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 MARCH EIGHTEENTH 
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ZJOith the Compliments of 
 
 The Cleveland Memorial Committee 
 
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THE 
 
 GROVER CLEVELAND 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 MARCH 18, 1909 
 
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THE 
 
 GROVER CLEVELAND 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH 
 
 IN THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND 
 
 NINE HUNDRED AND NINE 
 
 CARNEGIE HALL 
 
 THURSDAY AFTERNOON AT THREE O'CLOCK 
 
 COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 THURSDAY EVENING AT EIGHT-FIFTEEN O'CLOCK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
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 ^ CLEVELAND MEMORIAL COMMITTEES 
 
 OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES 
 
 FRANCIS LYNDE STETSON . Chairman 
 
 DeLANCEY NICOLL . . . Secretary 
 
 PAUL MORTON .... Treasurer 
 
 Members ex-ofBcio of all committees 
 
 Executive Committee 
 
 E. C. benedict, Chairman 
 WILLIAM A. COAKLEY MORGAN J. O'BRIEN 
 
 GEORGE HARVEY FRANCIS KEY PENDELTON 
 
 W. M. LAFFAN ISIDOR STRAUS 
 
 Finance Committee 
 
 HERMAN RIDDER, Chairman PATRICK F. McGOWAN 
 
 HERMAN A. METZ WHITELAW REID 
 
 EGERTON L. WINTHROP, Jr. 
 
 Committee on Public Exercises 
 
 JOSEPH D. BRYANT, Chairman JOHN H. FINLEY 
 
 LYMAN ABBOTT RICHARD WATSON GILDER 
 
 NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER THOMAS HASTINGS, Jk. 
 
 JOHN G. CARLISLE GEORGE F. PARKER 
 
 WILLIAM E. CURTIS WILLIAM M. SLOANE 
 
 Committee on Press and Publication 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER, Chairman 
 ST. CLAIR McKELWAY ADOLPH S. OCHS 
 
 * Committee on Permanent Memorial 
 
 ANDREW CARNEGIE, Chairman CHARLES S. FAIRCHILD 
 
 EDWARD D. ADAMS JOHN G. MILBURN 
 
 EDWARD R. BACON FRANK D. MILLET 
 
 JOSEPH D. BRYANT PETER B. OLNEY 
 
 JOHN L. CADWALADER ALTON B. PARKER 
 
 JOSEPH H. CHOATE WILLIAM F. SHEEHAN 
 
 HENRY F. DIMOCK EDWARD M. SHEPARD 
 
 * THE COMMITTEE ON PERMANENT MEMOEIAL IN DUE SEASON "WILL 
 DECIDE EEGAEDING THE FORM OF AN APPROPRIATE MEMOEIAL 
 AND WILL COMMUNICATE WITH THE PUBLIC 
 AS TO SUITABLE PROVISION THEREFOR 
 
CONTENTS 
 CARNEGIE HALL 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Oeder of Exercises xiii 
 
 The Rev. Dr.William Rogers Richards, Invocation 3 
 
 Mayor McClellan 6 
 
 Governor Hughes 10 
 
 Richard Watson Gilder 18 
 
 Chief Justice Fuller 23 
 
 President Taft 28 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt, Letter 38 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Samuel Schulman, Benediction . 41 
 
 THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 Order of Exercises 44 
 
 Edward M. Shepard 45 
 
 Mayor McClellan 47 
 
 Senator Root 49 
 
 Judge Gray 53 
 
 William B. Hornblower 65 
 
 The Rev. Father Quinn, S. J 73 
 
PORTRAITS 
 
 GROVER CLEVELAND (1903) Frontispiece 
 
 THE REV. DR. WILLIAM ROGERS RICHARDS . facing page 3 
 
 FRANCIS LYNDE STETSON . . . . 
 
 MAYOR McCLELLAN 
 
 GOVERNOR HUGHES 
 
 RICHARD WATSON GILDER . . . . 
 
 CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER 
 
 PRESIDENT TAFT 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 THE REV. DR. SAMUEL SCHULMAN 
 GROVER CLEVELAND (1892) . . . 
 
 EDWARD M. SHEPARD 
 
 SENATOR ROOT 
 
 JUDGE GRAY 
 
 WILLIAM B. HORNBLOWER . . . . 
 
 4 
 6 
 10 
 18 
 23 
 28 
 38 
 41 
 43 
 45 
 49 
 53 
 65 
 
Notice for the meeting at Carnegie Hall 
 
 THE MEMORIAL CEREMONIES 
 
 ■9 
 
 MAYOR McCLELLAN WILL PRESIDE 
 
 ADDRESSES WILL BE MADE BY 
 
 PRESIDENT TAFT, BY CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER AND BY GOVERNOR HUGHES 
 
 MR. RICHARD WATSON GILDER WILL READ A POEM 
 
 THE INVOCATION WILL BE OFFERED BY THE REVEREND DOCTOR 
 
 WILLIAM ROGERS RICHARDS 
 
 AND THE BENEDICTION WILL BE PRONOUNCED BY 
 
 THE REVEREND DOCTOR SAMUEL SCHULMAN 
 
 MR. WALTER DAMROSCH WITH HIS ORCHESTRA, SUPPLEMENTED BY 
 
 ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY VOICES OF THE LIEDERKRANZ SOCIETY, 
 
 WILL PROVIDE THE MUSIC 
 
 THE EXIGENCIES OF PREPARATION FOR THE EVENT REQUIRE THAT 
 
 DELAY IN ACCEPTANCE BE REGARDED AS A DECLINATION 
 
 DkLANCEY NICOLL, 
 
 Secretarv- 
 

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ORDER OF EXERCISES 
 
 1 Fiineral March from "Die Gotterdammerung" . Wagner 
 
 ORCHESTRA 
 
 2 Meeting called to order by the Chairman of the Committee 
 
 3 Invocation. The Reverend Doctor WiUiam Rogers Richards 
 ^ Hymn Largo Handel 
 
 CHORUS AND ORGAN 
 
 5 Introductory Remarks . The Chairman of the Committee 
 
 6 Address The Mayor 
 
 7 Address The Governor 
 
 8 Andante from Fifth Symphony Beethoven 
 
 ORCHESTRA 
 
 9 Poem Richard Watson Gilder 
 
 10 Address . . . The Chief Justice of the United States 
 
 1 1 Address .... The President of the United States 
 
 12 Sacred Song . "The Heavens Proclaim" . Beethoven 
 
 CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA 
 
 13 Benediction . The Reverend Doctor Samuel Schulman 
 
 The New York Symphony Orchestra 
 
 Walter Damrosch, Conductor 
 The German Liederkranz 
 
 Arthur Claassen, Conductor 
 
 Otto A. Graff, Organist 
 
THE 
 
 GROVER CLEVELAND 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 

 , -> yo 
 
 '•"A /r.. /...,./>. 
 
CARNEGIE HALL 
 
 Thursday afternoon, March 18, 1909 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE 
 
 The divine blessing will now be invoked by the 
 Rev. Dr. Richards. 
 
 INVOCATION 
 
 THE REV. DR. WILLIAM ROGERS RICHARDS 
 
 Let us pray. Almighty God, giver of all mercies, 
 we thank Thee for the great kindness that Thou 
 hast shown to this land in granting us freedom and 
 in establishing the nation in justice by the people's 
 will. We also thank Thee that when perplexity 
 and danger have come upon us Thou hast ever 
 raised up for our deliverance men wise to know 
 Thy will and strong and ever courageous in the 
 doing of it. We give Thee thanks this day for the 
 memory of a man who stood in that succession. We 
 pray that Thou wilt guide and bless us in all that 
 we do to-day to bring his name and example before 
 the minds of the people. May those virtues which 
 we have learned to love and honor in him become 
 
 [3] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 more common among us. May such men never be 
 wanting to serve the nation's need. We beseech 
 Thee that Thy favor may not depart from us. 
 Bless Thy servant, the President, and all those in 
 authority, and all the people of these United States, 
 that we may ever incline to Thy will and walk in 
 Thy way. May reverence and justice and freedom 
 and charity and courage be ever with us and give 
 us peace with each other and with all the nations of 
 the earth. We ask it in the name of Him who has 
 died when we pray and say. Our Father who art in 
 heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom 
 come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
 Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our 
 debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into 
 temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is 
 the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. 
 Amen. 
 
 Hymn, Largo .... Handel 
 
 CHORUS AND ORGAN 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN 
 
 Twice within this year of notable commemorations 
 our city, through its patriotic Mayor and Board of 
 Aldermen, has called the people together to honor 
 the memory of a great President of the United 
 States. Upon the centenary of Abraham Lincoln, 
 
 [*] 
 

 (i^M^4 Uji^M. VU^5^ 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 liberator, Union saver, and protomartyr, the story 
 of his great life learned from the written and the 
 printed page was told and was heard by those who 
 for the most part were bom since the date of his 
 tragic death. Upon this seventy-second anniver- 
 sary of the bii'th of Grover Cleveland his friends 
 and neighbors, familiar with his featm'es, ac- 
 quainted with the nobility of his character and his 
 devout patriotism, meet together to pay their sin- 
 cere tribute of affection to his beloved and revered 
 memory. 
 
 He was great as Mayor, as Governor, as Presi- 
 dent; and here graciously have come the Mayor, 
 the Governor, and the President, and the venerable 
 Chief Justice w^ho administered to him and to his 
 successors the solemn Presidential oath; and here, 
 too, has come a letter from that impressive and 
 striking personality who has succeeded to the soli- 
 tary place of ex-President, so long filled by our 
 beloved friend. 
 
 All of these you will hear during this meeting 
 under the direction of his Honor the Mayor, whom 
 now it is my privilege to present to you as Chair- 
 man of the day. \^Applause.~\ 
 
 [5] 
 
THE HON. GEORGE B. McCLELLAN 
 
 MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 We have met in behalf and in the name of the 
 people of New York to commemorate Grover 
 Cleveland on this the seventy-second anniversary of 
 his birth. He was our Governor, twice our Presi- 
 dent, sometime our fellow-townsman. 
 
 This meeting has been called in response to a 
 popular desire that there should be some public ex- 
 pression of the affection and honor in which we held 
 the man, of the loving reverence in which we hold 
 his memory. 
 
 Of the many Presidents of the United States 
 some have been abler and stronger and greater than 
 others, but all have been above mediocrity, not one 
 of them has failed to grapple successfully with the 
 problems which have confronted him, not one of 
 them but has been worthy of the time in which he 
 lived. Yet, of them all, five stand in a class apart, 
 because they more nearly represent their periods, 
 more fully express the hopes, the aspirations, and 
 the ideals of their contemporaries: Washington, the 
 Father, who brought our government into being; 
 Jefferson, the republican, who saved us from an 
 aristocracy; Jackson, the man of the people, who 
 made our government one of the people; Lincoln, 
 
 [ 6] 
 
^^^^^(/ 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 the unifier, who saved it a government for the peo- 
 ple; and Cleveland, the democrat, who emphasized 
 that for which he lived, in giving us a government 
 by the people. All five enunciated political prin- 
 ciples that have been so generally accepted that 
 they are to-day part of the traditions of our govern- 
 ment. 
 
 To the principles for which Cleveland lived and 
 fought and wrought, his name has been given. 
 Clevelandism has been described as being nothing 
 but the expression of the every-day and of the com- 
 monplace, and so it is, for it is the enunciation of 
 right Hving and thinking and doing, of rugged 
 honesty and integrity in thought and word and 
 deed, in private life and in public affairs, of plain 
 speaking and plain dealing, of sincerity of purpose 
 and absolute certainty of the righteousness of 
 its cause — all homely, every-day, commonplace 
 virtues. 
 
