eal to
Republican dissenters led the canvass away from issues into the field of
personalities.

The charge of the independents upon Blaine's personal honor caused the
Republican schism and drove the party regulars into a retort in kind.
The private life of the candidates was uncovered to the annoyance of
both and to the greater embarrassment of Cleveland. Nothing
discreditable to his honesty could be found, but an apparent lapse in
his private conduct gave the pretext for wild and dishonest attacks upon
his character. A few years later the novelist, Paul Leicester Ford, in a
keen study of New York politics entitled _The Honorable Peter Stirling_,
portrayed a situation somewhat resembling that of Cleveland, though
disclaiming Cleveland as his model. The Boston _Journal_ led in the
exploitation of the charges, and partisans forgot decency on both sides.
Nast, having formerly cartooned Blaine in the "Bloody Shirt," now turned
to "A Roaring Farce--The Plumed Knight in a Clean Shirt," while others
pointed out the fact that the admirer who coined the "plumed knight"
epithet had been counsel for the fraudulent star-route contractors.

Attempts were made to appeal to class hatred on both sides. Butler had
hesitated for several weeks in his acceptance of the nomination by the
Anti-Monopoly Convention. Greenbackers and a few labor leaders made up
his following, and it was supposed that they would draw votes from the
Democrats. After conference with Republican leaders, Butler agreed to
run, and it was freely charged that these leaders financed his campaign
to injure Cleveland. Republicans appealed to the Irish vote by recalling
Blaine's vigorous diplomacy against Great Britain; their opponents
caricatured Blaine by representing him as consorting with Irish thugs
and dynamiters. At the very end of the canvass a chance remark may have
decided the result.

So much had been said of character in the campaign that both candidates
brought out the clergy to give them certificates of excellence. In
October a meeting of clergymen of all denominations was held at the
Fifth Avenue Hotel to greet Blaine. The oldest minister, Burchard by
name, was asked to deliver the address, and while he spoke Blaine
thought of other matters. He thus missed a phrase which other hearers
caught and which the Democrats immediately advertised. It denounced the
Democrats as adherents of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion," and was
reported as conveying a gratuitous