THE LETTER FROM POMONA
Roper, William L
The Letter from Pomona by WILLIAM L. ROPER Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev has shown an occasional hankering to elbow his way into the American Presidential campaign. Obviously, he is not well...
...If the popular vote had been decisive, Cleveland would have won, but it is the vote of the electoral college that decides who shall be President and Vice President...
...The publisher, Merritt explained, took these precautions because he did not want any one to see him talking with the letter writer...
...One, published by the Los Angeles Times, which played a key part in publicizing the explosive correspondence, was that Osgoodsby acted on his own initiative...
...How did Osgoodsby, an obscure farmer, come to write the letter...
...But the frenzy grew...
...Years later, after the heat had died down, George Merritt, who had been manager of the Western Union telegraph office in Pomona and business agent for the Times in 1888, told of arranging secret meetings between Osgoodsby and Colonal Otis...
...This is precisely what happened in 1888 when a development celebrated among students of political phenomena as "The Murchison Letter Episode" changed the outcome of a Presidential election...
...He wrote a letter to the British Ambassador, Sir Lionel Sack-ville-West, in Washington, D.C...
...But Osgoodsby lost little time in showing the Ambassador's letter to Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who was considered the Republican boss in California...
...When the electoral votes were counted, Harrison had 233 to 168 for Cleveland...
...It was the Administration's unfavorable action toward Canada in regard to fishery interests...
...The other version is that the Times' publisher Colonel Otis had much more to do with inspiring "The Murchison Letter" than was ever revealed by his newspaper...
...So he wished to know if the Ambassador believed Cleveland was sincere in proposing a policy that was anti-British or whether this was being done to win the support of American voters who were hostile to England...
...Instead of using his own name, Osgoodsby signed the fictitious name, "Charles F. Murchison," with his own post office address...
...In a general election it is but natural that every point should be seized upon by both parties which would have an effect on the voters...
...The story of the interview was published by the Tribune October 24, 1888, under the headline: Lord Sackville-West Doesn't Care...
...As the Ambassador expressed it, President Cleveland, if re-elected, would again "manifest a spirit of conciliation in dealing with the question involved"—free trade and the Canadian fisheries agreement...
...Having done this on October 30, 1888, Bayard again brought the subject to the attention of Lord Salisbury...
...He added that he felt the entire matter should be considered by Parliament...
...Of course," he was quoted as saying, "I understand the action of the Senate and the President's letter of retaliation were for political effect...
...Otis published both the "Murchison Letter" and Lord Sack-ville-West's reply in his own Times and wired copies of the correspondence to New York and Washington dailies...
...Stating that he was English by birth and still considered England the motherland, Osgoodsby wrote slyly that many persons of English parentage had refrained from being naturalized because of the United States' hostile attitude toward England...
...So in November election day dawned with the controversy still unsettled...
...But they were having trouble rousing excitement among the voters...
...In London, Lord Salisbury, Britain's Foreign Minister, indicated that he preferred to let the dust settle...
...But Cleveland's Administration, he added, had been so friendly toward England that many thousands had become naturalized for the express purpose of helping to elect Cleveland to a second term...
...Thus, although President Cleveland was the choice of a majority of the voters, Harrison had succeeded in carrying more states, and hence won the Presidency...
...The effect was electric...
...But Colonel Otis was there in all his glory...
...In Pomona, California, then a community of 3,000 persons and now a city of more than 50,000, George Osgoodsby, a farmer and amateur politician, sat down in his modest cottage to do a job for his Republican Party...
...Most students of American politics are so convinced to this day...
...Taken in by the apparent sincerity of the cleverly written letter, he dictated an answer which implied that, everything considered, Cleveland's election would be more to the interest of Great Britain...
...Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had taken a hand in the controversy...
...To the charges made by the Committee and by President Cleveland, Sackville-West issued a reply...
...One evening, Merritt said, Colonel Otis came to Pomona and remained hidden in a darkened building, while Merritt went out seeking Osgoodsby...
...Obviously, he is not well read in United States history, for he seems not to know that Americans traditionally resent outside interference in their domestic political quarrels—and have been known to transform an approving nod from abroad to a kiss of death at the ballot box...
...The British Ambassador took the precaution to mark his reply to the fictitious "Murchison" private...
...He was not on hand to greet President Harrison when the President stopped over in Los Angeles and Pomona on April 21, 1891, to shake hands with his political supporters...
...There were rumors that Osgoodsby was a political hack writer from the East, that his pose as a farmer was only a masquerade, and that he had been imported to do a job...
...President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat and low tariff advocate, was locked in a tight Presidential race with Benjamin Harrison, a ReWIUIAM L. ROPER, formerly on the staff of the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Examiner, is a California free lance writer specializing in political and historical subjects...
...Newspaper polls showed President Cleveland maintaining his lead as the election drew near...
...According to the Times story, he conceived the idea while "sitting around the stove talking politics in Debrunner's grocery store" in Pomona...
...The Republicans, in their role of stout champions of high tariffs, were trying desperately to whip up voter interest in the foreign trade issue...
...Cleveland had received 5,540,329 popular votes to Harrison's 5,439,853...
...What became of him remains a Republican mystery...
...Throughout America both Republican and Democratic newspapers began criticizing the Ambassador and angrily accusing Great Britain of trying to dictate to its former citizens how to vote in the coming Presidential election...
...He insisted that he had not overstepped the traditional bounds of a foreign envoy...
...His articles have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Frontier, and Coronet...
...Shortly after this furtive, surreptitious caucus, Osgoodsby disappeared from Pomona...
...But imagine sitting around a grocery store stove in Pomona in August or September, when the mercury frequently registers in excess of one hundred degrees...
...In their party platform that year, Republicans had accused President Cleveland of putting the trade interests of Europe ahead of domestic welfare...
...As I before observed," Osgoodsby concluded, "we know not what to do, but look for more light on a mysterious subject which, the sooner it comes, will better serve true Englishmen in casting their votes...
...He instructed Secretary of State Bayard to hand the Ambassador his passport...
...He said that he felt there was insufficient cause for recalling Lord Sackville-West, and that he would like to investigate the matter further...
...But he did describe one meeting in detail...
...But the closeness of the contest was better measured by the popular vote...
...A reporter for the New York Tribune interviewed him, inquiring how he felt about the furor resulting from publication of the letters...
...Once more Lord Salisbury said that he did not believe the Ambassador's recall was justified...
...Even before the smoke of the election had died away, political pundits were saying that "The Murchison Letter" fiasco had defeated Cleveland...
...President Cleveland was furious...
...Goaded into action by this headline and the mounting hysteria, he instructed Secretary of State T. F. Bayard to demand an explanation through the American Ambassador in London...
...Two versions of the story have been handed down...
...They had made fiery speeches and distributed tons of campaign literature expounding this thesis...
...Lord Sackville-West voiced an emphatic denial...
...Merritt said he understood that Osgoodsby, fearing Democratic vengeance, left one dark night for Fallbrook, a small farming community near San Diego...
...One action by Cleveland, however, had caused doubt, he wrote...
...Although Lord Sackville-West had been Britain's Ambassador in Washington for seven years and must have known that American political campaigns were full of tricks, he fell for this one...
...The New York Sun urged that the Ambassador be handed his passport without further ado...
...It was at this crucial moment in the campaign that the incident occurred which was to have such momentous results in the Presidential election...
...This statement further infuriated President Cleveland...
...publican and grandson of former President William Henry Harrison...
...How many such meetings he arranged, he never told...
Vol. 24 • September 2006 • No. 7
