The Senate being Republican selected three Republicans and two Democrats; the House being Democratic selected three Democrats and two Republicans, and of the judges three were Republicans and two Democrats. The Elec toral Commission thus contained eight Republi cans and seven Democrats and on every con tested question the vote stood eight to seven, each member casting his vote so that it would aid his party.
The Democrats of 1880 endorsed the princi ples embodied in the platform of 1876, protested against centralization as dangerous to the gov ernment and denounced the "great fraud of 1876 and 1877 by which upon a false count of the electoral votes of two States the candidate defeated at the polls was declared to be Presi dent, and for the first time in American history the will of the people was set aside under a threat of military violence.° The righting of the wrong of 1876 was declared to be the para mount issue. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the Democratic nominee, weakened his campaign by putting the tariff question aside as "a local issue.° He was defeated, however, by a popu lar vote of less than 10,000 and by only 59 votes in the Electoral College.
In 1884 the Democrats met at Chicago and nominated Grover Cleveland of New York for President and Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana for Vice-President, A platform of great length was adopted, the tariff question being the one discussed at great length. The platform con tained the following plank on the money ques tion: "We believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a cir culating medium convertible into such money without loss.° This platform also contained a plank reaffirming that portion of the Democratic platform of 1856 which endorsed the liberal principles of Jefferson.
The Republican ticket, headed by James G. Blaine and John A. Logan, received a plurality of a little more than 20,000 in the popular vote, but Mr. Cleveland had 37 majority in the Elec toral College.
The Democratic platform of 1888 reaffirmed the platform adopted in 1884 and endorsed the President's views on the tariff question as ex pressed in the tariff message which he sent to Congress in December 1887. The tariff question was made the paramount issue and the cam paign waged on this question, and resulted in the election of the Republican ticket and its candidates, Benjamin Harrison and Levi P.
Morton, that ticket having a majority of 65 in the Electoral College, although the Demo cratic ticket had a popular plurality of about 100,000.
During the Cleveland administration an at tempt was made to reduce the tariff and the Mills Bill received the support of the Demo cratic members of the Senate and House. The Republicans, however, took advantage of the Republican victory of 1888 to propose and enact a high tariff law, known as the McKinley Act, taking its name from the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House. The pas sage of this law was followed by an increase in prices of commodities and it became the para mount issue in the following campaign of 1892. The Democratic party that year nominated Grover Cleveland for a third time and named Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois as his running mate.
There was a fight in the convention over the tariff plank, and as finally adopted it declared that the Federal government had no constitu tional power to impose and collect tariff duties except for revenue only. . The trusts were de nounced and the party pledged to the enactment of laws made to prevent and control them.
The money plank of the platform was as follows: We denounce the Republican legislation known as the Sherman Act of 1890 as a cowardly makeshift, fraught with possibilities of danger in the future which should make all of its supporters, as well as its author, anxious for its speedy repeal. We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination against either metal or charge for mintage, but the dollar unit of coinage of both metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value or be adjusted through international agreement, or by such safeguards of legislation as shall ensure the maintenance of the parity of the two metals, and the equal power of every dollar at all times in the markets and in the payments of debts; and we demand that all paper currency shall be kept at with and redeemable in such coin. We insist ourtnhetha policy as necessary for the protection o tecron defenseless victims of unstable money and a fluctuating currency.