Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

Blaine and Tilden are the only men I can recall who undertook to manage a Presidential contest for themselves, and both suffered defeats, for which they were wholly responsible.

Blaine committed many serious blunders during the campaign of 1884. He and Cleveland were both made the targets of flagrant scandals, and when the Cleveland scandal was sent to Blaine in the early part of the contest, instead of peremptorily forbidding its use as a campaign factor, as would have been most wise, he sent it to his national committee, and it was given publicity. The Blaine scandal was sent to Cleveland early in the fight, and he at once gave notice to those in charge of his campaign that any personal scandals against Blaine should not have the sanction of the Democratic organization. Blaine never would have committed such a mistake if he had been managing a Presidential campaign for another, and had he been such responsible manager, he never would have permitted a libel suit to be instituted against a newspaper publisher for any scandal, however false and malignant. He was a man of intense earnestness, and the intensity of his interest in his own election for the Presidency unbalanced his judgment and made him often the creature of impulse when he should have been most dispassionate and philosophical. The scandals did not affect a thousand votes out of the many millions cast for President, and Blaine suffered vastly more than Cleveland, because he dignified the scandal against himself by legal proceedings for defamation. The fact that he voluntarily discontinued the suit after the election is the best evidence of the error committed against himself.

Charles A. Dana, then editor of the New York Sun, became estranged from Mr. Cleveland the year before the Presidential election of 1884. He had earnestly supported Cleveland for Governor in 1882, but when a movement was made by Mr. Manning to organize the State for Cleveland in 1884 Dana was implacable in his opposition. I met him several times before Cleveland was nominated, and he always discussed the question with an unusual degree of acrimony. He believed that Cleveland was not available; that he was unworthy of the position, and that if nominated he would be overwhelmingly defeated. He gave me no reason for his changed relations with Cleveland, and I did not learn the true cause until after Cleveland had been elected President.

Soon after Cleveland’s nomination I was spending a few days at Saratoga, and was watching Dana’s paper with much interest, for he was very much disgruntled. He did not at first declare himself aggressively against Cleveland’s election, but one morning at Saratoga, in taking up the Sun, I found one of Dana’s terrible deliverances against Cleveland, that left no possible chance for a reconciliation. I telegraphed to Mr. Dana and asked him to meet me at his office at three o’clock that afternoon, and called there on my way home. Mr. Dana had gone too far to recede, but I tried to temper his bitterness, as I thought it would do great harm, not only to Cleveland, but to his own newspaper as well, then one of the most prosperous in the country.

Mr. Dana was petulant and violent in his expressions against Cleveland, and said that he had decided to support General Butler, who was the candidate of the Labor-Socialistic element, and who, he said, would receive not less than 25,000 votes in New York City. I told him that Butler might receive 2500, and if there were 25,000 disgruntled Democrats who wanted to defeat Cleveland, they would certainly vote for Blaine.

The result was about as I had predicted. Butler received only a few thousand votes, and Dana and his following, while ostensibly supporting Butler, voted squarely for Blaine. Dana’s paper was the most aggressive of all the anti-Cleveland newspapers in the country, and it doubtless exerted great influence, but not sufficient to lose Cleveland the State.

Charles A. Dana was the ablest editor ever developed by American journalism. Horace Greeley was more pungent and telling in his political articles, and Henry Watterson is more brilliant, but Charles A. Dana was the strongest editorial writer this country has ever produced. He was versatile, powerful, and elegant, but an unfortunate personal estrangement made him the bitterest of Cleveland’s enemies, and paved the way for the Sun to be transformed from an out-and-out Tammany organ to the most aggressive of Republican organs.

It was not until I met Cleveland at Albany, soon after his election, that I learned the cause of the estrangement between Cleveland and Dana, and the statement given by Mr. Cleveland was subsequently confirmed by Mr. Dana. Dana had very earnestly supported Cleveland’s nomination and election for Governor in 1882, and after the election he wrote a personal letter to Cleveland asking the appointment of a friend to the position of Adjutant-General. His chief purpose was to give a position on the staff to his son, Paul Dana, who is now his successor in the editorial chair. Cleveland received that letter as he received thousands of other letters recommending appointments, instead of recognizing the claim Mr. Dana had upon him for the courtesy of an answer. Beecher had a candidate for the same position, and Cleveland gave it to Beecher’s man without any explanation whatever to Dana, who felt that he had been discourteously treated by Cleveland.

Mr. Dana gave no open sign of his disappointment, but some time after Cleveland’s inauguration, when it became known that Dana felt grieved at the Governor, some mutual friends intervened and proposed to Cleveland that he should invite Dana to join with some acquaintances at the Executive Mansion. To this Cleveland readily assented. Dana was informed that Cleveland would tender such an invitation if it would be accepted, and he promptly assented. Cleveland then became involved in the pressing duties of the Legislature, and allowed the session to close without extending the promised and expected invitation to Dana. Mr. Cleveland told me that he was entirely to blame for neglect in both instances, as Dana would doubtless have been satisfied if he had courteously informed him of his convictions which required him to appoint another for Adjutant-General; and he had no excuse to offer but that of neglect for not inviting Dana to dinner.

Dana naturally assumed that Cleveland had given him deliberate affront, and Cleveland could make no satisfactory explanation. As Governor and as President he was first of all devoted to his official duties, which he discharged with rare fidelity, and he gave little time even to the common courtesies which most Governors and Presidents would recognize as justly belonging to their friends. Efforts were made to conciliate Dana, but he never would discuss the question, and he sacrificed half the circulation of his paper in the campaign of 1884 in his battle against Cleveland. When Cleveland’s election was announced, and the Republicans were disposed to dispute the vote of New York, Dana came out boldly and declared that Cleveland was elected and that no violent measures should be tolerated to deprive him of the honor conferred upon him by the people.