Grover Cleveland, the man and the statesman : an authorized biography

Front matter

THE MAN AND THE STATESMAN

VOLUME ONE

THE MAN AND THE STATESMAN

Chapter I

"// a man were permitted to make all the homes, he neeu not care who should make the laws of a nation."

— Grover Cleveland.

THE task of the historian is to separate truth from the propaganda of the past, and in the case of a biography this task is often rendered most difficult by the attempts of the subject to prepare his biographer's way before him. But Grover Cleveland made no such attempt. His mind was occupied with present duties, not future fame, and he was content to allow the muse of history to write her verdict without his personal aid. As a result we have neither autobiography nor personal memoir to guide or to misguide us. What we know of Grover Cleveland, the man, has been gathered almost wholly from his contemporaries, and from casual references in letters and speeches written with no thought of the verdict of history. What we know of Grover Cleveland, the statesman, has been culled from documents equally guiltless of propaganda. For, although in later life he published a number of monographs dealing with important incidents in his presidential career, they are, one and all, as impersonal as a presidential message or an executive order; and this is the more remarkable in a man who passed into history before he passed into silence.

According to certain genealogical tables which Dr. David Starr Jordan has examined and accepted, Grover Cleveland, George Washington, King Henry V of England, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert E. Lee, Henry- Adams, Jonathan Edwards, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller were descended from a common ancestry, "each showing one of the many 'direct lines' leading down from Isabel de Vermandois," who died in 1 131.

Although interesting, this appears of little real significance, since, as the same authority points out, every person now living would find, should he count back, that, allowing three generations to a century, he has had more than one hundred and thirty-four million ancestors since the year iioo, and more than twice that number if he counted "intervening forbears."

But genealogical studies had little interest for Mr. Cleveland. His indifference to his personal history was equaled by his lack of interest in his family history; and it is due solely to the efforts of others that in England we can trace his family line to the Norman conquest and beyond, while in this country we follow it through all the generations which make up the history of the American people since 1635, when Moses Cleveland landed in Massachusetts, an indented apprentice from Ipswich.

The name Cleveland is of Saxon origin. The estate or the district Cleveland, near the historic town of Whitby, was so called "because of the clefts or cleaves which abounded there." In early days the name was spelled Cliveland, Clyveland, Clievland, Cleivland, Cleaveland, Clevland, Cleveland, Cleffland, Clifland, or in other ways, if others be possible, according to the fancy of the writer. Such liberties were taken with all names in those happy days of phonetic freedom. But Cleveland or Clyveland, Cliveland or Clifland, every line of the family runs back to England. The genealogical tree is a veritable English oak, with no branch grafted from the Continent.

Starting with Moses, born in 1624, the American branch very properly passes to Aaron, and for four consecutive generations the oldest son bears the latter name. In 1770, however, William Cleveland appeared to break the succession, and his son, Richard Falley Cleveland, was Grover Cleveland's father.

Richard Falley Cleveland was born at Norwich, Connecticut, June 19, 1804. He received his college training at Yale, where he took high honors as of the class of 1824. Soon after graduation, his aim being the Presbyterian ministry, he accepted a post as tutor in Baltimore, where he began his theological studies and at the same time earned enough money to make possible a few months in the Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1828, he was ordained, and accepted the pastorate of the First Congregational Church at Windham, Connecticut. He had, however, left his heart in Baltimore, and in 1829 he returned to recover it, and with it her in whose keeping he had left it, the gentle Ann Neal.

Ann Neal, the mother of Cleveland, has left few traces to aid the biographer eager to do her justice. We know that she was of Irish and French descent, that her father was a publisher of law books in Baltimore, and that she was born in that city on February 4, 1806; but beyond that we know little except that love came early into her life in the handsome person of Richard Cleveland, and that her devotion stood the test of time, changing conditions, and an always scanty income. A country clergyman's life in those days meant constant sacrifice, and Ann Neal's sacrifice began when as a bride she returned with her husband to Windham where, in conformity to prevailing local standards, she willingly gave up many innocent enjoyments that the minister's influence might not be jeopardized, or the cause they both loved weakened.

When Ann left her father's house, her colored maid, who had cared for her from infancy, begged to be allowed to accompany her. Thus attended, and rejoicing in many bright articles of personal adornment, she entered the New England manse only to find that colored maids were regarded as unnecessary luxuries, and objectionable, as savoring of slavery. She soon understood also that jewelry was unbecoming a minister's wife. So the faithful servant was cheerfully returned to her Southern home, the treasured little ornaments were laid aside without a sigh, and the bright heart of Ann Neal Cleveland beat under costumes suitable to the wife of a village minister of New England. But the young couple were poor only in goods. They had education, culture, congeniality, and spiritual wealth — resources sufficient to encourage hope of a happy future.

