Cleveland, as you yourselves state and admit it, disqualify him,
in your estimation, for the Presidency of the United States?” We
answer frankly: “Yes, if his opponent be free from this stain, and
as good a man in all other ways.” We should like to see candidates
for the Presidency models of all the virtues, pure as the snow
and steadfast as the eternal hills. But when the alternative is
a man of whom the Buffalo _Express_, a political opponent, said
immediately after his nomination, “that the people of Buffalo
had known him as one of their worthiest citizens, one of their
manliest men, faithful to his clients, faithful to his friends, and
faithful to every public trust” ... a good son and good brother,
and unmarried in order that he might be the better son and brother,
against whom nothing can be said except that he has not been proof
against one of the most powerful temptations by which human nature
is assailed; or, on the other hand, a man convicted out of his
own mouth of having publicly lied in order to hide his jobbery
in office, of having offered his judicial decisions as a sign of
his possible usefulness to railroad speculators in case they paid
him his price, of trading in charters which had been benefited by
legislation in which he took part, and of having broken his word of
honor in order to destroy documentary evidence of his corruption--a
man who has accumulated a fortune in a few years on the salary of a
Congressman--then we say emphatically no--ten thousand times no.
A public office like the Presidency was not a reward for a blameless
private life, insisted Godkin, but a heavy duty and responsibility, to
be given only to a statesman of ability and official integrity. Schurz
pointed out that Hamilton, the founder of the _Post_, was once placed
in a position where he had to remain silent concerning a slur upon
his honesty in office, or confess to an offense like Cleveland’s; and
he hesitated not an instant to clear his public honor at this cost to
private reputation. The articles of the _Evening Post_ and _Nation_
powerfully conduced to right thinking on this subject.
The abuse visited upon the _Evening Post_ in this campaign was the
greatest since the slavery struggle. The Chicago _Tribune_ said that
“it was a natural instinct of servility to the great corporations
that has bound it with hoops of steel to Cleveland’s cause”; a
remarkable charge in view of the fact that Jay Gould, H. H. Rogers,
Cyrus W. Field, Russell Sage, H. D. Armour, and other corporation
heads supported Blaine, and by their dinner with him at Delmonico’s
just before election--“Belshazzar’s Feast”--did not a little to defeat
him. “The _Evening Post_ has finally gone down so low,” remarked the
Poughkeepsie _Eagle_ in September, “that it lies about itself.” The
Harrisburgh _Telegraph_ published an attack by Bryant upon Jefferson
as proof that the _Post_ had always been addicted to malevolent
personalities; not mentioning the fact that Bryant had written these
verses in 1803, at the age of nine, twenty-three years before he
joined the _Post_. The New York _Tribune_ turned Godkin’s statement,
“Cleveland’s virtues are those which bind human society together,” into
“Cleveland’s sins are of the sort which bind society together,” and
repeatedly printed it in this form. As for Dana’s _Sun_, it continually
called the _Post_ “stupid”; but Dana this year was proving his own
brilliance by supporting the farcical Greenback candidacy of Ben
Butler, who polled 3,500 votes in New York city.
On the other hand, the paper received a steady stream of congratulatory
letters. Henry Ward Beecher wrote in September that the editorials
were clear, honest, and weighty. “How any one who has read them can
vote for Blaine passes my comprehension. They ought to be circulated
over the whole land as one of the best campaign documents. They stand
in striking contrast with the inefficient speeches of Hawley, Hoard,
and Dawes, and the essays and letters of Mead, Bliss & Co. Allow me
to say that the _Evening Post_ has never stood higher in its long and
honorable life than now. It may almost be called the ideal family
newspaper.” As a matter of fact, the editorials _were_ circulated as
campaign documents. Godkin’s articles on Blaine’s railway transactions
sold 20,000 copies in pamphlet form before Sept. 20, when a revised
edition appeared. In October the _Post_ issued a pamphlet called “The
Young Men’s Party,” by Col. T. W. Higginson, and another which embraced
a reply to George Bliss and the table of ten Blaine falsehoods. In the
closing days of the campaign the paper received subscriptions of $1,000
a week for the independent Campaign Fund. Godkin maintained his fierce
editorial attacks to the last moment, and did not fail to make the most
of the “Rum-Romanism-Rebellion” indiscretion of the Rev. Mr. Burchard,
saying that Blaine had given “tacit assent” to this insult against
Catholicism.
