GROVER CLEVELAND: BIOGRAPHY IN TWO VOLUMES
by Allan Nevins
GROVER CLEVELAND: A STUDY IN COURAGE
(Volume Two of Two)
ISBN 978-0-945707-29-5 $35.00
420 pages including bibliography, appendixes and index.
(Continued from Volume One.) "...it is a pleasure to turn to the
solid merits of the full and balanced narrative which Professor Nevins has
produced. He paints his Cromwell wart and all. While he sets
down nothing in malice, he omits nothing over which, if it had been left out,
malice could indulge in a snigger. Without a suspicion of hero worship
this biography makes record of an extraordinary life which was in many particulars
of its public service heroic. From beginning to end it has here been
traced minutely and faithfully. Some of Mr. Cleveland's early associates,
indulging in fond recollections of his youth, have endeavored to make him
out a young man of marked precocity. Mr. Nevins puts this aside as
more than dubious. Bred in the narrow but bracing environment of a
humble parsonage in a country town, Grover Cleveland passed on to preparation
for his career slowly, and often with uncertain steps. At last settled
in the study and practice of the law at Buffalo, it was years before his
promise and potency were made known to his fellow-citizens. Although
many of his early companionships were ill-chosen, and although he long found
a strange pleasure in consorting with men in rather vulgar surroundings, little
by little he came to be know as a lawyer able to concentrate himself with
great intensity upon the cases committed to his hands, and as one whose cool
judgment and absolute disinterestedness made him of great value as a consultant
in delicate and difficult questions...
No doubt the greatest single service that President Cleveland did
the United States was saving it from going off the gold standard in the early
'90's. The looming of that critical issue he had with unusual prescience
foreseen and prepared himself to do battle on the right side of it.
His forcing through Congress of the bill to repeal the law for Treasury
purchases of silver was an achievement to which he bent all his native force
and applied every ounce of his official pressure..."
Distilled from the Book Review, The New York Times, October 16, 1932.
