Circular, 9” x 5.25”. 7 pp. Bold text printed via wood type. CONDITION: Good, faint horizontal fold, front wrapper and portion of leaves damp-stained, short tears and chips to wrappers and margins of leaves, text clear and binding sound.
An apparently unrecorded piece of political propaganda by an early Irish American organization, condemning James Blaine’s dubious bid for presidency against Grover Cleveland.
This notice warns that although Blaine convinced a bloc of Irish-Americans to vote for him in the 1884 election, with hindsight, the policies and politics he favored were decidedly against Irish immigrants. The authors note how Blaine’s “Republican party, with its well-known tendency to claim…to be the party of high moral ideas,” also hypocritically appeals “to race and religious prejudice” whenever these issues suited their political agenda. The pamphlet then describes how Blaine extended a false promise to Irish immigrants to secure Irish voters after losing the support of German-Americans due to his anti-Catholic rhetoric. The authors argue that though some Irish Americans still remain duped by Blaine and the Republican party’s promises, on the whole this community, and especially the members of the Democratic Union, will “support the old but ever new Democratic Party, and vote for Cleveland and Stevenson.”
The last page of this circular provides a list of the members of organizing members of the Irish-American Democratic Union. Our consultation of the newspaper record suggests that this group formed in 1872 in Newark, New Jersey, and ceased their operations by the turn of the century.
Circular, 9” x 5.25”. 7 pp. Bold text printed via wood type. CONDITION: Good, faint horizontal fold, front wrapper and portion of leaves damp-stained, short tears and chips to wrappers and margins of leaves, text clear and binding sound.
An apparently unrecorded piece of political propaganda by an early Irish American organization, condemning James Blaine’s dubious bid for presidency against Grover Cleveland.
This notice warns that although Blaine convinced a bloc of Irish-Americans to vote for him in the 1884 election, with hindsight, the policies and politics he favored were decidedly against Irish immigrants. The authors note how Blaine’s “Republican party, with its well-known tendency to claim…to be the party of high moral ideas,” also hypocritically appeals “to race and religious prejudice” whenever these issues suited their political agenda. The pamphlet then describes how Blaine extended a false promise to Irish immigrants to secure Irish voters after losing the support of German-Americans due to his anti-Catholic rhetoric. The authors argue that though some Irish Americans still remain duped by Blaine and the Republican party’s promises, on the whole this community, and especially the members of the Democratic Union, will “support the old but ever new Democratic Party, and vote for Cleveland and Stevenson.”
The last page of this circular provides a list of the members of organizing members of the Irish-American Democratic Union. Our consultation of the newspaper record suggests that this group formed in 1872 in Newark, New Jersey, and ceased their operations by the turn of the century.
