(Born 1837)
[Footnote 19: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Grover Cleveland. [TN]]
The history of our country discovers so many instances of men who have
risen from humble beginnings to posts of honor and influence by their
own energy, industry, and steadiness of purpose, that a fresh
illustration, while always sure of sympathy, no longer causes surprise.
But one element of interest always remains: the variety of character
which makes each new arrival at the goal an illustration of human
capacity different from all that have preceded it. As no two men are
alike, and as the conditions of life are infinitely various, the outcome
of character and disposition, as affected by circumstances, will also be
infinitely varied; and the discovery that every human experience puts
the possibilities of life in a new light, makes, perhaps, the greatest
charm of biography.
The life of Grover Cleveland is one that has appealed by its lessons to
a large body of his countrymen, without distinction of party, for the
plain reason that he is not removed from the mass of men by the
profession of extraordinary faculties. He has no genius, unless we
accept Goethe's dictum that genius is only the capacity for hard work;
he has no ornamental accomplishments; in social intercourse he does not
shine by wit, nor charm by humor, and we have too often to regret that
tact seems to have been wanting among his natal gifts. In these respects
he is himself one of the "plain people" in whom he seems always to be
interested, and whose welfare he has always in view; and as the plain
people, fortunately, make up the bulk of the world, the example of one
of our own number rising, unaided by friends or fortune, to so high a
position, has in it a great encouragement. In spite of political
differences, which, after all, are largely fostered by politicians for
their own advantage, the people at large are quick to recognize the
sterling qualities of honesty, industry, and plain-dealing, and it is by
these qualities that Mr. Cleveland's career has been determined.
Although we Americans have--rather ostentatiously, it must be
confessed--declared our indifference to ancestry; that
"Our boast is not, that we deduce our birth
From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth;"
yet we all have an innate conviction that there is something pleasant in
knowing that we come of good stock; and indeed it would be strange if we
valued that recommendation little for ourselves, as human beings, which
we prize so much in the animals that serve us. And so, although it has
been left for others to make the discovery, the fact is not without
interest that the American branch of the family to which the president
belongs, runs back to 1635, when Moses Cleaveland came to Massachusetts
from Ipswich, in Suffolk County, England. The spelling Cleaveland is
still retained by some of the collateral branches of the family on this
side the water, but the form Cleveland was in common use in England, and
it was so that John Cleveland, the Royalist poet, wrote the name. It may
be said, in passing, that it would not be without interest to discover,
if possible, if there were any connection between the family of John
Cleveland and that of Grover Cleveland's English ancestors, for the
resemblance between the characters of the two men is striking, and as
honorable as it is striking. As we read John Cleveland's appeals to
Cromwell for freedom and immunity after the death of the king, to whose
cause the poet had so devotedly adhered until that cause was hopelessly
lost, we seem to hear the prophecy of that boldness, that honesty
fearless of consequences, that refusal to withdraw or apologize for
sentiments honestly held and openly maintained, which are so
characteristic of one who may easily be an offshoot of that vigorous
stem.
The President's grandfather, William Cleveland, was a watchmaker doing
business at Westfield, Mass., but on his marriage with Margaret Falley,
of Norwich, Conn., he went there to live, and it was there that his son,
Richard Falley Cleveland, was born. According to the old system, it was
decided by his family to make a clergyman of Richard Cleveland, and
accordingly after making his terms at Yale College, and studying
divinity at Princeton, he entered the ministry; and having made some
preliminary trials, was finally settled in charge of the Presbyterian
Church in the village of Caldwell, Essex County, N. J., and in this
place his son, Stephen Grover Cleveland, was born, March 18, 1837. The
name of Stephen Grover was given out of respect to the memory of a
clergyman, Stephen Grover, who preceded his father in the charge of his
new parish. When the boy was only four years of age, Richard Cleveland
accepted a call to what was then almost the frontier-settlement of
Fayetteville, Onondaga County, N. Y. Here the Cleveland family remained
for eleven years making the most of life, and winning from the meagre
salary of $600 earned by the father, a harvest of cheerful content, of
homely comfort, and of unselfish mutual affection that might well be
envied by many whose means are far greater. The children were blessed in
their parents, and the parents were rewarded by the love and devotion of
their children. Later in life, on the day of his election to the
governorship of New York, in a letter to his elder brother, the Rev.
William N. Cleveland, Grover Cleveland showed where his heart was, for
his first words express a quiet regret that his mother's recent death
had made it impossible to make her the recipient of his deepest
feelings, of his hopes and fears on this important event in his life;
and at the close of the letter he again recurs to the theme as if the
memory of his mother were a part and parcel of his life.
