward, both parties looked backward in an effort to mobilize their respective party loyalists. But social and political problems certainly remained, becoming more aggravated the longer they were neglected; and the near accord of the two major candidates could not quite paper over that hard reality. Only the new Greenback-Labor Party (GLP), which nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa for president, sought to run on a spectrum of new economic and social issues including temperance, civil service reform, black suffrage, regulation of railroads, labor laws instituting an eight-hour workday and addressing child labor abuses, restrictions on immigration, the issuance of “greenbacks” as full payment of the public debt, universal suffrage, a personal income tax, extensive land reform, and sanitary codes for industry. Neither of the two main parties proposed such a far-reaching and (in most cases) forward-looking platform.
President Rutherford B. Hayes, keeping a promise that he had made upon entering the White House, chose not to seek reelection. Historians have been divided on the legacy of President Hayes. He has popularly been blamed for the end of Reconstruction, owing to the allegation of a corrupt bargain that ensured him the White House while denying that office to the winner of the popular vote in the election of 1876, Samuel Tilden. Hayes is also accused by some of being a strike buster (with no real evidence to support this) as well as engaging in damaging policies with regard to Native Americans, another long-standing accusation that is not without some degree of uncertainty as to its fairness; but then again, with regard to the plight of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, it is hard not to draw this kind of conclusion. Some have argued that Hayes was more effective than past commentators have allowed. His attempt at civil service reform was genuine and, to an extent, effective. He left the presidency having strengthened it in an era of congressional dominance, and even though this election was marred by implications of fraud from some quarters, he exhibited personal integrity, throughout his one term, that has long been underappreciated. Hayes’s legacy will continue to be debated, but his decision to abide by his promise to serve only one term does provide us with one sure fact: The presidency was now thoroughly up for grabs in 1880. As is always the case when no incumbent is in play, the field was now wide open for both parties.
On the Republican side, former president Ulysses S. Grant sought renomination, with an almost rabidly loyal contingent eagerly falling in behind his cause. Grant had recently been out of the country on a world tour that lasted over two years, and while abroad he was consistently met with enthusiasm by crowds and with admiration by world leaders, a phenomenon that helped scour away the tarnish of his scandal-ridden presidency. As a former president and renowned Civil War general, Grant’s popularity was never higher, and for a time, his name seemed to eclipse even Lincoln as the foremost hero of the Union. If his timing had been better, Grant might have gone unchallenged back to the White House, but he returned from abroad to his hero’s welcome too early; by the time of the convention in the summer of 1880, six months after Grant’s triumphant disembarking in San Francisco, party enthusiasm for the former president had waned in some quarters. Other candidates also brought delegates equally loyal to their own efforts, and a strong anti-Grant movement calling for “Anyone to Beat Grant” emerged along with them.
Thus two principal challengers against the Grant cause soon emerged: Maine’s senator James Blaine, the magnetic “Plumed Knight” who came very close to winning the nomination in 1876; and Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman, an Ohioan and the younger brother of famed general William Tecumseh Sherman. Also joining the race was another Ohioan—former general James A. Garfield, a Civil War hero who, at the time the convention was gaveled to order, had recently been appointed by the Ohio legislature to serve as Ohio’s senator-elect, to begin the following March. Elihu B. Washburne of Illinois, William Windom of Minnesota, and George Edmunds of Vermont were, along with Garfield, potential dark-horse candidates who rounded out the field. At various points in the convention, a handful of votes were cast for President Hayes (who was never a candidate); Philip Sheridan; John Hartranft, who had been a candidate in 1876; and former general Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, an official in the Hayes administration. Unlike Grant, Blaine had not quite shaken memories of scandal from the unseemly activities alleged in the Crédit Mobilier/Mulligan Letters scandal that had thwarted his nomination four years earlier; and Sherman was regarded as suspiciously sympathetic to Catholics, anti-Catholicism still being a prejudice harbored by elements in both parties. Even so, both candidates held enough support to serve as impediments to Grant’s play for a third term. Garfield was initially not a candidate at all; but he enjoyed a following, and a quiet movement on his behalf began to work behind the scenes, waiting for the right moment to make its move. When Garfield drew the attention of the delegates by delivering a stirring speech on behalf of Sherman, that moment was upon them, and a Garfield candidacy became an increasingly attractive alternative.
