A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents by Grover Cleveland

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Grover Cleveland

March 4, 1885, to March 4, 1889

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Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, Essex County, N.J., March 18,
1837. On the paternal side he is of English origin. Moses Cleveland
emigrated from Ipswich, County of Suffolk, England, in 1635, and settled
at Woburn, Mass., where he died in 1701. His descendant William
Cleveland was a silversmith and watchmaker at Norwich, Conn. Richard
Falley Cleveland, son of the latter named, was graduated at Yale in
1824, was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1829, and in the same
year married Ann Neal, daughter of a Baltimore merchant of Irish birth.
These two were the parents of Grover Cleveland. The Presbyterian
parsonage at Caldwell, where he was born, was first occupied by the
Rev. Stephen Grover, in whose honor he was named; but the first name was
early dropped, and he has been since known as Grover Cleveland. When
he was 4 years old his father accepted a call to Fayetteville, near
Syracuse, N.Y., where the son had common and academic schooling, and
afterwards was a clerk in a country store. The removal of the family
to Clinton, Oneida County, gave him additional educational advantages
in the academy there. In his seventeenth year he became a clerk and an
assistant teacher in the New York Institution for the Blind, in New York
City, in which his elder brother, William, a Presbyterian clergyman,
was then a teacher. In 1855 he left Holland Patent, in Oneida County,
where his mother at that time resided, to go to the West in search of
employment. On his way he stopped at Black Rock, now a part of Buffalo,
and called on his uncle, Lewis F. Allen, who induced him to remain and
aid him in the compilation of a volume of the American Herd Book,
receiving for six weeks' service $60. He afterwards, and while studying
law, assisted in the preparation of several other volumes of this work,
and the preface to the fifth volume (1861) acknowledges his services.
In August, 1855, he secured a place as clerk and copyist for the law
firm of Rogers, Bowen & Rogers, in Buffalo, began to read Blackstone,
and in the autumn of that year was receiving $4 per week for his work.
He was admitted to the bar in 1859, but for three years longer remained
with the firm that first employed him, acting as managing clerk at a
salary of $600, a part of which he devoted to the support of his widowed
mother, who died in 1882. Was appointed assistant district attorney of
Erie County January 1, 1863, and held the office for three years. At
this time the Civil War was raging. Two of his brothers were in the
Army, and his mother and sisters were largely dependent upon him for
support. Unable himself to enlist, he borrowed money and sent a
substitute to the war, and it was not till long after the war that
he was able to repay the loan. In 1865, at the age of 28, he was the
Democratic candidate for district attorney, but was defeated by the
Republican candidate, his intimate friend, Lyman K. Bass. He then became
the law partner of Isaac V. Vanderpool, and in 1869 became a member of
the firm of Lanning, Cleveland & Folsom. He continued a successful
practice till 1870, when he was elected sheriff of Erie County. At the
expiration of his three years' term he formed a law partnership with
his personal friend and political antagonist, Lyman K. Bass, the firm
being Bass, Cleveland & Bissell, and, after the forced retirement,
from failing health, of Mr. Bass, Cleveland & Bissell. In 1881 he was
nominated the Democratic candidate for mayor of Buffalo, and was elected
by a majority of 3,530, the largest ever given to a candidate in that
city. In the same election the Republican State ticket was carried in
Buffalo by an average majority of over 1,600. He entered upon the office
January 1, 1882, and soon became known as the "Veto Mayor," using that
prerogative fearlessly in checking unwise, illegal, and extravagant
expenditures. By his vetoes he saved the city nearly $1,000,000 in the
first half year of his administration. He opposed giving $500 of the
taxpayers' money to the Firemen's Benevolent Society on the ground
that such appropriation was not permissible under the terms of the
State constitution and the charter of the city. He vetoed a resolution
diverting $500 from the Fourth of July appropriations to the observance
of Decoration Day for the same reason, and immediately subscribed
one-tenth of the sum wanted for the purpose. His administration of the
office won tributes to his integrity and ability from the press and the
people irrespective of party. On the second day of the Democratic State
convention at Syracuse, September 22, 1882, on the third ballot, was
nominated for governor in opposition to the Republican candidate,
Charles J. Folger, then Secretary of the United States Treasury. He had
the united support of his own party, while the Republicans were not
united on his opponent, and at the election in November he received a
plurality over Mr. Folger of 192,854. His State administration was only
an expansion of the fundamental principles that controlled his official
action while mayor of Buffalo. In a letter written to his brother on
the day of his election he announced a policy he intended to adopt,
and afterwards carried out, "that is, to make the matter a business
engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the
obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an
eye single to the interest of my employers." The Democratic national
convention met at Chicago July 8, 1884. On July 11 he was nominated as
their candidate for President. The Republicans made James G. Blaine
their candidate, while Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, was the
Labor and Greenback candidate, and John P. St. John, of Kansas, was
the Prohibition candidate. At the election, November 4, Mr. Cleveland
received 219 and Mr. Blaine 182 electoral votes. He was unanimously
renominated for the Presidency by the national Democratic convention
in St. Louis on June 6, 1888. At the election in November he received
168 electoral votes, while 233 were cast for Benjamin Harrison, the
Republican candidate. Of the popular vote, however, he received
5,540,329, and Mr. Harrison received 5,439,853. At the close of his
Administration, March 4, 1889, he retired to New York City, where he
reentered upon the practice of his profession. It soon became evident,
however, that he would be prominently urged as a candidate for
renomination in 1892. At the national Democratic convention which met
in Chicago June 21, 1892, he received more than two-thirds of the votes
on the first ballot. At the election in November he received 277 of
the electoral votes, while Mr. Harrison received 145 and Mr. James B.
Weaver, the candidate of the People's Party, 22. Of the popular vote
Mr. Cleveland received 5,553,142, Mr. Harrison 5,186,931, and Mr.
Weaver 1,030,128. He retired from office March 4, 1897, and removed to
Princeton, N.J., where he has since resided. He is the first of our
Presidents who served a second term without being elected as his own
successor. President Cleveland was married in the White House on June 2,
1886, to Miss Frances Folsom, daughter of his deceased friend and
partner, Oscar Folsom, of the Buffalo bar. Mrs. Cleveland was the
youngest (except the wife of Mr. Madison) of the many mistresses of the
White House, having been born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1864. She is the
first wife of a President married in the White House, and the first to
give birth to a child there, their second daughter (Esther) having been
born in the Executive Mansion in 1893.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: In the presence of this vast assemblage of my
countrymen I am about to supplement and seal by the oath which I shall
take the manifestation of the will of a great and free people. In the
exercise of their power and right of self-government they have committed
to one of their fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust, and he here
consecrates himself to their service.

This impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn sense of
responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to all the people
of the land. Nothing can relieve me from anxiety lest by any act of mine
their interests may suffer, and nothing is needed to strengthen my
resolution to engage every faculty and effort in the promotion of their
welfare.

Amid the din of party strife the people's choice was made, but its
attendant circumstances have demonstrated anew the strength and safety
of a government by the people. In each succeeding year it more clearly
appears that our democratic principle needs no apology, and that in its
fearless and faithful application is to be found the surest guaranty of
good government.

But the best results in the operation of a government wherein every
citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of purely
partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when the
heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen.

To-day the executive branch of the Government is transferred to new
keeping. But this is still the Government of all the people, and it
should be none the less an object of their affectionate solicitude.
At this hour the animosities of political strife, the bitterness of
partisan defeat, and the exultation of partisan triumph should be
supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will and a
sober, conscientious concern for the general weal. Moreover, if from
this hour we cheerfully and honestly abandon all sectional prejudice and
distrust, and determine, with manly confidence in one another, to work
out harmoniously the achievements of our national destiny, we shall
deserve to realize all the benefits which our happy form of government
can bestow.

On this auspicious occasion we may well renew the pledge of our devotion
to the Constitution, which, launched by the founders of the Republic and
consecrated by their prayers and patriotic devotion, has for almost a
century borne the hopes and the aspirations of a great people through
prosperity and peace and through the shock of foreign conflicts and the
perils of domestic strife and vicissitudes.

By the Father of his Country our Constitution was commended for adoption
as "the result of a spirit of amity and mutual concession." In that same
spirit it should be administered, in order to promote the lasting
welfare of the country and to secure the full measure of its priceless
benefits to us and to those who will succeed to the blessings of our
national life. The large variety of diverse and competing interests
subject to Federal control, persistently seeking the recognition of
their claims, need give us no fear that "the greatest good to the
greatest number" will fail to be accomplished if in the halls of
national legislation that spirit of amity and mutual concession shall
prevail in which the Constitution had its birth. If this involves the
surrender or postponement of private interests and the abandonment of
local advantages, compensation will be found in the assurance that the
common interest is subserved and the general welfare advanced.

In the discharge of my official duty I shall endeavor to be guided
by a just and unstrained construction of the Constitution, a careful
observance of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal
Government and those reserved to the States or to the people, and by a
cautious appreciation of those functions which by the Constitution and
laws have been especially assigned to the executive branch of the
Government.

But he who takes the oath to-day to preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation
which every patriotic citizen--on the farm, in the workshop, in the busy
marts of trade, and everywhere--should share with him. The Constitution
which prescribes his oath, my countrymen, is yours; the Government you
have chosen him to administer for a time is yours; the suffrage which
executes the will of freemen is yours; the laws and the entire scheme
of our civil rule, from the town meeting to the State capitals and the
national capital, is yours. Your every voter, as surely as your Chief
Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere,
exercises a public trust. Nor is this all. Every citizen owes to the
country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and
a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity and usefulness. Thus
is the people's will impressed upon the whole framework of our civil
polity--municipal, State, and Federal; and this is the price of our
liberty and the inspiration of our faith in the Republic.

