Dean Acheson on that Triangulating Bastard Grover Cleveland

From Dean G. Acheson: "A Democrat Looks at His Party":

At the end of the [nineteenth] century there was a lesser, but serious, missed opportunity for Democratic leadership in President Cleveleand's failure to grasp the significance of the Populist and labor unrest... and in his cautious and unimaginative approach to economic depression. The unrest... did not spring from a radical movement directed against the established order... or the constitutional system. It grew out of conditions increasingly distressing... on the farms and in the factories. Its purposes were the historic purposes of the Democratic party... to keep opportunity open, opportunity not merely to rise from barefoot boy to President but for people to find in their accustomed environments useful, respected, and satisfying lives.... The conditions and popular response had many points of similarity to those of the 1930s.

Grover Cleveland... followed the right as he saw it... through a conservative and conventional cast of mind. The agitation seemed to him... a threat to law and order.... Coxey's Army was met with a barrage of injunctions and... the Capitol police.... The Pullman strike was smashed by federal troops who kept the mails moving, the union leaders imprisoned, and the union crushed. And the financial panic was dealt with through the highly orthodox and [highly] compensated assistance of Mr. Morgan.

The underlying causes... were neither understood nor dealt with... an opportunity was missed.... If, to take one of them, the problems arising out of the concentration of industrial ownership had been tackled when they were still malleable and subject to effective treatment, we might have been spared some aches and pains that are still with us.

But with all this, Grover Cleveland holds an honored place.... When the Congress showed signs... of declaring war on Spain, Cleveland put an end to the business for the duration of his administration by saying... that, if the Congress did declare war, he would refuse to direct it as commander in chief...

Comments

[Maynard Handley]

"Grover Cleveland... followed the right as he saw it... through a conservative and conventional cast of mind. The agitation seemed to him... a threat to law and order"

I recently listened to a very interesting talk, (referenced here
http://name99.org/blog99/?p=126 )
that discusses the nature of the legal system in the South just before and after the Civil War. The lecture points out that justice in this society was not envisaged in terms of rights but in terms of disturbing the peace; so a rape for example was to be punished not so much as a violation of the rights of a person (since a woman had few legal rights, a free black woman less, and a slave woman pretty much none) as because it was a general disturbance to the peace.

I was unaware that there was this alternative conceptualization of the nature and role of law running through US society, but I suspect, given what I know of the US from Reconstruction to the Progressives, that this conceptualization was wider than just the South. The arguments I've always heard given when apologizing for these presidents is that they felt that the constitution did not give them the power to interfere and change society as many people wanted, but I wonder if this alternative view of law played an important role --- that the way people framed these problems was not in terms of balancing different rights, but rather as preservation of the peace.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

In her autobiography Julia Child, the cook, charcterises her politics as "Acheson abroad, FDR at home."

Not bad -- and this Acheson quote reminds me a little bit why it's not bad.

[Bruce Wilder]

It may not be much, but Grover Cleveland did do one progressive thing: RFD, rural free delivery.

After his Presidency, he put the Democrats on the side of the angels, as head of the anti-imperialist league, opposing Republican dreams of Empire -- we could use him on Iraq.

[DRR]

There just isn't much to say about the man. He was basically an anti-imperialist Calvin Coolidge. Not that anti-imperialism isn't grand if that's your bag but it wasn't like populist/agrarian wing of the party were expansionists or internationalists by comparison.

Even though "free silver" was a pretty flipping stupid idea, at least Progressive wing of the party had prescriptions for positive change. The Bourbons only cared that foreign entanglements were kept to a minimum, trade was unfettered and the treasury was stable. It's not surprising they went extinct, and yes, anticipating some blunt comparisons to certain modern factions of the Democratic party, they really did go extinct.

[CMike]

Maynard Handley,

Pretty much all of Anglo law is premised on the notion that the King or the state is first in line as the offended party when a crime is committed. All criminal trials are brought by the state in this country, either The United States versus or The State of [say] Virginia versus.

From Blackstone's Commentaries:

IN criminal proceedings, or prosecutions for offences, it would still be a higher absurdity, if the king personally sat in judgment; because in regard to these he appears in another capacity, that of prosecutor.

All offences are either against the king's peace, or his crown and dignity; and are so laid in every indictment. For, though in their consequences they generally seem (except in the cafe of treason and a very few others) to be rather offences against the kingdom than the king; yet, as the public, which is an invisible body, has delegated all it's power and rights, with regard to the execution of the laws, to one visible magistrate, all affronts to that power, and breaches of those rights, are immediately offences against him, to whom they are so delegated by the public.

He is therefore the proper person to prosecute for all public offences and breaches of the peace, being the person injured in the eye of the law

[CMike]

Here's Fox News anchor and budding historian Chris Wallace's take on Grover Cleveland.

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120304.shtml

[Robert]

Off topic question for Brad: Is the editors' "Case for Trade" in this morning's (27 July) NY Times the same as yours?

[Brett Dunbar]

Technically Blackstone is not entirely correct. The crown doesn't prosecute in all criminal cases, there are still occasional private criminal prosecutions, e.g. the League Against Cruel Sports and the RSPCA have successfully prosecuted under the Hunting Act 2004.

[andres]

"But with all this, Grover Cleveland holds an honored place.... When the Congress showed signs... of declaring war on Spain, Cleveland put an end to the business for the duration of his administration by saying... that, if the Congress did declare war, he would refuse to direct it as commander in chief..."

In comparison to today's situation on Iraq and Iran, this seems almost laughably surreal; the world turned upside down, so to speak. Once again, however, the war party was the Republicans and it took one courageous Democrat to temporarily stop them (though he was the president). It's interesting that the Republican party has a history of opposing war in Europe itself but of being eager to use its military toys almost everywhere else.

[Bob Mutch]

Maybe it wasn't so much that Cleveland "fail[ed] to grasp the significance of the Populist and labor unrest" as that he saw it in much the same way as Benjamin Harrison would have – as something that threatened the interests of their financial backers. The Gilded Age Dems' campaign contributors came from the same New York-Philadelphia-Boston-Chicago business and social elite that also gave to the GOP, so they were effectively a second business party. In 1892, the Dems probably – there are no records so we'll never know for sure – raised more money than the GOP for the first and only time in their history, and from pretty much the same sources. What's especially ironic about 1892 is that labor unrest helped get Cleveland elected. At a time when corporations were becoming increasingly unpopular, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick's brutal handling of the Homestead strike aroused public disapproval that rubbed off on the Republicans. For years afterward, Whitelaw Reid, the GOP candidate for VP in 1892, blamed Carnegie and Frick for his loss.

[STS]

CMike:

Thanks for the Daily Howler link -- ROTFL.