 There is nothing new about Clevelandism. It 
 has guided men as long as we have been a race and 
 will continue to guide men as long as our race en- 
 dures. The spirit of Clevelandism was present at 
 Runnymede, which saw the dawn of English liberty 
 through the efforts of every-day, commonplace 
 English country gentlemen. The men who rode 
 with Oliver Cromwell and brought modern Eng- 
 land into being were only every-day, commonplace 
 Enghsh tradesmen and yeomen. Our Revolution, 
 which began with the Declaration of Independence 
 and reached its full fruition with the adoption of 
 
 [7] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 the Constitution, was the work of every-day, com- 
 monplace Colonials. Our Civil War was fought 
 and won and lost by every-day, commonplace 
 Americans from the cotton-fields of the South and 
 the wheat-fields of the North, from the workshop 
 and the factory and the streets. The spirit of the 
 every-day and of the commonplace has saved us 
 many a time in the past and will save us many a 
 time in the days to come. 
 
 The men who have left their impress upon the 
 history of our race, who have helped to mold us in 
 our development as a nation, have not been the 
 erratic, eccentric geniuses, but the slow-thinking 
 and conservative men of wisdom and sober thought. 
 
 The men who are our real heroes, the men who 
 live in the hearts of the American people, are not 
 those who dwell in Olympus, aloof, inimitable and 
 unattainable, but the men who live upon the earth, 
 who are of the earth, earthy, who are as human as 
 we are, the men in whom we see our weaknesses and 
 shortcomings and failings minimized, but our 
 strength and our virtues glorified; not the men 
 whom we know we cannot be like and would not if 
 we could, but the men we know we are like in a 
 small degree and in whose footsteps we follow a 
 great way off. The men whose names are most 
 often heard in the homes of the American people 
 are the three who most nearly represented the essen- 
 tial characteristics of the American race — Wash- 
 ington, Lincoln, Cleveland. 
 
 The hold which Grover Cleveland obtained and 
 
 [8] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 retained upon the hearts of his countrymen was not 
 so much because of what he did as because of what 
 he was. The people saw in him their ideal of what 
 an American ought to be; they saw in him the 
 homely, every-day, commonplace virtues that their 
 mothers taught them when they were children and 
 that they in their turn teach their sons. They saw 
 in him the type of man they would like to be them- 
 selves, and in what he did and tried to do they saw 
 the strivings of a man who was the concrete em- 
 bodiment of our country. 
 
 The world is better because he lived, for he suc- 
 ceeded in his life's mission. He carried the people 
 whom he served and loved a little forward, a little 
 upward, a little nearer to their God. 
 
 [9] 
 
Mayor McClellan: I have the honor to intro- 
 duce to you his Excellency the Governor of New 
 York. 
 
 ADDRESS OF CHARLES E. HUGHES 
 
 THE GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK 
 
 Mr. President, Mr, Mayor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies 
 and Gentlemen: 
 
 We are met to-day to pay a just tribute to a 
 great hero of civil administration, who was not 
 introduced to the favor of his countrymen by mili- 
 tary achievement, who had not been associated with 
 any great strife, with enemies abroad or within our 
 boimds, who stands preeminently a great figure of 
 peace unidentified in our country's history with 
 those conflicts which have given us many of the men 
 whom we admire as our national heroes. It is pre- 
 cisely in that fact, and in the contribution that he 
 made to our life within those limits, that we find 
 the significance of this meeting. 
 
 The fame of Grover Cleveland is secure because 
 of the ruggedness, the simplicity of his character, 
 and because of his inflexible determination in exe- 
 cuting his honest judgment. Others may more 
 appropriately speak at this time of his relation to 
 national affairs, and the great part that he played 
 as twice President of the United States, but it is 
 
 [10] 
 
Copyright, IQOQ, by Mojffett Studio, Chicago 
 
 f-;s^u 
 
 r 
 
 ^CXiX^ 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 weU that in this city we should recaD the service 
 which he rendered to the State of New York as 
 Mayor of one of its important municipalities and 
 as ckef executive of the State. He was not bom 
 m New York, but his early years were spent here. 
 Here he laid the foundation for his future work- 
 here he was trained in the arduous labors of his pro- 
 fession, and here he indicated the principles which 
 commended hmi to the confidence of the country at 
 Jarge. He was favored in his early life. His was 
 not an adventm-ous youth ; it does not contain a sen- 
 sational episode; his was not the fortmie of a 
 luxurious home, nor did he even have the average 
 advantages so far as education was concerned His 
 was the training of the village, of the village school, 
 of the work of the humble clerk, of selfCprogres 
 through constant devotion to the task of the day 
 and preparation through self-culture for the task 
 of the morrow. But he was fortunate because he 
 was reared in a Christian household inspired by the 
 highest Ideals and had his youthful training under 
 conditions which neither made him the victim of 
 extreme poverty on the one hand or of extraor- 
 
 his"e?i ,7'.f "" "" *' °*^^- He represents in 
 hs early We the opportunity afforded to thousands, 
 ndeed millK,ns, of our young men. His was no 
 the extraordinary career of a Lincoh; his was not 
 the grinding poverty from which some of our great 
 men have emerged. He was the son of an honest 
 clergyman with a considerable family, and re- 
 ceived the training which most American boys are 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 privileged to have, and so, after spending some 
 years in Oneida County and other places in the 
 upper part of the State, he went to Buffalo and for 
 a long period after he had been admitted to the bar 
 practised his profession. He was elected in 1881 
 as Mayor of Buffalo simply because of the credit 
 he had estabhshed with his fellow-citizens as a man 
 of high ability, sound judgment, and absolute in- 
 tegrity. He took the trying position of chief 
 executive of the municipality with certain prin- 
 ciples. What he exhibited there in that narrower 
 sphere was precisely what he displayed in the larg- 
 est sphere of action which the country affords. He 
 was the same man in the Mayor's office at Buffalo 
 as he was in the White House, and the messages 
 which he sent to the Common Council of the city 
 were phrased with the same determination, vigor, 
 and expression of principle which characterize his 
 later and more important official utterances. 
 
 Our pubHc men as time passes do not become 
 identified in the memory of the people so closely 
 with the particular policies with which their public 
 life has been intimately connected; the particular 
 policies of the day are remembered by students, are 
 discussed in special assemblies, but with the people 
 at large the man in public life, if he is remembered 
 at all, is remembered because of his adherence to the 
 fundamental principles we all recognize, and be- 
 cause of the impression made by the sterling worth 
 of his character. It is precisely for that reason that 
 we have confidence in the future of the Republic. 
 
 [12] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 We judge our chances of success in this experiment 
 of popular government by the sort of men we 
 revere, and to-day we honor ourselves because we 
 honor Grover Cleveland. 
 
 He was a man who had firmly fixed in his mind 
 the idea that a public officer was a public servant, 
 a delegate of the people to perform certain duties 
 prescribed by the Constitution and the statutes; 
 that he was the representative of the constituency, 
 and not for the purpose of furthering selfish ambi- 
 tions or of exploiting particular schemes or helping 
 himself or his friends to positions of advantage, but 
 solely to do what, according to our traditions and 
 principles of government, the officer in the particu- 
 lar place was appointed or elected to do. He could 
 express himself trenchantly. He had no fear. 
 You may recall the words in which he vetoed a cer- 
 tain proposition of the Common Council of Buf- 
 falo. He says in his veto message : 
 
 This is a time for plain speech, and my objection 
 to the action of your honorable body, now under 
 consideration, shall be plainly stated. I withhold 
 my assent from the same because I regard it as the 
 culmination of a most barefaced, impudent, and 
 shameless scheme to betray the interests of the peo- 
 ple and to worse than squander the public money. 
 
 That was Grover Cleveland in Buffalo in 1882. 
 Again and again he addressed to the Common 
 Council of his city plain reminders of their obvious 
 duty, but couched in such vigorous and sincere 
 
 [13] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 terms that he won completely the confidence of his 
 community without respect to party. The result 
 was that when the Democratic convention met after 
 Mr. Cleveland had for a time held the office of 
 Mayor of Buffalo, there was no difficulty in per- 
 suading it that he was the man to be selected as the 
 candidate for the office of Governor. Mr. Cleve- 
 land constantly in his public addresses emphasized 
 the fact that whatever the office might be, whether 
 mayor or governor, the conception of its duties with 
 regard to the principles underlying it was precisely 
 the same. So he went to Albany, and there he con- 
 tinually presented to the public, to the Legislature 
 in official documents and in his addresses, this 
 proposition which had so completely captured his 
 imagination, the proposition of the public officer 
 doing that which he was elected to do. He had also 
 certain ideas which he emphasized and which we 
 must recognize as important contributions to the 
 life of the State. For example, he spoke of the im- 
 portance of the different communities of the State 
 having an opportunity to develop their local life. 
 Said he: 
 
 I am unalterably opposed to the interference by 
 the Legislature with the government of the muni- 
 cipalities. I believe in the intelligence of the people 
 when left to an honest freedom in their choice, and 
 that, when the citizens of any section of the State 
 have determined upon the details of a local govern- 
 ment, they should be left in the undisturbed enjoy- 
 ment of the same. The doctrine of home rule, as 
 I understand it, lies at the foundation of republican 
 
 [14] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 institutions, and cannot be too strongly insisted 
 upon. 
 
 Closely associated with that principle which he 
 constantly emphasized was his effort to prevent un- 
 necessary special legislation. Again and again he 
 sent messages to the Legislature voicing his protest 
 against the iniquity of unnecessary bills interfering 
 in matters concerning the freedom of the local com- 
 munity. Said he in one message : 
 
 Another evil which has a most pernicious influ- 
 ence on legislation is the introduction and considera- 
 tion of bills purely local in their character, affecting 
 only special interests, and which ought not upon 
 any pretext to be permitted to encumber the stat- 
 utes of the State. Every consideration of expedi- 
 ency, as well as the language and evident intent of 
 the Constitution, dictate the exclusion of such mat- 
 ters from legislative consideration. Their consid- 
 eration retards the business of the session and 
 occupies time which should be devoted to better 
 purposes. And this is not the worst result that may 
 follow in their train. Such measures, there is 
 ground to suspect, are frequently made the means 
 of securing, by a promise of aid in their passage, 
 the votes of those who introduce them, in favor of 
 other and more vicious legislation. 
 
 I speak of these matters because it is important, 
 these days when we pay appropriate tribute to the 
 men who have honored us in public stations, that we 
 should endeavor to reset the scene, to reconstruct 
 the hfe, to come close to the living man and under- 
 stand exactly the principles that move him, and not 
 
 [15] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 consume our time in vain eulogy without the in- 
 spiration and encouragement of a proper under- 
 standing of his actual conduct. 
 
 We notice in addition as one of the principles of 
 Mr. Cleveland's official conduct that there should 
 be absolute justice in dealing with all of the crea- 
 tures of the State and all who receive privileges 
 from the State. On account of certain of his official 
 actions there was a time when he was severely criti- 
 cized as a friend of corporations, and it was sup- 
 posed by some, indeed stated by some, that his 
 official action was prompted because of his desire 
 to protect them. Never was there a more unwar- 
 ranted misconstruction of a public man of sincere 
 purpose and integrity. In one case where he vetoed 
 a bill which the public, or a certain portion of them, 
 very much desired, he explained that his reason was 
 that the State of New York must in all cases keep 
 faith, and that the action there proposed was an act 
 of infidelity, an act betraying what they had most 
 solemnly promised. His general attitude toward 
 corporations may be illustrated in this statement 
 which appears in one of his messages : 
 
 The State [he says] creates these corporations 
 upon the theory that some proper thing of benefit 
 can be better done by them than by private enter- 
 prise, and that the aggregation of the funds of 
 many individuals may be thus profitably employed. 
 They are launched upon the public with the seal of 
 the State in some sense upon them. They are per- 
 mitted to represent the advantages they possess and 
 
 [16] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 the wealth sure to follow from admission to mem- 
 bership. It is a grave question whether the forma- 
 tion of these artificial bodies ought not to be 
 checked, or better regulated and in some way super- 
 vised. At any rate, they should always be kept well 
 in hand, and the funds of its citizens should be pro- 
 tected by the State which has invited their invest- 
 ment. While the stockholders are the owners of 
 the corporate property, notoriously they are often- 
 times completely in the power of the directors and 
 managers. Acting within their legitimate sphere 
 they should be protected, but whenever oppression 
 appears, authority should be created to check it and 
 prevent it. 
 
