Grover Cleveland – Page 2 – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Thomas Hendricks’ Views on Race Cast a Shadow Over His Entire Career

Thomas A. Hendricks is featured on the 1886 $10 Silver Certificate. This example realized $43,125 at a January 2008 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In the annals of American vice presidents, no occupant had a more tortuous path than Democrat Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana. In the course of that journey, he acquired a controversial reputation with views on race that cast a shadow over his entire career.

A law practice in Indiana led him to a political career in 1848 where he first revealed his anti-black bias. He helped to enact the infamous “Black Laws” – ensuring racial segregation and strict limitations on immigrations of free blacks into the entire state. In 1850, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he was a strong supporter of popular sovereignty and expansion of slavery to the West.

He then pushed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and led directly to the Civil War. His speeches were some of the most vitriolic on record concerning the black race. He fought against reconstruction after the war and was rejected as a VP running mate for Samuel Tilden in 1876.

This was the only election in which a candidate (Tilden) received more than 50 percent of the popular vote but was not elected by the Electoral College. (In 1824, 1888 and 2000, the candidate who received the most votes did not win, but none of them had more than 50 percent).

Then eight years later, Grover Cleveland and Hendricks became the first Democrats to win a presidential election since 1856. This was the longest losing streak for any major party in American political history … six consecutive losing presidential elections!

Hendricks’ long wait was over, but he had little time to savor victory. Eight months later, he was dead. For the fifth time, the vice presidency was vacant as the result of the death of the occupant and in 10 of the first 18 presidencies, there was no sitting VP. But by now the office was so lightly regarded, few seemed to care.

That is until someone realized that the offices of both the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House were also vacant. With Republicans in control of the Senate, the next successor would be of the opposing party!

So in 1886, Congress passed a law removing Congressional leaders from the line of succession and replaced them with members of the president’s Cabinet … starting with State and then Treasury, War, etc. That lasted until 1947 and then changed again in 1967 with the passage of the 25th Amendment … today’s law.

So old racist Thomas Hendricks’ service was only memorable for the actions taken by others after he died.

Not much of a legacy.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Cleveland Believed Public Service was a Public Trust

A rare set of Lake Erie “State Governors” cards, circa 1890s and including Grover Cleveland, sold for $11,352.50 at a May 2014 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When Grover Cleveland was running for president in 1884, Joseph Pulitzer wrote an editorial endorsing him and listed four reasons for wanting him to be president. “One, he is an honest man. Two, he is an honest man. Three, he is an honest man. Four, he is honest.”

Cleveland had been mayor of Buffalo – a Democrat in a Republican city – and his name quickly became “The Veto Mayor.” Any bill that he thought was a raid on the public treasury was quickly vetoed. (He would later veto over 300 bills in his first year as president.)

In 1882, Democrats in New York were looking for someone to run for governor. Someone asked “Why not the mayor of Buffalo?” He was nominated and won in a landslide.

Teddy Roosevelt was then a member of the New York Assembly and formed an alliance with Governor Cleveland on legislation called the Five-Cent Fare Bill. It was intended to force transit companies in NYC to cut their 10-cent fares by 50 percent (this was before Uber). However, when Cleveland read the final bill, he decided it was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. He also firmly believed the state should not get involved in private contracts, so vetoville.

Everyone was stunned, including TR, but then he rethought his position and decided the governor was right. After helping get the veto upheld, TR “The Dude” and Cleveland “The Big One” found other areas of mutual cooperation. (It was an arcane political concept called bipartisan cooperation.)

President Cleveland’s favorite political phrase was “Public service is a public trust.” He believed an executive, whether governor or president, was exactly that – an executive officer whose job was to see that the organization was run efficiently and that shareholder (taxpayer) money was not wasted. He believed fervently that “The people support the government. The government does not support the people.”

A novel concept that JFK would recall more eloquently in 1961 as “Ask not …”

1932 Election Marked New Relationship Between American Society and Government

This rare 3½-inch Herbert Hoover button from his successful 1928 campaign realized $8,750 at a February 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

It would have taken a bold person to have forecast in the afterglow of President Herbert Hoover’s landslide victory in 1928 that, only four years later, he would be the victim of a comparable landslide victory by his Democratic opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the aftermath of the 1928 election and the promise of almost endless prosperity, winning the 1932 Democratic nomination was viewed as little more than an empty honor, scarcely worth the effort.

However, in the first months after the stock market crash in 1929, the Great Depression started slowly, then the European repercussions caused a sudden downturn in the American economy in the spring of 1932, and by summer, the Depression was becoming acute. It continued to worsen with each passing day.

A point of desperation had clearly been reached and all attempts by the Hoover administration for relief were futile. By today’s standards they would have been viewed as too little and way too late. A deflationary spiral was under way and Democrats maneuvered Hoover into making statements that seemed to echo Grover Cleveland: “We cannot squander ourselves into prosperity.”

Hoover seemed cold and remote, which contributed to his unpopularity. The extent and degree of suffering in 1931-32 was far worse than the calm appraisals of the situation by the White House.

By election time, one in five workers was unemployed, one in three unemployed in big cities like Chicago. Even those still working were receiving such low wages or working so few hours that they barely survived. Twenty-five percent of the working women in Chicago were making less than 10 cents an hour. Relief payments were typically a starvation-level pittance; in Detroit, payments were 5 cents a day per person.

Amid the suffering and fear, there was surprisingly little violence and only a whisper of radicalism. The Republicans, despite the unpopularity of the party and the overwhelming unpopularity of the president, had no real choice but to re-nominate Hoover.

For their part, Democrats approached the campaign with jubilant anticipation. FDR was unusually well-prepared to be a presidential contender. Since he had left a New York law clerkship in 1910 to run for state senate, he demonstrated increasingly astute political savvy. In a number of campaigns and offices, he had carefully honed his political craftsmanship.

At the Democratic convention, Roosevelt was easily nominated on the fourth ballot and buried in his acceptance speech was the phrase “new deal” and the words were picked up by a political cartoonist. Within a few days, the term was in broad use and remains memorable today.

Roosevelt was elected by a wide margin, carrying 42 of 48 states and a total of 472 electoral votes to 59. In the process, Herbert Hoover’s sterling reputation and brilliant career were relegated to the ash heap of failures and never fully restored.

The 1932 election focused on the responsibility of government for the economic welfare of American citizens. The debates of the campaign were far less momentous than the aftermath of the election … the establishment by President Roosevelt of a new relationship between American society and government.

Thereafter, the federal government took active, vigorous steps to promote and preserve prosperity far beyond the limited, tentative measures of President Hoover and all his predecessors. It’s a role that has continued to expand yet today with actions not even imagined earlier.