Germans, Jubilee Singers, and Axe Men: James A. Garfield and the Original Front-Porch Campaign for the Presidency

James A. Garfield sometimes had a flair for the dramatic as a presidential candidate in the campaign of 1880. No presidential contestant had ever openly invited groups of people to visit him at his residence, but that is exactly what Garfield did in the summer of 1880. As the first “front-porch” campaign in American history unfolded, personal friends, unknown well-wishers, and different groups all traveled to Mentor, Ohio, to visit him at his Lawnfield home. The visits ranged from the mundane to the dramatic. On October 1, 1880, the Jubilee Club from Fisk College came to Lawnfield. The group was about to fulfill an obligation in Painesville, Ohio, and decided to stop at the home of Garfield. They gathered in Garfield’s living room in what his personal secretary, Joseph Stanley-Brown, later described as a “big living room” that was “well-filled.” As Garfield walked by Brown on his way into the room, he said, “My boy! I am going to say a word to them if it kills me.” Realizing that there were no reporters to record the potentially dramatic event, Stanley-Brown noted all the events he witnessed into a notebook. Before the group started singing, their leader gave an “effecting speech.” Once the group started singing old Negro spirituals, people watching became “increasingly emotional.” Stanley-Brown wrote that “Tears were trickling down the cheeks of many of the women, and one staid old man blubbered audibly behind a door.” Once they were done, Garfield rose and, “standing at ease besides the fireplace with his hand resting lightly on the mantle,” he began talking to the crowd in “low conversational tones” and employed “rhetorical periods,” which Southerners in his audience would be able to identify with. According to Stanley-Brown, Garfield said that he understood the needs and desires of a “race out of place” and finished his talk with “clear, ringing tones,” stating, “And I tell you now, in the closing days of this campaign, that I would rather be with you defeated than against you and victorious.” Stanley-Brown wrote that immediately following Garfield’s remarks, there was a moment of complete silence followed by the sound of “human expirations in unison.” The story of the event appeared in newspapers in Cleveland, but Garfield’s closing statements were omitted from the paper.¹ No matter how the event was reported, Garfield’s front-porch campaign undoubtedly produced some unique and dramatic moments such as this interlude with the Jubilee Club.

Maybe most importantly, it does not appear that Garfield offended anybody during the contest. He actually proved to be one of the more active presidential candidates in the nineteenth century as he conducted a front-porch campaign, spoke at three military gatherings, kept up correspondence with his political backers, and managed to go on a stump speaking tour by train to New York State in early August. In what became the closest popular vote in American presidential history, the front-porch campaign certainly played a role in his victory. Republican candidates for the presidency emulated the trend during the Gilded Age. In 1888, Benjamin Harrison became the second Republican nominee to do it. Four years later, William McKinley successfully employed the tactic and became one of the most important presidents in American history. By 1904, presidential candidates abandoned the technique almost as quickly as it was taken up as front-porch campaigning came to be seen as disingenuous. In 1920, Warren Harding successfully ran the last front-porch campaign for the presidency.²

Garfield started the first front-porch campaign because he simply did not want to upset his friends and prospective voters. Once he had said yes to a visit from one group of friends or small club of people, it became very difficult to say no to another. The process started snowballing until it became an integral part of the candidate’s strategy. Garfield allowed voters to come to his home to show them that he was willing to communicate with them personally...