Kitobni o'qish: «The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 2, November, 1884»

GROVER CLEVELAND

By HENRY H. METCALF

Save only that of Ulysses S. Grant, no name in America has come from comparative obscurity into national eminence in so short a time as that of GROVER CLEVELAND.

The fame of Grant was wrought out through the exigencies of a great civil war, in which the unity of the Republic was the issue involved. The distinction which Cleveland has achieved comes of valiant service in another field of conflict, wherein the issue involves the perpetuity and dominance of the great principles which constitute the framework and fibre of republican government itself. Under ordinary circumstances, probably, neither Grant nor Cleveland would have risen above the plane of every-day life. The same, too, might perhaps justly be said even of Washington. In the history of human progress it will be seen that every great crisis involving the triumph of the principles and tendencies which make for the moral, social, or political advancement of mankind has developed a leader endowed with the special qualities demanded by the occasion.

The brilliant and self-assertive men who press forward to leadership in ordinary times, whether impelled by mere love of notoriety, personal ambition, or an honest desire to promote the welfare of their fellow-men, seldom become masters of the situation when a supreme emergency arises. They may set in motion great contending forces; they may precipitate conflicts whose ultimate outcome brings inestimable benefit to mankind; but other hands and other minds are required to direct the issue and shape the result. The master spirit of the occasion is born thereof. Ulysses S. Grant had absolutely no part in bringing about that great conflict of ideas and systems which culminated in the war of the rebellion; nor had he even figured prominently in the field of military achievement until long after hostilities were commenced, and the struggle had assumed proportions entirely unforeseen by, and actually appalling to, not only the people themselves, but those In control of active operations in the field. But the emergency developed the man required to meet it, and Grant came to the front.

So, too, in this later and greater conflict, which is to test the virtue and determine the durability of popular government—whose outcome is to decide whether political parties are to be the mere instruments through which the people express their will, and whose relations can be changed as the public good may seem to require, or whether the government itself shall be subordinated to party, and its functions prostituted for the perpetuation of party ascendency and the aggrandizement of corrupt and selfish individuals—the leader in whom the hopes of those who contend for the supremacy of the popular will, the surbordination of party-power to public welfare, and the administration of the government in the interests of the whole people, are now thoroughly centred, is one who has gained no distinction in shaping partisan contests, and won no laurels in the halls of legislation or the forum of public debate. He is, simply, the man who, in the last few years, first in one, and then in another still more important position of official responsibility, has demonstrated more emphatically than any other in recent times (possibly because circumstances have more generally drawn attention in his direction) his thorough devotion to the doctrine that public office is a public trust; and has, therefore, been selected as the best representative and exponent of the popular idea in the great political conflict about to be brought to an issue.

The purpose and scope of this brief article permit no detailed account of the private life or public career of Grover Cleveland. Those who have cared to do so have already familiarized themselves with the same through the ordinary channels; yet, as a matter of record, a few salient facts may be presented.

Grover Cleveland was born in the village of Caldwell, near Newark, New Jersey, March 18, 1837. His paternal ancestry was of the substantial English stock.

I. Aaron Cleveland, an early settler in the valley of the Connecticut. He was liberally educated, and, ardently devoted to the interests of the Church, he determined to take holy orders, and returned to England for confirmation therein. Coming back to America he settled in the ministry at East Haddam, Conn. Some fifteen years later, in August, 1757, he died, while on a visit to Philadelphia, at the residence of his friend, Benjamin Franklin, then publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, who spoke of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as "a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere in his friendship, and above every species of meanness and dissimulation."

II. Aaron Cleveland, born at East Haddam, Conn., February 9, 1744. He was a hatter by trade and located in Norwich, which town he represented in the Legislature, where he introduced a bill for the abolition of slavery, of which institution he was a determined opponent. Subsequently he became a Congregational clergyman, and a power in that denomination. He died at New Haven in 1815.

III. William Cleveland, second son of the above, a silversmith by occupation, also dwelt in Norwich. His wife was Margaret Falley. He was prosperous in business, respected in the community, and deacon of the church of which his father had been pastor for a quarter of a century previous to his decease.

IV. Richard Falley Cleveland, second son of William, born in 1804, graduated from Yale in 1824 with high honors. He, too, became a clergyman, having adopted the Presbyterian faith, and pursued his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, after serving a year as a tutor in Baltimore, where he made the acquaintance of Miss Anne Neale, daughter of a prominent law publisher of Irish birth, with whom he united in marriage after completing his studies, in 1829. He was located in pastorates, successively, at Windham, Conn.; Portsmouth, Va.; Caldwell, N.J., and Fayetteville, N.Y. Subsequently, moved by failing health, he sought a change, and, as agent of the American Home Missionary Society, located at Clinton. Two years later he returned to pastoral service, though still In feeble health, establishing himself and family at Holland Patent, a few miles north of the city of Utica. Here he died suddenly, a few weeks after his removal, leaving to his wife and nine children no other fortune than the legacy of an honorable name, and the enduring influence of a true and devoted life.

