The Libertarian from Buffalo

Grover Cleveland was a man who in a period of four years rose from sheriff of Erie County to President of the United States. He was a man with strong morals and passionately dedicated to honesty, justice, and liberty as he fought tirelessly for the rights of voters during his terms as mayor of Buffalo, governor of New York, and President of the United States. Cleveland over time earned the reputation of being a man with solid principles and sound judgment.

Perhaps more background information on the man and his record are in order. Let us begin with his famous veto as mayor of Buffalo, New York. In the veto he clearly rebuked the corruption running rampant throughout his city, stating:

"I regard it as the culmination of a most bare-faced, impudent, and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people, and to worse than squander the public money"

After this striking veto, word had spread outside of the county about his devotion to ethical politics and in one year he moved from Buffalo to Albany, becoming Governor of New York after emerging from the Democratic Primaries as a strong compromise candidate. In Cleveland’s first two months he signed eight vetoes and one in particular brought close attention. It was a bill to lower the fares of a railroad owned by Jay Gould, who just several years earlier rescued the railroads and made them solvent again. While the bill might have been popular his veto was supported by the newspapers in the state, which congratulated him for his will to stand on behalf of private property and the US Constitution.

1884 came around just two years later and Cleveland ran for President, this being the first time since 1856 that chances of a Democratic win were strong since the GOP nominee, James G. Blaine, was a weak candidate. Cleveland ultimately triumphed over his fellow Democrats even without the Tammany Hall backing due to his earlier opposition to this corrupt political machine as Governor.

“Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” This line was started during the campaign by the Republican James G. Blaine’s supporters to tarnish Cleveland’s pure reputation because in 1874 he paid child support to Maria Crofts Haplin after she claimed the child was his. Since she had slept with several other men around the same time there was no proof the child was actually his but he accepted responsibility of payments anyway.

When the results of the election came in Cleveland was announced the winner with 219 electoral votes to Blaine’s 182. As a result, Cleveland’s supporters turned the Republican catch phrase in their favor, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa? Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Now to focus on his politics as President of the United States, which he served as from 1885-1889 and again from 1893-1897, being the only President ever to serve two non-consecutive terms.

Cleveland begun his Presidency angering the railroad investors by launching an investigation of Western lands they held by government grant and since the railroads failed to extend their lines according to agreements, 81,000,000 acres of land was brought back under government control.

In 1887 Cleveland issued his most famous veto, that of the $10,000 Texas Seed Bill. Drawing a line in the sand and stating his political philosophy for all to see:

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”

During the late 19^th century the silver cause was a popular one among Western and Southern farmers. The intention was to inflate the national currency so as to help relieve their chronic misfortune. Cleveland, not being one to favor any groups, refused to inflate the currency. Instead he fought strongly on the side of the gold cause, defending it even while the currency was under the assault of deflation. Knowing that any meddling with currency would not yield positive results for anyone, he and the rest of the Northern politicians refused to turn their backs on gold currency.

                                       

One of the most divisive issues during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries was that of the tariff. Democrats, such as Cleveland, opposed high import tariffs while Republicans supported them. While in office Cleveland fought the high tariff, even going so far as to call it an attack upon Americans:

"When we consider that the theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him, it is plain that the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice.”

Come 1893 Cleveland was back into the White House after his four year ‘vacation’. But his second term was not a happy one as just a few months into it the Panic of 1893 hit. Realizing that the economy only had gotten worse due to the lack of gold reserves because of the involvement of silver in the currency the Congress had to act fast in order to restore adequate reserves of gold. After fifteen weeks of debating the Senate finally repealed free coinage by a vote of 47-38 with the signature of President Cleveland the legislation passed.

Next was the Pullman Strike, which was the result of a depressed economy and the end of silver. By June 1894 roughly 125,000 railroad workers were striking, virtually bringing the nations’ rails to a halt. Cleveland soon intervened because the railroads carried the mail and several effected lines were under federal receivership. So he obtained an injunction in the courts which the strikers did not obey, as a result, federal troops were sent into Chicago along with twenty other rail centers.

By this point the general idea of Cleveland’s philosophy of government should be known. He was an unshakeable foe of subsidizing any business or group, regardless of their problems. Being a man of gold at that time was difficult but he stood firm in his opposition to the silver cause which had, in the end, damaged our currency and worsened the effects of the first Great Depression. On the issue of tariffs he treated them like all other taxes, opposing them when they are high on the grounds that it is basically extortion.

May history rest well on the side of President Grover Cleveland, a staunch Bourbon Democrat who would bow to no moneyed interest, power brokers, political machines, or corrupt influences that dare to challenge the integrity of the office he resided over. A man of the same tree of liberty from which the great Presidents Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson were born of.

Without any debate or argument, he was most definitely the last Jeffersonian Democrat to hold office of President of the United States of America. Yet why must he be the last? What has happened to the Democratic Party of year prior? I speak of the one that pulled more people off government doles than Republicans. Were they suckered into the ideas of statism because of people like Woodrow Wilson or was it the gradual changing of things which moved Democrats from the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland to that of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Obama?

Whatever the answer to the question may be the facts still remain. Our country had noble men who stood on behalf of liberty, justice, and honor, while these men may not be noticed today they are still around. Lurking, waiting, for the day in which the truth that is freedom may be seen by the masses again after the fog of tyranny is once again removed from these shores.