But as changes of party
control took place, experience taught that the only practical
result was to introduce new players into the same old game. Such
experience spread among the people a despairing feeling that
American politics were hopelessly depraved, and at the same time
it gave them a deep yearning for some strong deliverer. To this
messianic hope of politics may be ascribed what is in some
respects the most remarkable career in the political history of
the United States. The rapid and fortuitous rise of Grover
Cleveland to political eminence is without a parallel in the
records of American statesmanship, notwithstanding many instances
of public distinction attained from humble beginnings.
The antecedents of Cleveland were Americans of the best type. He
was descended from a colonial stock which had settled in the
Connecticut Valley. His earliest ancestor of whom there is any
exact knowledge was Aaron Cleveland, an Episcopal clergyman, who
died at East Haddam, Connecticut, in 1757, after founding a
family which in every generation furnished recruits to the
ministry. It argues a hereditary disposition for independent
judgment that among these there was a marked variation in
denominational choice. Aaron Cleveland was so strong in his
attachment to the Anglican church that to be ordained he went to
England--under the conditions of travel in those days a hard,
serious undertaking.
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