Popular dissatisfaction with the behavior of public authority had not up to this time extended to the formal Constitution.Schemes of radical rearrangement of the political institutions of the country had not yet been agitated.New party movements were devoted to particular measures such as fresh greenback issues or the prohibition of liquor traffic.Popular reverence for the Constitution was deep and strong, and it was the habit of the American people to impute practical defects not to the governmental system itself but to the character of those acting in it.Burke, as long ago as 1770, remarked truly that "where there is a regular scheme of operations carried on, it is the system and not any individual person who acts in it that is truly dangerous." But it is an inveterate habit of public opinion to mistake results for causes and to vent its resentment upon persons when misgovernment occurs.That disposition was bitterly intense at this period."Turn the rascals out" was the ordinary campaign slogan of an opposition party, and calumny formed the staple of its argument.Of course no party could establish exclusive proprietorship to such tactics, and whichever party might be in power in a particular locality was cast for the villain's part in the political drama.But as changes of party control took place, experience taught that the only practical result was to introduce new players into the same old game.Such experience spread among the people a despairing feeling that American politics were hopelessly depraved, and at the same time it gave them a deep yearning for some strong deliverer.To this messianic hope of politics may be ascribed what is in some respects the most remarkable career in the political history of the United States.The rapid and fortuitous rise of Grover Cleveland to political eminence is without a parallel in the records of American statesmanship, notwithstanding many instances of public distinction attained from humble beginnings.
The antecedents of Cleveland were Americans of the best type.He was descended from a colonial stock which had settled in the Connecticut Valley.His earliest ancestor of whom there is any exact knowledge was Aaron Cleveland, an Episcopal clergyman, who died at East Haddam, Connecticut, in 1757, after founding a family which in every generation furnished recruits to the ministry.It argues a hereditary disposition for independent judgment that among these there was a marked variation in denominational choice.Aaron Cleveland was so strong in his attachment to the Anglican church that to be ordained he went to England--under the conditions of travel in those days a hard, serious undertaking.His son, also named Aaron, became a Congregational minister.Two of the sons of the younger Aaron became ministers, one of them an Episcopalian like his grandfather.Another son, William, who became a prosperous silversmith, was for many years a deacon in the church in which his father preached.William sent his second son, Richard, to Yale, where he graduated with honors at the age of nineteen.He turned to the Presbyterian church, studied theology at Princeton, and upon receiving ordination began a ministerial career which like that of many preachers was carried on in many pastorates.He was settled at Caldwell, New Jersey, in his third pastorate, and there Stephen Grover Cleveland was born, on March 18, 1837, the fifth in a family of children that eventually increased to nine.
He was named after the Presbyterian minister who was his father's predecessor.The first name soon dropped out of use, and from childhood he went by his middle name, a practice of which the Clevelands supply so many instances that it seems to be quite a family trait.
In campaign literature, so much has been made of the humble circumstances in which Grover made his start in life that the unwary reader might easily imagine that the future President was almost a waif.Nothing could be farther from the truth.He really belonged to the most authentic aristocracy that any state of society can produce--that which maintains its standards and principles from generation to generation by the integrity of the stock without any endowment of wealth.The Clevelands were people who reared large families and sustained themselves with dignity and credit on narrow means.It was a settled tradition with such republican aristocrats that a son destined for a learned profession--usually the ministry--should be sent to college, and for that purpose heroic economies were practiced in the family.
The opportunities which wealth can confer are really trivial in comparison with the advantage of being born and reared in such bracing conditions as those which surrounded Grover Cleveland.As a boy he was a clerk in a country store, but his education was not neglected and at the age of fifteen he was studying, with a view to entering college.His father's death ended that prospect and forced him to go to work again to help support the family.
