GROVER CLEVELAND: BIOGRAPHY IN TWO VOLUMES
by Allan Nevins
GROVER CLEVELAND: A STUDY IN COURAGE
(Volume One of Two)
ISBN 978-0-945707-28-8 $35.00
420 pages including illustrations.
"From the pen of Mr. Nevins we now have the full
life story of a great character. Some of the gifts and attributes
and evidences of greatness in a public man were denied Grover Cleveland.
He was no popular orator. Impassioned speech that sways the multitude
was never at his command. Yet he could utter his mind straight on,
like Mark Antony, telling the people what they all knew to be true about
the fundamental and simple virtues of government, in a way to give an impression
of intense sincerity and massive strength. As a writer he was heavy-footed,
carrying much of the cumbrousness of a legal style into what he wrote as
Governor or President. Nevertheless, he coined a few phrases and added
words to our political vocabulary which are still in circulation. In
political management he was not adroit, nor did he seek to be. The
petty arts of the politician made no appeal to him. In dealing even
with leaders of his own party he often seemed tactless and blundering.
But in large matters of public policy he had a sure instinct, and many times
went dead against the advice of his timid counselors to put himself at the
head of some cause or movement that captured public opinion and made him
seem the embodiment of courage and devotion to civic duty. The reputation
which he had slowly built up of being absolutely fearless, an enemy of all
kinds of political trickery, a sworn opponent of waste and extravagance in
the administration of cities, the State, or the Federal Government, an abhorrer
of corruption, became so firmly established in the minds of the American
people that they more and more looked to him as a man of unchallenged honesty
and integrity. They saw that he had a resolution which, when it was
put behind what he believed to be righteousness and justice, nothing could
shake or break. In his long and remarkable public career it was not
genius, or cleverness or fascinating personal qualities that led him on conquering
and to conquer, but simply the weight of character." (Continued on
the back of Volume Two.)
