So many prominent and able Republicans joined the Mugwumps it is
sometimes forgotten that many more equally good and wise Republicans
refused to "bolt," but stayed with the party and voted for Mr. Blaine.
Either they did not at all believe the charges which had been made
against him--and it is as impossible now as it was then to prove the
charges--or else they thought that the country would be far worse off
with the Democratic party in power than with the Republicans successful.
Mr. Roosevelt was disgusted with the result of the convention, but did
not believe that he was justified in leaving the party. He therefore
stayed in it, and supported Mr. Blaine.
The Democrats nominated the courageous Governor of New York, Grover
Cleveland. Both before and after this, he and Mr. Roosevelt worked
together for measures of good government, and respected each other,
while belonging to different parties. The presidential election turned
out to be close, and in the end several incidents besides the split in
the Republican party worked against Blaine. He was narrowly defeated.
The change of a few hundred votes in the State of New York would have
made Blaine the President. As in later years large election frauds were
discovered to have been going on in New York, some people contend
with good show of reason, that Blaine and not Cleveland was really the
choice of the voters.
Two years after this, in 1886, when Roosevelt was on his Dakota ranch,
the Republicans nominated him for Mayor of New York City. He was about
twenty-eight years old, and it is evident that he had made a mark in
politics. He came East, accepted the nomination, and made the campaign.
The opponents were, first, Abram S. Hewitt, a respectable candidate
nominated by Tammany Hall in its customary fashion of offering a good
man, now and then, to pull the wool over the eyes of persons who
naturally need some excuse for voting to put New York into the hands
of the political organization whose existence has always been one of
America's greatest disgraces.
The other candidate was Henry George, a man of high character,
nominated by the United Labor Party. Mr. Hewitt was elected, with Mr.
George second and Mr. Roosevelt third.
About a month after the election, Mr. Roosevelt went to England, where
he married Miss Edith Kermit Carow, of New York. She had been his
friend and playmate when he was a boy, and was his sister's friend. The
groomsman was a young Englishman, Mr. Cecil Spring-Rice. Years later
the groom and his "best man" came together again in Washington, when
the American was President Roosevelt, and the Englishman was Sir Cecil
Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States.
CHAPTER VI
FIGHTING OFFICE-SEEKERS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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