This Day in Electoral History (GOP Farmer Commits Fraud; British Envoy, a Gaffe)

October 21, 1888—With the Presidential election only a few weeks ago, The Los Angeles Times – unlike its present incarnation, a mouthpiece of its Republican owner, Col. Harrison Otis—printed a letter that tilted the balance of the contest.

In an unguarded moment, Lionel Sackville-West, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States, confided to a correspondent he had never met, an English-born American citizen named Charles F. Murchison, that the incumbent administration of President Grover Cleveland was “desirous of maintaining friendly relations with Great Britain.”

A few small problems with all of this:

* “Murchison” was fiction—the letter had been created by a Republican farmer named George Osgoodby.

* Sackville-West had fallen for a diplomatic version of a trick that pugilist Muhammad Ali later tried out on George Foreman in a boxing ring—i.e., “Rope a Dope.”

* The Cleveland administration not only didn’t invite the errant envoy’s endorsement, but would have been thrilled if he could have been dropped into a deep, deep well—for at one stroke, Sackville-West had alienated a constituency that had put the President over the top in the key state of New York four years before—Irish Catholics.

In the end, the fury of this voting bloc led to the loss of New York for the Democrats in 1888. While narrowly winning the popular vote, Cleveland lost the all-important Electoral College vote to his Republican challenger, Benjamin Harrison.

I could go on and on about this event, but I’ve found someone who can relate it a hundred times better than I ever can. I’m talking about Robert B. Mitchell, an assistant editor with the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service.

The longtime journalist has indulged his fascination with history in Skirmisher: The Life and Times of James B. Weaver, the Populist Party candidate of 1892.

Now he displays his smooth writing style and considerable erudition on a blog called “The Greased Pig.” (If that term sounds slightly unsavory, well, it is—it comes from Ambrose Bierce’s description of the Presidency as “the greased pig in the field game of American politics.” The more things change, etc….) Here is Mitchell’s post about this imbroglio.

Mitchell only started his blog a fortnight ago, but I’m impressed enough that I’ve already bookmarked it. I hope you will, too, faithful reader.