The fight was by no means won with the closing of the polls on election
day, Nov. 4. Early next morning every one knew that Cleveland had
carried the South, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana, that his
election was assured if he had carried New York, and that New York
was doubtful. The _World_ claimed the Empire State for the Democrats,
and the _Sun_ conceded it to them, but the _Tribune_ declared that
Blaine had won. The _Post’s_ headlines that afternoon ran: “Cleveland
Probably Elected--213 Electoral Votes for Him--New York in Cleveland
Column”; while the editorial declared simply that, with the returns
very backward, the indications were that Cleveland had a safe majority.
Crowds all day filled the streets in front of the bulletin boards, and
for a time there was a threat of rioting against Jay Gould and the
western Union Telegraph officers, who were accused of delaying and
tampering with the returns in the interest of Blaine. With an audacity
born of their memory of 1876, the Republicans continued to claim the
victory all day Thursday the 6th. The _Tribune_ footed up the county
returns for New York as giving Blaine a plurality of 1,166, but the
addition was inaccurate--they really gave Cleveland a plurality of
128! The Associated Press, whose returns were inexcusably fragmentary
and late, gave Cleveland 1,057 plurality, and the _Post_, with its
own dispatches from every county save one, 1,378--the official figure
being later given as 1,149. The excited _Mail and Express_ made the
same blunder as the _Tribune_, claiming New York for Blaine when its
own inaccurately added table of counties gave Cleveland a plurality
of 4,000. At two a. m. on the 7th the Associated Press announced
Cleveland’s election, and Godkin was able to write:
At daylight this morning everybody conceded Cleveland’s election
save the _Tribune_, which remains in doubt. If it persists in
declaring Blaine elected there will be two inauguration ceremonies
on March 4, one of Cleveland in Washington and one of Blaine on
the steps of the _Tribune_ building, the oath of office being
administered by William Walter Phelps.
II
Our one American President whose dislike of newspapers in general could
be called intense was Cleveland. He deeply resented the mud-slinging
in which they had indulged against both himself and Blaine during
his first campaign; and when he married in 1886, he was outraged by
the manner in which a crowd of correspondents followed him into the
Maryland hills on his honeymoon, occupied points of vantage, and
spied upon him with field-glasses. Late that year he spoke of the
“silly, mean, and cowardly lies” of the press, and of the “ghoulish
glee” with which it desecrated every sacred relation of private life,
an utterance which Mr. Godkin emphasized by editorial endorsement,
for no editor ever hated newspaper mendacity and sensationalism
more than Godkin. Cleveland’s hottest wrath was reserved for Dana’s
_Sun_, which professed to believe that he culled his speeches from an
encyclopedia, and that Miss Cleveland wrote his messages to Congress;
when in 1890 the _Sun_ made some offensive reference to his corpulence,
Mr. Cleveland expressed his feelings without restraint. But he made
one exception in his general dislike. He read the _Evening Post_
faithfully, respected its views, and had a high regard for Mr. Godkin,
whom he knew personally.
His friendliness had ample reason, for the _Post_ supported almost
every act of his first administration. It praised his early observance,
in spirit and letter, of the Civil Service law, and his courageous
veto of vicious little pension bills. Above all, it maintained that
his administration was an invaluable demonstration that the unity of
the nation was real, that it was no longer necessary for one section
and party to monopolize political power. One New Yorker, the day after
Cleveland’s election, had offered in a fit of rage and despair to
sell Godkin his securities for fifty cents on the dollar. Some men
had believed that the tariff would be wrecked overnight, and that the
Confederacy would return “to the saddle” and compel the North to pay
an indemnity of billions in settlement of Civil War damages. From this
nightmare, which disposed men to put up with all sorts of Republican
corruption, a Democratic administration had been necessary to rescue
the country.
Mr. Godkin never called Cleveland brilliant, and praised him rather for
an honest obstructiveness, balking the schemes of raiders, visionaries,
and predatory interests, than for marked constructive abilities. Like
the other “Mugwump” organs, the _Evening Post_ was offended in 1887–88
by his apparent acquiescence in several raids upon the civil service by
spoilsmen. In April, 1889, it accused the Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury, Mr. J. H. Maynard, of bringing heavy pressure to bear upon
the New York Custom House for the dismissal of capable Republicans.