V. Grover Cleveland, third son and fifth child of Richard Falley and Anne (Neale) Ceveland, was sixteen years of age when his father died. The sad event necessarily marked a turning-point in his career. He was forced to look life and duty seriously in the face, and he proved himself equal to the emergency. It had been a cherished hope of his boyhood that he might secure the benefit of a classical education at Hamilton College, from which his eldest brother, William (now a Presbyterian clergyman at Forestport, N.Y.), had then recently graduated. But this was now out of the question. He had not only to provide for himself, but he felt bound to aid his mother in the support of the younger members of the family. The idea of the college course, for which he had partially fitted himself in the preparatory school at Clinton, was relinquished, and the battle of life commenced in earnest. He had already learned something of the lesson of self-reliance, having served for a year or more as a clerk in a grocery at Fayetteville, and he soon secured a situation as an assistant in the Institution for the Blind in the city of New York, where his brother William was then engaged as a teacher. Here he remained nearly two years, faithfully discharging the duties assigned him, and promptly forwarding to his mother such portion of his moderate wages as remained after providing for his own personal necessities. The situation, however, grew irksome. As the young man's capabilities developed his ambition was aroused. There was no way of advancement open before him here, and he felt that his duty to himself, as well as others, demanded that he make the best practicable use of the powers with which he was endowed. Returning home for a short visit, and taking counsel with his mother, he soon set out for the "West," the field toward which ambitious young men have turned, with hearts full of hope, for the last half century.

His proposed destination was Cleveland, Ohio; his cherished ambition the study and practice of the law. He was accompanied on his journey by a young friend of kindred aspirations. Arriving at Buffalo he called on an uncle, Mr. Lewis F. Allen, who had a fine stock farm, just out of the city, and who finally induced him to remain there, promising to secure him admission to a law office in Buffalo. He remained with his uncle for a time, assisting him in the preparation of the manuscript of the "American Herd Book," a work upon which he was then engaged; but in the course of a few months (in August, 1855) he secured admission as a student in one of the best known law offices of the city—that of Rogers, Bowen, & Rogers. Blessed with good health and industrious habits, with an earnest determination to succeed, he entered upon the work before him. For a time he boarded at his uncle's house, taking the long walk to and from the office at morning and night; but after a few months he was enabled to be of such assistance in the office in clerical and other work, that, from the modest compensation allowed, he secured lodgings in the city and provided for all his humble wants.

After four years of unremitting study and toil, he was admitted to the Erie county bar, having laid the foundation for future professional success in a thorough mastery of legal principles and all the details of practice, and in those well-established habits of thought and application by which his subsequent life has been so fully characterized. He had gained, also, the confidence and esteem of his preceptors and employers, and after his admission continued with them as confidential clerk in charge of the office business, receiving a salary which enabled him, then, to contribute materially to the assistance of his mother in providing for the wants of the family and maintaining the comforts of the humble home in Holland Patent, toward which his fondest thoughts have turned in all the years of his busy life, and where such periods of recreation as he has felt warranted in indulging have mainly been spent.

In 1863 Mr. Cleveland received an appointment as assistant district attorney for Erie county, a strong testimonial to the legal abilities of so youthful a practitioner, considering the array of professional talent in the county and the responsibilities of the position. The war was then in progress; two brothers, one the next older, and the other younger than himself, had enlisted in the Union army; and when, a few months after his appointment, as he had fairly familiarized himself with the details of important cases intrusted to his care, he was himself drafted, he pursued the only practicable course, and provided a substitute for the service. In the fall of 1865, while yet serving as deputy, he was unanimously selected by the Democratic Nominating Convention as candidate for district attorney. The county was strongly Republican, but young Cleveland received a support beyond his party strength and was beaten, by a few hundred majority only, by the Republican nominee, Lyman K. Bass, then and since his warm personal friend.