The young wife was not long called upon to walk in the ways of the Puritan. In 1833 the field of their joint labors was transferred to the more familiar atmosphere of Portsmouth, Virginia; and two years later they settled down to the seven years of Richard Cleveland's pastorate at Caldwell, New Jersey.

The Cleveland family had grown since the days in Windham. Two children, Anna, and William Neal, had been born in Connecticut, Mary Allen during the brief pastorate at Portsmouth, and Richard Cecil almost as soon as the trunks were unpacked in the little manse at Caldwell. Less than two years later, on March i8, 1837, the fifth child was born, and they called him Stephen Grover in honor of the late pastor, whose service at Caldwell had lasted almost half a century, and whose name was there greatly beloved.

In 1 841 Reverend Richard Cleveland accepted a call as pastor of a church in Fayetteville, New York, and to Fayetteville, with the others, went the young Grover, traveling the way of the patient, on an Erie Canal boat, which in those days was a method so slow that the Clevelands were weeks on the journey. Fayetteville, in 1841, was a quiet village, with a good academy, which served the older Cleveland children both as educational and social center. But there were no kindergartens in those days and the education of Grover, the four-year-old, had to wait. His training, however, did not wait. Filial reverence, strict obedience, unquestioning belief in parental wisdom, and ready compliance with parental commands were the presuppositions of life, according to the Puritan creed which dominated the family. "Often and often as a boy," he declared in later years, "I was compelled to get out of my warm bed at night, to hang up a hat or other garment which I had left on the floor."

The commands of the Bible, the memorizing of the Westminster Catechism, the strictest observance of Sunday as the Puritan had understood it, were the elements upon which the character of Grover Cleveland were built. Father, mother, and nine children were all supported by the minister's salary, which seldom exceeded six hundred dollars a year.

Under such conditions, simple, cultivated, religious, Grover Cleveland passed the most formative years of his life. With the help of the academy and of his intelligent and well-trained father, he acquired a reasonable proficiency in Latin and mathematics, and an interest in religious questions which lasted throughout his life.

In the home of his childhood vexed questions such as Sabbath observance were not debated. Each child understood that six days were made for work and play, and one for worship. When the long shadows began to fall on Sabbath eve, playthings were put away, clothes carefully arranged for use on the morrow, an early supper was prepared, in order that there might be ample time for the weekly bath, at which the elder sisters assisted with conscientious thoroughness. For clean hands as well as a pure heart were considered appropriate accompaniments of the day of rest.

While the steaming tubs were playing their part on one side of the kitchen, the one servant, a self-respecting Canadian woman, was preparing the material for Sunday dinner on the other. A peck of potatoes, the roast, the rice pudding with its spices and raisins, all had to be got ready on Saturday.

When the little Clevelands, with ears shining and at times with hearts resentful at the memory of too vigorous gouging, had been tucked into bed, the elder members of the family retired to the church to practice hymns for the service of the morrow. Sunday was itself a discipline — two sermons a day, with Sunday school between, and a prayer meeting in the evening which, on the first Sunday of each month, took the form of a missionary lecture and always closed with the singing of the hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains."

With the end of afternoon service, the strain of piety was a little lightened, and the family assembled for a substantial meal at three-thirty. A walk in the garden or in the orchard beyond the house followed, and at twilight the pastor met his family for an hour of private worship. Then the little ones were sent to bed, while their elders returned to the church for an evening meeting.

Such was the atmosphere in which Grover Cleveland passed his childhood. It inevitably tended to produce a keen sense of personal responsibility, to make trustworthy character; for its ethical basis was absolute. It taught that there is a right which is eternally right, and a wrong which must remain forever wrong.

To one of Mr. Cleveland's sisters we are indebted for the following memory which shows how early the sense of responsibility was developed in the boy: *'It was a very busy day and the last baby was more than usually troublesome. Grover was pressed into service as babytender, and encouraged to believe that sleep would soon end his task. The vision of a little round-faced, blue-eyed boy rocking a cradle, with a far-away look out of the window where the 'fellers' were sliding down the hill, is very clear in my memory. His heart was with the boys, but his hand steadily kept the cradle in motion.