It is the duty of those serving the people in public place to closely
limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the Government
economically administered, because this bounds the right of the
Government to exact tribute from the earnings of labor or the property
of the citizen, and because public extravagance begets extravagance
among the people. We should never be ashamed of the simplicity and
prudential economies which are best suited to the operation of a
republican form of government and most compatible with the mission of
the American people. Those who are selected for a limited time to manage
public affairs are still of the people, and may do much by their example
to encourage, consistently with the dignity of their official functions,
that plain way of life which among their fellow-citizens aids integrity
and promotes thrift and prosperity.

The genius of our institutions, the needs of our people in their
home life, and the attention which is demanded for the settlement
and development of the resources of our vast territory dictate the
scrupulous avoidance of any departure from that foreign policy commended
by the history, the traditions, and the prosperity of our Republic. It
is the policy of independence, favored by our position and defended by
our known love of justice and by our power. It is the policy of peace
suitable to our interests. It is the policy of neutrality, rejecting
any share in foreign broils and ambitions upon other continents and
repelling their intrusion here. It is the policy of Monroe and of
Washington and Jefferson--"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with
all nations; entangling alliance with none."

A due regard for the interests and prosperity of all the people demands
that our finances shall be established upon such a sound and sensible
basis as shall secure the safety and confidence of business interests
and make the wage of labor sure and steady, and that our system of
revenue shall be so adjusted as to relieve the people of unnecessary
taxation, having a due regard to the interests of capital invested
and workingmen employed in American industries, and preventing the
accumulation of a surplus in the Treasury to tempt extravagance and
waste.

Care for the property of the nation and for the needs of future settlers
requires that the public domain should be protected from purloining
schemes and unlawful occupation.

The conscience of the people demands that the Indians within our
boundaries shall be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the
Government and their education and civilization promoted with a view
to their ultimate citizenship, and that polygamy in the Territories,
destructive of the family relation and offensive to the moral sense of
the civilized world, shall be repressed.

The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of
a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of
acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and
customs repugnant to our civilization.

The people demand reform in the administration of the Government and the
application of business principles to public affairs. As a means to this
end, civil-service reform should be in good faith enforced. Our citizens
have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees
who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service, and from
the corrupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods
of those who expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek public
employment have the right to insist that merit and competency shall be
recognized instead of party subserviency or the surrender of honest
political belief.

In the administration of a government pledged to do equal and exact
justice to all men there should be no pretext for anxiety touching the
protection of the freedmen in their rights or their security in the
enjoyment of their privileges under the Constitution and its amendments.
All discussion as to their fitness for the place accorded to them as
American citizens is idle and unprofitable except as it suggests the
necessity for their improvement. The fact that they are citizens
entitles them to all the rights due to that relation and charges them
with all its duties, obligations, and responsibilities.

These topics and the constant and ever-varying wants of an active
and enterprising population may well receive the attention and the
patriotic endeavor of all who make and execute the Federal law.
Our duties are practical and call for industrious application, an
intelligent perception of the claims of public office, and, above all,
a firm determination, by united action, to secure to all the people
of the land the full benefits of the best form of government ever
vouchsafed to man. And let us not trust to human effort alone, but humbly
acknowledging the power and goodness of Almighty God, who presides over
the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been revealed in our
country's history, let us invoke His aid and His blessing upon our
labors.

MARCH 4, 1885.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _March 13, 1885_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

For the purpose of their reexamination I withdraw certain treaties and
conventions now pending in the Senate which were communicated to that
body by my predecessor in office, and I therefore request the return
to me of the commercial convention between the United States and the
Dominican Republic which was transmitted to the Senate December 9, 1884;
of the commercial treaty between the United States and Spain which
was transmitted to the Senate December 10, 1884, together with the
supplementary articles thereto of March 2, 1885; and of the treaty
between the United States and Nicaragua for the construction of an
interoceanic canal which was transmitted to the Senate December 10,
1884.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _Washington, April 2, 1885_.

