THROUGH THE ARCHIVES: Grover Cleveland is elected president of US despite ‘political skulduggery’

The outcome of who would become the 22nd President of the United States of America had been decided despite much political skulduggery, wrote a despatch correspondent to the News Letter.
By Darryl Armitage
Published 8th Nov 2020, 06:00 BST
The outcome of who would become the 22nd President of the United States of America had been decided despite much political skulduggery, wrote a despatch correspondent to the News Letter in November 1884. The man elected was Grover Cleveland who had defeated Senator James G Blaine. They wrote: “The Press of this country [the USA] is now in a position to announce that Mr Cleveland has been elected President of the United States of America. Numerically, his triumph over Senator [James G] Blaine is not great; morally, it signifies a revolution.”The outcome of who would become the 22nd President of the United States of America had been decided despite much political skulduggery, wrote a despatch correspondent to the News Letter in November 1884. The man elected was Grover Cleveland who had defeated Senator James G Blaine. They wrote: “The Press of this country [the USA] is now in a position to announce that Mr Cleveland has been elected President of the United States of America. Numerically, his triumph over Senator [James G] Blaine is not great; morally, it signifies a revolution.”
The outcome of who would become the 22nd President of the United States of America had been decided despite much political skulduggery, wrote a despatch correspondent to the News Letter in November 1884. The man elected was Grover Cleveland who had defeated Senator James G Blaine. They wrote: “The Press of this country [the USA] is now in a position to announce that Mr Cleveland has been elected President of the United States of America. Numerically, his triumph over Senator [James G] Blaine is not great; morally, it signifies a revolution.”

The man elected was Grover Cleveland who had defeated Senator James G Blaine. They wrote: “The Press of this country [the USA] is now in a position to announce that Mr Cleveland has been elected President of the United States of America. Numerically, his triumph over Senator [James G] Blaine is not great; morally, it signifies a revolution.”

The despatch continued: “During the past two days the most conflicting rumours were industriously circulated as to the possible or probable result of this contest, but read under the lines these rumours only revealed another and a striking phase of official corruption.”

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The figure of blame for these rumours, according to the despatch writer, lay at the hands of Jay Gould, who controlled one of the USA’s biggest telegraphic lines, Gould was described by the writer as “a sort of stock-jobbing Shylock on a large and most unscrupulous scale”.

Gould was also the owner of three New York newspapers and had “unblushingly” supported Senator Blaine in his campaign for the presidency.

The Blaine camp, noted the writer, were now “engaged in the most virtuous task of denouncing official corruption, and bellowing very loudly over the futile machinery of election by ballot”.

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