A George H. Mead source page

Originally published as:

George Herbert Mead. "Republican Persecution," Letter to the Editor, The Nation, 39, Dec. 18 1884, 519-520.

Editors' notes

This letter is part of a chain beginning with an article published in The Nation 1013, discussing the election of 1884 -- Grover Cleveland(D) v James Gillespie Blaine(R). The article evoked a letter to the editor detailing events at Oberlin College in Ohio, where Mead was a student. The statement "the election of Blaine" appears to refer to the results of the election, not his success. Blaine was, of course, soundly defeated. Later, as Secretary of State, Blaine would become an active internationalist, chairing the first PanAmerican Conference, and proposing an international tribunal for resolving hemispheric disputes.

The reader will be, no doubt, be struck by Mead's defense of the republican youth. It may surprise some that Mead was an active Republican. Later in his career, Mead would become embroiled in another political cause with strange ties to this one. In 1919, Mead would defend another internationalist, Woodrow Wilson, challenging Illinois senator McDill McCormick (R) attempts to stop American participation in the League of Nations in a telegram. McCormick would use Mead's telegram as the basis of a speech attack

The bibliography lists a Mead article documenting his telegram to McCormick, "Mead Answers McCormick as to the League of Nations," Chicago Evening Post, March 7, 1919). Unfortunately, we have search all Chicago papers preserved in the Chicago Research Library for 1 week on either side of this date and have been unable to find any such document. It must have appeared in an edition not preserved in the collection. However, we were able to locate articles in the New York Times and the City Club Bulletin that provide some background.

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Republican Persecution

To the Editor of The Nation:

SIR: In the letter signed "W." in your No. 1014 are some statements in regard to Ohio which are incorrect and misleading.

The "Preacher" who was attacked was a senior in the college, a St. John man; the "Republican mob," a party of students who, receiving telegraphic report of the election of Blaine, gave the benefit of it to their St. John classmate, with considerable tumult, no doubt, but with no worse intentions than those suggested by animal spirits and boyish enthusiasm. At least one person was wounded, though not seriously, by "the firing in the air," which surely justified an arrest. It will hardly do to claim Oberlin, where all factions are represented among the students and the Prohibition party in the faculty, for persecuting and vindictive Republicanism.

In No. 1013, would not your estimate of the popular strength of Cleveland and Blaine — clas-

(520) sing as it does the fusion votes of Butler men as Cleveland strength — deny popular strength to Butler which was distinctly given him by that vote?

The vote certainly helped Cleveland. It was intended for two purposes — to show Butler's popular strength, and perchance give him two or three electors, who could throw their vote for whom they pleased, probably for Blaine. It seems to me that this fusion vote, some 70,000, intended to help Blaine probably, and certainly to give a showing of Butler's popular strength in Michigan and Iowa, cannot consistently be classed as showing the strength of Cleveland in the Western States. — I remain sir, yours truly,

Geo. H. Mead
Minneapolis, Minn. December 8, 1884.

Notes

No notes

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