_To the Senate of the United States_:

For the purpose of its reconsideration I withdraw the additional
article, now pending in the Senate, signed on the 23d of June last, to
the treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation which was concluded
between the United States and the Argentine Confederation July 27, 1853,
and communicated to the Senate by my predecessor in office 27th of
January, 1885.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

PROCLAMATIONS.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas it is alleged that certain individuals, associations of persons,
and corporations are in the unauthorized possession of portions of the
territory known as the Oklahoma lands, within the Indian Territory,
which are designated, described, and recognized by the treaties and laws
of the United States and by the executive authority thereof as Indian
lands; and

Whereas it is further alleged that certain other persons or associations
within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States have begun
and set on foot preparations for an organized and forcible entry and
settlement upon the aforesaid lands and are now threatening such entry
and occupation; and

Whereas the laws of the United States provide for the removal of all
persons residing or being found upon such Indian lands and territory
without permission expressly and legally obtained of the Interior
Department:

Now, therefore, for the purpose of protecting the public interests, as
well as the interests of the Indian nations and tribes, and to the end
that no person or persons may be induced to enter upon said territory,
where they will not be allowed to remain without the permission of the
authority aforesaid, I, Grover Cleveland, President of the United
States, do hereby warn and admonish all and every person or persons now
in the occupation of such lands, and all such person or persons as are
intending, preparing, or threatening to enter and settle upon the same,
that they will neither be permitted to enter upon said territory nor, if
already there, to remain thereon, and that in case a due regard for and
voluntary obedience to the laws and treaties of the United States and
if this admonition and warning be not sufficient to effect the purposes
and intentions of the Government as herein declared, the military power
of the United States will be invoked to abate all such unauthorized
possession, to prevent such threatened entry and occupation, and to
remove all such intruders from the said Indian lands.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, this 13th day of March, 1885, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninth.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

By the President:
T.F. BAYARD,
_Secretary of State_.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas satisfactory evidence has been received by me that upon vessels
of the United States arriving at the island of Trinidad, British West
Indies, no duty is imposed by the ton as tonnage tax or as light money,
and that no other equivalent tax on vessels of the United States is
imposed at said island by the British Government; and Whereas by the
provisions of section 14 of an act approved June 26, 1884, "to remove
certain burdens on the American merchant marine and encourage the
American foreign carrying trade, and for other purposes," the President
of the United States is authorized to suspend the collection in ports of
the United States from vessels arriving from any port in the island of
Trinidad of so much of the duty at the rate of 3 cents per ton as may be
in excess of the tonnage and light-house dues, or other equivalent of
tax or taxes, imposed on American vessels by the government of the
foreign country in which such port is situated:

Now, therefore, I, Grover Cleveland, President of the United States of
America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the act and section
hereinbefore mentioned, do hereby declare and proclaim that on and after
this 7th day of April, 1885, the collection of said tonnage duty of 3
cents per ton shall be suspended as regards all vessels arriving in any
port of the United States from a port in the island of Trinidad, British
West Indies.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of
the United States to be affixed.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, this 7th day of April, 1885, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninth.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

By the President:
T.F. BAYARD,
_Secretary of State_.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, by an Executive order bearing date the 27th day of February,
1885, it was ordered that "all that tract of country in the Territory
of Dakota known as the Old Winnebago Reservation and the Sioux or Crow
Creek Reservation, and lying on the east bank of the Missouri River, set
apart and reserved by Executive order dated January 11, 1875, and which
is not covered by the Executive order dated August 9, 1879, restoring
certain of the lands reserved by the order of January 11, 1875, except
the following-described tracts: Townships No. 108 north, range 71 west;
108 north, range 72 west; fractional township 108 north, range 73 west;
the west half of section 4, sections 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,
21, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33 of township 107 north, range 70 west;
fractional townships 107 north, range 71 west; 107 north, range 72 west;
107 north, range 73 west; the west half of township 106 north, range 70
west; and fractional township 106 north, range 71 west; and except also
all tracts within the limits of the aforesaid Old Winnebago Reservation
and the Sioux or Crow Creek Reservation which are outside of the limits
of the above-described tracts, and which may have heretofore been
allotted to the Indians residing upon said reservation, or which may
have heretofore been selected or occupied by the said Indians under and
in accordance with the provisions of article 6 of the treaty with the
Sioux Indians of April 29, 1868, be, and the same is hereby, restored
to the public domain;" and

Whereas upon the claim being made that said order is illegal and in
violation of the plighted faith and obligations of the United States
contained in sundry treaties heretofore entered into with the Indian
tribes or bands occupants of said reservation, and that the further
execution of said order will not only occasion much distress and
suffering to peaceable Indians, but retard the work of their
civilization and engender amongst them a distrust of the National
Government, I have determined, after a careful examination of the
several treaties, acts of Congress, and other official data bearing on
the subject, aided and assisted therein by the advice and opinion of the
Attorney-General of the United States duly rendered in that behalf, that
the lands so proposed to be restored to the public domain by said
Executive order of February 27, 1885, are included as existing Indian
reservations on the east bank of the Missouri River by the terms of the
second article of the treaty with the Sioux Indians concluded April 29,
1868, and that consequently, being treaty reservations, the Executive
was without lawful power to restore them to the public domain by said
Executive order, which is therefore deemed and considered to be wholly
inoperative and void; and