GROVER CLEVELAND
The Administration of Chester A. Arthur proved that the President had
never been so discreditable a spoilsman as the reformers had believed,
or else that he had changed his spots. The term ended in dignity and
Arthur hoped to secure a personal vindication through renomination by
his party. His struggle precipitated a contest of leaders, and until the
nominations were made, none could say where either party stood.
The independents, chiefly of Republican antecedents, hoped to retain
what had been gained in the last Administration. They hoped to extend
the reform in the civil service and to focus attention upon the tariff.
The failure of downward revision in 1883 had strengthened their hands
and increased their hopes. They had dallied with bolting movements and
threats so long that party regularity meant little to them. Either party
could obtain their support by nominating men who could be trusted to
stick to their platform. Arthur was not acceptable to them, and Blaine
was anathema.
The candidacy of Arthur was doomed to failure. He had alienated the
Stalwarts by his independence, while he had failed to win the reformers
because he had not invariably refrained from playing the politician. In
the fall of 1882 he had interfered in the campaign in New York, allowing
his Secretary of the Treasury, Charles J. Folger, while retaining that
office, to be the Republican candidate for governor. This had led to the
belief that the patronage was being used for local purposes, and had
stirred up an opposition to Folger which defeated him. Arthur's veto of
the Chinese Exclusion Bill and the River and Harbor Bill further
increased his unpopularity in various sections. He failed to win over
the Blaine faction, who regarded him as an intrusive accident and waited
impatiently for the next national convention.
Blaine was the leader of the Republican party in 1884, so far as it had
a leader, and he possessed all the weaknesses of such a leader as well
as personal weaknesses of his own. Rarely has it been possible to
nominate or to elect one who has gained a dominant place through party
struggles. Such men, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and their kind, have
commonly created enough enemies, as they have risen, to make them
unavailable as leaders of a national ticket. Blaine was handicapped like
these. His prolonged fight against Conkling and the Stalwarts created a
breach too deep to fill, while the old questions respecting his honor
would not down.
Early in 1884 Blaine was the leading candidate for the nomination in
spite of all opposition. The Republican National Committee was in charge
of men who sympathized with him. Dorsey had resigned as its secretary
after the star-route exposure, though his associate in land
speculations, Stephen B. Elkins, remained as one of the managers. The
control was in the hands of men who had close affiliation with the old
organization, and of the manufacturers who had blocked tariff revision
in 1883. It was improbable, in the opinion of many independents, that a
tariff reduction could be got from an Administration headed by Blaine;
they questioned his sincerity upon civil service reform; and they
thought it not right that any man, concerning whose character there was
a doubt, should be President. They put forward, within the party,
Senator George F. Edmunds, whom they had desired in 1880, and who had
since become President of the Senate. Other candidates with local
followings were General John A. Logan, of Illinois, John Sherman, and
the President himself.
The Chicago Convention of the Republican party, meeting early in June,
was the scene of a battle between the two elements in the party. At the
outset, the old independents, headed by Curtis, and reinforced by
younger men like Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and Theodore
Roosevelt, of New York, broke the slate of the National Committee and
seated a chairman of their own choice. But the regulars rallied,
controlled the platform, and made the nomination. Blaine and John A.
Logan were selected, the former accepting the honor with secret
misgivings, for he had a clear understanding of the intensity of the
opposition within the party. The reformers went home discouraged, many
of them determined not to let party regularity hold them to Blaine.
Out of the nomination of Blaine grew the "Mugwump" movement, whose
influence was greater than that of the last bolt. The origin of the name
"Mugwump" is not entirely clear, but it was well known as an opprobrious
epithet, and was applied now by party regulars to the "holier-than-thou"
reformers. One of the regulars later quoted Revelation at them: "Thou
art neither hot nor cold ... so, then, I will spew thee out of my
mouth." They were more offensive to Republicans than were the Democrats,
while the latter were bewildered but cynical. "I know that to-day we are
living in a very highly scented atmosphere of political reform," said
one of the Democratic Senators a little later, "I know that under the
saintly leadership of the Eatonian school of political philosophers we
are all ceasing to be partisans, that we no longer recognize party
obligations, party duty, party discipline, and party devoirs; that we
are all to become reconciled to a life of political monasticism; but I
will continue to have one failing, and that is in my humble way to be as
watchful and as vigilant of the purposes, designs, and craft of the
Republican leaders as I have endeavored to be in the past."