 Grover Cleveland was a man who believed that 
 public office was a public trust ; that local communi- 
 ties should govern themselves; that in every official 
 position there should be the highest efficiency 
 through a proper method of obtaining civil service ; 
 and that every one with whom the State was called 
 upon to deal should be dealt with with absolute jus- 
 tice and with regard for the supreme public interest. 
 We can never grow so large, and the importance 
 of emphasizing the rule of the people can never be- 
 come so great, that we can afford to forget those 
 principles that are illustrated in the life-work of 
 Grover Cleveland as the Mayor of Buffalo and 
 Governor of New York better than in any other 
 public servant this State has ever had. It is because 
 I deem it proper in my official position to emphasize 
 these matters that I have brought them closely to 
 your attention. We must remember that when 
 
 [17] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 Grover Cleveland was uttering, as the Mayor has 
 said, commonplaces, he was announcing fundamen- 
 tal principles. He announced what others had 
 announced before him. The principles for which 
 he stood had long been recognized, but he sincerely, 
 nobly, and vigorously applied them, and while we 
 pay tribute to the memory of Grover Cleveland, 
 twice President of the United States, honored man 
 of the nation, let us not forget our great indebted- 
 ness to Grover Cleveland, Governor of the State 
 of New York. 
 
 Music^ 
 
 Andante from Fifth Symphony . . Beethoven 
 
 ORCHESTRA 
 
 Mayor McClellan: The poem written for this 
 day will be read by its author. I have great 
 pleasure in introducing to you Mr. Richard 
 Watson Gilder. 
 
 Mr. Gilder read the following poem : 
 
 [18] 
 
CLEVELAND 
 
 He shrank from praise, this simple-hearted man— 
 Therefore we praise him! Yet, as he would wish, 
 Chiefly our praise not for the things he did. 
 But for his spirit in doing. Ah, great heart. 
 And humble ! Great and simple heart ! forgive 
 The homage we may not withhold ! Strong soul ! 
 Thou brave and faithful servant of the State, 
 Who labored day and night in little things, 
 No less than large, for the loved country's sake, 
 With patient hand that plodded while others slept! 
 Who flung to the winds preferment and the future, 
 Daring to put clear truth to the perilous test. 
 Fearing no scathe if but the people gained. 
 And happiest far in sacrifice and loss. 
 Yes, happiest he when, plain in all men's sight, 
 He turned contemptuous from the lure of place. 
 Spurning the laurel that should crown success 
 Soiled by surrender and a perjured soul. 
 
 II 
 
 The people! Never once his faith was dimmed 
 In them his countrymen ; ah, never once ; 
 For if doubt shook him, 't was but a fleeting mood ; 
 Though others wavered, never wavered he. 
 
 [19] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 Though madness, like a flood, swept o'er the land, 
 This way, now that ; though love of pelf subdued 
 The civic conscience, still he held his faith. 
 Unfaltering, in man's true-heartedness. 
 And in the final judgment of free men. 
 
 in 
 
 Firm with the powerful, gentle with the weak. 
 
 His was the sweetness of the strong ! His voice 
 
 Took tenderness in speech with little folk, 
 
 And he was pitiful of man and brute. 
 
 So, for the struggle with high things of state. 
 
 He strengthened his own heart with kindly deeds — 
 
 His own heart strengthened for stern acts of power 
 
 That, fashioned in the secret place of thought. 
 
 And in the lonely and the silent shrine 
 
 Of conscience, came momentous on the world: 
 
 Built stronger the foundations of the State ; 
 
 Upheld the word of Honor, no whit less 
 
 'Twixt nation and nation than 'twixt man and man ; 
 
 Held righteousness the one law of the world, 
 
 And higher set the hopes of all mankind. 
 
 IV 
 
 Lonely the heart that listens to no voice 
 Save that of Duty; lonely he how oft 
 When, turning from the smooth, advised path. 
 He climbed the chill and solitary way ; 
 Wondering that anj'^ wondered, when so clear 
 
 [20] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 The light that led— the light of perfect faith 
 And passion for the right, that fire of heaven 
 Wherein self dies, and only truth lives on! 
 Lonely how oft when, with the statesman's art, 
 He waited for the fullness of the time. 
 And wrought the good he willed by slow degrees, 
 And in due order conquered wrong on wrong. 
 Lonely how oft when 'mid dark disesteem 
 He moved straightforward to a longed-for goal. 
 Doing each day the best he might, with vision 
 Firm fixt above, kept pure by pure intent. 
 
 Some souls are built to take the shocks of the world, 
 To interpose against blind currents of fate, 
 Or wrath, or ignorant purpose, a fixt will ; 
 Against the bursting storm a front of calm; 
 As, when the Atlantic rages, some stern cliff 
 Hurls back the tempest and the ponderous wave. 
 So stood he firm when lesser wills were broken; 
 So he endured when others failed and fell; 
 Bearing, in silent suffering, the stress, 
 The blame, the burden of the fateful day. 
 
 VI 
 
 So single and so simple was his mind. 
 So unperturbed by learned subtleties 
 And so devout of justice and the right — 
 His thought, his act, held something of the prime ; 
 
 [21] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 The wide, sure vision of the ancient day- 
 Prophetic; even a touch of nature's force — 
 Large, elemental, healing; builded well 
 On the deep bases of humanity. 
 
 VII 
 
 O strong oak riven ! O tower of defense 
 Fallen ! O captain of the hosts struck down ! 
 O cries of lamentation — turning swift 
 To sounds of triumph and great victories ! 
 For unto the hands of one of humble soul 
 Great trust was laid, and he that trust fulfilled. 
 So he who died accomplished mighty deeds. 
 And he who fought has won the infinite peace. 
 And sleeps enshrined in his own people's hearts, 
 And in the praise of nations and the world. 
 And rests immortal among the immortal Great. 
 
 [22] 
 
O'/j-r/i,-///, IQOO. hy //.irii.'. C- E 
 
 jkUj^^i^ J^/^^/6.> 
 
Mayor McClellan: Ladies and Gentlemen: I 
 have the honor to introduce to you the Chief 
 Justice of the United States. 
 
 ADDRESS OF CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER 
 
 In announcing to the people of the United States 
 the sad tidings of the death of General Grant, 
 President Cleveland said that, whether as a soldier 
 or as a Chief ISIagistrate, the illustrious deceased 
 "trod unswervingly the pathway of duty, unde- 
 terred by doubts, single-minded and straightfor- 
 ward." 
 
 In these words ]Mr. Cleveland indicated the qual- 
 ities he thought most commendable in a public 
 serv^ant, and in eulogizing another unconsciously 
 portrayed himself, for he was single-minded, and 
 straightforward, and unswerving, and nothing 
 doubting, in his adherence to duty. 
 
 He never doubted that the conduct of public 
 affairs should be governed by the principles of 
 honor and truthfulness and honest dealing — in 
 short, the principles applicable to the discharge of 
 trusts— and he regarded public office as a public 
 trust. 
 
 At the same time he fully recognized the neces- 
 sity of political parties, whose conflicts over gen- 
 eral principles resulted in that golden mean which 
 
 [23] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 gives peace, prosperity, and success to the govern- 
 ment of the people. 
 
 I should say that President Jefferson's first in- 
 augural embodied, in a general way. President 
 Cleveland's political views, including the belief that 
 when the elections were over all should vmite in 
 common efforts for the common good. 
 
 Nevertheless he often declared, in a party sense, 
 that he was a Democrat. He did not seem to think 
 that that word, as he used it, needed any explana- 
 tion, though, if it did, he repeatedly gave it, as, for 
 instance, in his letter to Mr. MacVeagh on the occa- 
 sion of the Jackson Day Celebration at Chicago in 
 1897, when he wrote : 
 
 At such a time it should be impressively taught 
 that Democracy is not disorder; that its regard for 
 popular rights does not mean the care of only a 
 portion of our people; that its loyalty to the Con- 
 stitution and law does not mean a petulant chal- 
 lenge of the duty of civic obedience; that its 
 aggressiveness does not mean class hatred and 
 sectional vituperation; and that its success should 
 never mean mere partizan triumph at the sacrifice 
 of principle and patriotism. 
 
 How like the man that is ! It shows the comfort- 
 ing idealism back of its political utterances, while, 
 like them, it is good old-fashioned plain talk, with- 
 out any taint of subtlety about it. 
 
 Holding the views that he did, and being a last- 
 ditch fighter, it is perhaps not to be wondered at 
 that many of his followers attacked instead of sup- 
 
 [24] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 ported him, and, as they could not catch him asleep, 
 violently sought to throw him overboard; but, Hke 
 Palinurus, in that particular he carried his rudder 
 with him, and, riding the tempestuous seas trium- 
 phantly, regained the ship and brought her safely 
 into port. 
 
 The truth is that the people, whom he loved so 
 well, like a man, and Cleveland was a man, and of 
 course as such to be trusted, and they knew it. The 
 sober second thought, the salvation of the republic, 
 came up in full tide, and whatever its ebb and flow 
 during the tribulations of his second term, it vindi- 
 cated his heroic maintenance of the conviction that 
 because right is right to follow right is wisdom in 
 the scorn of consequence. 
 
 Think for a moment how he stood like a rock for 
 the public credit in the financial upheaval arising 
 from the silver excitement, which had swept away 
 the majority of his own party; how he put down the 
 Chicago riots; how he averted threatened national 
 bankruptcy by the issue of bonds; how he faced 
 with calm serenity torrents of personal abuse, de- 
 sertion of friends, misapprehension in the public 
 mind, and resolutely discarded the temporary ex- 
 pediencies of the mere politician. 
 
 Doubtless, though he suppressed the evidence 
 of it, he felt keenly the personal attacks upon him, 
 for, serious-minded as he was, it is an egregious 
 mistake to assume that he was lacking in tender 
 emotions. I recall an incident strikingly illustra- 
 tive of this, which I must be pardoned for relating. 
 
 [25] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 At the remarkable Centennial Celebration of the 
 Organization of the Federal Judiciary, held in 
 New York, February 4, 1890, over which Mr. 
 Cleveland presided with great dignity, the eminent 
 jurist and eloquent speaker, Mr. Edward J. Phelps, 
 in the course of one of the formal addresses deliv- 
 ered on that occasion, turning to Mr. Cleveland 
 and the court, referred to Chatham's declaration 
 that the poor man's cabin was his castle — the wind 
 might enter it, the rain might enter it, but the King 
 of England could not enter it — and said that the 
 great statesman and orator did not say that the 
 Parliament of Great Britain might not enter it, 
 yet here in America was a court to which the poor 
 man might resort, whose judgment, pronounced in 
 the due course of judicial proceedings, could bar 
 the entrance of the Congress if its action were held 
 to be contrary to the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 I happened to glance at JNIr. Cleveland, and the 
 tears were rolling down his face. 
 
 But at last the long day's work was over and he 
 laid his armor off, retiring for his well-earned repose 
 to that abode of scholars, Princeton, in his native 
 State of New Jersey. 
 
 Although making no claim to scholarship as 
 such, he characteristically sought rest in intercourse 
 with scholars and in quiet meditation over the les- 
 sons taught by battles far away. 
 
 And then came the reaction, and before his weary 
 eyes were closed on earth it was vouchsafed to him 
 to know that his courage, his strength of purpose, 
 
 [26] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 his fidelity to duty, were fully recognized, and that 
 he was reaping the reward of the good and faithful 
 servant. 
 
