Material Interests
and silver, and paper convertible into coin on demand”; and “a tariff for revenue only.” Its money plank was obviously an acceptance of the identical Republican principles which the Democrats had formerly opposed and denounced, and in various other details the platform substantially agreed with that of the Republicans. The chief difference was in respect to the tariff which thus for the first time became the paramount issue of the campaign. On this platform the Democrats nominated General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania and William H. English of Indiana.
The campaign was waged with great vigor, chiefly upon the tariff issue. The Republicans unequivocally advocated maintenance of the policy of protection to American industry, though of course with such modifications from time to time as circumstances might require, and they charged the Democratic demand for a “tariff for revenue only” with being tantamount to free trade. To this the Democrats could make no effective reply. Their candidate General Hancock, a gallant soldier but quite unversed in statecraft, aggravated the case by trying to dismiss the tariff as an issue of only local interest. The result was that despite the arbitrary suppression of the Republican vote throughout the South, the Republican ticket was handsomely elected; receiving 214 electoral and 4,454,416 popular votes, to the Democrats' 155 electoral and 4,444,952 popular votes. The Greenback party, favoring "fiat” money and abolition of national bank notes, polled 308,578 votes for James B. Weaver of Iowa and the Prohibitionists 10,305 for Neal Dow of Maine.
With a Republican President and Republican control of Congress in 1881 the work of constructive and
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