The campaign which took place that year was one of the most savage in American history.  Issues were thrust into the background.  The tariff, though mentioned, was not taken seriously.  Abuse of the opposition was the favorite resource of party orators.  The Democrats insisted that “the Republican party so far as principle is concerned is a reminiscence.  In practice it is an organization for enriching those who control its machinery.”  For the Republican candidate, Blaine, they could hardly find words to express their contempt.  The Republicans retaliated in kind.  They praised their own good works, as of old, in saving the union, and denounced the “fraud and violence practiced by the Democracy in the Southern states.”  Seeing little objectionable in the public record of Cleveland as mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York, they attacked his personal character.  Perhaps never in the history of political campaigns did the discussions on the platform and in the press sink to so low a level.  Decent people were sickened.  Even hot partisans shrank from their own words when, after the election, they had time to reflect on their heedless passions.  Moreover, nothing was decided by the balloting.  Cleveland was elected, but his victory was a narrow one.  A change of a few hundred votes in New York would have sent his opponent to the White House instead.

=Changing Political Fortunes (1888-96).=—­After the Democrats had settled down to the enjoyment of their hard-earned victory, President Cleveland in his message of 1887 attacked the tariff as “vicious, inequitable, and illogical”; as a system of taxation that laid a burden upon “every consumer in the land for the benefit of our manufacturers.”  Business enterprise was thoroughly alarmed.  The Republicans characterized the tariff message as a free-trade assault upon the industries of the country.  Mainly on that issue they elected in 1888 Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, a shrewd lawyer, a reticent politician, a descendant of the hero of Tippecanoe, and a son of the old Northwest.  Accepting the outcome of the election as a vindication of their principles, the Republicans, under the leadership of William McKinley in the House of Representatives, enacted in 1890 a tariff law imposing the highest duties yet laid in our history.  To their utter surprise, however, they were instantly informed by the country that their program was not approved.  That very autumn they lost in the congressional elections, and two years later they were decisively beaten in the presidential campaign, Cleveland once more leading his party to victory.

=References=

L.H.  Haney, Congressional History of Railways (2 vols.).

J.P.  Davis, Union Pacific Railway.

J.M.  Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron.

M.T.  Copeland, The Cotton Manufacturing Industry in the United States
(Harvard Studies).

E.W.  Bryce, Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.