The Mugwumps left Chicago and at once opened negotiations with the
Democratic leaders. The _Nation_ and the _Evening Post_ were already
with them. _Harper's Weekly_, which had been a Union journal in the war,
and Republican ever since, abandoned the party ticket. George William
Curtis, its editor, led in the revolt, and the Mugwumps met at the house
of one of the Harpers for organization, on June 17, 1884. Their problem
was whether to nominate an independent ticket and be defeated, or to
support and help elect a Democratic President, in case the Democrats
should be willing to cooperate with them.
Not all the reformers turned from Blaine. Whitelaw Reid, the successor
of Horace Greeley on the New York _Tribune_, remained regular. Lodge
went back to Massachusetts and persuaded himself to take part in the
canvass. Roosevelt, discouraged by the nomination of Blaine, remained
regular, but stepped out of the campaign and began his ranch life in the
Far West. With him, as with many others, it was a matter of conviction
that reform, to be effective, must be urged within the party. But enough
of the reformers went with the Mugwumps to lessen Blaine's chances of
election.
When the Mugwumps made overtures for fusion to the Democratic leaders,
they had in mind as a candidate a young Democratic lawyer who had
appeared as Mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and had been elected as reform
Governor of New York in 1882. He had secured the aid of independent
reformers in that campaign,--men who resented the candidacy of Folger
and the intrusion of the National Administration in local politics. As
governor he had speedily established his reputation for stubborn honesty
and independent judgment. Grover Cleveland had become, like Tilden, the
most promising candidate in a party that had no admitted leader.
The opposition from two elements in his party, at the Democratic
Convention in Chicago, strengthened Cleveland as the candidate of
reform. Ben Butler, who had himself been nominated for the Presidency by
an Anti-Monopoly Convention, denounced him as a foe of labor; and such
was Butler's reputation that his enmity was one of Cleveland's assets.
John Kelly, the chief of Tammany Hall, opposed him, too, having learned
to know him as Governor of New York. Well might Cleveland's friends say,
"We love him for the enemies he has made." They nominated him on the
second ballot, selecting Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana, to run with
him. Their platform was full of reform, even of the tariff, but on the
latter subject it was less specific than the tariff reformers had hoped.
As the parties stood in 1884, personal character meant more than
platform or party name. Cleveland possessed qualities that made his
appeal to independents quite as strong as it was to Democrats. With
older brothers in the army he had supported his mother during the war,
and had kept clear of copperheadism. He stood for sound money; he
believed in a tariff for revenue; he had proved his devotion to civil
service reform; he lacked the factional enemies who weakened the
candidacy of a prominent leader like Blaine; and his peculiar appeal to
Republican dissenters led the canvass away from issues into the field of
personalities.
The charge of the independents upon Blaine's personal honor caused the
Republican schism and drove the party regulars into a retort in kind.
The private life of the candidates was uncovered to the annoyance of
both and to the greater embarrassment of Cleveland. Nothing
discreditable to his honesty could be found, but an apparent lapse in
his private conduct gave the pretext for wild and dishonest attacks upon
his character. A few years later the novelist, Paul Leicester Ford, in a
keen study of New York politics entitled _The Honorable Peter Stirling_,
portrayed a situation somewhat resembling that of Cleveland, though
disclaiming Cleveland as his model. The Boston _Journal_ led in the
exploitation of the charges, and partisans forgot decency on both sides.
Nast, having formerly cartooned Blaine in the "Bloody Shirt," now turned
to "A Roaring Farce--The Plumed Knight in a Clean Shirt," while others
pointed out the fact that the admirer who coined the "plumed knight"
epithet had been counsel for the fraudulent star-route contractors.