Upon the expiration of his term of service as deputy district attorney, in January, 1866, he entered actively into practice, having formed a partnership with the late Isaac K. Vanderpoel, a prominent lawyer and ex-State treasurer. The burden of the labor fell to the share of the junior partner, and through his close attention to the interests of clients the business of the firm soon became extensive and the income fairly remunerative. Three years later the partnership was dissolved, through the election of Mr. Vanderpoel as police judge, and soon after the new firm of Cleveland, Laning, & Folsom was formed. In 1870 Mr. Cleveland was urged by leading Democrats of Erie county to accept the party nomination for sheriff. The proposition was by no means in accordance with his desires or inclinations. The office, although a most important one in a large and populous county, and commanding liberal compensation in fees, was a most thankless one in many respects: its duties, always delicate and exacting, sometimes disagreeable in the extreme, and its responsibilities great. It was felt, however, that the acceptance of this nomination by one who so thoroughly commanded the confidence of the people, and whose professional training and experience gave him superior qualification for the office, would insure to the county ticket of the party, with due care in the selection of other candidates, the strength necessary to success in the election. As a loyal member of the party to whose principles he had ever been devotedly attached, and in the support of whose cause he had labored in every consistent capacity since becoming a voter, he finally yielded, accepted the nomination, and, as had been hoped, was duly elected along with the entire ticket. He administered the office, upon which he entered in January following, upon strict business principles, and to the eminent satisfaction of the courts, the bar, and the public at large, during the full term of three years. There were no duties, however irksome, from which he shrank; no responsibilities which he failed to meet in a becoming manner; and when, on the first of January, 1874, his term expired and he returned to his legal practice, it was with a larger measure of popular esteem than he had ever before enjoyed.

In resuming professional labor he formed a partnership with his friend and former antagonist, Lyman K. Bass, Mr. Wilson S. Bissel also becoming a member of the firm. Now thirty-seven years of age, with mental powers thoroughly developed, and a capacity for labor far greater than that with which most men are favored, he was eminently well equipped for substantial achievement in his chosen field of effort; and it is not too much to say that, in the next seven years, during which he gave uninterrupted attention to the work, he accomplished as much in the way of honest professional triumph as any lawyer in Western New York. He sought no mere personal distinction, but put his heart into his work, and practically made his clients' interests his own. His judgment was sound, his industry indefatigable, his integrity unquestioned. He was eminently well fitted for judicial service, but could never be induced to put himself in the way of preferment in that direction. He was always the "working member" of the firms with which he was connected. As an advocate, he made no pretensions to brilliancy; but in the preparation of cases, and in the cogent statement of principles involved, as well as in the effective presentation of pertinent facts, he found no superiors, and few equals, among his associates at the bar.

Caring nothing for the pecuniary rewards of labor, beyond the provision for his own modest wants and the comfort of those, in a measure, depending upon his assistance, Mr. Cleveland has accumulated no large fortune; although, with the opportunities at hand, had he made wealth his object, he might have secured it. On the other hand, he has befriended many a poor client to his own cost; and, while failing in many cases to collect the fees which were his due, he has contributed to public and private charities with a liberal, but unostentatious hand. Though he has never posed as a "working-men's candidate" for official preferment, the laboring people of his city and section have long known him as the true and sympathetic friend of every honest son and daughter of toil.

When, in the autumn of 1881, the people of the great city of Buffalo, the third in the Empire State in population, and the second in commercial importance, tired of the corruption, the robbery, and oppression of the ring rule, which had fastened its grip upon them under long years of Republican ascendency, turned at last to the Democratic party for relief, the Democracy of the city saw in Grover Cleveland the one man of all others with whom as their candidate for mayor, they might reasonably hope to win, not simply a partisan triumph, but a victory for honest government in which all patriotic citizens might well rejoice. Much against his own will, after repeated solicitation on the part of leading Democrats, and many Republicans, who appreciated his character and fitness, he again consented to become the candidate of his party for responsible office; and, at the election which followed, so great was the desire for a change in municipal matters, and so general the confidence in Mr. Cleveland as the man under whose direction the needed reform might be effected, that his majority for mayor was about three thousand five hundred, or nearly the same figure with which the Republican ticket had ordinarily triumphed.

Entering upon the duties of his office as mayor, January 1, 1882, he soon gave practical assurance of the fact that the people of Buffalo had made no mistake in the selection of their chief municipal servant. In his first message to the Common Council, which was replete with sound, practical suggestions, he said:—

It seems to me that a successful and faithful administration of the government of our city may be accomplished by constantly bearing in mind that we are the trustees and agents of our fellow-citizens, holding their funds in sacred trust to be expended for their benefit; that we should at all times be prepared to render an honest account to them touching the matter of its expenditure; and that the affairs of the city should be conducted as far as possible upon the same principles as a good businessman manages his private concerns.

