CHAPTER VII

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND ONCE MORE

WHEN Mr. Cleveland, as President-elect, proceeded to the Capitol to take the oath of office for the second time, it seemed almost as though the earlier ceremony of 1889 were being faithfully repeated. Now as then, he was accompanied by Mr. Harrison, and only the relations of the two were changed. Then, Mr. Cleveland was a defeated candidate giving place to his victorious successor. Now, it was Mr. Harrison who was gracefully sustaining the same rôle, and in his turn making way for an opponent. In externals, however, the scene was essentially the same, even to the aspect of the weather; for a storm of mingled sleet and rain was raging, and Washington had awakened on that raw March morning to find the streets all whitened by a swirl of snow.

Amid a driving gale, and standing in what an observer graphically described as "a blizzard-riddled wooden pen, the new President, bareheaded, delivered without notes of any kind, a brief inaugural address; and then for five hours he reviewed the long procession which marched past the presidential stand. Its most conspicuous feature was the entire National Guard of Pennsylvania, headed by the Democratic Governor of that State. For the first time also in the history of inaugural parades, women participated in the pageant. A cavalcade of them from Mary. land, superbly mounted, rode past the President, adding a new element of the picturesque. More interesting, however, in view of recent political events, was the presence

of three thousand Tammany men, of whom several hundred were arrayed in Indian garb, and with whom were leaders such as Croker, Grady and others, who for nine years had waged relentless war, on Mr. Cleveland. Assuredly it was for him a day of genuine triumph when even such consistent enemies as these had been brought to heel. On the day following the inauguration, Senator Hill called upon the President, and the two were closeted for hours. Just what passed between them no one ever learned; but it seems quite certain that Mr. Hill accepted frankly the inevitable. From that day he never seriously opposed the policy of his successful rival, and more than once in the tempestuous times which followed, he did staunch service in its defence.

And thus began the years of President Cleveland's second term of office, which a philosophical writer has truly characterised as "the most momentous period in a time of peace in the history of the country, and the most interesting, from a political point of view, in either war or peace." The fury of the elements, that raged throughout the day of its inception symbolised, as it were, the storm and stress which marked the years of its continuance, and which reached a climax at its close.

The composition of the new Cabinet had become known to the people before the nominations were laid before the Senate. The Secretary of State was Mr. Walter Q. Gresham of Illinois, lately a judge in one of the Federal courts. Mr. Gresham had been a lifelong Republican until a few months prior to President Cleveland's election. He had even been regarded as a possible Republican candidate for the Presidency. At the Republican National Convention of 1888, he had received on the first ballot III votes, standing second only to Senator Sherman, who led the 1 Stanwood, A History of the Presidency, p. 519 (Boston, 1898).

poll until the combination in favour of Harrison was effected.2 Mr. Gresham had always been a conservative, a "Lincoln Republican," wholly out of sympathy with the later tendencies of his party; and when the tariff was made a direct issue in 1892, he turned his back upon high protection as a policy, and publicly announced his purpose of voting for Mr. Cleveland. Mr. Gresham was popular with the labour element in the Middle West, and as a judge had given from the bench decisions accompanied by obiter dicta that greatly pleased the opponents of privilege. He was a man of the Cleveland type, sternly honest, inflexible of purpose, and vigorous in mind. In some respects he fell short of the ideal requirements in a Secretary of State. His training had not sufficiently familiarised him with the minutiae of diplomatic relations. He failed, perhaps, to appreciate the importance of these relations as compared with concerns of domestic interest. Moreover, on the personal side, he lacked something of that regard for the fitness of things which ought to characterise one who has to do with the representatives of foreign countries. It was Mr. Gresham's wont to receive ambassadors and ministers-men bred to the most punctilious etiquette-sitting in his shirt-sleeves at his desk, and chewing on the stump of a cigar; while he was overfond of lounging about the corridors of Willard's Hotel and mingling with the very motley mob which sprawled there at all hours of the day and night. Naturally, Mr. Gresham's appointment was rather sharply criticised. Republicans regarded him as a renegade from their ranks, while many Democrats thought it hard that the chief Cabinet position should go to so very recent a convert to Democracy.

Mr. John G. Carlisle of Kentucky was made Secretary

2 See p. 156.

of the Treasury, and offered a brilliant contrast to his two immediate predecessors. He was an experienced legislator, who had been three times Speaker of the House and a member of seven different Congresses, in all of which he had concerned himself with questions of theoretical and practical finance. Mr. Carlisle was of a calm, reflective, and judicial cast of mind, and he had to an exceptional degree the gift of lucid and convincing exposition. While acting as Speaker, Mr. Carlisle once received an unusual compliment from a political opponent. Mr. (afterwards Senator) Hiscock of New York, said of Mr. Carlisle : "He is one of the strongest of Democrats and I am one of the strongest of Republicans; yet my imagination is not strong enough to conceive of his making an unfair ruling or doing an unfair thing against the party opposed to him in this House." 3

The President appointed as Secretary of War, Colonel Daniel S. Lamont of New York, who had been private secretary to Mr. Cleveland while the latter was Governor of New York, and also during his first administration as President. It was essentially a personal appointment, well justified both by Colonel Lamont's devotion to Mr. Cleveland and also by his ability, his sound judgment and his admirable tact. Another personal appointment was that of Mr. Wilson S. Bissell of New York, an old and intimate friend, to be Postmaster-General. The new Secretary of the Navy was Mr. Hilary A. Herbert of Alabama-the first ex-Confederate to be placed in charge of one of the military departments of the Government. Mr. Herbert was an accomplished gentleman and a skilful administrator. He had served as chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs in three Congresses and was intimately familiar with the duties of his new office. A. D. White, Autobiography, ii. p. 126 (New York. 1995).

Under him, the navy of the United States, which a few years before had ranked as only twelfth among the navies of the world, advanced to the fifth place, being surpassed only by the armaments of Great Britain, France, Russia and Germany. Mr. Hoke Smith of Georgia became Secretary of the Interior and Mr. Julius S. Morton of Nebraska, Secretary of Agriculture. The Cabinet was completed by the appointment to the Attorney-Generalship of Mr. Richard Olney of Massachusetts, whose name was destined to be honourably associated with some of the most stirring events of President Cleveland's administration. When he became Attorney-General he was almost unknown outside of his native State. Educated at Brown and Harvard, he was a successful lawyer who had mingled but little in public life, beyond serving in the Massachusetts Legislature. He had, however, a very forceful personality, combining the keenness and prompt decisiveness of a trained reasoner with a certain aggressive quality which suggested, under all the suave amenities of a polished gentleman, the pugnacity, and also the tenacity, of a bulldog.

President Cleveland entered upon his duties under no illusions as to the difficulty of the problems which confronted him. There was a seriousness, amounting almost to solemnity, in some of the sentences of his inaugural address, which may have been regarded lightly by those who then heard or read them, but which afterwards were seen to have been full of meaning. Toward the close, he said with something like the spirit of prophecy:

Anxiety for the pledges which my party has made constrains me to remind those with whom I am to co-operate, that we can succeed in doing the work which has been especially set