The presidential election of 1884, in which Grover Cleveland ended the Democrats' twenty-four-year presidential drought by defeating Republican challenger James G. Blaine, was one of the gaudiest in American history, remembered today less for its political significance than for the mudslinging and slander that characterized the campaign. But a closer look at the infamous election reveals far more complexity than previous stereotypes allowed, argues Mark Summers. Behind all the mud and malarkey, he says, lay a world of issues and consequences.

Summers suggests that both Democrats and Republicans sensed a political system breaking apart, or perhaps a new political order forming, as voters began to drift away from voting by party affiliation toward voting according to a candidate's stand on specific issues. Mudslinging, then, was done not for public entertainment but to tear away or confirm votes that seemed in doubt. Uncovering the issues that really powered the election and stripping away the myths that still surround it, Summers uses the election of 1884 to challenge many of our preconceptions about Gilded Age politics.

[An] interesting and ably argued book.

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

It deserves an audience that reaches beyond academia.

Virginia Quarterly Review

Written with gusto and peppered with insights, this is old-fashioned political history at its best.

American Historical Review

Summers has unearthed . . . enough historical drama to nurture interest in 1884 among the most jaded.

Choice

Mark Summers challenges many preconceptions about Gilded Age politics in this close look at the infamous 1884 presidential campaign between Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine. The mudslinging and slander were not for public entertainment, he argues, but to tear away or confirm votes that were in doubt during a time when voters were drifting away from party loyalty.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Prologue: Judgment Day

Chapter 1. No Business To-Day Other Than Politics

Chapter 2. The Dispirit of '76

Chapter 3. The Bloody Shirt--In Hoc Signo Vinces

Chapter 4. The Politics of Personality

Chapter 5. O Temperance, O Mores!

Chapter 6. The Protection Racket

Chapter 7. The Democrats Rise from the Dead

Chapter 8. The Passing of Arthur

Chapter 9. We Love Him for the Enemies He Has Made

Chapter 10. The Public Be Crammed!

Chapter 11. Love's Libels Lost

Chapter 12. Windypendents' Day

Chapter 13. Ireland Sold for Gold!

Chapter 14. Sideshows

Chapter 15. Carrying the War into Africa

Chapter 16. Local All Over

Chapter 17. Clerical Errors

Chapter 18. Lord! But We Skirted the Edge!

Chapter 19. Justice at Last!

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

"Another voice for Cleveland"

The Blaine tariff fraud

"His own destroyer"

Death at the polls and free from "federal interference"

"Mr. Tilden's body-guard"

"This puts me in the devil of a position"

A cartoon of what Democrats thought Readjuster rule meant

"Rival rag-pickers"

"The 'magnetic' Blaine"

"A grand Shakespearian revival"

"A big job"

"Her platform going to pieces"

"Senator Bayard strikes his grand attitude on the tariff question"

"Cleveland the celibate"

"Made harmless at last!"

"Blaine leans towards Logan"

"Phryne before the Chicago tribunal"

"He courts the mother and means the daughter"

He can't beat his record

"Those dogs won't fight--they are dying of starvation"

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