The question was settled, by these very veterans, from 1861 to ’65 with bullets, and it was utterly unavailing to call upon them for ballots in 1892 against the cause for which they fought in 1861.
The very negro said to himself: “You gave us freedom, the Republican party, but the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln was purely a Democratic party, in a broader sense.” To the negro’s mind, no three Presidents of the past will more thoroughly represent a picture pleasing to the eye of the enslaved or the lower classes, than Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln. All were Democrats--men who believed in the people and labored for the people, leading lives of pure simplicity, affecting no superiority of rank or position. It was useless to attempt to hold the negro vote.
The very name of the “People’s Party,” so strongly did it indicate and describe this sentiment of the people; enabled that party, with all its incongruous doctrines, to carry the electoral votes of some States of the Union.
How frivolous seemed the claim of the Democratic papers and politicians, that the popularity of Grover Cleveland, and the confidence that people had in his rectitude and honesty, caused this revolution. How it appears to be trifling with truth to ascribe the victory of the people, the true Democracy, to the “masterly manner in which Mr. Harrity managed the campaign.” Mr. Whitney’s diplomacy, Mr. Dickinson’s energy and ability, Mr. Sheehan’s shrewdness, sink into utter insignificance, and become as a grain of sand upon the seashore, where they have happened to be tossed by the mighty wave of the ocean of feeling, full of resentment, that filled the hearts of the people. Their little all was but the piping of a penny whistle in a gale of wind. W. H. Vanderbilt’s four words, “The public be damned,” uttered from the pedestal of $150,000,000, made a greater impression, and became more indelibly impressed upon the minds of the whole people, ranging in wealth from $10,000,000 to less than a cent, than all the management of Harrity, the diplomacy of Whitney, the skill of Sheehan, or the energy of Dickinson. The reported expression of Mr. Russell Harrison, when asked, while in London, what his position was in America, as son of the President,--“Oh, about what the Prince of Wales is here,”--was thought of and resented to greater purpose than was produced by all the speeches of the eloquent Cockran.