insult to the Irish vote. How many
Irish turned from Blaine to Cleveland in the last week of the campaign
cannot be said, but the election was so close that a few votes, swung
either way, could have determined it. Cleveland carried New York and won
a majority of the electoral college, but his popular plurality over
Blaine was only 23,000, while he had some 300,000 fewer than his
combined rivals. Butler drew 175,000 votes without defeating Cleveland.
Purists, disgusted with the personalities of the campaign, swelled the
Prohibition vote to 150,000.

On March 4, 1885, Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as the first Democrat
elected President since James Buchanan. His Cabinet was necessarily
filled with men inexperienced in national administration, for the party
had been proscribed for six terms. The greatest attention was attracted
by the two former Confederates, Garland and Lamar, whose career did much
to disprove the "gloomy and baseless superstition" of twenty years,
"that one half of the nation had become the irreconcilable enemies of
the national unity and the national will." It was an American
Administration, and of its chief, James Russell Lowell, who had known
men in many lands, wrote, "He is a truly American type of the best
kind--a type very dear to me, I confess."

The State Department was entrusted to Thomas F. Bayard, who had been a
competitor for the nomination in 1884, and who sustained the tradition
that only first-rate men shall fill this office. Bayard proceeded at
once to undo the work of the last five years and to reverse a policy of
Blaine. A treaty with Nicaragua, negotiated by Frelinghuysen in
December, 1884, ran counter to the English treaty of 1850. After a vain
attempt to persuade Great Britain to abandon the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
respecting an isthmian canal, Frelinghuysen had disregarded it and
acquired a complete right-of-way from Nicaragua. This was pending in the
Senate when Cleveland was inaugurated, and was withdrawn at once. The
United States reverted to the old Whig policy of a neutralized canal.

In all departments the new Administration was forced to test the
strength of its convictions upon civil service reform. During its long
years of opposition the party had often voiced a demand for reform, but
now in office its workers demanded the usual rewards of success.
Cleveland had fought the spoils politicians in New York, and had taken
counsel of Carl Schurz after his election as Presiden