In 1851, Richard Cleveland, with his wife and nine children, left
Fayetteville, for Clinton, Oneida County, N. Y., where he was to act as
the agent for the American Home Missionary Society, with a salary of
$1,000 a year. But of more importance than this modest increase of pay,
was the opportunity the new place offered for giving his children a
better education than they had been able to get at Fayetteville. Grover
did not leave Fayetteville with the rest of the family, because he had
engaged himself for a year with the keeper of a grocery store in the
village, where he was to receive the sum of $50 for the first year and
$100 for the second. At the end of the first year, however, his father,
ambitious for his boy's education, sent for him and placed him at the
Academy in Clinton, where he was to be fitted to enter Hamilton College
in due time. But this larger opportunity he was not to enjoy. His father
received a call to take charge of a church at Holland Patent, a village
near Utica, N. Y., and the whole family left their home in Clinton for
this place; but only three weeks after their arrival the father died,
October 1, 1853, and the wife, with so many of the children as still
remained at home, were left to support life as their scanty means
enabled them. The mother, evidently a woman of much force of character,
remained on the rock where the waves of changing fortune last flung her,
and by her own efforts and the willing hands of her children, kept the
family together until, her loving duty done by all that remained to her,
she died in 1882, living happily long enough to see the beginning of her
high hope for her son Grover, fulfilled in his honorable career as Mayor
of Buffalo.
Grover Cleveland was now to exchange for a short time the quiet life of
a country village for the more stirring experience of life in a great
city. His brother William, after leaving Hamilton College, had obtained
employment as an instructor in the Institution for the Blind in New York
City, where he was the principal of the male teachers. After the death
of his father, he secured for his brother Grover the place of
book-keeper and assistant to the superintendent of the asylum. The boy
came to his new place, not only with the good character given him by his
brother, then as now a man much respected by his associates, but with
the good word of all with whom he had been connected, whether as
school-boy or as work-boy.
Grover Cleveland left New York in the autumn of 1854, at the end of his
year's engagement at the Institution for the Blind. He returned to his
mother's home for a brief visit, and then, with the hope of making a
beginning in the profession of the law, which he for some time intended
to take up, he visited some of the towns where his family was known,
Syracuse and Utica, in the hope of finding employment; but as no opening
presented itself, he determined to visit Cleveland, a town named for one
of his family. He stopped on his way at Buffalo, to visit an uncle,
Lewis F. Allen, a well-known farmer, who published each year a
compilation made by himself: "The American Short-Horn Herd-Book."
Pleased with his young relative, Mr. Allen persuaded him to remain in
Buffalo and assist him in his work; and thus it happened that Grover
Cleveland found himself planted in a city with which in time his
fortunes and his fame were to become closely associated; while, on the
other hand, the results of that connection to the city itself were to be
far-reaching and of great importance.
By the recommendation of his uncle he obtained a place as office-boy in
the office of Bowen & Rogers, one of the principal firms of lawyers in
Western New York. It was thus that he began his legal studies, reading
hard in all his odd moments; and in his spare time after office-hours
assisting his uncle, with whom at first he lived, in the compilation of
the "Herd-Book." Mr. Parker tells us that the first appearance in print
of Grover Cleveland's name is in the "Herd-Book" for 1861, in which Mr.
Allen expresses his acknowledgment of "the kindness, industry, and
ability of his young friend and kinsman, in correcting and arranging the
pedigrees for publication." Prompt to seize every opportunity for
increasing his knowledge of the world about him, and feeling, perhaps,
that his uncle's farm in the outskirts of Buffalo was too much like the
village he had left, he took rooms with an old schoolmate from
Fayetteville in the old Southern Hotel in Buffalo, at that time a resort
for drovers and farmers, where his knowledge of their business, obtained
in his uncle's employ, brought him into closer acquaintance with at
least one division of the "plain people" than could have been gained
without that experience.
[Illustration: The ceremony at Grover Cleveland's marriage.]
Grover Cleveland was admitted to the bar in 1859. He did not at first
begin the practice of the law on his own account, but remained for four
years longer with his teachers, until he had gained the position of
chief clerk. In 1858, on coming of age, he cast his first vote, giving
it to the Democratic party; but not content with the mere performance of
this part of the citizen's duty, "he took his place at the polls and
throughout the day distributed ballots by the side of the veterans of
his party." "This habit," says Mr. Parker, "he kept up until his
election as governor. He was never a partisan, but he believed in
working for his party, and he not only worked for it at the polls,
but he always marched in the procession whenever a great Democratic
demonstration was made."