It suffices to say that, so far as the mayor himself was concerned, and so far as his power and influence extended, he lived up fully to the letter and spirit of this suggestion. Although hampered by an adverse political majority in the Common Council, still measurably under the influence of the old rings, and more intent upon preventing the mayor from winning public favor which might, perchance, inure to the benefit of his party (though standing himself entirely beyond party in his relations to the public welfare), than upon the faithful discharge of their own duties, he succeeded, by the force of his own earnest personality, by searching investigation into the workings of all the departments of city affairs, by the ruthless exposure and denunciation of various corrupt schemes of jobbery and plunder, and by the persistent recommendation of measures and methods which commended themselves to his judgment, in accomplishing much in the way of the reform for which his election had been sought. He used the veto power with a vigor and a significance which had characterized the action of no predecessor in the office, and often regardless of the fact that its exercise might be distorted by designing enemies, personal or political, to insure him at least the temporary disapprobation of large classes of citizens; but he used it only when fully satisfied, through patient research and careful deliberation, that duty and obligation imperatively required it. It is conceded that in his brief year's administration he saved a million of dollars to the city treasury, stamped out numerous abuses, and stimulated the spirit of faithful devotion in various branches of the municipal service. Men of all parties unite in saying that the city of Buffalo was never favored with the services of a more faithful, conscientious, and thoroughly impartial executive head.

But he was not to continue the work of administrative reform in that particular field of labor. The people had called him "up higher." His reputation as a true Democrat, an honest reformer, and a faithful public servant, had spread abroad through the State, and when the Democratic State Convention assembled in the early autumn of that year it was clearly apparent that the nomination of Grover Cleveland, the reform mayor of Buffalo, as the candidate of the party for the supreme magistracy of the Empire State, was the one certain guaranty of overwhelming Democratic victory at the polls. That nomination was promptly made, and the result which followed was without parallel in the annals of American political history. He was elected governor by a majority of nearly two hundred thousand, and, although internal dissensions in the Republican party, then existing, contributed largely to the general result, the most significant feature of the election is found in the fact that the largest relative Democratic gain was made in his own county of Erie, where he received upwards of seven thousand majority against more than three thousand majority for Garfield in the last presidential election, showing him strongest before the people where his personal character and attributes, as well as his qualifications for positions of high public trust, are most thoroughly known.

As governor of New York, which position he has occupied for the last twenty months, first with a Democratic and later with a Republican legislature, Mr. Cleveland has followed the same rule of official conduct adopted for his guidance in other positions. Mindful of all proper obligations to his own political party, he has never permitted party demands to stand in the way of his duty to the public and the State. Believing, to quote his own language, "in an open and sturdy partisanship which secures the legitimate advantages of party supremacy," he also believes that parties were made for the people, and declares himself "unwilling, knowingly, to give assent to measures purely partisan which will sacrifice or endanger the people's interests." In the office of governor, as well as in that of mayor, he has made vigorous but discriminate use of the veto power, and in the one case, as in the other, it has invariably been found, upon candid investigation, that his action has been taken under a profound sense of the binding authority of the fundamental law, and with an unflinching regard for the rights and interests of the whole people,—however violent, at times, may have been the denunciation of demagogic opponents, or clamorous the protests of those who sought merely temporary advantages in particular directions, regardless of ultimate results upon the general welfare. In this, as in other positions, his general line of action has been such as to command the hearty approval of patriotic men of all parties; and if he has incurred the hostility of any, it has been through his opposition to the schemes of corrupt rings and the purposes of selfish individuals, which he regarded detrimental to the public good; or through his support of wholesome measures, calculated to protect the body politic, and thwart their illegitimate designs in other directions.

And now, Grover Cleveland stands before the people of the whole country the duly nominated candidate of the Democratic party for the highest office in the gift of the Republic; while his candidacy is indorsed and enthusiastically supported by tens of thousands of pure and unselfish men of the opposite party, who see, through his election, the only hope of a return to constitutional methods and honest practices in the administration of the Federal Government, without which ere long the complete and irremediable subversion and destruction of the government itself will be accomplished. This candidacy comes not through his own seeking. Grover Cleveland never sought an office in all his life. He has consented to serve his fellow-citizens in public station only at their solicitation and command. He has served them faithfully and well so far as he has been called, and none need fear that, if called to still higher responsibilities and a broader field of duty, he will not prove equal to the emergency—equally true to himself and his trust.

Grover Cleveland is a man "cast in nature's noblest mould." Of commanding presence, with a physical development commensurate with his mental powers, thoroughly democratic in habit and manner, accessible to all, meeting the humblest and highest upon equal terms, sympathizing heartily with the honest laborer in every field of action, frank and outspoken in his opinions, hating hypocrisy and sham with all his soul, fighting corruption and dishonesty wherever he finds them, respecting the opinions and listening to the suggestions of others, but acting invariably in accordance with his own convictions of right, he fills the perfect measure of honest manhood; and whether he be President of the American Republic, or simple citizen, he will never, it is safe to assume, forfeit either his own self-respect, or the confident regard of his fellow-men.