''The wide-open eyes of the infant were met by Grover with an hypnotic stare, as he monotonously droned out the refrain, ' 'T is a sin to steal a pin, and how much more a greater thing.' He tried all keys and all modulations; but the baby smile persisted, and the baby eyes watched every motion with a sleepless interest.

"Convinced at last that the combined concert and pantomime were too exciting, Grover changed his tactics. He suddenly disappeared beneath the cradle, hushed his lullaby, and moved the rockers, slowly and quietly, back and forth, from his unseen position. After a few moments, he rose stealthily, and peered cautiously over the side of the cradle, only to be greeted by that same baby smile, and those wide-open baby eyes. Then, with a despairing glance out of the window toward the hill where the

'fellers' slid, and with tears in his blue eyes, Grover Cleveland dropped resignedly to the floor again, and resumed his monotonous rocking. There he lay, listening, sobbing and doing his duty, until relieved by an older sister who came to the rescue."

Alvah Woodworth, once proprietor of the iron foundry at Manlius, New York, has left us the story of how Grover Cleveland and the Bangs boys prepared to hail a certain glorious fourth of July. They had gathered a little wagon-load of old iron and brought it to Woodworth to be melted and molded into a cannon.

"Puffing and perspiring," he says, "they toiled along, one boy between the shafts, pulling, and the other two back of the wagon, pushing. When they had arrived opposite the village foundry, they halted. One of the boys — he was the youngest and shortest of the trio — then made it known . . . that they desired to exchange their load of old iron in return for a small cannon, which the proprietor was to make for them in time to use in their fourth of July celebration.

"The foundryman weighed up the iron and found that there was not a sufficient quantity to pay for the job. This rather staggered the boys for a moment, but their spokesman [Grover Cleveland], who seemed to be a lad of resources, soon found a way out of the difficulty. His proposition was that the foundryman should go ahead and make the cannon, and after the arduous work of the fourth was disposed of he and his fellow patriots would drag up another load of iron to square up accounts. The proprietor of the foundry looked the boys over keenly and decided he could trust them. So the cannon was made and used and, true to their word, the boys delivered to the foundryman a second load of old iron as payment for the balance they owed him."

That this was done promptly we can infer from Grover's appreciation of the value of time, as shown by an essay which he wrote at the age of nine :

Fayetteville Academy Sept. S, 1846.

Time.

Time is divided into seconds — minutes, hours, days, weeks month years and centurys. If we expect to become great and good men and be respected and esteemed by our friends we must inprove our time when we are young. George Washington inproved his time when he was a boy and he was not sorry when he was at the head of a large army fighting for his country. A great meny of our great men wer poor and had smal means of obtaining an education but by improving their time when they were young and in school they obtained their high standing Jackson was a poor boy but he was placed in school and by improving his time he found himself a president of the United States guiding and directing a powerful nation. If we wish to become great and usful in the world we must improve our time in school.

S. G. Cleveland.

That the atmosphere of Fayetteville did not always breed progressive and enlightened citizens is abundantly demonstrated by a letter which President Cleveland received, two years after he entered the White House :

March 22, 1887, Grover Cleveland Washington DC Dear Grover

Hank Stebbins told me the other day that you was elected president I just couldnt believe it — I often wonderd whare you was — I haint herd of you for years . . . I have got a good job . . . here but I would like to live in Washington — Can you give me a job there for the sake of old times — Sallie Hornakers is dead had a rising. Please rite to your old friend and schoolmate.

For nine years Richard Cleveland served the people of Fayetteville as pastor. Then his health began to fail, and the strain of sustaining so large a family upon so meager a salary was heavy. When, therefore, the American Home Missionary Society offered him an agency with a salary of $1000 a year, he accepted the appointment, which involved a change of residence to Clinton, N. Y. The move was made in 1 85 1 , when Stephen Grover was fourteen years of age, but he always remembered with pleasure those youthful days at Fayetteville. In after years, as President of the United States, he returned for a flying visit, and his brief speech is one of the few autobiographical touches that he left among his papers.

"As I find myself once more in this pretty village," he said, "the sports and pastimes of my youth come back to my mind. I take warm interest in being with you once more. Some of you more than forty years ago were my schoolfellows and playmates. I can recall the faces of some that are now no more.

"I have been reminded to-day by an old resident of the many deaths which occurred among those I knew since I took my departure from you, and I was astonished to find that I could remember so many of the old names in di-iving from the foot of the street to the parsonage and the academy. There were Cobb, Parker, Gillett, McVicker, Worden, Palmer, Horner, Edwards, Noble, Deacon Flint, and many others. I recall old Green Lake and the fish I tried to catch and never did, and the tra-

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT II

ditional panther on its shores which used to shorten my excursions thitherward. I've heard so much howling in the past two years that I don't think I should be frightened by the panther now.