Attempts were made to appeal to class hatred on both sides. Butler had
hesitated for several weeks in his acceptance of the nomination by the
Anti-Monopoly Convention. Greenbackers and a few labor leaders made up
his following, and it was supposed that they would draw votes from the
Democrats. After conference with Republican leaders, Butler agreed to
run, and it was freely charged that these leaders financed his campaign
to injure Cleveland. Republicans appealed to the Irish vote by recalling
Blaine's vigorous diplomacy against Great Britain; their opponents
caricatured Blaine by representing him as consorting with Irish thugs
and dynamiters. At the very end of the canvass a chance remark may have
decided the result.
So much had been said of character in the campaign that both candidates
brought out the clergy to give them certificates of excellence. In
October a meeting of clergymen of all denominations was held at the
Fifth Avenue Hotel to greet Blaine. The oldest minister, Burchard by
name, was asked to deliver the address, and while he spoke Blaine
thought of other matters. He thus missed a phrase which other hearers
caught and which the Democrats immediately advertised. It denounced the
Democrats as adherents of "rum, Romanism, and rebellion," and was
reported as conveying a gratuitous insult to the Irish vote. How many
Irish turned from Blaine to Cleveland in the last week of the campaign
cannot be said, but the election was so close that a few votes, swung
either way, could have determined it. Cleveland carried New York and won
a majority of the electoral college, but his popular plurality over
Blaine was only 23,000, while he had some 300,000 fewer than his
combined rivals. Butler drew 175,000 votes without defeating Cleveland.
Purists, disgusted with the personalities of the campaign, swelled the
Prohibition vote to 150,000.
On March 4, 1885, Grover Cleveland was inaugurated as the first Democrat
elected President since James Buchanan. His Cabinet was necessarily
filled with men inexperienced in national administration, for the party
had been proscribed for six terms. The greatest attention was attracted
by the two former Confederates, Garland and Lamar, whose career did much
to disprove the "gloomy and baseless superstition" of twenty years,
"that one half of the nation had become the irreconcilable enemies of
the national unity and the national will." It was an American
Administration, and of its chief, James Russell Lowell, who had known
men in many lands, wrote, "He is a truly American type of the best
kind--a type very dear to me, I confess."
The State Department was entrusted to Thomas F. Bayard, who had been a
competitor for the nomination in 1884, and who sustained the tradition
that only first-rate men shall fill this office. Bayard proceeded at
once to undo the work of the last five years and to reverse a policy of
Blaine. A treaty with Nicaragua, negotiated by Frelinghuysen in
December, 1884, ran counter to the English treaty of 1850. After a vain
attempt to persuade Great Britain to abandon the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty
respecting an isthmian canal, Frelinghuysen had disregarded it and
acquired a complete right-of-way from Nicaragua. This was pending in the
Senate when Cleveland was inaugurated, and was withdrawn at once. The
United States reverted to the old Whig policy of a neutralized canal.
In all departments the new Administration was forced to test the
strength of its convictions upon civil service reform. During its long
years of opposition the party had often voiced a demand for reform, but
now in office its workers demanded the usual rewards of success.
Cleveland had fought the spoils politicians in New York, and had taken
counsel of Carl Schurz after his election as President. In the next four
years he nearly doubled the number in the classified service in the face
of opposition from his most intimate associates.
The problems of prosperity and national growth, developing in the
eighties and culminating between 1885 and 1889, involved administrative
efficiency rather than party policy. On every side the Government was
forced to expand its activities, and Cleveland was occupied in getting
new machinery into operation and meeting conditions for which no
precedents existed.