On January 1, 1863, Mr. Cleveland began his first independent work as a
lawyer, and on leaving the office of the firm that had been his teachers
and associates, he accepted the office of assistant district attorney of
Erie County, to which he had been appointed. For this he give up a
salary of $1,000, and took one of $600, but he did this because he saw
that the training and experience of such an office would be worth more
to him than money. It was while he held this office that he was drafted
into the army, and being convinced that he was more useful in his office
than he could be as a soldier, he sent a substitute, borrowing the money
for the bounty from his superior, the district attorney. This money,
says Mr. Parker, he was not able to pay back until the close of his term
as assistant district attorney, and until the war itself was over. Two
of his brothers entered the army in 1861, and served through the war.
From this time Mr. Cleveland's rise was rapid, and made by great
strides, each new position the result of the satisfactory way in which
he had filled the one previously held. He was indeed defeated in his
first contest, that for district attorney of Erie County. In 1870 he
accepted the nomination of his party for the office of sheriff of Erie
County. It was not usual for lawyers to accept this office, and Mr.
Cleveland did not take it until after much deliberation and consultation
with his party friends. He was finally moved to accept the nomination
for the practical reasons that the place would give him leisure for
much-needed study in his profession, and that it would also enable him
to lay up a little money. He held the office for the full term, and
returned to the practice of the law in 1874, becoming a member of the
firm of Bass, Cleveland, & Bissell. Mr. Bass was the opponent who had
defeated him in the contest for district attorney, and Mr. Bissell is
now the Postmaster-General in the cabinet of his former law-partner.
In 1881, Mr. Cleveland was nominated for the office of Mayor of Buffalo,
and was elected by a majority of thirty-five hundred, the largest which
had ever been given in Buffalo for that office. It was a time of great
excitement, for the government of the city had fallen into very bad
hands, and in the election of Mr. Cleveland party lines were disregarded
to an unusual degree. His fearless and energetic administration of this
office; his resolute refusal to give any support to those fictions of
politicians and office-holders by which the citizens in all our great
municipalities are robbed of their rights and their money; his obstinate
vetoing of one proposed law after another by which these people hoped to
gain their ends--vetoes for which he always gave his reasons in the
plainest words, meant to be understood by the plainest people--his
determination, in short, to be true to his principle declared on taking
office, that the affairs of government were to be managed as a man would
manage his private business--all this fixed the eyes of the people upon
him as a man to be intrusted with still graver responsibilities.
In 1882, Mr. Cleveland was nominated for the high position of Governor
of New York, in opposition to Charles J. Folger, a man of high
character, formerly chief justice of the Court of Appeals, and at the
time of the contest, secretary of the treasury under President Arthur.
For reasons into which we cannot enter here, but which, though purely
political, gave good cause for public discontent, Mr. Folger's
nomination roused the determined opposition of many of his own party,
and this defection, added to the united enthusiasm of the Democracy,
insured Mr. Cleveland's election by one hundred and ninety-two thousand
eight hundred and fifty-four votes more than were cast for Mr. Folger.
Mr. Cleveland administered the office of governor in such a way as
greatly to strengthen the admiration of his party, especially of the
better portion of it, in spite of the fact that partisan advantages were
often lost by Mr. Cleveland's independent and patriotic action. Nor can
it be doubted that his election to the presidency, which followed, was
the fruit of the experience the people had had of his character while in
the governor's chair. That campaign was one of the most interesting, and
we may say, one of the most valuable morally, that has been waged in our
day in this country. So far as mere votes were concerned, it was not
such a victory as that for the governorship, but in its political
meaning, and its influence on the course of our history, it was of the
first importance.
At the close of his first term of office as president, Mr. Cleveland was
again nominated, but was defeated by his opponent, Mr. Harrison; yet
when the time for choosing a successor to Mr. Harrison came round, Mr.
Cleveland was again nominated, and was elected, defeating Mr. Harrison
in his turn. The vote on this last occasion was so overwhelmingly in
favor of the Democratic party as to have amounted virtually to a
political revolution; but the limitation and character of this sketch do
not permit us to go into a discussion of it. Our purpose has been to
show the elements of character that have gone to make the truly
extraordinary success that has marked Mr. Cleveland's political life.
That success has not been due to genius, nor to social or personal
advantages. It has been due to nobler causes; it is the result of
sterling and well-tried honesty, of hard and unremitting labor applied
to the understanding of every question coming before him for decision,
and of a resolute independence; his fixed belief that
"Because right is right to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."
[Signature of the author.]