had ruled the country uninterruptedly for forty years,
was returned to power, and on an issue which would have delighted
Jefferson's heart.
Much to the dismay and disappointment of the politicians, the new
President made no clean sweep of Republican officeholders. He took the
unheard-of ground that, in the public service, as in any other, good
work merited advancement, no matter what the politics of the individual
might be. He made some changes, as a matter of course, but he was from
the first sturdily in favor of civil service reform. It is worth
remarking that a Democratic President was the first to take a decided
stand against the principle of "to the victors belong the spoils," first
put into practice by another Democratic President, Andrew Jackson, over
fifty years before.
His stand, too, on the pension question was startling in its audacity.
The shadow of the Civil War still hung over the country; the soldiers
who had served in that war had formed themselves into a great,
semi-political organization, known as the Grand Army of the Republic,
and worked unceasingly for increased pensions, which Congress had found
itself unable to refuse. More than that, the members of Congress were in
the habit of passing hundreds of special bills, giving pensions to men
whose claims had been rejected by the pension department, as not coming
within the law. Cleveland took the stand that, unless the soldier had
been disabled by the war, he had no just claim to government support,
and he vetoed scores of private pension bills, many of which were shown
to be fraudulent.
In other ways, his remarkable strength of personality soon became
apparent, and his determination to do what he thought his duty,
regardless of consequences. His message of December, 1887, fairly
startled the country. It was devoted entirely to a denunciation of the
high tariff laws, a subject on which the Democratic leaders had deemed
it prudent to maintain a discreet silence since the preceding election,
and which many of th
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John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.