met later, and nominated Grover Cleveland
and Thomas A. Hendricks.

The Presidential campaign of 1884 was unique in the extreme. It
was the most bitter personal contest in our history. The private
lives of both candidates, Cleveland and Blaine, were searched, and
the most scandalous stories circulated, most of which were false.

The tide was in favor of Blaine only a short time before the
election. I do not intend to go into the cause of his defeat. It
was accomplished by a margin so narrow that any one of a dozen
reasons may be given as the particular one. The Burchard incident,
the dinner given by the plutocrats at Delmonico's, certainly changed
several hundred votes--important when we remember that a change of
less than six hundred votes in the State of New York would have
elected him. Conkling, too, was accused of playing him false, and
it was alleged that there were hundreds of fraudulent votes cast
in the city of New York and on Long Island. Colonel A. K. McClure,
in "Our Presidents and How We Make Them," says, with reference to
this contest:

"Blaine would have been matchless in the skilful management of a
Presidential campaign for another, but he was dwarfed by the
overwhelming responsibilities of conducting a campaign for himself,
and yet he assumed the supreme control of the struggle and directed
it absolutely from start to finish. He was of the heroic mould,
and he wisely planned his campaign tours to accomplish the best
result. In point of fact, he had won his fight after stumping the
country, and lost it by his stay in New York on his way home. He
knew how to sway multitudes, and none could approach him in that
important feature of a conflict; but he was not trained to consider
the thousand intricacies that fell upon the management of every
Presidential contest."

Grover Cleveland was inaugurated on the fourth of March, 1885,
being the first Democratic President since James Buchanan, who was
elected in 1856, and marking the first defeat of the Republican
party since the election of Lincoln.

There was a wild scramble for offices on the part of the Democrats
as soon as Cleveland was inaugurated. He proceeded to satisfy them
as rapidly as he could, and out of 56,134 Presidential positions
he appointed 42,992 Democrats.

I always admired Grover Cleveland. I first saw him at the time of
his inaugural address, which he delivered without notes. He never
faltered from the beginning to the end