Mugwumps

Theodore Roosevelt stunned his upper-class New York City friends by supporting Blaine in 1884; by rejecting the Mugwumps, he kept alive his Republican Party leadership, clearing the way for his own political aspirations.

[4] New England and the Northeast had been a stronghold of the Republican Party since the Civil War era, but the Mugwumps considered Blaine to be an untrustworthy and fraudulent candidate.

[5] Political patronage, also known as the spoils system, was the issue that angered many reform-minded Republicans, leading them to reject Blaine's candidacy.

In the spoils system, the winning candidate would dole out government positions to those who had supported his political party prior to the election.

Although the Pendleton Act of 1883 established the United States Civil Service Commission and made competency and merit the base qualifications for government positions, its effective implementation was slow.

The side that held the upper hand in numbers and popular support were the Half-Breeds, led by Senator James Blaine of Maine.

The Half-Breeds supported civil service reform and often blocked legislation and political appointments put forth by their main congressional opponents, the Stalwarts, led by Roscoe Conkling of New York.

This division among Republicans may have contributed to the victory in 1884 of Grover Cleveland, the first President elected from the Democratic party since the Civil War.

In the period from 1874 to 1894, presidential elections were closely contested at the national level, but the states themselves were mostly dominated by a single party, with Democrats prevailing in the South and the Republicans in the Northeast.

A leading organizer was the German-trained scholar Herbert Baxter Adams (1850–1901), head of the history and political science department at the Johns Hopkins University 1882–1901.

Raymond Cunningham, argues that his reformism shows that the Mugwumps movement could attract affirmative and optimistic experts, rather than just suspicious or cautious patricians.

According to Tucker, the Mugwumps embodied the liberalism of the 19th century and their rejection by 20th-century historians, who embraced the government intervention of the New Deal and the Great Society, is not surprising.

[12] The Indianapolis Sentinel pinned the moniker on the Independents in 1872, but it was Charles Anderson Dana, the colorful newspaperman and editor of the now-defunct New York Sun, who revived it in March 1884, after which it achieved far wider currency.