Organized labor had gained concessions from Congress in a Bureau of
Labor, in 1884, and an Anti-Contract Labor Law in 1885. These called for
sympathetic administration and encouraged labor to hope for more. During
1886 and 1887 the views of labor leaders attracted much attention
because of a series of strikes and riots. In the greatest of these the
local chapters of the Knights of Labor fought against the Gould railways
of the Southwest--the Missouri Pacific and the Texas Pacific. The strike
originated in March, 1886, in sympathy with labor organizers who had
been discharged by the railroad. Under the leadership of Martin Irons it
spread over the Southwest, causing distress in those regions which were
dependent upon the railroad for fuel and food and causing disorder in
the towns where the idle workmen congregated. Powderly and the other
chief officials of the Knights tried to stop the strike, but were
ineffective, while the railroad managers shaped events so as to divert
the sympathies of the Western people against the strikers. The Knights
never recovered from the blow which the loss of the strike inflicted
upon them.
In May, 1886, a general demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day
was planned and carried out. In Milwaukee riots ensued, the militia was
called out by Governor Rusk, and a volley was fired into the mob. In
Chicago the union movement was combined with anarchy and socialism, and
opponents of all did not discriminate among them. A meeting of the
anarchists was broken up by the police, several of whom were killed by
the explosion of a bomb thrown in the tumult. In 1887 a group of the
anarchist leaders were hanged, having been convicted of what may be
called constructive conspiracy. The unrest revealed by the strikes and
riots showed that the old period of uniform well-being and satisfaction
was over.
The demands made upon politics by organized labor were exceeded by the
demands of organized patriotism. The veterans of the Civil War, who were
in early manhood in 1865, were now in middle life, were possessed of
political influence, and turned to the National Government for personal
advantage. Advocates of protection acted upon the theory that for
national purposes special advantages ought to be given to manufacturers.
The same idea of government readily bestowed these advantages in return
for a past service.
The machinery of the veterans was the Grand Army of the Republic, which,
from being an unimportant, reminiscent league, had grown to be an
instrument for the procuring of pensions. The surplus tempted citizens
to make demands upon it; the number of soldier votes encouraged
politicians to comply with the demands. In 1879 the movement began with
an Arrears of Pensions Act, by which pensioners were entitled to back
pay from their mustering-out dates, regardless of the period at which
their incapacity set in. The next step involved the issuing of pensions
for incapacity and dependence, regardless of their cause, and opened the
way for pensions for service only. In 1887 Cleveland vetoed a pension
bill of this character, and prevented its passage until the term of his
successor, in 1890. He had already offended many of his supporters by
guarding the offices; his pension veto offended more by checking the
attack of the old soldiers on the Treasury. No one opposed the granting
of pensions to soldiers who had been injured in the Civil War, but the
demands of the leaders of the Grand Army, supported by the interests of
hundreds of attorneys who lived on pension claims, now assumed the
appearance of an organized raid on the Treasury. The general laws were
supplemented by special private pension laws, of which 1871 were sent to
Cleveland in four years. He vetoed 228 of these, often to his political
injury. In many cases these made allowances to persons whose claims had
been rejected by the Pension Bureau as inadequate or fraudulent. In the
course of time Cleveland became "thoroughly tired of disapproving gifts
of public money to individuals who in my view have no right or claim to
the same." The pension fund, he maintained, was "the soldiers' fund,"
and should be distributed so as to "exclude perversion as well as to
insure a liberal and generous application of grateful and benevolent
designs." In the ten years ending in 1889, Congress spent $644,000,000
on pensions; in the next ten it spent $1,350,000,000.
The surplus incited extravagance, and its reduction had been demanded on
this ground, the tariff appearing to afford the best method of
reduction. When the Democratic party gained control of the House, in
1883, it proceeded at once to discuss revision, and promptly uncovered a
difference of opinion among its members. The last Democratic Speaker of
the House had been Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who
had been trained in the philosophy of Henry Clay and in the interests of
a great manufacturing State. He was by conviction and association a
protectionist, and was a candidate for his party's nomination as Speaker
in the Forty-eighth Congress, which met in December, 1883. From this
date he ceased to lead his party in the House and became the leader of
an internal faction. John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, supplanted him, was
elected Speaker, and organized the House in the interest of a tariff for
revenue only. For the next six years the Democratic organization of the
House was pledged to revision, but operated in the face of a growing
Republican opposition, and with Randall and the protectionist Democrats
attacking from the rear.