 He was indeed a great man, and it was character 
 that made him great — character, which Emerson 
 describes as "a reserved force, which acts directly 
 by pressure and without means," "a certain un- 
 demonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose 
 impulses the man is guided" and accomplishes 
 things by a sort of magnetism. Washington had 
 it, and Lincoln had it, and the people have always 
 finally acknowledged it. 
 
 It is very right that this tribute is paid to him, 
 and that the President of the United States and the 
 Governor of the State of New York, the successor 
 of Mr. Cleveland, have joined in it. I find in the 
 President that adherence to duty and those plain 
 and practical utterances that were Mr. Cleveland's, 
 and I mark with delight the salutary influence on 
 the Governor of the fearlessness of his illustrious 
 predecessor. 
 
 At the simple rites with which he was committed 
 to the grave, Wordsworth's poem of "The Happy 
 Warrior" was read, and, applicable as it was, I 
 still could not help thinking of Valiant-for-truth's 
 last words : 
 
 My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in 
 my pilgrimage, and my corn-age and skill to him 
 that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with 
 me to be a witness for me that I have fought His 
 battles that will now be my rewarder. 
 
 [27] 
 
Mayor McClellan: Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 Gentlemen, I ask you to arise and receive our 
 Chief Magistrate. I have the honor to present 
 you to the President. 
 
 ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Grover Cleveland was as completely American 
 in his character as Lincoln. Without a college edu- 
 cation, he prepared himself for the bar. His life 
 was confined to western New York. His vision of 
 government and of society was not widened by 
 foreign travel. He was a pure product of the vil- 
 lage and town life of the Middle States, affected 
 by New England ancestry and the atmosphere of 
 a clergyman's home. His chief characteristics were 
 simplicity and directness of thought, sturdy hon- 
 esty, courage of his convictions, and plainness of 
 speech, with a sense of public duty that has been 
 exceeded by no statesman within my knowledge. 
 It was so strong in him that he rarely wrote any- 
 thing, whether in the form of a private or public 
 communication, that the obligation of all men to 
 observe the public interest was not his chief theme. 
 His career was a most remarkable one. By his 
 administration of the affairs of his city as its 
 Mayor, he showed his power of resistance to, and 
 
 [28] 
 
Copyright, IQOQ, by llatris u-" Ezeha; 
 
 z 
 
 Jf^.J'f^^^ 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 of overcoming the influence that made for, corrup- 
 tion and negligence in city government, both in 
 his own party and in the party of his opponents. 
 His reputation in this regard spread over the 
 State of New York at a time when such an 
 attitude as his seemed exceptional, and his standing 
 before the community became a political asset for 
 the Democratic party, that even those who had but 
 little sympathy with his principles were glad to 
 seize upon as a means of getting into power. Ac- 
 cordingly, he was nominated for the governorship, 
 and was elected by the votes not only of his own 
 party but of hundreds of thousands of the Republi- 
 can party. The discharge of his duties as Gov- 
 ernor confirmed and strengthened the reputation 
 that he had acquired as Mayor. Before he had 
 ceased his office as Mayor, he had been elected Gov- 
 ernor. Before he had ceased his office as Governor, 
 he had been elected President of the United States. 
 
 The Presidential campaign of 1884 degenerated 
 into one of slander, scandal, and abuse, but Mr. 
 Cleveland came through it, retaining the confidence 
 of the American people in his courage and honesty 
 and his single purpose to better the public service. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland was a Democrat. He was a parti- 
 zan. He believed in parties, as all men must who 
 understand the machinery essential to the success 
 and efficiency of popular government. His im- 
 pulses were all toward the merit system of appoint- 
 ments in the public service, and against the spoils 
 system; but he had a practical, common-sense view 
 
 [29] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 of the problems before him. He dealt with the 
 instruments which he had, and he not infrequently 
 was obliged, in order to accomplish greater objects, 
 to yield to the demands of those who had no ideals, 
 and who were impatient of anything but the use of 
 government offices as a purely political reward. 
 Every time that opportunity offered, however, and 
 there was not some greater object in immediate 
 view, he strengthened and assisted the movement 
 toward the merit system. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland's political career was so short that 
 he had a great advantage over the prominent men 
 of his party whose records reached back into, and 
 were governed by, the bitter quarrels of the Civil 
 War. As a political quantity, his history began 
 during the corruption and demoralization in the 
 Republican party which were a necessary result of 
 continued power during the war and the decade 
 succeeding it. He represented in a sense a new 
 Democracy, about which all the older elements 
 rallied, both those strongly in sympathy with his 
 reform views, and those elements without such 
 sympathy, who were anxious to secure party 
 power. 
 
 At the end of his first term he was renominated, 
 but was beaten by General Harrison in a close 
 vote. By that time the politicians of the old school 
 in the Democratic party had drawn away from him, 
 and had no desire to continue his leadership. But 
 so strong a hold had he upon the affections and 
 confidence of the rank and file of his party, and 
 
 [30] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 so sure were they that he was stronger than the 
 party in an electoral contest, that he was nominated 
 in the National Convention against the desires of 
 most of the State organization leaders; and in the 
 election which followed he led his party to the great- 
 est victory in its history. 
 
 In this campaign Mr. Cleveland stood for an 
 affirmative idea, that of a reduction of the tariff, 
 so as to make it a tariff for revenue. He attacked 
 the protective theory and system. He stood for 
 something aggressive and affirmative. It was in 
 accordance with the ancient traditions of the party. 
 
 I do not need to enter into a discussion of the 
 merits of the issue, but comment on it only as illus- 
 trating Mr. Cleveland's character. He was posi- 
 tive. He was affirmative. He was courageous. 
 He believed in parties. He believed in party pol- 
 icies, and he believed in consistency in regard to 
 them, and he did not believe in trimming down a 
 policy to catch the votes of those who really did not 
 agree with it. 
 
 The first time Mr. Cleveland was in power he 
 was opposed by a Republican Senate. This gave 
 little opportunity for any radical change by legis- 
 lation in the previous policies of Republican admin- 
 istrations, but it did offer an opportunity for Mr. 
 Cleveland to point out to the country the fact that 
 our government is a government of three distinct 
 branches, the executive, the legislative, and the 
 judicial, and that the executive has a sphere which 
 the legislative branch has no right to invade. 
 
 [31] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 We hear much in these days of the usurpation 
 of the legislative jurisdiction by the executive 
 branch. As long as the legislative branch has the 
 power of the purse, the danger of executive usurpa- 
 tion is imaginative. The real danger arises from 
 the disposition of the legislative branch to assume 
 that it has the omnipotence of Parliament and may 
 completely control the discretion conferred upon 
 the executive by the Constitution. The country is 
 under obligation to Mr. Cleveland for having 
 pointed out, in his controversy with the Republican 
 Senate, some of the limitations that there are in the 
 Constitution upon attempted legislative action to 
 restrict executive discretion. In the end Mr. Cleve- 
 land won in his controversy with the Senate. 
 Whether he might have done so, had both the 
 House and the Senate been against him, is a matter 
 of doubt. The history of Andrew Johnson's con- 
 troversy with Congress shows how far a partizan 
 legislature may be induced to go in an unconstitu- 
 tional attempt to cut down executive power. The 
 limit of legislative restriction upon executive action 
 is a difficult line to define. Any one who attempts 
 to do more than to pass on single instances as they 
 arise may find himself in great difficulty, but as 
 such instances are considered and decided, the limits 
 are gradually being defined. We owe to Mr. Cleve- 
 land and his courage in dealing with the Senate of 
 the United States the establishment of some useful 
 precedents. 
 
 In Mr. Cleveland's second term there was a large 
 [82] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 majority of his party in the House and a working 
 majority in the Senate, so that the whole respon- 
 sibiHty of government fell upon the Democracy, 
 with Mr. Cleveland at its head. The significance 
 of his second administration centers about three 
 issues. The first was the tariff; the second, free 
 silver; and the third, the suppression of lawlessness 
 directed against Federal authority by use of the 
 process of Federal courts and by Federal troops. 
 The same influence in his own party which had 
 sought to defeat Mr. Cleveland for nomination in 
 his third canvass, he found intrenched in the Senate 
 so strongly as to be able to defeat the declared pol- 
 icy of his party in favor of a revenue tariff, and he 
 refused to sign the Gorman- Wilson Bill, but al- 
 lowed it to become a law after denouncing it as the 
 result of perfidy and dishonor. This was doubtless 
 the greatest disappointment of his political life, for 
 it destroyed the opportunity to test the wisdom of 
 the party policy advocated by him and declared in 
 the party platform, while the business depression 
 which existed before and after its passage furnished 
 ammunition to his pohtical opponents, who did not 
 hesitate to argue that the prospect of a revenue 
 tariff on the one hand and the passage of the actual 
 Gorman- Wilson Bill on the other had paralyzed 
 the industries of the country. Whatever one's 
 views upon the tariff, whether he be a protectionist 
 or a free-trader, he cannot but have the deepest 
 sympathy with Mr. Cleveland in his deep indigna- 
 tion at the party disloyalty which defeated the 
 
 [33] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 Wilson Bill as it passed the House, and gave us 
 the nondescript bill which became the law. 
 
 But there was a rising in the Democratic party 
 at the time, especially in the western and southern 
 parts of the country, a desire for economic remedy 
 which should cure everything in our business and 
 body politic. This was the movement in favor of 
 the free coinage of silver. The Republican party 
 and some of its leaders in the West and South had 
 not been free from weakness in this respect, and the 
 law for the monthly purchases of $2,000,000 of 
 silver hung like a stone around the neck of the coun- 
 try. Mr. Cleveland used all the authority that he 
 could command as the Executive to bring about 
 a repeal of this law, and he finally succeeded. The 
 deep gratitude of the country is due to him for this 
 result. Without it disaster would have come. With- 
 out it the credit of the country could not have been 
 sustained, and there would have been a blot on our 
 financial escutcheon. But when Mr. Cleveland suc- 
 ceeded in securing the repeal of the Sherman Act, 
 it seemed as if his control over the party with re- 
 spect to the monetary issue had been exhausted. 
 His party became hopelessly divided, and the ma- 
 jority of it declared in favor of the free coinage of 
 silver, a policy which we know to-day, and which 
 we ought to have known then, was nothing but a 
 policy of repudiation. It was a policy completely 
 contrary to the ancient and traditional views of the 
 old Democratic party. It was a departure from 
 the plainest principles of honesty to those who fore- 
 
 [34] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 saw its effect in repudiation and scaling down of 
 public and private debts by legislative fiat. It was 
 a policy which has taken away from the Demo- 
 cratic party the confidence of the business com- 
 munity, whether previously Democratic or Repub- 
 lican. It presented a moral issue so sharp, so clear, 
 as completely to destroy party fealty and party 
 attachments. It took away from the Democratic 
 party that strong, conservative element of which 
 Mr. Cleveland was the leader, and it made it for the 
 time a party which seemed to threaten the founda- 
 tion of honest business and of honest government. 
 It seemed to make its campaign in 1896 and 1900 
 an assault upon that which was best in our civiliza- 
 tion. In my judgment, the safety of the Republic 
 was threatened by the breaking up of the Demo- 
 cratic party into its radical and conservative ele- 
 ments. 
 
 In the campaigns of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Cleve- 
 land and of Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Harrison, 
 every one felt, however deep his partizan desires, 
 that the institutions of the country, as established 
 by the fathers, would be preserved under the leader- 
 ship of either party; but in the campaign of 1896, 
 and the one which followed it, there was certainly 
 no such confidence on the part of the men who 
 voted for Mr. McKinley. It seemed to be an issue 
 in which the permanence of our institutions was 
 involved. In this light, it was an unfortunate day 
 for the Republic when the leadership of the Democ- 
 racy passed from Mr. Cleveland. 
 
 [35] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 The patriotic spirit which moved those under 
 Mr. Cleveland's leadership to break from party- 
 ties and save the country from repudiation entitled 
 them and him to our everlasting gratitude. 
 
