The mugwumps, Republican advocates of civil service reform, were distressed when their party, at its 1884 national convention, nominated James G. Blaine for the presidency. Blaine was not only hostile to their pet reform but also favored a protective tariff, imperialism, and worst of all was a corruptionist. (Years before, when serving as Speaker of the House of Representatives, he sold to the Union Pacific Railroad—which was anxious to retain his friendship—some nearly worthless Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad bonds for $64,000). When the Democrats nominated the anti-TAMMANY Hall governor of New York, Grover Cleveland, many reform Republicans, including former Secretary of the Interior Carl ScHURZ and editors Edwin L. Godkin and George William Curtis, bolted and supported Cleveland. Loyal Republicans derisively called them mugwumps— apparently Algonquian for “great men”—since the bolters unabashedly thought of themselves as “the best men.”
The mugwump defection was disastrous for Blaine. It was especially strong in New York, and Blaine lost that state and therefore the election by a handful of votes. If 600 New York mugwumps had voted for Blaine instead of for Cleveland, Blaine would have been elected.
While the term mugwumps has particular relevance for the election of 1884, those men so-labeled had behaved independently in the past and would do so in the future. Several of them, including Schurz and Godkin, had participated in establishing the 1872 Liberal Republican Party in opposition to President Ulysses S. Grant. Cleveland as president pleased mugwumps by his support of civil service reform and by trying to reduce tariff rates, and most of them supported him for president again in 1888 and in 1892. But they revered the gold standard and abhorred Free Silver (see Free Silver movement), and in 1896 they voted for Republican William McKinley and against the Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The mugwumps, however, were anti-imperialists, and in the twilight of their careers opposed the acquisition of the Philippines by the McKinley administration.
Further reading: Gerald W. McFarland, Mugwumps, Morals and Politics, 1884-1920 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975).
Muir, John (1838-1914) naturalist, conservationist John Muir was the leading naturalist and conservationist in the Gilded Age. Born on April 28, 1838, in Dunbar, Scotland, Muir migrated with his family to Wisconsin in 1849. His father worked him unmercifully hard on the family farm, stunting his growth (so Muir thought) but also developing his phenomenal capacity for endurance. Early each morning Muir read whatever books he could get hold of, since his father forbade reading in the evening. In addition, Muir was a talented whittler, had a creative mind, and fashioned mechanical contrivances, including an ingenious clock that woke him up early to do his reading. He exhibited his inventions in 1860 at the State Fair at Madison, and, impressed by their quality plus his general knowledge,
John Muir (Library of Congress)
The University of Wisconsin admitted Muir. Limiting his studies to subjects that interested him—chemistry, geology, and botany—Muir left in 1863 without earning a degree and began taking walking tours that became the passion of his life. Tramping through Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and into Canada, Muir kept journals recording and picturing what he had seen each day. Later, he would draw upon these records for his writings.
In 1867, while working in a wagon factory in Indianapolis, Muir injured an eye and “bid adieu to mechanical inventions” to study “the inventions of God.” He walked 1,000 miles from Indianapolis to Florida and then went to California in 1868 and walked from San Francisco to the Yosemite Valley, where he lived for the next six years. While there he concluded that it had been shaped by eons of glacial activity, thus earning the derision of both California State geologist Josiah D. Whitney and the future head of the U. S. Geological Survey, Clarence King; ultimately, though, Muir’s views and not their ideas were accepted by geologists. Muir also explored Nevada, Utah, and the Pacific Northwest before marrying in 1880 Louie Wanda Strenzel, the daughter of a Polish patriot who fled Poland after the abortive Revolution of 1830, settled in Martinez, California, in 1849, and became a leading horticulturist. After visiting Alaska in 1881 (where he discovered and described glaciers, one of which is named for him), Muir purchased a portion of his father-in-law’s land, lavished his attention upon it, and, like his father-in-law, became an outstanding horticulturist. By 1891—having sold or leased his land—Muir was able to pursue his avocation as a naturalist and conservationist.
Muir had contributed numerous articles on the natural beauty of the West to Scribner’s Monthly and to the Century Magazine. He took Robert Underwood Johnson, the Century editor, on a camping trip in the Yosemite region, showing him its grandeur and the damage wrought by grazing sheep (“hooved locusts” Muir called them). Together they launched a campaign to create Yosemite National Park. Muir’s earlier articles had aroused considerable interest in preserving beautiful areas, and, with popular support quickly building, Congress in October 1890 created YosEMiTE National Park. The following year Congress empowered the president to create forest reserves, and in 1896 a Forestry Commission was created. Muir accompanied it on its investigative tour, and Grover Cleveland in the waning days of his administration set aside 13 forest reservations. Lumber interests, however, succeeded by 1898 in undoing all but those in California. Muir wrote impassioned articles, again aroused public opinion, and the forest lands were reserved anew. In this work Muir was aided by the Sierra Club, which he founded in 1892 and which has since become the leading advocacy group for the conservation of resources and the preservation of nature. With the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, whom Muir in 1903 took camping in Yosemite, conservation had a warm friend in the White House. Roosevelt added 148 million acres to forest reservations and created 16 national monuments (including Muir Woods) and national parks (including Sequoia National Park). Muir, however, lost his last battle to prevent the flooding of Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley for a San Francisco reservoir. He died in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914.
Further reading: Michael P. Cohen, The Pathless Way: John Muir and the American Wilderness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
Munn v. Illinois See railroads.
World History
