ΧΧΧ. CLEVELAND'S FIRST ADMINISTRATION. His Civil Service Attitude Pleases Neither the Partisans Nor the Reformers-Coolness Between the President and Vice-President -Selection of the Cabinet-Repeal of the Tenure-of-Office Act-Clean Sweep of the Offices-Cleveland's Pension Vetoes-Order for Restoring the Southern Flags-Resentment of the Grand Army Posts-Rebuilding the Navy-The Electoral Count and Presidential Succession Acts-The Inter-State Commerce Measure-The Newfoundland and Alaska Fisheries-The President's Extraordinary Tariff Message--The Mills Bill and General Tariff Discussion. The consideration of President Cleveland's Administration naturally divides itself into topics, instead of suggesting the treatment of events in their chronological order. In the matter of civil service reform he offended both classes of his supporters, the Democratic partisans and the Mugwump non-partisans, the former by his profes sions and by the dilatory manner in which he made changes in office, and the latter by the clean sweep, which he did make when he once commenced. He had been accepted as a candidate by many of the Democratic party rather as a necessity than from any liking they had to him, and he was not very popular with the mass of the party. This was shown on the day of his inauguration, when the cheers for him were faint compared with those which went up from the crowd when Vice-President Hendricks' carriage appeared. It was to this discrimination in the applause that many ascribed the coolness toward the Vice-President which Cleveland showed up to the time of Mr. Hendricks' death. A month after the inauguration Mr. Hendricks called upon the President, and on returning to his rooms said: "I hoped that Mr. Cleveland would put the Democratic party in power, in fact as well as in name, but he does not intend to do it." About the same time a Southern Congressman said to some of his Democratic friends: "Gentlemen, we've got a big elephant on our hands. I fear there will be some disappointment about the offices." The appointment of his Cabinet furnished no indication of a purpose to follow out the spirit of the Civil Service law, as none of the gentlemen composing it, named below, had made any record on this subject. December 6, 1887, Don M. Dickinson, of Detroit, succeeded Postmaster General Vilas. Secretary of State-Thomas F. Bayard, of Delaware. Though the Cabinet appointments included no "reformers," Cleveland understood that his Mugwump support was due quite largely to the stand he had taken on the evils of Congressional patronage, and he had promised to abate this so far as he could. He was better situated for doing this than any previous President, for the Pendleton Law, passed during the last Administration, required that 15,000 of the offices should be filled by non-partisan tests, and authorized the President to extend this method of appointment. But in attempting to make good his promises, he encountered the opposition of almost every Democratic leader, and finally of Congress. His first clash with the Senate was over a removal from office, that of G. M. Duskin, District Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. It was made during a recess of Congress, and when the Senate again convened it called on him for the reasons for his action, and for the papers in the case. This he refused, in a strong message, taking the ground that for his acts of removal and suspension he was responsible to the people alone, and not to the Senate, and that the papers in the Duskin case were of a private nature. The Senate receded from its position, and three months later Congress repealed the Tenure-of-Office Act, which had been passed twenty years earlier to prevent Andrew Johnson from removing Executive officers after they had been confirmed by the Senate. This left Mr. Cleveland with no check on his power to remove from office. In 1886 Congress refused to make any appropriation for the salaries or expenses of the Civil Service Commissioners, and the President then surrendered. Within a year from that time he had made a clean sweep of nearly all the Presidential postmasters, foreign ministers, collectors of internal revenue, district attorneys, marshals, territorial judges and pension agents, while 40,000 of the 52,600 fourth-class postmasters lost their positions. In the course of another year he had added a large number more, bringing up to about 80,000 the list of Republican office-holders who had been replaced by Democrats. Such wholesale changes greatly impaired the service, as well as the President's reputation for sincerity. Although the members of the Cabinet had, before this. made no public record on the Civil Service reform matter, they made records fast enough now. Daniel Manning, of the Treasury Department, and Postmaster General Vilas, especially, took delight in the official slaughter. When Cleveland first took office it was given out that only those Republicans who were guilty of "offensive partisanship" would be removed, but in these later stages the fact that a man was a Republican at all was enough to set him upon the order of his going. In 1887 the President made another effort to disprove the assertion that he was "no Democrat." Senator Gorman was then making a desperate effort to retain his political hold on the State of Maryland, and was using methods that rivaled those in Louisiana and South Carolina. It was stated on Democratic authority that, in Baltimore, election after election was carried by the grossest frauds; that to stop a ballot in an important ward murder was recognized as a political service; that ballot boxes were opened and votes taken out, and that in one ward nineteen men with criminal records, drew pay from the City for doing political work of doubtful or criminal character. The President, by his appointments, gave Mr. Gorman all the aid that he could, and this, following his weakening on the Civil Service matter, effectually