 Another great debt which the country owes to 
 Mr. Cleveland is the assertion, made through him 
 as its Chief Executive, of the power of the Federal 
 Government directly to defend the Federal juris- 
 diction, through the process of Federal courts and 
 by Federal troops, against the lawless invasion of 
 a mob. Mr. Cleveland was a Democrat and of 
 course respected the traditional construction of the 
 Constitution by the party; but no fear of apparent 
 inconsistency prevented him from asserting the 
 full Federal power to maintain its authority to sup- 
 press lawlessness when directed against Federal 
 right and Federal jurisdiction; and so he instituted 
 proceedings in the Federal courts to restrain the 
 Debs boycott of the country, the tying up of inter- 
 state commerce, and the interference with the mails, 
 and he sent the troops under General Miles to Chi- 
 cago to make his assertion of the power effective. 
 It cost him the support of the thoughtless whose 
 sympathy against the unjust aggressions of cor- 
 porate power and wealth makes them wink at the 
 lawless invasion of vested rights. But he succeeded 
 in stopping what had really grown to the propor- 
 tions of an insurrection. The highest tribunal cre- 
 ated by the Constitution to fix the limits of State 
 and national authority completely sustained his 
 course. There were some other issues in his admin- 
 
 [36] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 istration; there were other controversies in which 
 he took part in his political hfe, but time permits me 
 only to discuss those which I have referred to. 
 
 Grover Cleveland earned the sincere gratitude of 
 his countrymen and justified recurring memorial 
 occasions like the one in which we are taking part. 
 He was a great President, not because he was a 
 great lawyer, not because he was a brilliant ora- 
 tor, not because he was a statesman of profound 
 learning, but because he was a patriot with the 
 highest sense of public duty, because he was a 
 statesman of clear perceptions, of the utmost cour- 
 age of his convictions, and of great plainness of 
 speech ; because he was a man of the highest charac- 
 ter, a father and husband of the best type, and be- 
 cause throughout his political life he showed those 
 rugged virtues of the public servant and citizen, 
 the emulation of which by those who follow him 
 will render progress of our political life toward bet- 
 ter things a certainty. 
 
 [37] 
 
Mayor McClellan: Mr. Stetson, the Chairman 
 of the Committee, will read the letter from the 
 former President of the United States, Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt. 
 
 Mr. Stetson read as follows: 
 
 THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 Washington, November 16, 1908. 
 My dear Mr. Stetson: 
 
 I regret that it is not possible for me to be pres- 
 ent in person at the meeting held under the auspices 
 of the Cleveland Memorial Committee. I wish you 
 all success in your efforts. 
 
 I was a member of the Legislature when Mr. 
 Cleveland became Governor of the State of New 
 York at the beginning of the year 1883, and for the 
 next twenty-five years on several different occa- 
 sions I was brought into close contact with him. 
 For two years during his second administration I 
 served under him as Civil Service Commissioner. 
 Like all others who were thrown closely with him, 
 I was much impressed by his high standard of of- 
 ficial conduct and his rugged strength of character. 
 Not only did I become intimately acquainted with 
 the manner in which he upheld and enforced the 
 civil service law, but I also saw at close quarters his 
 
 [38] 
 
Copyright, igoj, by Hanis &fi Eiving: 
 
 
 c^^ 
 
 .^ 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 successful fight against free silver, and the courage 
 with which he, aided by men like the late Senator 
 Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, supported the 
 judiciary at the time of the Chicago riot; and, fi- 
 nally, I happened to be in a position in which I 
 knew intimately how he acted and the reasons why 
 he acted in the Venezuelan matter. This knowledge 
 gained at first hand enables me to bear testimony, 
 which I am more than glad to bear, to the late Pres- 
 ident's earnest purpose to serve the whole country, 
 and the high courage with which he encountered 
 every species of opposition and attack. Owing to 
 a peculiar combination of circumstances, he went 
 out of office assailed even more bitterly by his o^vn 
 party than by the opposing party, and short-sighted 
 people thought that the great mass of American 
 citizens had repudiated him and disbelieved in him. 
 
 Six years later it happened that I was at St. Louis 
 as President when Mr. Cleveland, then a plain pri- 
 vate citizen, arose to make an address in the great 
 hall of the Exposition; and no one who was there 
 will ever forget the extraordinary reception given 
 him by the scores of thousands present. It was an 
 extraordinary testimony to the esteem and regard 
 in which he was held, an extraordinary testimony to 
 the fact that the American people had not forgotten 
 him, and, looking back, had recognized in him a 
 man who with straightforward directness had 
 sought to do all in his power to serve their interests. 
 
 Moreover, all Americans should pay honor to the 
 memory of Mr. Cleveland because of the simplicity 
 
 [39] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL . 
 
 and dignity with which as ex-President he led his 
 life in the beautiful college town wherein he elected 
 to live. He had been true to the honorable tradi- 
 tion which has kept our Presidents from making 
 money while in office. His hfe was therefore of 
 necessity very simple; but it was the kind of Hfe 
 which it is a good thing to see led by any man who 
 has held a position such as he held. 
 
 Again wishing you all good fortune, I am. 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Theodoee Roosevelt. 
 
 Sacred Song, 
 
 "The Heavens Proclaim" .... Beethoven 
 
 CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA 
 
 [40] 
 
Mayor McClellan: Benediction will be pro- 
 nounced by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Schulman. 
 
 BENEDICTION 
 
 THE REV. DR. SAMUEL SCHULMAN 
 
 Everlasting God, who art nearest to us when in 
 reverence we acknowledge Thy rule and when in 
 humility we recognize duty as our service, we turn 
 to Thee in the conclusion of this sacred memorial to 
 ask Thy benediction. Bless, for the American peo- 
 ple, the memory of Thy servant Grover Cleveland. 
 Let the record of his strong character, his faithful 
 stewardship in exalted office, his fine courage in 
 leadership of men, be an inspiration growing from 
 day to day in strength and leading the people to 
 the understanding that righteousness exalts it. 
 May the memory of his generous manhood, his civic 
 virtue, his broad-minded Americanism, endure as a 
 lesson to the republic, as the embodiment of its ideal 
 of loyalty, that it is not conditioned by racial origin 
 or creedal profession, but roots in the soul's love of 
 freedom, of justice, of right, and of our devotion to 
 the land and its laws. 
 
 Bless our beloved President of the United States 
 who is with us, that he may lead in wisdom, in virtue 
 and fear of Thee the American nation from strength 
 
 [41] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 to strength. Bless this assemblage, that the glori- 
 fication of the immortal dead may quicken the pa- 
 triotism of the living. Bless every home and heart 
 in our land in accordance with Thy threefold 
 priestly blessing as it is written : 
 
 May the Lord bless you and keep you; 
 
 May the Lord let His countenance shine upon 
 you, and be gracious unto you; 
 
 May the Lord lift His face upon you, and give 
 you peace. Amen. 
 
 [42] 
 
ISit'i 
 
THE 
 
 GROVER CLEVELAND 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 THE GREAT HALL 
 THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 THURSDAY EVENING THE EIGHTEENTH OF MARCH 
 
 IN THE YEAR ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED 
 
 AND NINE. AT EIGHT-FIFTEEN O'CLOCK 
 
ORDER OF EXERCISES 
 
 1 Organ Prelude — 
 
 Paraphrase on Handel Chorus Guilmant 
 
 Reve Angelique Rubinstein 
 
 PROFESSOR SAMUEL A. BALDWIN 
 
 2 Overture . . . Coriolan" .... Beethoven 
 
 THE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA 
 
 3 Presentation of the Mayor as Chairman 
 
 The Honorable Edward M. Shepard 
 
 4 Address .... The Honorable George B. McClellan 
 
 Mayor of the city of New York 
 
 5 Feldeinsamkeit E. Wendel 
 
 THE UNITED GERMAN SINGING SOCIETIES OF NEW YORK 
 
 6 Address The Honorable Elihu Root 
 
 Senator from New York 
 
 7 Siegfried's Death "Die Gotterdammerung" . R. Wagner 
 
 THE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA 
 
 8 Address The Honorable George Gray 
 
 United States Circuit Judge 
 
 9 a. Early Morning in the Field .... R. Burkhardt 
 b. Soldier's Farewell Johanna Kinkel 
 
 THE UNITED GERMAN SINGING SOCIETIES OF NEW YORK 
 
 10 Address . . . The Honorable William B. Hornblower 
 
 11 Address . . . The Reverend Daniel J. Quinn, S.J. 
 
 President of Fordham University 
 
 1 2 With Verdure Clad ." Creation " Haydn 
 
 MME. LILLIAN BLAUVELT 
 
 13 Address .... The Honorable Charles E. Hughes 
 
 Governor of the State of New York 
 
 14 Dankgebet Ed. Kremser 
 
 CHORUS, ORCHESTRA AND ORGAN 
 
 Julius Lorenz, Conductor 
 
^^f</^K/WyH v^^ 
 
THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY 
 OF NEW YORK 
 
 Thursday evening, March 18, 1909 
 
 MR. EDWARD M. SHEPARD 
 
 presented the Mayor as Chairman, and said : 
 
 This Great Hall and the buildings around are 
 dearer to many of us because they and the college 
 which dwells in them were so near, in his later years, 
 to the great American whom to-night we commem- 
 orate. After three times he had stood first in the 
 popular suffrages of his countrymen for the chief 
 magistracy of the nation, after twice he had been 
 chosen to it under the Constitution, after, for eight 
 years, he had exercised its powers — after he had 
 faced, while President, and afterward, when he had 
 left the White House, the misunderstandings or 
 even stormy hostility, as well as the cheers, of those 
 masses of men to whom he rendered such enormous 
 and enduring service, and— still after that— when, 
 all such hostility and misunderstandings being fi- 
 nally conquered, he was left rich in the almost unan- 
 imous confidence and love of the land— then it was 
 that he brought honor to the supreme cause of edu- 
 
 [45] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 cation as it is here cherished by the city of New 
 York. When, five years ago, the corner-stone of 
 this building was laid and we welcomed a new chief 
 and pilot of the college, Grover Cleveland came to 
 us, helping by his strong and sympathetic support 
 to exalt the work in which we were engaged. And 
 when, last May, we dedicated the completed build- 
 ings, and when he could not, as he would, come to us 
 — because he was near a far greater summons — 
 then it was that he sent to us his dearest messenger 
 again to bring his strong and sympathetic support. 
 So it is, Mr. President, Governor Hughes, and 
 Mr. Mayor, that here, where the republic and its 
 ideals of the future are in the making — here it is 
 that we welcome you to this celebration of one of the 
 chief heroes. And it is my privilege to ask to pre- 
 side one to whom this college is in great and special 
 debt. Ladies and gentlemen, I present, as chair- 
 man, his Honor Mayor IMcClellan. 
 
 [46] 
 
MAYOR McCLELLAN 
 then spoke as follows: 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 The purpose of this meeting is to give an oppor- 
 tunity to those who were unable to leave their work 
 to attend the meeting at Carnegie Hall this after- 
 noon, to join in commemorating Grover Cleveland 
 on the seventy -second anniversary of his birth. 
 
 We have met as citizens of New York to give 
 public expression of the affection in which we held 
 the man and the honor in which we hold his memory. 
 
 The heritage which Cleveland has left us is not 
 so much the record of his specific achievements in 
 statecraft as the character of the man himself. He 
 succeeded in giving this country the kind of gov- 
 ernment in which he believed and in which his coun- 
 trymen believe, because the people and he worked 
 together for a common end. There was a partner- 
 ship between them which began when he first en- 
 tered public life and lasted until his death. It was 
 a union in thought, in hope, in aspirations, and in 
 ideals. It was the result of mutual confidence and 
 mutual trust. The people believed in him, and he 
 believed in the people. This implicit trust in the 
 common sense and integrity of the people of the 
 United States was the inspiration of his entire 
 career. 
 
