The Mulligan Letters | Losing Campaigns
Whistlestop: Presidential History and Trivia
Slate Podcasts
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2015
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of Slate's bite-sized podcast about presidential campaign history, chief political correspondent John Dickerson brings us a disturbingly familiar story of personal correspondence coming back to haunt the early favorite. No, he's not talking about Hillary Clinton's emails. The year is 1884, the candidate is James G. Blaine, and the correspondence became known as The Mulligan Letters.
Recommended for fans of Slate's Political Gabfest and American political history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Whistlestop, a podcast of Presidential Campaign Curiosities. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm John Dickerson. They didn't have email servers in 1884, but the Republican candidate for President James G. Blaine would have known just what to do with one if it had held his private correspondence, |
| 0:28.0 | he'd have asked that it be burned to avoid the prying eyes of investigators looking into his inside deals with the railroad |
| 0:34.4 | interests. Does this sound familiar? It should. It's why we're staying with the |
| 0:38.8 | election of 1884 for a second week in a row. More on those letters and rum, |
| 0:43.9 | Romanism, and rebellion in a moment. |
| 0:46.6 | But first, a word from our sponsor. |
| 0:49.0 | If you like Presidents, I find myself having a mild affection for them. The Great Courses has a set of lectures |
| 0:54.9 | that you might enjoy. It's called The Great Presidents. It studies 12 of our country's greatest |
| 1:00.1 | presidents from Washington to Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy. The great courses has created a special limited time offer for |
| 1:07.4 | Whistlestop listeners. You can get the great presidents or any of their |
| 1:11.2 | other eight most popular best-selling courses and you get |
| 1:14.8 | 80% off. So if you're a Whistlestop listener and all of these things apply to |
| 1:19.3 | you go to the Great Courses.com slash Whistlestop that's the Great Courses.com |
| 1:25.0 | slash Whistle Stop. |
| 1:26.0 | Our Whistle Stop today is September 27th, 1884. |
| 1:30.0 | We are in Illyria, Ohio. |
| 1:33.0 | Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine of Maine |
| 1:37.0 | is on a train headed through the state |
| 1:39.0 | in a series of campaign stops. |
| 1:42.0 | As the train passes out of the city, it goes by the Lake Erie Company. |
| 1:48.0 | And in front of the Lake Erie Company are a group of men in the yard, and Mr. Blaine sees them there and walks out onto the platform of the train, and |
... |
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