alienated the great mass of reform voters. President Cleveland aroused the bitterest feeling among the soldiers of the country by the number and character of his pension vetoes. During the two sessions of the Forty-ninth Congress alone, he vetoed more bills than all the other Presidents combined, from Washington down. In all 364 measures which passed this Congress failed of his approval, though 167 of these became laws, by lapse of time, without his signature. Of the whole number 300 were private pension bills, and he wrote 123 separate vetoes on these. He often sat far into the night, laboriously writing out, with his own hand, these long veto messages. Some of them were insulting, and some of them were marked by cheap wit at the expense of the wounds and suffering of the soldiers. They gave the impression of personal hostility to every man that wore the blue, and, coupled with his own record during the war, made the most effective of campaign documents when he came before the people for re-election. He pursued the same policy in the Fiftieth Congress, and further intensified the feeling against himself by vetoing the Dependent Pension Bill Worst of all was his order, given in 1887, through Adjutant General Drum, to return to the various Southern States the Rebel flags captured during the war. The order could not be carried out, for it was illegal, as the flags were in the custody of the Government, and could be removed only under authority of an Act of Congress. But before this fact became generally known there was abundant time for popular indignation to find expression. General Butler called the order "an attempt to mutilate the archives." General Sherman wrote: "Of course I know Drum, the Adjutant General. He has no sympathy with the Army which fought. He was a non-combatant. He never captured a flag, and values it only at its commercial value. He did not think of the blood and torture of battle; nor can Endicott, the Secretary of War, or Mr. Cleveland." Grand Army Posts, throughout the North, passed resolutions denouncing the order in the strongest terms. After a time it was formally revoked, but the impression of a want of patriotism on Cleveland's part remained. Two incidents illustrate the intensity of the feeling on this subject. A number of Grand Army Posts in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, held a camp fire at Wheeling. A banner had been suspended over the street on their line of march, bearing the Presi dent's portrait, with the inscription, "God Bless our President, Commander-in-Chief of our Army and Navy." Most of the posts, with colors folded and reversed, marched around this, although in order to do so, they had to go through the gutters. Again, the National Encampment of the Grand Army was held at St. Louis, and the President had accepted an invitation to be present. After the flag incident he withdrew the acceptance, because he thought it his duty to protect the dignity of the people's highest office, adding: "If among the membership of that body there are some, as certainly seems to be the case, determined to denounce me and my official acts at the National Encampment, I believe that they should be permitted to do so, unrestrained by my presence as a guest of their organization, or as a guest of the hospitable city in which their meeting is held." President Cleveland was very fortunate in his selection of a Secretary of the Navy. William C. Whitney was a lawyer of high standing in New York City, but he was also a practical man of affairs, and he soon had a thorough knowledge of the business of his departThe American Navy had gone to decay very rapidly after the war, and in 1881 was in a decidedly unserviceable condition. Under the Garfield Administration, Secretary Hunt secured the appointment of a Naval Advisory Board of capable and experienced men. Then President Arthur's Secretary of the Navy, William E. Chandler, of New Hampshire, dinned into the ears of Congress such notes of alarm as to prepare that body for the rehabilitation, in a comprehensive way, of that branch of our service. The final report of the Advisory Board recommended that, within the next eight years, $30,000,000 should be expended on the Navy, and it was estimated that this would construct twenty-one iron-clads, seventy unarmored cruisers, five rams, five torpedo gunboats, and twenty torpedo boats. There was objection in Congress to making a beginning that looked to so large an expenditure. Some even declared that the United States did not need a large Navy, as we were certain to have no more civil war, and not likely to be engaged in any foreign war. But Secretary Chandler's counsels prevailed, and the Forty-sixth Congress authorized the construction of three unarmored cruisers. The work was continued through Secretary Chandler's term of office, was taken up with zeal by Secretary Whitney and continued through President Harrison's Administration. Up to the time of the meeting of Con gress in December, 1894, forty-seven vessels were either in commission or under construction, including the battleships Oregon, Massachu setts, Indiana and Iowa, which rendered such efficient service four years later in the war with Spain. Although the Senate was of one stripe in politics and the House another, and neither was in full accord with the President, three important Acts, of a non-partisan character, marked this Adminis tration. Two of these, though non-partisan, were of a political nature; the Electoral Count Act and the Presidential Succession Act. These, as passed, were practically the same as the measures introduced during the Arthur Administration, and explained in some detail in a previous chapter of this book. The first of the two, which provides for settling Electoral count disputes within the states, and requires the concurrent action of both Houses of Congress to reject an Electoral vote, passed the Senate without division |