 [47] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 He was neither a demigod nor a demagogue, but 
 a rugged, honest, broad-minded, wise American cit- 
 izen. There was nothing sensational or theatrical 
 about him. He did not appeal to his countrymen 
 in their moments of excitement or thoughtlessness. 
 He did not play upon their passions or their preju- 
 dices, but influenced and guided them through their 
 sober judgment and their calm common sense. 
 
 Long after those of us who are here to-night have 
 passed away the name of Grover Cleveland will 
 live and still be honored and cherished in the hearts 
 of the American people as that of a man who could 
 not think an ignoble thought or do a mean action; 
 a man who was intensely human and intensely 
 American, whose leadership of his countrymen was 
 no forced march, but who strove with all the honesty 
 and intensity of his great soul to have them move 
 forward with him in human progress. 
 
 I now present the Hon. Elihu Root, Senator 
 from New York. 
 
 [48] 
 
Ci'/yiy'^/i/. igoQ, hy Harris >£~ E'n<itii_ 
 
SENATOR ROOT 
 
 It is a grateful duty to pay public honor to Mr. 
 Cleveland, because he was our friend and because 
 all of us are his debtors for his inestimable service 
 to our country. 
 
 It is not merely a duty to Mr. Cleveland's mem- 
 ory, it is an opportunity for Americans to signify 
 their capacity to appreciate such a man as he was. 
 
 A nation may be known by the men it honors. 
 
 All the world honors genius ; all the world is daz- 
 zled by military glory; all the world is swayed by 
 power of leadership over masses of men; all the 
 world extols great deeds done ; but the best evidence 
 of a nation's greatness, the best augury of its power 
 to rise to higher levels of national life, is to be found 
 in the exhibition of general and heartfelt apprecia- 
 tion of a noble character. 
 
 It is to the honor of America that the deepest, 
 most lasting impressions from the times of Wash- 
 ington and of Lincoln are not so much what they 
 did but what they were. Against the background 
 of their arduous labors stand out the men themselves 
 — the fortitude in adversity, the long-suffering pa- 
 tience, the indomitable will, the strength, the cour- 
 age, the great-heartedness, the unselfishness, the 
 devotion. The powerful influence of a strong and 
 noble character made manifest in high station is the 
 
 [49] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 chief legacy of Grover Cleveland to his country- 
 men, and it can never be lost, for that influence has 
 greatly moved his generation to higher conceptions 
 of civic duty and independent manhood and public 
 righteousness. Students of political history will 
 remember the many good things he did; but all 
 America has passed a step nearer to its ideals be- 
 cause of what he was. 
 
 He did not rise conspicuously above the men of 
 his time in intellectual power. His mind gave forth 
 none of those emanations of genius which the world 
 admires at a distance and which make their way 
 into the common apprehension only in after years. 
 One of the elements of his strength was that his 
 mind worked as the minds of most Americans work, 
 only more powerfully and conclusively than most 
 minds. He spoke and wrote distinctly truths that 
 Americans generally were conscious of thinking 
 vaguely. His words, backed by his great authority 
 and still more potently backed by the example of 
 his life, brought realization of great saving common 
 truths that were being forgotten. He was a man of 
 convictions, not extemporized for the moment, or for 
 a purpose, but real, vital, and urgent. He thought 
 them out and felt them through and through. His 
 judgments were not the cock-sure opinions of igno- 
 rant conceit, but the result of mature deliberation. 
 He gave enormous industry and pains to the pro- 
 cess by which he reached them. He brought to his 
 work strong practical common sense, a just and 
 well-balanced mind, a temperament of sustained 
 
 [50] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 vigor and without malice, sincerity of purpose, and, 
 as time went on, ever-increasing wisdom and insight 
 into Hf e. 
 
 His convictions once settled, he was absolutely 
 immovable in them. Neither political expediency 
 nor personal fortunes produced the slightest effect 
 upon his active adherence to them. 
 
 He believed the Silver Purchase Act was ruinous 
 to the country, and he forced its repeal while the 
 politicians of the country for the most part were 
 cautiously sounding public sentiment. 
 
 He considered that the attitude of Great Britain 
 in the Venezuela boundary controversy put at issue 
 the JNIonroe Doctrine, essential to our national 
 safety, and he unhesitatingly risked the wi-eck of his 
 administration and a disastrous war in uncompro- 
 mising committal to the application of the tradi- 
 tional American policy at all hazards to that 
 concrete case. He came to the conclusion that our 
 protective policy was wrong, and he risked and lost 
 his reelection by the tariff message at the close of 
 his first administration. He was warned of the 
 result by the advisers whom he trusted most, but 
 that produced no effect whatever upon him. 
 
 Whether one agrees with his views or not, it is 
 impossible not to find inspiration in the example of 
 the man who would not wait for a safe reelection 
 to do what he believed to be right. 
 
 With high and unquestioning courage he stood 
 always for what he believed to be just and honest 
 and best for his country. With unconcealed scorn 
 
 [51] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 and wrath he stood against all sham and chican- 
 ery. 
 
 He was not swayed by personal ambition or by 
 selfishness. He thought always of his work and 
 not of himself. 
 
 He was simple and unostentatious in his Hving. 
 He had no thirst for riches. 
 
 He was sincere and outspoken, without the craft 
 of the time-server or the false pretense of the dema- 
 gogue. 
 
 He was kindly and affectionate — a good husband 
 and father and friend and neighbor. 
 
 He remembered always with touching interest 
 the undistinguished companions and scenes of his 
 youth. Great station raised no barriers about his 
 heart. He was loyal to his friends and to his ideals 
 and to every cause in which he had enlisted. 
 
 For a quarter of a century after he was raised to 
 power, in office and out of office he stood conspicu- 
 ous before the world, a great figure of exalted citi- 
 zenship, an evidence to all the young men of Amer- 
 ica that in this free republic the greatest success, 
 high station, power, fame, can be won with truth, 
 honor, and self-respect. 
 
 To honor him is to be lifted up in spirit, to re- 
 member him is to be grateful for our country's 
 happy fortune and to be possessed of a cheerful 
 hope for the future of a people that can bring forth 
 such sons. 
 
 [52] 
 
The Chairman then presented the Hon. George 
 Gray, Circuit Judge of the United States. 
 
 JUDGE GRAY 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 I deem it a privilege to participate in this demon- 
 stration. It was a saying of a great Athenian phi- 
 losopher that the character of the city is determined 
 by the character of the men it crowns, and we need 
 not to despair of a public whose people delight to 
 acclaim the public life and character of such a man 
 as Grover Cleveland. These meetings of to-day 
 bear witness that the higher ideals of citizenship, of 
 public service and social duty, have not departed 
 from among us. The things that best characterized 
 Mr. Cleveland's administrations are those which 
 make for the honor of our national life, the eleva- 
 tion of our citizenship to higher planes of thought 
 and action, and for the stability of our institutions. 
 It is a good thing in fitting phrase to laud the per- 
 formance of duty in exalted station ; it is better still 
 to give living example to conscientious and cou- 
 rageous devotion to it, such as all men now perceive 
 that Mr. Cleveland gave and exhibited in every 
 grade of the public service, from the lowest to the 
 highest to which he was called. 
 
 I rejoice to-day, as an American citizen, that the 
 [53] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 influence of his example is felt throughout the 
 length and breadth of this dear land of ours, 
 strengthening and uplifting the hearts of our coun- 
 trymen with increased hope for the future and 
 deepened reverence for the past. Now that the ob- 
 scuring mists, engendered by party strife, have in 
 large measure faded away, we can look back on Mr. 
 Cleveland's two administrations through a clearer 
 atmosphere, and recognize, as Americans and not 
 as partizans, that he stood, with all the sincerity 
 and strength of his nature, for those of his country- 
 men (let us hope the great majority of his country- 
 men to-day) who cherish the great traditions of the 
 past, and those ideals which make for justice and 
 civic righteousness. Strong administrations have 
 signalized themselves along the track of the almost 
 century and a quarter of our past history, and I 
 hazard nothing in the statement that Mr. Cleveland's 
 two administrations will in the future be classed 
 among the strongest of these. They were strong 
 by reason of his single-hearted devotion to the prin- 
 ciples which he believed lay at the foundation of our 
 free institutions, the sincerity of his character, and 
 the uncompromising courage which he brought to 
 the performance of every public service. He was 
 instinct with the love of the equal opportunities 
 guaranteed to all by our State and Federal consti- 
 tutions, and rejoiced in the equality of all men be- 
 fore the law; that none was so humble as to be 
 beneath its protection, or so high as to be beyond 
 its control. His faith in these fundamental prin- 
 
 [54] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 ciples was unswerving and vital, and was illustrated 
 in his simple, unostentatious, official and private 
 life. 
 
 There were grave crises in public affairs during 
 his administrations, the dealing with which required 
 high statesmanship, patriotism, and decision of 
 character— questions which appealed to and excited 
 the passions of large numbers of our people, and as 
 to which public opinion was unsettled and disorgan- 
 ized, threatening the tranquillity of our country. 
 His high official position gave him the opportunity 
 of leadership and command, which, if he had failed 
 in exercising, or had assumed with timidity and 
 vacillation, could not have resulted otherwise than 
 disastrously to our moral and material interests. 
 But, fortunately, timidity and vacillation had no 
 place in the make-up of JNIr. Cleveland's character. 
 He met the demands made upon him with the wis- 
 dom and firmness born of his sense of justice and his 
 faith in the moral law. The high character and 
 courage displayed in his leadership controlled the 
 situation. Public opinion steadied itself, and we 
 were saved from the perils and difficulties of an 
 unstable standard of value and disordered finance 
 largely by his clear perception of, and fearless de- 
 votion to, duty, as it was given to him to see it— a 
 devotion to duty practised at no small cost of tem- 
 porarily disrupted friendships and party ties. 
 
 He grasped the national powers conferred by 
 the Constitution on the Federal Government with 
 a firm hand, and wielded them fearlessly for the 
 
 [55] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 preservation of the peace, honor, and safety of the 
 repubhe. It was with equal promptitude and cour- 
 age that he demanded of Great Britain that she deal 
 justly with a weak and erring sister republic of this 
 hemisphere, and insisted that the combinations of 
 misguided men, who were inaugurating a reign of 
 terror in the great metropolis of the West, should 
 submit themselves to the law. 
 
 The clear, strong sense of duty which permeated 
 his own life and conduct is beautifully portrayed in 
 the few and simple words he applied to his friend 
 and Secretary of State in his first administration, 
 in a memorial address wi'itten just before his last 
 sickness: "Duty was the word of command which, 
 during all his life enlistment, he never failed to hear 
 nor to unquestionably obey. It dominated his affec- 
 tions and impulses, and gave imperative direction to 
 his thought and endeavor." That this was the key- 
 note of his eulogy of his distinguished friend gives 
 us an impressive word-picture of the man who 
 uttered it, and we can see, in the thought that in- 
 spired it, his own self -consecration to duty, and how 
 every selfish interest was subordinated to, and every 
 less worthy motive dominated by, its controlling 
 power. The now well-known phrase in which he 
 simply and naturally expressed his all-pein^ading 
 thought, that came almost unbidden to his lips, that 
 "Public office is a public trust," has become, thanks 
 to him, one of the commonplaces of our speech, 
 which, like the precepts of the moral law, have 
 served to crystallize the moral sense of the people 
 
 [56] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 into an imperative rule of conduct. His sense of 
 justice was clear, strong, and dominant, and he 
 rarely failed, in his public utterances, to impress 
 others with the justness of the ends he had in view, 
 and with the sincerity and honest purpose with 
 wliich they were pursued. If the inevitable influ- 
 ence of party spirit at the time prevented wider 
 recognition of this, the recognition, though tardy, 
 has at last come to Mr. Cleveland, as it has to others 
 who have "wrought in sad sincerity" for noble ends. 
 Mr. Cleveland doubtless loved the applause of his 
 fellow-citizens, but it was the applause that follows, 
 not that which is sought after. His strength of 
 character enabled him to reconcile himself to the 
 withdrawal of the sympathy and support of those 
 from whom he had the right to expect both, and 
 content himself with the joy that comes from loyal 
 adhesion to conscientious convictions. I have spoken 
 of his abiding faith in the moral law, as well as of 
 his sense of justice, and I cannot refrain from quot- 
 ing a single sentence, in illustration of both, taken 
 from a message to Congress in which he earnestly 
 pleaded that no present advantage should obscure 
 the moral sense of the nation in its international 
 affairs. "I mistake," he said, "the American people 
 if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such 
 thing as international morality, that there is one 
 law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, 
 and that, even by indirection, a strong power may 
 with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory." 
 I would not be thought to mean that these great 
 [57] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 qualities illustrated in Mr. Cleveland's public life 
 are rare among our countrymen. God forbid! 
 There were brave men before Agamemnon, as there 
 were brave men after him. But, speaking with that 
 moderation of statement which Mr. Cleveland him- 
 self loved, it is safe to say that, among the public 
 men of this country who have combined all, or a 
 part of, the great qualities I have so imperfectly 
 attempted to portray, Mr. Cleveland must ever 
 stand conspicuous. 
 
