The Gilded Age Heretic
The Gilded Age is not known for its presidents. The chief executives from 1876 to 1896 saw themselves not as active leaders but as checks against, or in some cases enablers of, a corrupt Congress; this “light touch” leadership condemned most of them to obscurity beyond political history nerds. One exception is Grover Cleveland, America’s first nonconsecutive president. Gilded Age Democrats loved Cleveland during his first term for his fiscal responsibility; they also turned against him during his second term for the same reason. This culminated in the Democrats backing a presidential candidate who was the opposite of Cleveland. If we are to understand the party’s turning on Cleveland, we must examine his life.
Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18th, 1837, in Cadwell, New Jersey. The Cleveland family frequently moved around New York because their father, Richard Cleveland, was a poor traveling preacher. This lowly upbringing taught the young Cleveland personal discipline and living within one’s means. Cleveland wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a preacher, but things changed when the older man died of a stomach ulcer in 1853 (Algeo, 2011, 19-22). The tragedy forced Cleveland to support his family for the next several years. In 1855 Cleveland moved to Buffalo. Cleveland’s uncle had secured him a clerkship at a prominent local law firm. Cleveland worked long hours and studied law during his free time. His relentlessness paid off in 1859 when he passed the bar and became a lawyer. Several years later, the American Civil War began. Cleveland spent the war on his legal practice; when he was called up for service in 1863, he paid for a substitute because he was his family’s primary breadwinner (Welch Jr, 1988, 22-4). The following years saw Cleveland dip his toe into politics. In 1865 Cleveland ran as a Democrat for Erie County district attorney…and lost. Cleveland kept up his legal practice until 1870 when he was elected the sheriff of Erie County. He spent his time as sheriff doing what he could have passed off to others like executing prisoners. Cleveland also built up support with his jovial-but-serious personality. Local party leaders saw Cleveland’s potential, but he returned to legal matters when his term ended (Graff, 2002, 16-18). Little did either side know Cleveland would catapult from a local figure to the highest elected office in the United States in the blink of an eye.
Cleveland spent the rest of the 1870s on the law as Buffalo, and all of America’s cities, scummed to political machines. Political machines were organizations that controlled local politics. One popular example is Tammy Hall in New York City around that time. These groups held power through methods like kickbacks and favoritism. In 1881, Buffalo’s Democrats were looking for a mayoral candidate, and Cleveland…was not their first choice. He only ran for mayor on the encouragement of his political contacts (Algeo, 27-30). Cleveland’s staunch anti-corruption proved to be what the party and voters were looking for and it carried him to victory. He spent his time in the mayor’s office focused on money: he killed padded government contracts, he awarded contracts to competent contractors, and he made sure Buffalo’s money was being used effectively. These efforts caught the attention of the state’s Democratic leadership; they needed a candidate for the 1882 New York governor’s race. Cleveland began connecting with the party’s factions from reformers to party bosses. Many of the state’s party bosses assumed Cleveland would pay them back when he won the race that November; Cleveland had other ideas. He battled political machines as fervently as he did when he challenged wasteful spending in Buffalo. Cleveland’s actions convinced national Democratic leaders he should be their 1884 presidential candidate (Welch Jr, 24-28). That year, Republicans ran the notoriously corrupt Maine Senator James G Blaine. Blaine attacked Cleveland’s character by portraying him as a notorious drunkard. Blaine’s toxic tactics and corruption turned enough New York voters to hand Cleveland the presidency (Algeo, 34-38). However, Cleveland focused on one major issue during his time in the White House: tariffs.
Tariffs—import taxes—were a major issue during the Gilded Age because they formed most of the federal budget; think of them like today’s debates around tax rates. Republicans supported high tariffs to promote American industry; Democrats opposed tariffs since they harmed their working-class base. Cleveland thought tariffs helped politically-connected industries at the average person’s expense. Cleveland and his congressional allies tried to lower tariffs in 1887 only for the Republican Senate to block it. This failure, and Cleveland’s weak campaigning, cost him the 1888 election (Welch Jr, 83-8, 94-8). He spent the next four years horrified at the Republicans reversing his policies. The worst of these was a tariff increase championed by Ohio Representative William McKinely; the second worst was the passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. It made the federal government purchase tons of silver from western mines (Graff, 100-4). This represented another great economic debate of the Gilded Age: free silver.
Free silver is the policy of letting people exchange their dollars for less valuable silver or more valuable gold. Think of free silver as late 19th-century money printing; a large infusion of cash devaluing the existing money supply. Rural Democrats supported free silver since it helped their debt-burdened base; Republicans, urban Democrats, and Cleveland, opposed free silver because it devalued the dollar. Cleveland returned to politics in the run-up to the 1892 election. Cleveland became the Democratic nominee because he was the only person everyone in the party tolerated (Graff, 103-6). Cleveland didn’t know following his reelection he would spend his second term saving the American economy…by going against his party.
In early 1893, a massive drop in agriculture sparked a wave of bank failures across the country culminating in a massive recession (Dupont, 2009, 27-8, 32-3). Cleveland responded with trademark fiscal discipline and successfully lobbied Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. His response helped stabilize the economy for a time, but it didn’t change the long-term confidence of investors. Southern and Western Democrats attacked Cleveland for his actions (Welch Jr, 115-9, 122-7). Economics wasn’t the only reason Democrats turned against their leader. Cleveland alienated urban Democrats by crushing labor unrest throughout his second term. Cleveland also snubbed his party’s expansionists by not annexing Hawaii after a coup toppled the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. That’s not to say Cleveland’s second term was just bridge burning: he improved relations with the United Kingdom, he prevented a war between the UK and Germany over Samoa, and he mediated a border dispute between British Guiana—modern Guyana—and Venezuela (Welch Jr, 145-50, 158-66, 180-7). By 1896, the Democrats felt it was time for a change.
In 1896, the Democrats nominated Nebraska House Representative William Jennings Bryan as their presidential candidate. Bryan was everything Cleveland hated: a free silver firebrand who hated low tariffs. Bryan’s nomination meant that Democrats no longer believed in Cleveland’s ideas; the only solace for Cleveland was that the Republican McKinley crushed Bryan in the elections that November. Cleveland never forgave the Democrats for nominating Bryan for the rest of his life. Cleveland left the White House in March 1897 knowing that the American economy was safe from the party that had abandoned him. Cleveland spent his final years in quiet retirement. When he died on June 24th, 1908, his last words perfectly summed up his life: “I have tried so hard to do right” (Welch Jr, 208-212; Graff, 130-5).
Works Cited
Algeo, M. (2011). President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth. Chicago Review Press.
Dupont, B. R. (2009.) “Panic in the Plains: Agricultural Markets and the Panic of 1893”. Cliometrica 3(1), 27-54.
Graff, H. (2002). Grover Cleveland. Henry Holt and Company.
Welch Jr, R. (1988.) The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland. University of Kansas Press.
