The Crime of Caste in Our CountryDavenport, Benjamin Rush
History
The Crime of Caste in Our Country
Davenport, Benjamin Rush
Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
President of the United States, 1889-93.]
The sympathy of the nation was deep, broad, and strong; and had
Benjamin Harrison represented anything else but what the people knew
was the aristocratic party, on the flood-tide of that sympathy he would
have been carried into office by an overwhelming majority. Let those
who would excuse their own errors and the errors of their _class_, let
the would-be astute politician and the abashed assumed barons ascribe
the defeat of the Republican party to the lack of personal magnetism
of their candidate, but the great heart of the people will feel that
that charge was as false as the claim of the “Four Hundred” to social
superiority.
Benjamin Harrison will long be remembered as an exemplary President,
if patriotism and the performance of those pledges made to the people
who elected him, entitle a President to remembrance. Great as we all
recognize the personal magnetism of that magnificent statesman, James
G. Blaine, to be, it could not have exerted the influence over the
minds of the masses that the death of Mrs. Harrison in the White House
did. Death robbed the President of the position of the First Man in
the Nation. He became at once the husband, the father, and the man;
and had the issue been alone to be decided by personal magnetism,
sympathy of the people, the outburst of approval and approbation would
have been in favor of Benjamin Harrison. But he and the party whom he
represents, justly or unjustly, had become accursed with the crime of
“caste” in our country. He was defeated by those who, to a man, bowed
their heads in sorrow with him, and shed tears of sympathy at his great
loss as a fellow-man and citizen, but could not give him their votes as
representing what to them became the party of sham, affected, foreign
aristocracy.
Another picture that rises simultaneously before the eyes of the masses
as representing those queens in America, to whom more ready homage
is paid than was ever accorded to a coronet or crown, is our Frances
Cleveland. Ours, because the “Common People” claim her, as only an
ordinary, sweet, lovely, modest American woman.
That picture made more votes for Grover Cleveland than any political
chicanery could have accomplished. With her baby in her arms, she
represents American womanhood, motherhood, and simplicity; that which
is best, purest, and dearest to the hearts of all of us, the “Common
People.” No higher place is it possible for woman to attain than that
she occupies with her babe on her bosom.
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN QUEEN.]
[Illustration: THE AMERICAN DUCHESS.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account