October Surprises: Garfield vs. Hancock (1880)
No doubt you all remember the 1880 election. It came four years after the closest election in presidential history when Rutherford Hayes was elected president after he was awarded the disputed electoral votes of three states just days before he was inaugurated. Many believe that a deal was made in which Hayes was declared president in return for a pledge to pull federal troops out of southern states where they were protecting the rights of the freed former slaves. Whatever deal was or wasn't made, Democrats entered the 1880 campaign pledging to get even for the "stolen election" of 1876.
Both of the major political parties nominated former Civil War Union Generals as their candidate. For the Democrats it was Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania, while the Republicans nominated Congressman James Garfield of Ohio. Garfield won the nomination as a compromise candidate on the 35th ballot. He had come to the convention to nominate fellow Ohioan James Sherman (the brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman), but when a convention fight resulted in a deadlock between those wanting to nominate Ulysses Grant to a non-consecutive third term (the "Stalwarts") and those wanting to nominate Maine Senator James G. Blaine (the "Half-breeds"), the delegates compromised on Garfield. As a concession to the Stalwarts, Chester Alan Arthur, a bagman who had never been elected to any political office, was chosen as Garfield's running mate, even though Stalwart leader Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York had told Arthur not to accept the position. Arthur took the job anyhow.
The Democrats expected to carry the south, while much of the north was considered safe territory for the Republicans. The campaign was focused on a handful of swing states that included New York. The Republicans began the campaign with their familiar theme of "waving the bloody shirt" (i.e. reminding northern voters that the Democratic Party was responsible for secession and four years of civil war). They spread the message that the nation elected a Democrat, it would reverse the gains of that war, dishonor Union veterans, and pay Confederate soldiers' pensions out of the federal treasury. But fifteen years had passed since the end of the war, and this argument became less effective as time passed. Besides, both parties had Union generals as their candidates, so this was less of an issue for voters.
The Democrats attacked Garfield personally, alleging that he was connected with the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal of the early 1870s, in which many members of Congress were bribed by the Crédit Mobilier corporation, a railroad construction company. Garfield's precise involvement is unknown, but most of his modern biographers agree that his dealings were probably somewhat less than honest. The Republican Party was reluctant to criticize Hancock, who was hailed a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg, but they did portray him as uninformed on the issues.
Republicans emphasized the parties' policy difference on the issue of tariffs. Garfield's campaign was able to portray the Democrats as unsympathetic to the plight of industrial laborers, a group that benefited from a high protective tariff. This issue cut Democratic support in industrialized Northern states. Hancock made the situation worse when he said that "the tariff question is a local question". Republicans used this gaffe to suggest to voters that Hancock did not understand the issue.
It looked as if Garfield would win the election handily. But on October 20, Garfield received an "October surprise" when a Democratic newspaper published a letter, purportedly from Garfield to a group of businessmen, pledging to keep immigration at the current levels so that industry could keep workers' wages low. One hundred thousand copies of the newspaper were mailed to California and Oregon. The letter, addressed to an H.L. Morey of Lynn, Massachusetts, voiced support for Chinese immigration to the U.S., and expressed the opinion that employers had the right “to buy labor where they can get it the cheapest.” The letter was published at a time of widespread xenophobia among white Americans. It contradicted the Republican platform, which endorsed restrictions on Chinese immigration. It made Garfield look like a hypocrite and jeopardized his support in western states whose white citizens were particularly fearful they would lose their jobs to Chinese immigrants.
The letter was a forgery. Democratic operatives distributed over a half-million copies of the letter across the country. Unfortunately, Garfield was slow to defend himself. It took some time for penmanship expert to study the letter to determine that it was a forgery and for reporters to travel to Massachusetts to track down the addressee, an unknown H.L. Morey of Lynn. Reporters never found Mr. Morey, and after examining the letter himself, Garfield publicly announced that it was a fake.
But delay in Garfield's denial hurt him politically. What was supposed to be a clear Republic victory became a close race. Garfield beat his opponent by only .02 percentage points in the popular vote, and he lost California, the state most affected by Chinese immigration. After the election, the letter's author was revealed to be Kenward Phillip, a New York Truth journalist who was later arrested and indicted for fraud.