"If some of the old householders were here I could tell them who it was that used to take ofif their front gates. I mention this because I have been accused of so many worse crimes since I have been in Washington that I consider taking ofif gates something of a virtue.

"I would be sadly at fault if I failed to recall the many inestimable benefits I received at your hands — my early education, the training of the Sunday school, the religious advantages, the advantages of your social life. These are things which have gone with me in every step in life. And so, when in short intervals of freedom from the cares and duties of my office, my mind revels in retrospection, these early recollections are the truest, pleasantest, and brightest spots on which my memory lights.

"And so, you see, I have taken you and your village with me, and whether you are willing or not, I have made you a part of this administration. I have been a sad truant, but, now that you have seen me, keep your eyes ever upon me as I strive to do my duty in behalf of the people of this country. And it shall be my desire so to act that I may receive the approbation of these, my oldest and best friends."

At Clinton the Cleveland children enjoyed educational advantages far superior to those of Fayetteville, and the atmosphere of Hamilton College fostered in Grover the ambition already created by the influence of a scholarly father and a mother wise enough to understand the supreme advantages of a thorough intellectual training. But his brief sojourn here failed to develop in him any unusual scholarly gifts. As a student he did not shine.

The wonderful powers of application and concentration which later distinguished him were not yet apparent. He made friends more effectively than grades, and his friendships lasted.

He has himself left us an account of his Clinton days :

"It was here, in the school at the foot of College Hill, that I began my preparation for college life and enjoyed the anticipation of a collegiate education. We had two teachers in our school. One became afterward a judge in Chicago, and the other passed through the legal profession to the ministry, and within the last two years was living farther West.

"I read a little Latin with two other boys in the class. I think I floundered through four books of the iEneid. The other boys had nice large modern editions of Virgil, with big print and plenty of notes to help one over the hard places. Mine was a little old-fashioned copy which my father used before me, with no notes, and which was only translated by hard knocks. I believe I have forgiven those other boys for their persistent refusal to allow me the use of the notes in their books. At any rate, they do not seem to have been overtaken by any dire retribution, for one of them is now a rich and prosperous lawyer in Buffalo, and the other is a professor in your college and the orator of to-day's celebration. The struggles with ten lines of Virgil, which at first made up my daily task, are amusing as remembered now; but with them I am also forced to remember, that, instead of being the beginning of the higher education for which I honestly longed, they occurred near the end of my school advantages. This suggests a disappointment which no lapse of time can alleviate, and a deprivation I have sadly felt with every passing year. . . .

"I don't know that I should indulge further recollections that must seem very little like centennial history; but I want to establish as well as I can my right to be here. I might speak of the college faculty, who cast such a pleasing though sober shade of dignity over the place, and who, with other educated and substantial citizens, made up the best of social life. I was a boy then, and slightly felt the atmosphere of this condition; but, notwithstanding, I believe I absorbed a lasting appreciation of the intelligence and refinement which made this a delightful home.

"I know that you will bear with me, my friends, if I yield to the impulse which the mention of home creates, and speak of my own home here, and how through the memories which cluster about it I may claim a tender relationship to your village. Here it was that our family circle entire, parents and children, lived day after day in loving and affectionate converse; and here, for the last time, we met around the family altar and thanked God that our household was unbroken by death or separation. We never met together in any other home after leaving this, and Death followed closely our departure.

"And thus it is that, as with advancing years I survey the havoc Death has made, and as the thoughts of my early home become more sacred, the remembrance of this pleasant spot, so related, is revived and chastened."

Hamilton College was the Mecca of his dreams. His brother, William, was already nearing the end of his course, and Grover's turn was soon to come. But necessity is a stern master, and at this point it took control. The imperative need of relief for the hard-pressed family treasury sent Grover back to Fayetteville to work in a village store. Here he made himself useful in various ways, receiving in return a salary of fifty dollars for the first year, and one hundred for the second, with board and lodging furnished without charge.

