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Chapter Seven MaYOr BUlkeleY: Part twO Aa Just before Morgan Bulkeley dashed o√ to Europe to win the hand of the enchanting Fannie Houghton, the voters of Hartford once again passed judgment on the job the mayor was doing at city hall. If Bulkeley had gained a reputation as a vote buyer in the 1880 and 1882 elections, he cemented it forever in the 1884 race. The Hartford Times wrote, ‘‘At noon, the appearance at the polls indicated that the Democrats in a number of wards had sold out. It appears as if [there were] 200 Democrats working for Mayor Bulkeley in the 6th ward. . . . They were paid of course. . . . From our reports, it appears that Mayor Bulkeley will carry every ward in the city.’’∞ The mayor’s slippage at the polls in 1882 had grabbed his attention, and he took the requisite action. As Bulkeley spread money madly about the city’s wards, the Times continued to scold, ‘‘Many of these vote sellers are accustomed to talking loudly about the ‘power of monopolies,’ and the ‘hardships for the poor man.’ They had better ‘dry up’. . . . A $5 greenback held close to the eyes obscures all the horizons of the future with its legacy of evils for laboring men especially.’’≤ Despite the Times’s taunts, voters elected Bulkeley by an 830 majority over Col. Charles Joslyn, who was fast becoming the Democrats’ sacrificial lamb.≥ Moreover , the Republicans kept a solid majority among the aldermen and councilmen. This foretold clear sailing for the city’s chief executive. a Marriage put a fire under Morgan Bulkeley as he delivered his annual message in April 1885. Hardly a shock, Bulkeley announced that he ‘‘would not again be a candidate for mayor.’’∂ Morgan clearly had gubernatorial ambitions, and by publicly announcing his intentions, he was in e√ect asking the delegates to the Republican State Committee to give him the gubernatorial nod. As we shall see, they weren’t exactly in agreement. Through spring and summer, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Bulkeley frequented a more polished side of Hartford. Before marriage, Morgan’s cultural preferences were in line with those of the common man—baseball and horse racing. Rarely did he attend any of the city’s artistic activities. Now, however, Fannie’s influence even brought them to the opera. On Friday night, May 14, 1886, for example, the Ω∂ c r o w b a r g o v e r n o r operatic audience at Robert’s Opera House on Main Street might have spied Morgan and Fannie seated in one of the boxes. The Eggleston English Opera Company performed Michael William Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl, scheduled to benefit the Police Mutual Aid Society.∑ Many of the cast members were amateurs, but the performance received the most favorable reviews. An American actor, however, once described this opera’s most famous aria, ‘‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls,’’, as ‘‘deadly dull and grandiose.’’∏ How might the under-educated musical ear of Mayor Bulkeley have appreciated this piece? As the hot summer months baked the city, bad news came calling. On July 23, 1885, Gen. Grant died. Just five years earlier, the people of Hartford had turned out in huge numbers just to catch a glimpse of the great man, and now he was gone. As soon as the news reached Mayor Bulkeley, he ordered sixty-three rings on the city’s Pearl Street fire alarm bell.π Three thousand of the city’s leaders and former military men gathered at the State Arsenal for a solemn service honoring the late president. Mayor Bulkeley arranged with Western Union and the quartermaster general’s o≈ce to have word sent to Hartford at the exact moment when Grant’s body was interred in the kiosk on Riverside Drive in New York City. At that precise time, soldiers fired a thirty-eight-gun salute on the west side of Bushnell Park.∫ Though his presidency was marred by scandals involving the men around him, the people in the North never lost their love and respect for Ulysses S. Grant. Mayor Bulkeley’s clear expression of his decision not to run for a fourth term as mayor nevertheless went unheeded by the Republican City Committee. Meeting at Allyn Hall the following April, they overwhelmingly nominated Morgan Bulkeley. ‘‘No other names were heard.’’Ω Since Bulkeley accepted the nomination , he must have received word from the higher-ups in state Republican politics that he would not be...

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