Melting Pot Mayor

William Russell Grace
and the Elections of 1880

LAWRENCE A. CLAYTON
 

(/" ]f ^O the Neiv York Herald on October 30, 1880, the issue
I      was clear. Vote for William Russell Grace for mayor and

)K destroy free government by allowing the Roman Catholic
Church into American politics. It \x'as a pure and simple appeal to
ancient religious prejudices, and it failed. \A'illiam R. Grace was
not only elected Mayor of New York in 1880, he was re-elected
in 1884. Furthermore, Grace was foreign-born, making him twice
suspect by Americans still very much imbued—or at least per¬
suaded—by religious zealotry and chauvinistic nativism.

Grace's election marked a watershed in New York's and the
nation's history. His rather spectacular rise from a minor Irish-
American merchant, at home among the burly burly of the tall
ships on South Street, to the mayoralty of his adopted city, is re¬
vealed in splendid detail by the rich collection of papers recently
donated by the W. R. Grace & Co. to the Rare Book and .Manu¬
script Library. The correspondence in the collection from Grace's
period as mayor forms one of the most complete records of a re¬
form administration when reform \\-as barely on the horizon of
political activists. Coincidentally, the most dynamic reformer of
them all, Theodore Rooseveir, was elected to his first term as a
State Assemblyman in the fall of 1881, presaging his rise to influ¬
ence among the gathering forces of integrity, honesty and inde¬
pendence in government. He would discover a good ally in the
diminutive, forty-nine year old Grace, also committed to the same
ideals.

The campaign of 1880—unlike those a century latet-was sliort
and intense. If the issues were as murky then as now, the person-