The New York herald., 1872-11-07
The Presidential Result OF 1879 as
Compared with Other Remarkable
NatfOnal Elections.


National Elections.
The popular majorities by States and the
electoral majority given to General Grant in
the late national election are really amazing.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean he
carries not only all the Northern or free
States, as contradistinguished from the late
slave States, but, with few exceptions, by un-
paralleled majorities, and in some cases by
majorities SURPRISING the widest dreams Of
the most sanguine republican prophets And
he carries the supposed impregnable little
democratic State of Delaware and more of the
Southern States beyond the Susquehanna
than were expected by the Republican Con-
gressional Committee; and his gains in the
popular vote, though not so marked, appear to
have been as general throughout the South as
in the North. He has from twenty-eight to
thirty States of the thir%y-seven Of the Union,
including the most powerful and the weakest;
most of the old ones and all the youngsters.
He could spare well on to hundred of the
electoral votes he has secured, and still have o
dred and sixty-six. His majority on the
popular vote of the Union will probably ex-
ceed half q Million o majority without pre-
cedent in the history Of the country
And how are we to account for these extra
ordinary and astounding results? The causes
may be briefly summed up as follows:-Gen-
elal Grant is strong in the affections and conf
dence of the country, and Mr. Greeley is COM
paratvely weak. The administration party
was disciplined, united, compact, confident
and harmonious in this great conflict, while
the opposition alliance was discordant, dis
trustful, divided and demoralized. The ad-
ministration of General Grant furnished
safe and substantial platform for his support
ers, while that of the opposition was budget
Of Pickering distractions And, lastly, touch
ing secession, reconstruction, the Southern
Ku Klux and the blacks, there was safety with
Grant and danger apprehended with Greeley;
and the same consideration was as forcibly i'm
pressed upon the conservative body OF the
people in regard to the financial and business
interests of the country, "with all their
fluctuations and their vast concerns"
We have said that in many respects these
Presidential results of 1872 are without paral-
lei in our political history; but as universal
political carnival Of bands of music and min
strels, and log cabins and hard cider, and vast
multtudes in grotesque professions, clearing
the way for sweeping political revolution in
the election, we have had no parallel, and
probably never shall have, for the Presidential
contest of 1840 In that election against the
financial blunders and disasters and defalca-
tions and embezzlements Of Van Buren's ad-
ministration, and with the hurrah of s'Tippe-
canoe and Tyler, too" Of the twenty-six States
of the Union, General Harrison (''Old Tip'')
carried oil except Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois,
Missouri, New Hampshire and Virginia, which
adhered to Van Buren, and the popular ma
jority of Harrison on less than two and
half millions aggregate vote was LAG, 900. And
yet in the next Presidential campaign (1S44)
James X. Polk, nominated at venture by the
democrats, beat-on the annexation of Texas
and through chapter Of lucky accidents-the
most popular man in the Union of that time
that greatest of American statesmen, Henry
Clay.
The whig party, sorely distressed at this
defeat of their idol and embodiment, resolved
to fall back upon popular soldier, and in
1848 they did so in the nomination Of General
Taylor-"Old Zack," ssOld Rough and
Ready" the "Hero of Buena Vista" and he
was elected, in consequence Of bolt of Van
Buren against Cass, in which s.little Van'' was
run as the Independent free soil candidate,
thus carrying off half the democracy Of this
State and giving it to Taylor by nearly hun
dred thousand plurality. And in that con-
test, as in 1914, the vote of New York, and
upon q side issue, settled the question.
We come next to that very remarkable con-
test Of 1852, in which General Scott, ''the
Hero of Mexico" was the whig candidate, and
General Pierce, volunteer under Scott in his
Mexican campaign, was the democratic candi-
date, both parties occupying the platform of
Henry Clay's great compromise measures on
the slavery question of 1850. The great body
of the people, desiring peace on this question,
were in favor of these compromises, while the
abolition agitating elements of the whig party
were dreaded as disturbers of this peace. So
Pierce, the militiaman, defeated our greatest
and most distinguished soldier of that day;
tUU tuc uclcdO VI CCOIt was bO OVERWHELMING
as to be positively startling. Pierce carried all
the States except Vermont and Massachusetts, in
the North, and kentucky and Tennessee in the
South, and his popular majority over Scott was,
two hundred and fourteen thousand, in total
vote oftwo and half millions. From this crush
ing defeat the whig party never rallied again,
but was rapidly broken up and dissolved, and
its fragments were gathered up year or two
later, with many democrats, in the new organi-
cations of the Native American or Know
Nothing party and the republican party. But
the election of 1852 which promised twenty
years of unbroken power to the democrats