Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

WILLIAM McKINLEY

THE McKINLEY-BRYAN CONTEST

1896

Cleveland and Harrison were cast in the same mould of statesmanship, differing only in degree, and they had some important qualities in common. Both stood for a better political system than was acceptable to their respective parties, and both regarded public duty as paramount to political or individual interests. They are the only two men of the nation each of whom retired from the Presidency defeated by the other. Both were vastly in advance of the dominant sentiment of their followers in the support of civil service reform. Neither of them was accomplished as a national politician. They never could have nominated themselves for President by political manipulation, nor could they have mastered the intricacies inevitable in the management of a great national contest. They employed none of the arts which have been common among public men to popularize themselves, and both were called to the leadership of their respective parties in Presidential battles because they were wanted rather than because they wanted the place. Both were regarded as unsympathetic by the ardent political leaders of their parties when it came to the distribution of administration patronage, and yet no two Presidents were ever more pronounced in their devotion to their party faith.

Cleveland was a Democrat all through from hat to boots; Harrison was equally positive as a Republican, and both held to the better teachings of their parties in the better days. Cleveland was a Jackson Democrat, Harrison a Lincoln Republican, and neither took to the modern political frills which sacrifice the substance of conviction to glittering shadows to protect political degeneracy. Cleveland was the more positive in purpose and bolder in action; Harrison was probably the stronger intellectual force, with greater aptness in adaptability to political movements, and both were thoroughly honest, tireless in devotion to duty, and sincerely patriotic. Both were exemplars of public and private purity, alike in home and trust, and the prattle of “Baby McKee” and of “Little Ruth” would at any time call either to forgetfulness of the honors and cares of State. Both finally retired from the Presidency, leaving records as Chief Magistrates which will ever shed rich lustre upon the annals of the Republic.

Cleveland’s second administration fell upon troublous times. The country was about to enter upon a severe season of industrial and business depression, that no political power nor the wisest legislation could have prevented. The products of our farms had reached the minimum of value. Debts were steadily increasing, labor was largely unemployed, and consumption of the necessaries of life was reduced to the lowest standard. The McKinley tariff of 1890 had given excessive protection to our industries, but that only stimulated production while it narrowed the markets for our products, and it was not surprising when silver reached the point that made a dollar worth only 50 cents, that the free silver theory should attract the hopeless debtor class by the promise of paying their obligations practically with one-half the money they had borrowed.

Both parties were severely honeycombed with the cheap-money theory, and although Cleveland had a Democratic Congress and was able, after the most exhaustive effort, to halt the continued purchase of silver for coinage, it was the last and only achievement he attained with the aid of Congress to better our financial system. It was most fortunate for the country that in this fearful peril to our national credit Grover Cleveland was President of the United States. He stood impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar when the fierce waves of repudiation surged against him from both parties, and when the West and South appeared to be practically unanimous in demanding cheap money, while even the more stable business and financial States of the North were greatly divided on the issue. Just as the peril to our national honor increased Cleveland’s determination and courage to maintain the right increased with it, and he finally braved a howling repudiation Congress by a demand for gold bonds to sustain Government credit with notice that, if refused by Congress, whereby a loss of many millions would be forced upon the country, he would sell bonds, as then authorized by law, to any extent necessary to maintain the most scrupulous faith of the nation.

Congress refused and Cleveland stood grandly alone with Congress against him, and saved the Republic from a stain of dishonor that would have been ineffaceable. This was a vastly more heroic act than Jackson’s throttling of nullification, as Jackson was sustained by the patriotic devotion to the Union. Another record of his administration that stands out among the heroic of Presidential actions was his promptness and courage in meeting the Chicago riots when the commerce of the nation was interrupted by lawlessness. In a single order issued by Cleveland directing public peace to be maintained and commerce permitted to go on uninterrupted by the strong arm of national power he effaced forever the last lingering dregs of States’ rights that would make a great Commonwealth the prey of the lawless with the National Government powerless to interfere. The Governor of Illinois was in hearty and open sympathy with the lawless, and refused the protection to public peace and to commerce that was his sworn duty to give, and the civil authorities of Chicago were the mere plaything of the mob.

These two acts of Grover Cleveland will go into history as among the most heroic and self-sacrificing acts of any of our long line of Presidents. Harrison would doubtless have met both of these emergencies as Cleveland did, but Cleveland had to brave the overwhelming prejudices of his own party to discharge the duty, while Harrison would have been heartily and unitedly sustained by his party in meeting the Chicago issue, and would have had the majority of his party followers in sympathy with him in maintaining the national credit. Cleveland retired from his second term of the Presidency with his party very generally alienated from him, and yet he had not in any material degree departed from the Democratic platform on which he was re-elected. He was not in any measure an apostate, but he stood resolutely where his party had planted him, while his party apostatized and became his bitterest foe.

No administration can command the support of the country when industry and trade are severely depressed. It matters not what may be the true cause of financial, commercial, and industrial revulsion; it is always charged to the policy of the party in power, and Cleveland could not escape political disaster because of conditions which he had no more part in producing than he had in creating the stars when they first sang together. The mid-administration elections of 1894 resulted in the most disastrous defeat the Democracy had ever suffered, and the cheap-money heresy rapidly grew in strength, disintegrating both the old parties until the question of maintaining national credit became one of the gravest ever presented to the people, with the single exception of the secession that caused our civil war.