Maynard denied the charge in a hot telegram; the _Evening Post_
appealed to the Senate Committee upon the Civil Service to come to New
York and investigate; and it did so, sustaining the _Post’s_ charges
in their entirety. But Mr. Godkin never forgot the consideration which
Cleveland later urged in defending himself: “You know the things in
which I yielded; but no one save myself can ever know the things which
I resisted.” The President, said the _Evening Post_, had fallen short
of his promises, but had done far more than any predecessor. “No man,
for example, who has filled the Presidential chair since Jackson’s
day would have listened for one moment to the suggestion that the
New York Post Office should be taken out of politics, or would have
kept the Custom House in its present comparatively neutral condition,
or postponed the removal of the great bulk of officers to the end of
their terms, or extended in any degree the application of the rules,
or have so steadily used his veto to oppose Congressional jobbery and
extravagance. No one, too, has kept the White House and its purlieus so
free from the small scandals which worked so much disgrace in the days
of Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur.”
In 1888 the _Post_ showed genuine enthusiasm in advocating the election
of Cleveland over Benjamin Harrison. His courageous message in favor of
a low tariff in December, 1887, which did so much to ensure his defeat
the next fall, met the views of the editors precisely. The Republicans
declared in their platform for maintenance of the existing tariff, but
for a reduction in the internal revenue taxes, and Godkin labeled them
the party of “high clothes and cheap whisky.” A sharp attack was made
upon Harrison’s Congressional record--“the advocate of centralization,
the defender of reckless pension schemes, the friend of Hennepin Canal
jobs.” Once more, but moderately, parallel columns were employed:
MURAT HALSTEAD (REP.) | HUGH M’CULLOCH (REP.)
|
“The bottom truth about | “I have watched Mr. Cleveland’s
Cleveland is that he may have | Administration very carefully,
been a Copperhead, for he is | and I consider it to have been
of about that grade of snake, | marked with signal ability and
but he has been too ignorant | uprightness.”
all his life to be an |
intelligent member of any |
political party.” |
Cleveland’s defeat the _Evening Post_ attributed in part, it is
interesting to note, to the folly of the New York Democrats in
nominating David B. Hill for Governor, a choice which disgusted
independent voters. Naturally, Harrison’s administration confirmed by a
half dozen acts the paper’s loyalty to the ex-President. The choice of
Blaine to be Secretary of State, the McKinley Tariff Act, the Service
Pensions Act of 1890, and the Sherman Silver-Purchase Act seemed to the
editors, and to a great body of intelligent and thoughtful citizens,
to be so many milestones on a road of perversity and danger. The
reckless way in which our foreign relations were handled, as we shall
see later, aroused grave apprehensions in Mr. Godkin. At the moment
when the disgust of the _Evening Post_ with the Republican Party was
deepest, in February, 1891, Cleveland’s famous letter in opposition
to the free coinage of silver, characterizing it as a “dangerous and
reckless experiment,” was published. All his enemies, Dana at their
head, thought that by this courageous act he had destroyed himself
politically. So did many Democrats. “Again,” wrote Godkin, “the
shrewd politicians sat down on the party stoop and wept, and prepared
sorrowfully to nominate a first-class juggler in the person of David
B. Hill, who was to show the wretched Mugwumps how much better it was
to be able to keep six balls in the air than to be able to show the
absurdity of a fluctuating currency.”
But Cleveland’s uncompromising stroke filled the _Evening Post_ with
joy. It had feared the Democratic Party was rushing down a steep
place to destruction by accepting an alliance with these silver
enthusiasts who were trying to debase the currency. Now it had faith
in the willingness of the party rank and file to respond to the
ex-President’s unflinching words. As it turned out, the newspaper was
right. The people recognized the voice of a real statesman, and the
scheming bosses who had rejoiced at his supposed political suicide,
found that he had at once rescued the party from a ruinous coalition
with the Populists, and made his own renomination inevitable. In the
canvass which followed this renomination, the _Evening Post_ found it
unnecessary to say much about the silver question, so completely had
Cleveland knocked it out of the campaign, and it centered its attention
upon the McKinley Tariff. That wages had fallen in many industries,
that prices of many groups of commodities had risen, and that a hundred
“tariff trusts” had attained new vigor behind the McKinley bulwark, was
shown in a long series of editorial articles. Lowell had already, while
the McKinley Act was pending, published anonymously in the _Evening
Post_ a satirical poem upon the argument that higher rates were needed
to protect our “infant industries.” When Cleveland was decisively
reëlected that November, Godkin traced his victory primarily to the
effect his anti-tariff message of 1887 and his anti-free-silver letter
of 1891 had produced upon men:
Mr. Cleveland’s triumph to-day has been largely due to the young
voters who have come on the stage since the reign of passion and
prejudice came to an end and the era of discussion has opened.