Life in a western New York village in those days partook somewhat of the conditions of the frontier. Comforts were few, and of these still fewer fell to the lot of John McVicar's clerks. But the boys gave little thought to their physical surroundings. From the pen of his fellow clerk, F. G. Tibbitts, we have this picture of their daily life:

^'It was our duty to wait on customers, sweep and clean up, open and close the place, run errands, and do a turn for neighbors at odd times. . . . Our room was . . . a large, unfurnished room. The bed was a plain, pine one, with cords upon which to lay the tick. ... In that room, without carpet, without wall paper, without pictures, bare, drear, and desolate, we two lived together one whole year. In the winter we fairly froze sometimes. There was no stove in the room, heat coming up from a pipe leading from the store below. . . . Grover used to rise, in those days, at about five o'clock in the summer and half-past five in the winter. He would go out to an old green pump that then stood in the square, used for watering horses, and make his morning toilet in the trough; then back to the store; open up; sweep out; build the fire; dust up; lay out the goods. By and by, about seven o'clock, along would come Mr. McVicar."

At the end of two years Grover returned to Clinton to continue his preparation for entering college; but his plans were soon again swept aside by the ruthless hand of fate. His father, whose health was still failing, shortly resigned his too arduous post at Clinton to accept a rural pastorate at Holland Patent, near Utica.

The move was made in the autumn of 1853, the last earthly autumn for that devoted servant of God. Three

Sundays he preached to his new congregation, and then death came suddenly. He was only forty-nine, poor in the goods of this world, but rich in a record of noble and unselfish service.

The tidings reached Grover through the voice of a newsboy crying papers in the street. He had driven to Utica with his sister, Mary, who was preparing for her wedding to Mr. M. E. Hoyt, and wished to make some purchases. As he sat in the carriage waiting, the cry reached him. His father had died only a few moments after his departure from Holland Patent.

This sudden and untimely death changed Grover's entire outlook. He was now sixteen years old, and abundantly supplied with brothers and sisters. Otherwise, he had inherited only the world to live in, and immediate self-support was imperative. He therefore sought a position and soon found one in the New York Institute for the Blind. But a single year having convinced him that such a life was not for him, he returned to Holland Patent, and patiently canvassed the neighborhood for employment with a future.

Disappointment followed. There seemed no satisfactory opening in that general region, and reluctantly he was forced to consider some other locality. In those days the trade winds blew steadily in one direction for young men of ambition and scant means, and Grover at last decided to go West. His earnings had been generously placed in the family sinking fund, which had sunk so low that he was compelled to borrow twenty-five dollars to pay the expense of his intended journey. For this he gave a personal note, promising to pay when convenient. Twelve years later he sent to his benefactor the following letter :

My dear Mr. Townsend :

I am now in condition to pay my note which you hold given for money borrowed some years ago. I suppose I might have paid it long before, but I have never thought you were in need of it, and I had other purposes for my money. I have forgotten the date of the note. If you will send me it I will mail you the principal and interest. The loan you made me was my start in life, and I shall always preserve the note as an interesting reminder of your kindness. Let me hear from you soon. With many kind wishes to Mrs. Townsend and your family, I am yours, very respectfully,

Grover Cleveland.

The town of Cleveland, Ohio, was his intended destination, the name, given in honor of his kinsman. General Moses Cleveland, seeming to him a good omen. But at Buffalo fate again intervened, this time in the person of his uncle, Lewis Allen, a well-known shorthorn cattle breeder, whose home was at Black Rock, on the outskirts of the city. Having stopped here for a brief visit, the traveler was persuaded to accept an offer of work on Mr. Allen's herd book, which netted him sixty dollars in cash, and deprived Ohio of another President of the United States; for Buffalo became henceforth his home.

His life in the Allen household was pleasant, even luxurious, and his earnings sufficient for his personal needs. But, although circumstances had forced him to abandon all idea of a college training, he was still resolved, with a resolution singularly like the law of the Medes and Persians "which altereth not," to study law.

Mr. Allen easily secured for him a clerkship in the firm of Rogers, Bowen and Rogers, whose senior member had a very simple theory of education: "If a boy has brains he will find out for himself without any telling." Grover Cleveland was accordingly given a table, a shelf of law books, and permission to study law, in so far as that occupation did not interfere with his clerical duties.

His own account of his persistent struggle for education is characteristically direct and impersonal:

"I know a young man who, when quite young, determined to acquire a college education and enter the legal profession.

"The door to a college education was inexorably closed against him.

"He at once set his heart on studying law without collegiate training. When it soon appeared that even this must be postponed, he quite cheerfully set about finding any kind of honest work.

"After an unsuccessful quest for employment near home, he started for the West. He had adversity in abundance.

"He had plenty of willingness to work, plenty of faith and a fair stock of perseverance in reserve. He had no misgivings.