 His reputation is in the keeping of his country- 
 men, and his name will assuredly be added to the 
 bead-roll of those who "have done the State some 
 service," and have best illustrated in their lives the 
 highest qualities of the race from which they sprang. 
 "Rich in saving common sense," clear in his percep- 
 tion of duty, and with perfect courage in its per- 
 formance, he stands as a type of that true Ameri- 
 canism which holds that moral obligations rest no 
 less on nations than they do on individual men, an 
 Americanism which is not truculent, aggressive, or 
 boastful, but strong in its own self-respect, which 
 demands nothing that it is not willing in reverse 
 circumstances to concede, and will submit to no in- 
 vasion of its just rights, as it will do no wrong to 
 the rights of others; an Americanism that has cre- 
 ated an honest, straightforward diplomacy that has 
 helped to raise the moral standards of the world, 
 and had made us a world power before Dewey's 
 guns had waked the echoes of the Orient. He stood 
 for the hearty and thorough recognition, by all who 
 
 [58] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 were intrusted to any extent with the administration 
 of the Federal Government, of the limitations upon 
 the powers conferred by the Constitution ; that pow- 
 ers not granted were withheld in the hands of the 
 people, and that no authority but their will, ex- 
 pressed in the mode themselves have pointed out in 
 the Constitution, could justify the addition to or 
 enlargement of the powers they had granted. He 
 invoked no doctrine of inherent sovereignty, by 
 which to magnify and aggrandize the sphere of the 
 general government, at the expense of those rights 
 of local self-government reserved to the States. In 
 the plain meaning of the language of the Constitu- 
 tion, he found expression of the people's sovereign 
 will, and obedience to it was the supreme and re- 
 hgious duty he felt to be imposed upon him, and 
 upon all who shared in the administration of gov- 
 ernment. To him, and such as he, it was the sacred 
 charter of individual Hberty, a liberty safeguarded 
 by its limitations, as well as by its granted powers, 
 and he beheved that our constitutional government 
 owes its strength not less to its limitations than to 
 its powers. 
 
 Whether we as a people vnW continue to regard 
 and maintain the restraints ourselves have placed 
 on the exercise of governmental power, is the mo- 
 mentous question of to-day— whether a majority, 
 held in restraint by constitutional checks and limita- 
 tions, to use Mr. Lincoln's phrase, is to remain our 
 ideal of free government, and the only true sover- 
 eign of a free people. Our highest hopes for the 
 
 [59] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 right solution of these questions have been strength- 
 ened by ]Mr. Cleveland's teaching and example. 
 
 It is thus only the priceless heritage of the indi- 
 vidual liberty our fathers loved can be preserved, 
 and the tyranny they hated can be avoided. And 
 so, to repeat what I have said on a former occasion, 
 we find that individual liberty is guarded by the 
 most positive sanctions of our organic law, and these 
 are the outgrowth of the spirit from which came the 
 Declaration of Independence, that spirit which finds 
 expression in the sententious phrase which flowed 
 from the same pen that drafted its immortal lines, 
 "Equal rights to all, special privileges to none." 
 These are not the recondite doctrines of a complex 
 code of laws, to be dug out by lawyers and only un- 
 derstood by learned men. They are the practical, 
 every-day muniments of our liberty. They are what 
 have been called "fireside rights," which you and I 
 must understand and value at their full worth, and 
 must be ready to defend and fight for, if need be, 
 that we may transmit them unimpaired to our pos- 
 terity, as we have received them from our fathers. 
 
 We sometimes say our governments, State and 
 national, are governments of majorities, and so in 
 a broad sense they are. But the power of majorities 
 is a limited power; limited by reason of the teach- 
 ings and experience of the past, which had not been 
 lost on the men who settled upon these shores. Ab- 
 solutism found no place in our institutions of gov- 
 ernment. Absolutism is tyranny, whether it be 
 that of a monarchy or a democracy, and tjrranny 
 
 [60] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 is as hateful to-day as it was to the fathers a century 
 ago. We do not hold, you and I, our rights to per- 
 sonal liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness 
 by so frail a tenure as that of the capricious and 
 changing mood of a majority. No; they rest on 
 institutional freedom, on the checks and inhibitions 
 of our organic law — that law of the land which does 
 not reflect the mere volatile humors and passions of 
 the hour, but the settled, sober public opinion — that 
 public opinion which is formed in the crucible of 
 free discussion, and which is the outgrowth of our 
 progressive civilization, safeguarding the activities 
 of a free democracy, whose vital breath is personal 
 and individual liberty. 
 
 It is individual liberty — not class liberty, not cor- 
 poration liberty, not guild or society liberty — that 
 our fathers fought for and established on this great 
 continent. Nol It was the right to your home; 
 the right to go and come as you please; the right 
 to worship God according to the dictates of your 
 own conscience; the right to work or not to work, 
 and the right to be exempt from interference by 
 others in the enjoyment of those rights; the right 
 to be exempt from the t5rranny of one man or of 
 many ; the right to so live that no man or set of men 
 shall work his or their will on you against your con- 
 sent. This is liberty worth Uving for ! It is liberty 
 worth dying for! And it was this blessed inheri- 
 tance that has come to us from the fathers, and 
 which means to us all that it meant to them. While 
 it is maintained, all things are possible that tend to 
 
 [61] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 the expansion, the development, prosperity, and 
 glory of our common comitry. God grant that this 
 liberty may live forever among us! That is what 
 our flag means to us, and that, as it floats over the 
 land and over the sea, is the message that it delivers 
 to all the toiling millions of other lands. 
 
 But, fellow-citizens, this liberty cannot live unless 
 it lives in the lives and characters of those who 
 to-day enjoy it. It is not something that comes 
 from the outside to us, as a boon to be enjoyed or 
 thrown aside, as caprice or indifference may sug- 
 gest. It can only exist by being cherished in the 
 hearts and lives of each generation. Our free 
 institutions depend on the courage, the faith, the 
 honor, and the intelligence of our people. Unless 
 your hearts and mine are full of the love of that 
 same liberty, regulated by law, which has made us 
 free in the past, these glorious institutions, and all 
 that our flag symbolizes, will decay and fall, and our 
 prosperity and happiness and hopes for the future 
 will be involved in a common ruin. It is not foreign 
 foes that we have need to fear, but the insidious 
 enemies who seek to poison the minds and alienate 
 the affections of our people from their ancient faith, 
 who would undermine the foundations of a Hberty 
 regulated by law, with the vain hope that the petty 
 tyranny of a class or corporation, or of a society, to 
 which individual liberty and individual conscience 
 are to be subordinated, can achieve the lasting hap- 
 piness of those whose minds and character it has 
 weakened or destroyed. 
 
 [62] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 This was the hberty dear to Mr. Cleveland's 
 heart, and which he zealously and anxiously sought 
 to defend, and we would be unfortunate indeed if 
 we had reason to believe, as we have not, that that 
 liberty was undervalued by those who succeeded 
 him in his great office, or by those who hereafter 
 shall hold the same high position. Mr. Cleveland 
 had no sympathy, and little patience, with those 
 who, in times of adversity and stress, preach the 
 gospel of discontent, and seek thereby to alienate 
 the hearts and minds of any portion of his country- 
 men from their love of our institutions, and from 
 belief in their beneficence — that far too numerous 
 class who, ignoring all counsels of manly courage 
 and hopefulness, and appealing only to the meaner 
 passions of our nature, envy, class hatred, and all 
 uncharitableness, make the paralysis of hard times 
 the stalking-horse of their selfish ambition. To use 
 his own language, "those enlisted in this crusade of 
 discontent and passion, proclaiming themselves the 
 friends of the people, exclude from that list all their 
 countrymen, except those most unfortunate or un- 
 reasonable, and those whom they themselves had 
 made the most discontented and credulous." He 
 beheved, with all the intensity of his nature, in 
 liberty regulated by law, a hberty which is not 
 anarchy, and a law which is not despotism; and so, 
 with the unfaltering faith and the unquestioning 
 courage that he brought to the performance of 
 every duty of his life, he stood as a "tower of 
 strength, foursquare to all the winds that blew.'* 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 He has left his great name and the inspiration of 
 his great example to his country, and we rest secure 
 in the assurance that "whatever record leap to life, 
 he never shall be shamed." 
 
 [64] 
 
cr-)~i'i^'&'^'cr^'-/^<~r. 
 
The Chairman then presented Mr. WiUiam B. 
 Hornblower. 
 
 MR. HORNBLOWER 
 
 After the addresses we have hstened to from the 
 distinguished speakers who have preceded me, on 
 the character and career of Grover Cleveland, I 
 shall add only a few words as a personal tribute 
 from one who was a friend and a political adherent 
 throughout his public life. 
 
 It was my good fortune to meet Mr. Cleveland 
 before he became JNIayor of Buffalo, to have seen 
 much of him when he returned to private life at 
 the expiration of his first term as President, and 
 again to have met him from time to time after his 
 second term as President, in his quiet home at 
 Princeton. 
 
 His life was full of remarkable vicissitudes of 
 fortune. Through all those vicissitudes he remained 
 the same quiet, unassuming, and steadfast man. 
 Success did not turn his head or make him arrogant ; 
 temporary defeat did not sour or embitter him. The 
 son of a Presbyterian minister, brought up on the 
 precepts of the Bible, there was much of the vigor 
 of the Puritan in his moral make-up, which was 
 shown by his unswerving devotion to duty; there 
 was much of the Hebrew prophet, which compelled 
 him to "speak out and spare not." Without the 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 glamour of military glory, or the eloquence of im- 
 passioned oratory, or the arts of the scheming poli- 
 tician, his success was due to solid worth and force 
 of character. And with what a magnificent con- 
 tempt he regarded the demagogue, the time-server, 
 and the trimmer ! 
 
 The two conspicuous characteristics which 
 marked Mr. Cleveland in the eyes of his contem- 
 poraries were his indomitable courage and his abso- 
 lute devotion to duty. By these two characteristics 
 he was known and judged or misjudged by the men 
 of his own generation. Strong of will and sturdy 
 of purpose, amid good report and bad report, in 
 carrying out the right as he saw it, unswerving and 
 inflexible in the teeth of bitterest denunciation and 
 fiercest criticism — such was Grover Cleveland as 
 men knew him. 
 
 Forceful, virile, unyielding — such was the Grover 
 Cleveland of public life. 
 
 Underneath this outer man, however, there was 
 another Grover Cleveland, quite unknown to the 
 public, and even unsuspected, the modest, gentle, 
 kindly, sympathetic Grover Cleveland of private 
 life. Of this Grover Cleveland this is not the place 
 nor the time to speak. 
 
