did the National
Prohibition party. 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." With an
astonishing lack of astuteness, the British minister fell into the trap
and sent a reply which, while noncommittal on particulars, exhibited
friendly interest in the reelection of President Cleveland. This
correspondence, when published late in the campaign, caused the
Administration to demand his recall. A spirited statement of the case
was laid before the public by Thomas Francis Bayard, Secretary of State,
a few days before the election, but this was not enough to undo the harm
that had been done, and the Murchison letter takes rank with the Morey
letter attributed to General Garfield as specimens of the value of the
campaign lie as a weapon in American party politics.

President Cleveland received a slight plurality in the total popular
vote; but by small pluralities Harrison carried the bi