Murchison letter


The Murchison letter was a political scandal during the United States presidential election of 1888 between Grover Cleveland of New York, the incumbent president and a Democrat, and the Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison. The letter was sent by Sir Lionel Sackville-West to "Charles F. Murchison" ; in the letter, Sir Lionel suggested that Cleveland was preferred president from the British point of view. The Republicans published this letter just two weeks before the election, and turned many Irish-American voters away from Cleveland. Cleveland lost New York and Indiana. Sackville-West was sacked as British ambassador.

History

A California Republican, George Osgoodby, wrote a letter to Sir Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the United States, under the assumed name of "Charles F. Murchison". "Murchison" described himself as a former Englishman who was now a California citizen and asked how he should vote in the upcoming presidential election. Sackville-West wrote back and indiscreetly suggested that Grover Cleveland, the Democratic incumbent, was probably the best man from the British point of view:
The Republicans published the letter just two weeks before the election, and it had a galvanizing effect on Irish-American voters exactly comparable to the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" blunder of the previous election: by trumpeting Great Britain's support for the Democrats, it drove Irish-American voters into the Republican fold. Cleveland lost the presidency. Following the election, the lame-duck Cleveland administration brought about Sackville-West's removal as ambassador, citing not only Sackville's letter, which could have been defended as a private correspondence unintended for publication, but also the content of his subsequent interviews, such as one with a reporter for the New York Herald:
Cleveland returned to the White House in the election of 1892.