of tariff reduction, was selected by them as their candidate for Speaker. The Committee on Ways and Means, of which Colonel Wm. R. Morrison, of Illinois, was Chairman, was accordingly organized with reference to the revision and reduction of the tariff. The Secretary of the Treasury, in his annual report to Congress, had declared that the bill of March 3, 1883, had not relieved the treasury of excessive revenues, so the question still presses as to what reduction is necessary to relieve the people of unnecessary taxes. But, although there was a large majority of tariff reformers in the ranks of the Democratic party, they did not constitute a majority of the House and were unable to carry through the bill reported from the Committee of Ways and Means, or to prevent the striking out of its enacting clause when its consideration for amendment was begun.

President Arthur was a candidate for renomination by his party and received a strong support throughout the country, but Mr. Blaine led from the start, receiving on the first ballot 334% votes to 278 for Arthur, with smaller votes for some half dozen other candidates, and was nominated on the fourth ballot by a clear majority over all. General John A. Logan, of Illinois, received the nomination for the Vice-Presidency. The convention met at Chicago on the 3d of June, and its platform pledged the Republican party to correct the irregularities of the tariff and to reduce the surplus-being otherwise a thorough protective platform.

The nomination of Mr. Blaine immediately produced a bolt from the Republican party, and the Democratic Con

vention, which met at Chicago on the 8th of July, nominated on the second ballot Grover Cleveland, Governor of New York, and Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, consented to accept the nomination for Vice-President. The platform declared in favor of taxation limited to the requirements of economical government and the necessary reduction of taxation without depriving the American laborer of the ability to compete successfully with foreign labor, and without the imposition of rates of duty which would invite foreign immigration in consequence of the higher rates of wages prevailing in this country. It further declared that sufficient revenue to pay all the expenses of the Government could be gotten from custom-house taxation on fewer imported articles, bearing heaviest on articles of luxury and lightest on articles of necessity. Subject to these limitations, and recognizing the fact that many industries had come to rely on legislation for successful continuance and that any change of law must be regardful of the laboring classes, the platform declared that Federal taxation should be exclusively for public purposes; it favored the setting apart of all the money derived from the internal revenue for the relief of the people from the remaining burdens of the war and for funds to defray the expense of the care and comfort of the soldiers disabled in the line of duty in the wars of the republic, and for the payment of such pensions as Congress might from time to time grant to such soldiers-any surplus to be paid into the treasury. That section of the Republican party, embracing no small part of its intelligence and moral worth, which refused to support Mr. Blaine received the designa

tion of "Mugwumps," and as the canvass proceeded it was most unsparingly ridiculed and coarsely denounced by its late party associates. There were also defections from the ranks of the Democratic party, so that the issue was in doubt from the beginning, but finally resulted in the election of Cleveland and Hendricks, who received 4,874,986 votes at the polls to 4,851,981 votes for Blaine and Logan. In the electoral vote Cleveland received 219 to 182 for Blaine. Two other candidates were voted for-John P. St. John, of Kansas, as Prohibitionist, receiving 150,369 votes, and Benjamin F. Butler, nominee of the National party, received 175,370. The election of Cleveland was hailed by the Democrats throughout the, country with unspeakable rejoicing, and his inauguration, on the 4th of March following, gathered in Washington a concourse such as no previous similar occasion had brought to that city.

CHAPTER XX.

HISTORY UNDER PRESIDENT

CLEVELAND, MARCH 4, 1885.

'HE return of the Democratic party to power with the

election of Grover Cleveland will always mark an epoch in the history of the country. It signalled the close of the war, the wane of sectionalism as a power in American politics, and the coming in of a national in the place of a sectional party. For the first time since 1861 representative men from the South appeared in the cabinet and shared in the honors and responsibilities of the administration. The position of the new President was one of unusual burden and beset with difficulties which the people have not yet fully comprehended and appreciated. He was himself a stranger, not only to his position but to all his surroundings and to the leaders and prominent men of his party. That party for nearly a quarter of a century had been the party of criticism and the party of opposition, too weak at times to interpose serious obstruction to the measures and policies of the dominant party. It had been returned to power not so much for the ideas and policies it represented, as because the people were weary of sectionalism, alarmed at the usurpations, and resentful of the centralization and rank Federalism of the Republican