In addition to the division over candidates, the party was now firmly split into the two main factions that had emerged in the previous election. The members of one faction, the Stalwarts, were generally more conservative in their adherence to party doctrine and, significantly, believed in the effectiveness and legitimacy of the old, machine-driven patronage (spoils) system; thus they were identified as opposing political and governmental reform, particularly civil service reform, and they also supported a third term for Grant. The other faction, the Half Breeds (derisively so labeled by the Stalwarts, who accused them of being only “half Republican”), were Republican moderates less inclined to ideological purity, were disenchanted with patronage and for the most part either supported or were sympathetic to civil service reform, and sought, at least initially, to nominate Blaine, believing him to have been innocent of all prior allegations and unfairly denied the nomination in the previous presidential election year. Blaine’s old nemesis, New York senator Roscoe Conkling, who had also been a candidate for nomination in 1876, was the Stalwart boss and the leading Grant supporter, closely allied with another influential New York boss, Thomas C. Platt; naturally, Blaine himself led the Half Breeds. Together, Conkling and Blaine divided among themselves over 80 percent of the convention delegates.
Grant opened with a first-ballot lead, winning 304 votes to Blaine’s 284 and Sherman’s 75, and he was able to sustain a leading plurality of support through 33 ballots, reaching 309 and at one point dropping to 275. Even though he held the lead deep into the convention, he was unable to find the needed majority. On the thirty-fourth ballot, Garfield, who had received scattered support on a few ballots, was awarded all the votes from the Wisconsin delegation. In response to this turn of events, Garfield initially protested, but to no avail; on the next ballot his total jumped to 50, but Grant’s also increased to 313, in what appeared to be encouraging movement in favor of the former president. Then suddenly, the anti-third-term forces, led by Conkling’s old nemesis Blaine and Sherman, marshaled their support and swiftly fell in behind young Garfield, who suddenly took 399 votes, exceeding by 20 the required majority needed for the nomination, and leaving Grant’s 306 far behind. Garfield—who would, as it turns out, never assume his Senate appointment—now joined the dark-horse legacy of previous successful candidates such as James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, and Abraham Lincoln at his first convention.
Garfield’s meteoric ascent surprised and humiliated the Stalwarts. It soon became clear to those who did a little investigating, and not without reason, that Garfield was in reality a faux dark horse, and that a degree of machination beginning some time before the convention had actually positioned Garfield into an unseen advantage, waiting for a well-timed moment. Garfield, in defeating Grant at the convention, was now the acknowledged de facto spokesman of the Half Breed faction, and realizing that a split party would be vulnerable in the general election, he successfully approached, in the spirit of reconciliation, the Stalwart Chester A. Arthur of New York to serve as his running mate. Arthur, a Conkling ally, had made a name for himself as President Grant’s collector of the Port of New York, where he had managed to wield considerable power and, as his Half Breed critics were quick to point out, used his position to enhance his own private income. In 1878, President Hayes sought to remove Arthur and replace him with Theodore Roosevelt Sr., an influential New York philanthropist and father of a future president, but it was a battle that pitted the president directly against Conkling, and one that Conkling was able to win, blocking Roosevelt’s ascent. Given the prospects of a joint Half Breed/Stalwart ticket, the delegates gladly nominated Arthur on the first ballot.
Democrats initially favored Samuel Tilden, the sentiment being that Tilden had been unjustly deprived of the presidency by what they felt to be the scandalous usurpation of “Rutherfraud” Hayes and was therefore entitled to another chance. But Tilden suffered declining health and the acrimony of Tammany Hall in his native New York, and thus he was unable to pursue the nomination. Several potential candidates were reviewed, but few leading personalities held wide appeal. Pennsylvania’s Winfield Scott Hancock, supported in the North for his heroism at Gettysburg and in the South for the compassionate nature of his service as occupation governor in Texas and Louisiana, was now the front-runner. He was also challenged by Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware and Ohio’s Henry Payne and Allen Thurman, along with numerous other candidates who came to the convention with scattered and thin support. On the first ballot, Hancock and Bayard left the rest of the field far behind, the former winning 171 votes, the latter 153. Given that numerous candidates shared the remaining 413 votes (with none of them exceeding 81), it looked as if the convention would grind toward deadlock. But on the second ballot, forces marshaled behind Hancock, and he won the nomination with 320 votes, with Bayard slipping to third and Speaker of the House Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania jumping into second with 128 votes. The second ballot was recast, with all but 33 delegates shifting to Hancock. William English of Indiana, known for his conservative management of state finances and his anti-greenback attitude, was plucked for the bottom half of the ticket without opposition.
