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The 1884 Cleveland-Blaine Presidential contest was, like that of 2000,
extremely close. But that nineteenth-century campaign involved personal
attacks and rhetoric savage beyond anything we have seen or heard in
our lifetimes.
Walt Whitman nevertheless celebrated that election with a poem, praising
not the campaign or the candidates, but something larger:
ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and
show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara-nor you, ye limitless prairies-nor your
huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite-nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops
ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones-nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes-nor Mississippi's
stream:
-This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name-the still small
voice vibrating-America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen-the act itself the main, the quadrennial
choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd-sea-board and inland-Texas to
Maine-the Prairie States-Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West-the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling-(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the peaceful
choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity-welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
-Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify-while the heart pants,
life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.
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