But I purpose nothing of the sort. In the last five national conventions my efforts were decisive in framing the platform of the party. In each of them I closed the debate, moved the previous question and was sustained by the convention. In all of them, except the last, I was a maker, not a smasher. Touching what happened at Chicago, the present year, I had a right, in common with good Democrats, to be anxious; and out of that sense of anxiety alone I wrote you. I am sorry that my temerity was deemed by you intrusive and, entering a respectful protest against a ban which I cannot believe to be deserved by me, and assuring you that I shall not again trouble you in that way, I am, your obedient servant,
HENRY WATTERSON.
The Hon. Grover Cleveland.
V
This ended my personal relations with Mr. Cleveland. Thereafter we did not speak as we passed by. He was a hard man to get on with. Overcredulous, though by no means excessive, in his likes, very tenacious in his dislikes, suspicious withal, he grew during his second term in the White House, exceedingly "high and mighty," suggesting somewhat the "stuffed prophet," of Mr. Dana's relentless lambasting and verifying my insistence that he posed rather as an idol to be worshiped, than a leader to be trusted and loved. He was in truth a strong man, who, sufficiently mindful of his limitations in the beginning, grew by unexampled and continued success overconfident and overconscious in his own conceit. He had a real desire to serve the country. But he was apt to think that he alone could effectively serve it. In one of our spats I remember saying to him, "You seem, Mr. President, to think you are the only pebble on the beach--the one honest and brave man in the party--hut let me assure you of my own knowledge that there are others." His answer was, "Oh, you go to ----!"
He split his party wide open. The ostensible cause was the money issue. But, underlying this, there was a deal of personal embitterment. Had he been a man of foresight--or even of ordinary discernment--he might have held it together and with it behind him have carried the gold standard.
I had contended for a sound currency from the outset of the fiscal contention, fighting first the green-back craze and then the free silver craze against an overwhelming majority in the West and South, nowhere more radically relentless than in Kentucky. Both movements had their origin on economic fallacies and found their backing in dishonest purpose to escape honest indebtedness.
Through Mr. Cleveland the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Tilden was converted from a Democrat into a Populist, falling into the arms of Mr. Bryan, whose domination proved as baleful in one way as Mr. Cleveland's had been in another, the final result shipwreck, with the extinguishment of all but the label.
Mr. Bryan was a young man of notable gifts of speech and boundless self-assertion. When he found himself well in the saddle he began to rule despotically and to ride furiously. A party leader more short-sighted could hardly be imagined. None of his judgments came true. As a consequence the Republicans for a long time had everything their own way, and, save for the Taft-Roosevelt quarrel, might have held their power indefinitely. All history tells us that the personal equation must be reckoned with in public life. Assuredly it cuts no mean figure in human affairs. And, when politicians fall out--well--the other side comes in.