With little difference between Garfield and Hancock, both parties once again resorted to the tedious tactics of the personal smear, albeit lacking the zeal of previous campaign nastiness. Republicans delighted in Hancock’s allegedly thin record as a civilian leader and, ignoring his war heroism and his fair treatment of Texas and Louisiana, depicted him as a political lightweight. But Hancock’s heroism for the Union army during the war prevented the Republicans from employing what had become, for them, a popular tactic of waving the bloody shirt against the Democrats as they had in the previous two elections, a worn and tacky display that was, by the 1880s, beginning to lose both its appeal and its effectiveness. The contrast between Hancock and Garfield, who could claim substantial experience and achievement in public life, was amplified. Democrats responded by finding dirt in Garfield’s past, linking him to the Crédit Mobilier scandal of the late 1860s (the scandal that had been tied to James Blaine), thus evoking uncomfortable memories of the scandal-ridden Grant years, somewhat unfairly in this instance, as the Crédit Mobilier scandal occurred during the administration of President Andrew Johnson. Shamefully, Democrats circulated a phony Garfield letter supporting Chinese immigration, a cynical and racist move that probably cost the Republicans California. On the lighter side, the campaign songbook was again used as a means of promoting presidential candidates, a Garfield-Arthur songbook in particular making something of a splash.
In the end, the election, which proved to be a choice between two nearly identical candidates, was one of the closest in history. Garfield polled only 10,000 more popular votes than Hancock, winning just 48.3 percent of the popular vote to Hancock’s 48.2 percent, with the remaining 3.5 percent going to candidates representing minor parties (mostly Weaver’s Greenback ticket). However, in the Electoral College, Garfield succeeded in winning a substantial electoral vote majority of 214 to 155, ensuring that there would be no repeat of the bungled election of 1876. Now that the southern states were once again self-governing (and aggressively dominated by the white majority), the electoral result was strikingly sectional. Every former Confederate state voted as a solid bloc for Hancock along with the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. New Jersey was the only northern state won by Hancock. The Chinese immigration issue helped Hancock to carry the states of California and Nevada, a blow that almost cost Garfield the presidency. Even though the election was again won by the Republicans, in just fifteen years after the end of the Civil War, the Democratic Party had reasserted itself, first by winning the popular vote (while losing the presidency) in the previous election of 1876, and now through a respectable showing in 1880. It was still largely a Southern political party, but it was one that was making inroads into the West and the more urban sections of the North, while the Republican Party remained solid with a largely Northern and Midwestern base.
From 1880 through the 1932 presidential election, the Democratic Party would continue to largely maintain control of southern states, mainly as a result of the widespread disenfranchisement of African American voters combined with sore memories among white voters of the Republican Party as the Party of Lincoln, the president responsible for defeating the Confederacy. The Republican Party would soon emerge, at least as general perceptions would have it, as the party of business and industry, but not before it would experience within its ranks the ascent of a strong, devoted, and for a time dominant reformist, progressive wing. With Garfield, the Grand Old Party (or GOP)—a nickname that was now associated with the Republicans—united its Half Breed and Stalwart factions and succeeded in preserving its dominance of the White House (a dominance that reached directly back to the Great Emancipator). However, Garfield’s promising presidency was painfully brief; he was soon mortally wounded by a bullet from a gun ignobly fired by an assassin, one of history’s small men who is almost universally described in the textbooks by some quirky default meme as a “disappointed office seeker,” and who, upon the bloody completion of his murderous act, unabashedly confessed the cramped pettiness of his motivation: “I am a Stalwart, and now Arthur is president!”
Dinnerstein, Leonard. “1880.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred L. Israel, and David J. Frent, eds. Running for President: The Candidates and Their Images. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Dinnerstein, Leonard. “Election of 1880.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds. History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968. Vol. 2. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
Herbert, John Clancy. The Presidential Election of 1880. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1958.
Mach, Thomas S. Reliving the “Hornet’s Nest”: James B. Weaver and the Election of 1880. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001.