This from a man who did not vote for Cleveland, who had never met him more than once or twice, but who had intuitively recognized that quality which is Cleveland’s power. Again, another man, one of preëminent genius in the world of finance, a very strong Republican, having also heard that Mr. Cleveland was seriously ill, went to a friend who had intimacy with the President, and said:
“I wish you would find out for me whether it is true that the President is in danger. I have heard that it is so, and if it is, it is the blackest cloud upon our horizon to-day. I did not vote for Mr. Cleveland, for I do not believe in some of the principles of his party, and I do not agree with him in some of his views. Yet if he had been the candidate of my party I would gladly have voted for him, for I think he is the most conscientious man I ever knew. I have perfect faith in his fidelity to his sense of duty, and I have never seen an action of his as President which I thought was inspired simply by a desire for partisan advantage. I think he is the faithfullest public man that we have had since Lincoln in his adherence to his convictions.”
There is only one word that will give a name to this quality that distinguishes Mr. Cleveland, and that is, Character—that quality which Emerson describes as a reserve force which acts directly and without means, whose essence, with Mr. Cleveland, is the courage of truth.
Not long ago a group of notable men were discussing Cleveland as a politician, and they seemed to be agreed that in the sense in which the word “politician” is customarily used he is not a man of remarkable ability, and there were anecdotes told to justify such opinion as that. His nomination for governor was the result of as purely political manipulation as New York State has ever seen, but he had no part in it. Those who were sincerely urging his nomination permitted him to take no part in these politics, for they had learned that he was possessed of two weaknesses as a politician, which, unless he were restrained, would be likely to defeat their plans: one of them the political fault of honesty. It was displayed in Buffalo once, when, it being proposed to nominate him for mayor, and the ticket agreed upon having been shown to him, he declared, with expressions more emphatic than pious, that he would not permit his name to go on the ticket upon which was the name of a certain man whom he believed to be unworthy, although this man had great political influence.
Another weakness, from the politicians’ point of view, is a seeming incapacity to understand the need of organization in political work. It is not only incapacity to understand the need, but also ignorance of the way in which organization can be effected. It has been revealed in all of Mr. Cleveland’s campaigns. After his election as Governor of New York by a plurality of nearly two hundred thousand, his availability as a presidential candidate was recognized, and, later, was strengthened by the assurance that his messages while Mayor of Buffalo had brought him the respect and confidence of the independent element; yet Mr. Cleveland’s friends very soon discovered that if they were to bring about his nomination for President, it must be done through organization of which he was either ignorant or to which he would be indifferent. So Mr. Cleveland had almost no part in that splendid game of 1884. He knew almost nothing of those things which were being done for him. Mr. Manning and the others had taken him up at first because of his availability; but Mr. Manning soon discovered that a man might be available and still be as ignorant of the science of politics, as understood by those who make it a professional pursuit, as a child.
After Mr. Cleveland became President, he sometimes drove his friends almost to distraction by his seeming incapacity to understand movements in the game of politics, which his friends suggested to him. A number of them went to him some time near the middle of his term as President, to set forth the political condition in New York State. They were men of long training and considerable achievement in politics. They had made successes both in New York City and New York State. They spoke to him with freedom—some of them with bluntness. They said to Mr. Cleveland that the then Governor of New York, Mr. Hill, was constructing with unusual cunning and consummate ability a political machine which might not be friendly, and was perhaps likely to be actively hostile, to him; and then, with much of detail, they showed Mr. Cleveland how he could break down such organization, utterly scatter it, and create and maintain in New York State one upon which he could rely with serenity. The merest tyro in politics can easily understand with what chagrin and astonishment these friends departed from his presence, because he did not seem to have been impressed in the slightest by their assertion that he was in political danger in New York State, and did not appear to comprehend the methods which they suggested by which the danger could be overcome.
Then again, in the spring and summer of 1892, when it seemed for a time as though the tide was setting against his nomination, when it was certain that the most powerful influence ever arrayed against a leading candidate for a presidential nomination had been secured, and one which, according to all precedent, would be successful, Mr. Cleveland astonished and almost vexed those friends of his who were working in and out of season to bring about his nomination, by professing indifference to the opposition of the New York State delegation, and of some of the most powerful politicians in the Democratic party. He had been at the Victoria Hotel one evening, listening in an almost perfunctory way to the plaints and warnings of his friends. He had no suggestions to offer, no advice to give. A stranger seeing him there would have thought that he was not one of that company holding this consultation, but perhaps a friend, there by chance, whose presence was not offensive, and was therefore tolerated.
At last, complaining of the warmth of the evening, he proposed a stroll; then, taking two friends by their arms, he walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, and astonished them by saying:
“These things which you have told me do not alarm me at all. They can do their worst, and yet I shall be nominated in spite of them.”
And, later on, after his prediction was justified, and his name in the Chicago Convention had triumphed over all political precedent, and conquered the most powerful and perfect opposition ever arrayed against a candidate, while there was still grumbling and bitter feeling and revengeful threats of New York State, he again amazed these friends by saying to them, when they proposed a certain form of counter-organization to prevent treachery, “No, no, do not do it. Let them do their worst; I can be elected without New York.”