If the last canvass has consisted largely of appeals to reason,
to facts, to the lessons of human experience ... it is to Mr.
Cleveland, let us tell them, that they owe it. But they are
indebted to him for something far more valuable than even this--for
an example of splendid courage in the defense and assertion of
honestly formed opinions; of Roman constancy under defeat, and of
patient reliance on the power of deliberation and persuasion on
the American people. Nothing is more important, in these days of
boodle, of indifference, of cheap bellicose patriotism, than that
this confidence in the might of common sense and sound doctrine and
free speech should be kept alive.
No one reading this editorial would have believed that within little
more than three years Mr. Godkin would turn savagely upon the man whose
fine qualities he thus praised. Mr. Godkin would not have believed
it. Cleveland’s second administration began well, and his policy was
particularly liked by the _Post_ in that field of foreign relations in
which the break was to come. He withdrew the treaty for the annexation
of Hawaii, which Godkin had opposed. He protected American rights in
Cuba, but maintained strict American neutrality in the war Spain was
waging there. When Great Britain put in a claim of damages against
Nicaragua, and landed marines to collect the money, Cleveland acted
with admirable discretion and tact. His belligerent Venezuelan message
of December, 1895, indeed, was almost a flash out of a clear sky.
To understand the consternation with which Godkin received this
message, which seemed to presage certain war with England, it must
be appreciated how much he abhorred jingoism and war. When Crimean
correspondent for the London _Daily News_ he had described the horrors
of the battlefields with indignation; and the suffering back of the
lines--“the great ocean of misery which war has caused to roll over
the heads of mankind ever since wars began”--he thought even more
heartrending. He was no pacifist: a war in a good cause, like the war
of the North to extinguish slavery and disunion, he approved. But wars
merely to vindicate what some one fancied to be “national honor” he
abominated as the worst relic of savagery:
Jingoism is, in fact, like Indian readiness for war, simply another
name for imperfect civilization. It is a simple outburst like
negro-burning, lynching, and jail-breaking, of the imperfectly
subdued barbarous instincts of an earlier time. To get men to
abandon fighting as the chief and most honorable business of their
lives, and the only respectable way of ending disputes, has been
the main work of modern civilization; and what hard work it has
been, one has only to read a little Froissart or Joinville to see.
We must also appreciate that Cleveland’s act seemed to Godkin a base
surrender to jingo elements in American politics which he had hitherto
been opposing. As we have said, the _Evening Post_ had lamented what
it thought the defiant tone of Harrison’s foreign policy. This it
attributed to Blaine’s desire to be a “brilliant” Secretary of State.
When he held that position under Garfield, he had promptly embroiled
the United States with Chile, and it had fallen to President Arthur
to appoint a new Secretary and extricate the nation. Seven years
later he had returned, and what had he done? He had made an effort to
exercise the right of search on British vessels in the Bering Sea,
had filled Harrison’s administration with the resulting controversy,
and had maneuvered the United States into a position in which it was
defeated in arbitration proceedings. Since Cleveland’s inauguration the
editors of the _Evening Post_ had constantly deplored the bellicose
talk indulged in by a considerable group of Republicans. Henry Cabot
Lodge in the spring of 1895 had predicted a war in Europe, hinted that
we might be drawn into it, and said that the British fortifications
at Halifax, Bermuda, Kingston, and Esquimault “threaten us.” The same
month Senator Frye, at Bridgeport, had called for a strong navy, and
declared: “We [the Republicans] will show people a foreign policy that
is American in every fiber, and hoist the American flag on whatever
island we think best, and no hand shall ever pull it down.” Senator
Cullom wanted Cuba instantly annexed. Godkin was justified in writing
(Feb. 13, 1895):
The number of men and officials in this country who are now mad to
fight somebody is appalling. Navy officers dream of war and talk
and lecture about it incessantly. The Senate debates are filled
with predictions of impending war and with talk of preparing for
it at once. With the country under the necessity for the most
stringent economy, appropriations of $12,000,000 for battleships
are urged upon Congress, not because we need them now, but because
we shall need them “in the next great war.” Most truculent and
bloodthirsty of all, the Jingo editors keep up a din day after day
about the way we could cripple one country’s fleet and destroy
another’s commerce, and fill the heads of boys and silly men with
the idea that war is the normal state of a civilized country.
