The Burchard episode, that Blaine was blunderingly brought into in New York just on the eve of the election, was very generally accepted as costing him more than enough votes to have given him the State of New York, and thereby his election to the Presidency. It was miserably bad politics in its conception and could not have been more bunglingly executed. Blaine had suffered much from the attacks upon his public integrity, and some of his friends in New York assumed that it would be a great card to have him called upon by forty or fifty ministers of different denominations and congratulated as the candidate for President. As originally planned it might have accomplished some good, and certainly would not have done any harm. It was intended that Rev. Dr. Tiffany should deliver the address to Blaine. He was one of the most eloquent divines of the country, was well up in politics, had been in active political movements in Pennsylvania as a leader in the American party when he was connected with Dickinson’s College, and was a candidate for United States Senator before the Legislature of 1855. Had he delivered the address to Blaine, it would have been an elegant and faultless congratulation, but when the ministers met some of them strenuously objected to Dr. Tiffany as the oracle of the party, and there were indications of considerable ill-feeling. There was little time for conference, and the dispute was suddenly ended by some one proposing that the oldest minister present should deliver the address to Blaine, and that was adopted to settle the dispute. Dr. Burchard, unfortunately, happened to be the oldest minister in attendance, and he was rampant against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” but none supposed for a moment that he would make such a fearful break as to publicly denounce Romanism in an address of congratulation to a Presidential candidate, whose mother and sisters were devout Catholics. On his way home from the West he had visited his sister at a convent in Indiana, where she was Mother Superior. Burchard, of course, had no opportunity for preparation, and when the ministerial crowd came into the presence of Blaine he fired off his address in a manner not highly creditable, and proclaimed the fatal sentence against “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”