The election of Cleveland gave the Democrats control of two branches of
the Government, but left the Senate in the hands of the Republicans. It
was vain to talk of serious revision or any other party measure in a
divided administration, yet the President chafed under his inability to
fulfill party pledges. The surplus continued to accumulate, to permit
extravagance in Congress, and to arouse the cupidity of citizens. In his
message to his second Congress, in 1887, Cleveland startled the country
by devoting his undivided attention to this single topic. He set his
party a text which could not be evaded, although there was even yet no
reason to believe that a tariff bill could pass both houses. He had
taken Carlisle into his confidence before sending the message; the
latter entrusted the leadership in revision to Roger Q. Mills, of Texas,
a free-trader, whom he appointed as chairman of the Committee on Ways
and Means.
With the opening of the debate on the Mills Bill, in April, 1888, there
began "the first serious attempt since the war to reduce toward a peace
basis the customs duties imposed during that conflict almost solely for
purposes of revenue." Mills and William L. Wilson, who had been a
college president in West Virginia, bore the burden of advocacy of a
reduction of the revenue to the extent of $50,000,000. They were opposed
by a united Republican party, both frightened and gratified because the
issue had been made so clear. It was charged that the Committee on Ways
and Means had drawn up the bill in secrecy, and that a majority of its
Democratic members were Southerners who knew nothing of the needs of
manufactures. The danger to American labor from the competition of the
pauper labor of Europe was urged against it. It was asserted to be a
pro-British measure, and stories were circulated of British gold, coming
from the Cobden Club, a free-trade organization, to subvert American
institutions. The Democratic organization drove the bill through the
House of Representatives in spite of all resistance. In the Senate, with
the Republicans in control, the bill never came to a vote, and was used
to manufacture campaign materials for the campaign then pending. Many of
the advisers of Cleveland had urged him to withhold the tariff message,
lest he arouse the enemy and defeat himself, but he had risked personal
and party defeat in order to get an issue definitively accepted--the
first issue so accepted in politics since 1864.
The Mills Bill fiasco was the most important party measure of
Cleveland's Administration, yet it served only to accentuate the
difficulties in tariff legislation which had been experienced in 1883,
and to provide an issue for the campaign of 1888. The laws that were
passed between 1885 and 1889 were generally non-partisan in their
character and were of most influence when they helped to readjust
federal law to national economic problems. The Federal Government was
unfolding and testing powers that had existed since the adoption of the
Constitution, but had not been needed hitherto in an agricultural
republic. The change that forced the resort to these powers came largely
from the completion of a national system of communication.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
For the election of 1884, consult, in addition to Stanwood, J.F. Rhodes,
"The National Republican Conventions of 1880 and 1884" (_Scribner's
Magazine_, September, 1911), and "Cleveland's Administrations"
(_Scribner's Magazine_, October, 1911). There is an annotated reprint of
the "Mulligan Letters" in _Harper's Weekly_ (1884, pp. 643-46). The
biographies of Blaine by Hamilton and Stanwood should be examined, as
well as the sketches of Cleveland (who left few literary remains), by
J.L. Williams, G.F. Parker, and R.W. Gilder. Among partisan party
histories, the best are F. Curtis, _The Republican Party_, (2 vols.,
1904), and W.L. Wilson, _The National Democratic Party_ (1888). J.H.
Harper recounts details of the Mugwump split in his history of _The
House of Harper_ (1912). The standard compilation on the pension system,
which has not yet received adequate treatment, is W.H. Glasson,
_Military Pension Legislation in the United States_ (in Columbia
University Studies, vol. XII). C.F. Adams and W.B. Hale published useful
essays on the pension system in _World's Work, 1911_. H.T. Peck begins
his popular _Twenty Years of the Republic_ (1907) with the inauguration
of Cleveland in 1885. Consult also Sparks, Dewey, Andrews, and the
_Annual Cyclopaedia_.