To the early stages of the controversy between Venezuela and England
over the western boundary of British Guiana neither the _Evening
Post_ nor any other journal paid close attention. Mr. Godkin did not
think that the Monroe Doctrine could properly be stretched to cover
American interference in the quarrel; and when Secretary Olney asked
Great Britain to submit the dispute to arbitration, and Lord Salisbury
refused, Godkin defended Salisbury’s action upon the ground that we had
tended to prejudge the case in Venezuela’s favor. As yet the editor was
not disturbed, trusting the President implicitly. But suddenly, on Dec.
17, 1895, Cleveland sent Congress a message asking for the appointment
of a commission to determine the boundary, and stating that it would be
the duty of the United States “to resist by every means in its power,
as a wilful aggression upon its rights and interests,” the taking by
Great Britain of any lands that the commission assigned to Venezuela.
“I was thunderstruck,” Godkin wrote Charles Eliot Norton. He described
the week that followed as “the most anxious I have known in my career.”
For the first three days the United States seemed to rise in unanimous
support of Cleveland. Republican newspapers like the _Tribune_, which
had never said a good word for him, rushed to his assistance. The
editor saw so much jingoism among even intelligent people, he said,
“that the prospect which seemed to open itself before me was a long
fight against a half-crazed public, under a load of abuse, and the
discredit of foreign birth, etc., etc.”; but he never hesitated.
The first afternoon there was time to write only a paragraph editorial
expressing consternation at the doctrine that the United States should
“assert such ownership of the American hemisphere as will enable us to
trace all the boundary lines on it to our own satisfaction in defiance
of the rest of the world.” On the second day the _Evening Post_
devoted both its column editorials to the subject. The first, “Mr.
Cleveland’s Coup d’Etat,” drew a striking contrast between war, with
all it involved of suffering, loss, and moral deterioration, and the
triviality of the possible cause, a wrangle about an obscure boundary
line. The second reviewed the Venezuela correspondence, and attempting
to refute Cleveland’s arguments, said that his message “humiliates
us by its self-contradictions,” and characterized his proposal for a
boundary commission as “ludicrously insulting and illogical.”
In later issues the _Evening Post_ mingled invective with calm, sound
argument. It tried to show that Salisbury’s claims in British Guiana
had been, in the main, supported by incontestable evidence. It traced
the history of our relations with Venezuela, and demonstrated that the
little republic had missed few opportunities to treat us insolently.
It declared that a commission of inquiry might be proper, but that it
was indefensible to create one as a hostile proceeding, with a threat
of war behind it. Months earlier, during the Nicaragua dispute, the
_Evening Post_ had issued in pamphlet form an essay by John Bassett
Moore upon the Monroe Doctrine, showing that it gave the United States
no right of interference in such affairs, and this it now sold in large
quantities. Godkin unfortunately prejudiced his case by two errors--he
failed to allow for the strong sentiment of most Americans in favor of
a flexible interpretation of the Doctrine, and he unjustly hinted that
Cleveland was eyeing a third term.
But the editor’s fears that he would stand alone were at once
dissipated. The _World_ lost no time in denouncing the belligerent
message as “A Great Blunder,” and so did the _Journal of Commerce_.
Among prominent Democratic newspapers which took their stand with the
_Evening Post_ were the Charleston _News and Courier_, Wilmington
_Every Evening_, Memphis _Commercial_, and Louisville _Post_. The
Cleveland _Plain Dealer_ summed up the view of a multitude of
thoughtful men in a little jest: “_Teacher_:--Johnny, now tell us what
we learn from the Monroe Doctrine. _Johnny_:--That the other fellow’s
wrong.” Prof. J. W. Burgess of Columbia contributed to the _Evening
Post_ a column article, in which he said: “On the whole, I have never
read a more arrogant demand than that now set up by President Cleveland
and Secretary Olney, in all diplomatic history.” Half a dozen times in
the next fortnight the _Post_ filled one or two columns with letters of
congratulation and support. Its circulation rose materially. “In fact,”
wrote Godkin when it was all over, with a touch of his eternal irony,
“our course has proved the greatest success I have ever had and ever
known in journalism.”