 His character was an inspiration to the young 
 men of my generation who were coming to maturity 
 at the time of his first election. Here was a leader 
 whose leadership meant something, who stood for 
 principle, not expediency, and whom we could fol- 
 low with enthusiasni and hope. There were those, 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 of course, who did not agree with the poHcies for 
 which he stood, yet even those recognized and ad- 
 mired the outspoken, fearless, and disinterested 
 manner in which he fought for these pohcies, accept- 
 ing defeat when it came and victory when it came 
 with the same calm and steadfast mind. 
 
 His yea was yea and his nay was nay, and no one 
 could misunderstand the yea or the nay. Some 
 might think him ^\Tong in his opinions, but not one 
 could think him insincere or uncertain. 
 
 Twice in his political career he risked the Presi- 
 dency by the outspoken and emphatic expression of 
 opinions— once on the tariff, in 1888; the second 
 time on the silver question, in 1892 — when he might 
 without impropriety have kept silent. The first 
 time he lost the office. The second time he gained 
 it. But whether he lost it or gained it, he wished the 
 people to understand clearly what he stood for, and 
 to elect or defeat him accordingly. 
 
 It was my privilege to see much of ^Ir. Cleveland 
 during the four years that he spent in this city be- 
 tween his two official terms, in the practice of his 
 profession. The one thing that impressed me most 
 about him was the absolute sincerity of his charac- 
 ter. I never met a man who seemed so utterly free 
 from the slightest trace of self -consciousness or of 
 guile. What he meant he said, and what he said 
 he meant. There was no mistaking his meaning, 
 and there was no room for doubt as to his straight- 
 forwardness. He could not deal in nicely balanced 
 phrases or ambiguous expressions of opinion. 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 There never was a man to whom the holding of 
 pubhc office was less of an object to be sought for 
 for its own sake. To him the honor of the office was 
 so greatly outweighed by the sense of responsibility 
 that the burden was far greater than the pleasure. 
 Especially was this so when called upon for the sec- 
 ond time by the overwhelming mandate of the peo- 
 ple in 1892 to assume the Presidency. He had 
 already held the office for four years and knew full 
 well its cares and its anxieties. He had had four 
 years of the congenial labor and pleasure of pro- 
 fessional and private life in which to reflect upon 
 the four years of work, worry, and responsibility of 
 public affairs. There was no glamour to him about 
 the high office of the Presidency. There were no 
 illusions to him about the resumption of that office. 
 He knew full well that he was entering upon four 
 years of bitter strife and turmoil. He knew that he 
 would be obliged to contend not only with fierce 
 opposition from the Republican party on the tariff 
 question, but with still fiercer and bitterer opposi- 
 tion from within his own party on the silver ques- 
 tion. On both of these questions his views were 
 firmly settled and frequently and most emphatically 
 announced. In many conversations which I had 
 with him after his reelection in 1892, I was struck 
 by the solemn sense of duty which animated him in 
 looking forward to his new term. 
 
 There was none of the elation of victory — a vic- 
 tory won by the popular will and against the wishes 
 of the politicians — a victory which might well have 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 turned the head of a smaller, a vainer, or a weaker 
 man. There was none of the gaudium certaminis 
 leading him to look forward with exultation to the 
 conflict with the political adversaries whom he was 
 to encounter. There was simply the solemn sense 
 of duty to his country, and loyalty to his principles, 
 and the firm resolve to be true to his conscience, 
 whatever might betide him personally. 
 
 I first saw Mr. Cleveland in the summer of 1879, 
 when he was a practising lawyer in Buffalo. He 
 was sitting at his desk in his office, hard at work in 
 his shirt-sleeves, on a hot July day. I was then a 
 young lawyer just starting in my professional work. 
 I had occasion to go to Buffalo on behalf of some 
 New York clients to look after some important liti- 
 gation against a prominent citizen of Buffalo. 
 Having occasion to select a referee to try one of 
 the branches of the litigation, I made inquiry of 
 Buffalo lawyers as to the selection. All of whom I 
 inquired agreed unanimously in recommending 
 Grover Cleveland as the best man to act as referee 
 in this particular case — as a sound lawyer and a man 
 of courageous independence and impartiality, who 
 could be relied upon to decide without fear or favor, 
 however influential or locally powerful the defen- 
 dant might be. After Mr. Cleveland had become 
 President, the idea was sedulously fostered by his 
 political opponents and generally accepted even by 
 his political supporters that Mr. Cleveland was not a 
 man of any prominence at the bar, but had achieved 
 success only in public office. This is an entirely 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 erroneous idea. The fact is that for a number of 
 years before he was elected Mayor of Buffalo he 
 was a very active and very successful lawyer, recog- 
 nized ( as I have been repeatedly assured by Buffalo 
 lawy^ers) as one of the first half-dozen of the leading 
 men at the bar of that city, at a time when that bar 
 stood exceptionally high in character, ability, and 
 attainments. It was because of his well-known in- 
 tegrity and professional ability that he was selected 
 as Democratic candidate for Mayor, entirely with- 
 out his own seeking and against his own wishes, and 
 was elected by the votes of independent Republi- 
 cans. Thus began the remarkable public career 
 which was to result in making him Governor of the 
 State of New York and twice President of the 
 United States. 
 
 I little thought when I saw ^Ir. Cleveland for the 
 first time— hard at work in his law office in Buffalo 
 —that within six years that quiet, modest, unassum- 
 ing man would be President of the United States. 
 
 Yet his career was no freak of chance or accident. 
 It was simply the result of his inborn capacity for 
 doing his duty honestly and courageously and his 
 absolute indifference to the personal consequences 
 to himself. Each step upward was based upon the 
 confidence inspired in the public mind by the faith- 
 ful and fearless discharge of his duties in the lower 
 sphere of public office. He never was a wire-puller 
 or an intriguer. He could not have been had he 
 wished to be. He was not built on those lines. 
 
 I well remember a conversation I had with him 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 in the White House just before his retirement to 
 private life in 1889. He was speaking of his tariff 
 message of the previous year. He said: "I was told 
 that that message was unnecessary and unwise, that 
 it would lead to my defeat, that all I had to do was 
 to keep silent and I would be reelected. Well, that 
 may be, but I felt it would not be honest or fair to 
 the people. And, after all, I have one consolation, 
 it was right." That was the key-note of his entire 
 public career. To be right as he saw the right, and 
 to speak out for the right as he saw it, was his one 
 principle of conduct. 
 
 He felt that he was not responsible for the result. 
 If the majority of the people did not think he was 
 right, he would cheerfully bow to their verdict ; but 
 to win their approval by concealing his own con- 
 victions was, he felt, to be untrue to his duty as a 
 public servant. 
 
 To-day even those of his fellow-citizens who think 
 he was wrong in his views on the tariff or in his views 
 on the silver question recognize and admire the high 
 courage and the noble disinterestedness of his loy- 
 alty to his own convictions. 
 
 I may be pardoned for one other personal remi- 
 niscence of Mr. Cleveland. It was on one of the 
 few occasions when I saw him in the White House 
 during his second administration. He was borne 
 down by the burden of his responsibilities and his 
 cares. He was smarting under the fierce invectives 
 of his political adversaries within and without his 
 party. He said to me with a tremor in his voice: 
 
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THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 "My only object is to uphold the public credit, to 
 prevent what I regard as a national catastrophe. I 
 am not trying to play politics or to fight for or 
 against my party. I may be wrong in my views, 
 but I believe I am right. Whatever may be said or 
 thought of me now, some day the people will realize 
 that I tried to do my duty." 
 
 That time has arrived. Over the grave of Grover 
 Cleveland all men now agree that he tried to do his 
 duty; that he did it loyally, courageously, stead- 
 fastly ; that he was a true patriot, a great President, 
 a noble American. 
 
 [72] 
 
The Chairman then presented the Rev. Father 
 Quinn, S.J. 
 
 THE REV. FATHER QUINN, S.J. 
 
 The surroundings in which we find ourselves this 
 evening, assembled as we are in the Great Hall of 
 the great college of the great city of New York to 
 honor the memory of a great American, Grover 
 Cleveland, one time President of these United 
 States, naturally suggest the thought to one of my 
 profession and to every one engaged in the sacred 
 work of education that Mr. Cleveland was just the 
 kind of a man the colleges of the country are striv- 
 ing to produce and give to the world. 
 
 In the presence of the distinguished gentlemen 
 seated on the stage here this evening who knew Mr. 
 Cleveland intimately, and after the excellent 
 speeches you have already listened to with evident 
 pleasure and approbation, it ill befits me to venture 
 upon an exhaustive and accurate estimate of his life 
 and his life's work. Yet I may claim the right, 
 which is my heritage as a native-born New Yorker 
 who loves his native city, who loves his native State, 
 who loves his native country, with an ardor that is 
 
 [73] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 second to no one else's in enthusiasm, to pass an 
 honest judgment on the character of one of our 
 pubhc officials. If I may be permitted, therefore, 
 to sum up all that has hitherto been said and at the 
 same time express my own estimate of a man whose 
 public career has always been a subject of deepest 
 interest to me, I would say that Grover Cleveland 
 was a man of clear mind, firm will, clean conscience, 
 great heart, strong hand, direct speech, and simple 
 manners. 
 
 What college is there in the land that would not 
 be proud to claim such a man as one of her favorite 
 sons ? Yet no college may claim him, for Mr. Cleve- 
 land did not have the advantages of a college train- 
 ing. The short-sighted and narrow-minded among 
 us might argue from this fact that a college educa- 
 tion is not only unnecessary, but even useless for 
 the right conduct of public affairs. But Mr. Cleve- 
 land was too broad-minded and too logical to come 
 to any such conclusion. His views were quite the 
 contrary. We have them on record. 
 
 Following the example of his predecessors in 
 the White House, Mr. Cleveland, while President 
 of the United States, attended the commencement 
 exercises at Georgetown University. He was asked 
 to make a few remarks. Addressing himself directly 
 to the student body, he spoke in that simple, direct, 
 earnest manner so characteristic of him, and left an 
 impression that will never be effaced. He reminded 
 the young men before him of the splendid opportu- 
 nities within their reach for a training which would 
 
 [74] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 fit them well for grasping, analyzing, and deciding 
 to the satisfaction of all honest critics, however se- 
 vere they might be, the important questions that are 
 constantly confronting us in our civil hfe. He ear- 
 nestly urged them to avail themselves of these op- 
 portunities. He sincerely lamented that he had not 
 had the advantages of a college education, and 
 frankly confessed that for lack of it he had been 
 handicapped in his public life and had often labored 
 under a stress to which he would not have been sub- 
 jected had he been as fortunate as they in the cir- 
 cumstances of his early life. He went a step further 
 and urged them to submit their hearts as well as 
 their minds to careful training. He told them of 
 the necessity of building up their moral life on prin- 
 ciples that were deep-rooted in the Eternal Law, if 
 they would be men true to duty's call. He favored 
 true culture of mind and will and heart, a harmoni- 
 ous development of the whole man, an all-round 
 training for the work of life. 
 
 Such were tlie views of Mr. Cleveland, and as he 
 belongs to no particular college, all the colleges may 
 claim him because of the deep and broad sympathy 
 he felt for the work they are striving to do for God 
 and country. Hence I may make so bold as to lay 
 a tribute of praise from the colleges of the college 
 world on the grave of Grover Cleveland to-night. 
 And college officials may tell their young men, if 
 you wish for a type of a strong, masculine, rugged 
 American who has lived in our times and has worked 
 under the same circumstances in which you are now 
 
 [75] 
 
THE CLEVELAND MEMORIAL 
 
 placed, look to Grover Cleveland, take him for your 
 model, and imitate his noble example. 
 
 The exercises then closed with a brief address from 
 the Governor of New York, of which, unfortu- 
 nately, no record was kept. 
 
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