Our Presidents and How We Make Them

Our American system makes the President the centre and focus of political life. He is at once Prime Minister and independent executive. He blends the functions of what in parliamentary government is the head of the Cabinet, and what in other government is the head of the State. He is a vital part of the legislative power without being amenable to its control or dependent on its life. He is the framer of policies and the arbiter of parties. All this makes the election of President the central chord and the arterial force of our broad political action.

The history of Presidential elections, if not the history of the nation, is at least the history of its determining periods. The successive epochs of our national progress, with their passionate struggles and controlling influences, are fully reflected in these contests. After the retirement of Washington the battles from 1800 for a quarter of a century, which gave the succession of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, marked the reaction from federal authority and the rise of the democratic impulse in the young Republic. Then came the period running through the three contests and two elections of Jackson, the heirship of Van Buren, and the cyclonic reversal under “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” in 1840, which turned on practical questions of internal polity and signalized the transition from the formative stage of the government to the inevitable clash between the sections. This was followed by the long political and moral contention between freedom and slavery, which began with the success of Polk and the Texas annexation policy in 1844 and ended with the defeat of the divided Democracy and the election of Lincoln in 1860, when the political combat culminated in the armed and colossal struggle of the civil war. Since its conclusion and its settlements the nation has been engaged in the mighty work of internal upbuilding, never equalled anywhere else in the world, and the elections have involved the contending theories.

The narrative of these elections, with the rise and fall of parties, their divisions and their creeds, presents the outlines of the national development. For this work Colonel McClure, by experience, taste, and special knowledge, is peculiarly and pre-eminently fitted. It is doubtful if any other living American has borne so active and so intimate a part in so many Presidential elections. Not yet of age, but already a zealous and eager observer of political movements as a young editor, he attended the Whig National Convention of 1848 in Philadelphia, and witnessed the nomination of General Taylor. From that time he has been personally familiar with the inner workings of every national convention and campaign. Including this year, there have been twenty-nine Presidential contests in our history. Colonel McClure has actively participated in fourteen, or practically one-half of the entire number.

He was born at Centre, Perry County, Pennsylvania, on the 9th of January, 1828. Spending his youth on his father’s farm, he became a tanner’s apprentice at fifteen, and remained at this trade for three years. His schooling was very limited, and his mental equipment was almost wholly the rich endowment nature had given him and the attainments which his extraordinary intellectual force brought in after-years. At nineteen he became the editor of the Juniata Sentinel, and his natural ability and vigorous pen soon gave him a recognized position and a distinct influence. Before he was twenty-one he served as a conferee for Andrew G. Curtin in his Congressional candidacy, and laid the foundations of his long and intimate friendship with the great War Governor. Speedily called to the editorship of a more important paper at Chambersburg, his impress broadened, and in 1853, at the age of twenty-five, he was nominated by the Whigs for Auditor-General, the youngest man ever named by any party in Pennsylvania for a State office. Four years later he was elected to the Legislature, serving in the House and then in the Senate for several years. His career in that body was brilliant and distinctive. He was independent, fearless, and aggressive, a ready and trenchant debater, and he displayed political and parliamentary abilities of the highest order.

In the Republican National Convention of 1860 he played a prominent part. He and Curtin were potential in leading the Pennsylvania break from Cameron to Lincoln, and in promoting the nomination of the latter. With that success he accepted the chairmanship of the State Committee, and made a dashing and energetic campaign, which resulted in the October State victory that assured and portended the election of Lincoln. This relation to the contest and subsequent service with Governor Curtin, in directing Pennsylvania’s part in the war, placed him on an intimate footing with the President, and during those dramatic and trying years he was a commanding figure in the State. Later he settled in Philadelphia in the practice of the law; became one of the leading spirits in the Republican revolt of 1872 which led to the Greeley movement; returned to the Legislature, where, free from party shackles, he waged unsparing war against jobbery and wrong, and where his forensic talent, his bold attacks, and rare powers of invective and sarcasm made him at once respected and feared. Finally, he found what was to prove his higher and truer place, and entered upon what was to be his main life-work in the establishment of the Philadelphia Times, where he has had an ample and conspicuous arena for the editorial genius which has ranked him among the foremost journalists of the country. Here, for twenty-five years, with ripened experience and mellowed spirit, but with unabated passion for political movements, Colonel McClure has been both the actor and the critic in the great and constantly changing drama of public events. Standing between both parties, bound by neither, but in the counsels of each, he has been exceptionally informed on all the currents of political activity. No one has had a broader acquaintance with the public men of his time, or has been more thoroughly behind the scenes in the shifting transformations of public action. From his earliest years politics has had an extraordinary fascination for his fertile mind, and his taste and talent for it have been equally marked. There has been no national convention of either party for years that he has not attended, and the episodes and influences which have turned the decision of the hour have been as familiar to him as the broader principles which have moulded the general course of action.

Colonel McClure is thus peculiarly qualified, not only to present the large history of Presidential contests, but to illuminate it with the instructive side-lights which are as entertaining as they are suggestive. Comprehensive in its treatment, infused with the very life and spirit of political action, prepared with complete knowledge, and written in a style of singular charm and force, this work is not only a labor of love, but a valuable contribution to the historical literature of American politics.