Although making no very considerable showing at the polls,
these new movements were very significant as evidences of popular
unrest. The fact that the heaviest vote of the Union Labor party
was polled in the agricultural States of Kansas, Missouri, and
Texas, was a portent of the sweep of the populist movement which
virtually captured the Democratic party organization during
President Cleveland's second term.
The withdrawal of Blaine from the list of presidential candidates
in 1888 left the Republican Convention at Chicago to choose from
a score of "favorite sons." Even his repeated statement that he
would not accept the nomination did not prevent his enthusiastic
followers from hoping that the convention might be "stampeded."
But on the first ballot, Blaine received only thirty-five votes
while John Sherman led with 229. It was anybody's race until the
eighth ballot, when General Benjamin Harrison, grandson of
"Tippecanoe," suddenly forged ahead and received the nomination.
The defeat of the Democratic party at the polls in the
presidential election of 1888 was less emphatic than might have
been expected from its sorry record. Indeed, it is quite possible
that an indiscretion in which Lord Sackville-West, the British
Ambassador, was caught may have turned the scale. An adroitly
worded letter was sent to him, purporting to come from Charles
Murchison, a California voter of English birth, asking
confidential advice which might enable the writer "to assure many
of our countrymen that they would do England a service by voting
for Cleveland and against the Republican system of tariff.
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