The
Cleveland Record
President Grover Cleveland’s
first administration (1885-1889) is remembered mainly for its
record number of vetoes (414), more than double the number
issued by all his predecessors combined. The vetoes were
aimed at curbing congressional spending, especially pension and
relief bills for individual Union veterans whose claims had been
rejected by the Pension Bureau as weak or fraudulent.
Therefore, the president incurred the wrath of the Grand Army of
the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union veterans closely
associated with the Republican Party. In January 1887,
Cleveland further angered the GAR when he vetoed a bill
expanding pension coverage to veterans whose disability was not
traceable to Civil War military service and to dependent
relatives of deceased veterans. The strain was exacerbated
that June by an executive order directing the return of captured
Confederate battle standards to their home states. The
order was rescinded two weeks later in the wake of an intense
outcry from the GAR and sympathetic politicians.
An important
development during the first Cleveland administration was the
ambitious shipbuilding program pursued by Navy Secretary William
Whitney. In foreign affairs, Secretary of State Thomas
Bayard attempted to resolve a longstanding dispute between
American and Canadian fishermen, but the resulting treaty (1888)
was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate. That
institution also came into conflict with the Democratic
president over civil service reform. Cleveland had
introduced the reform to New York while governor and promised
during the 1884 campaign to expand its application at the
federal level. When the new president began replacing
Republican officeholders with Democrats, Republican senators
threatened to expand the scope of the Tenure of Office Act,
which required Senate approval for the removal of presidentially
appointed officials. Instead, Cleveland’s firm and
well-argued stance gained him substantial backing among the
press and public, and the law was repealed in 1887.
Cleveland did expand civil service coverage, but (like
subsequent presidents) did so by securing members of his own
party in office.
In 1887,
Congress passed legislation creating the first federal
regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was
an attempt to make railroad rates and practices more equitable.
The Dawes Severalty Act offered citizenship and land to American
Indians who gave up their tribal allegiance. Congress
established the Department of Agriculture as a cabinet
department and passed the Hatch Act, which allocated federal
funds for state colleges to conduct agricultural experiments.
Cleveland supported these measures, but they gained him little
political advantage. In December 1887, the president used
his annual message to Congress to appeal for a reduction in the
nation’s high tariffs, and an administration-backed bill was
introduced into the House by Congressman Roger Mills in the
spring of 1888. Given the timing, the tariff became a key
issue in the presidential election.
The Democratic
Nomination
Since the Democrats were
divided on the tariff issue, Cleveland and his advisors
bolstered support for his renomination by undermining the power
of Democratic Congressman Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania,
former speaker of the House and leading tariff protectionist.
With the behind-the-scenes assistance of the White House,
Congressman William Scott, a tariff reformer, gained control of
Pennsylvania’s Democratic organization. Cleveland’s home
state of New York, a swing state, was even more important to his
renomination and essential to his reelection. Governor
David B. Hill (Cleveland’s former lieutenant governor) had
created a state political machine comprised mainly of
anti-Cleveland groups led by New York City’s Tammany Hall.
Fearing a Hill challenge at the national convention, the
president’s operatives ensured that the New York delegation was
pro-Cleveland and that the governor was not given
delegate-at-large status. Hill chose not to attend the
Democratic National Convention, which opened in St. Louis on
June 5. The event was ostensibly harmonious and
renominated Cleveland unanimously on the second day.
However, there
was an intense backroom fight over the tariff plank of the
platform. Republicans had erroneously labeled Congressman
Mills’s proposed legislation as “free trade”—i.e., the complete
abolition of tariffs. In response, Cleveland drafted a
platform plank that rejected free trade, ignored the Mills bill,
and supported moderate compromise legislation. He had
Senator Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, a trade protectionist,
take it to the St. Louis convention. The election of a
leading trade reformer, editor Henry Watterson of the
Louisville Courier-Journal, as chairman of the Resolutions
Committee sparked a fierce debate on the topic. The
plank’s final language endorsed the 1884 platform call for a
tariff-for-revenue-only (i.e., rates that raise money to meet
federal expenditures, not to “protect” certain industries from
foreign competition and create a large fiscal surplus). It
also argued that lower rates would reduce the cost of living for
workers. The plank’s passage was a victory for Watterson,
as was approval of a resolution, introduced by Congressman
Scott, endorsing the Mills bill.
Since
Cleveland’s vice president, Thomas Hendricks, had died in
November 1885, the position was open. The president’s
campaign managers had surveyed party leaders from across the
country, and the popular choice for the office was Allen
Thurman, a former congressman and senator from Ohio. At
the Democratic National Convention, he easily defeated two
favorite-son candidates on the first ballot. Respected by
all factions of the party and bringing geographical balance to
the ticket, it was hoped that Thurman would help bridge
divisions within the party.
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