First Democrat President after Civil War and the World Crises He Faced

A wedding took place in the White House, JUNE 2, 1886.

One of three Presidents to marry in office and the only President to wed on White House grounds, Grover Cleveland married Frances Folsom and together they had five children.

Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th President – the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms.

In his 2nd Inaugural, March 4, 1893, Grover Cleveland stated:

“Above all, I know there is a Supreme Being who rules the affairs of men and whose goodness and mercy have always followed the American people, and I know He will not turn from us now if we humbly and reverently seek His powerful aid.”

The first Democrat elected President after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland sent in the army to stop union strikers during the Pullman Railroad Strike of 1894.

He supported having currency backed by gold and fought political corruption.

One of the international incidents which occurred during Grover Cleveland’s time as President was the treatment of the Christians in Armenia by the Muslim Ottoman Turks.

In a Message to Congress, December 2, 1895, President Grover Cleveland stated:

“Reported massacres of Christians in Armenia and the development there and in other districts of a spirit of fanatic hostility to Christian influences naturally excited apprehension for the safety of the devoted men and women who, as dependents of the foreign missionary societies in the United States, reside in Turkey …”

President Cleveland continued:

“Several of the most powerful European powers have secured a right … not only in behalf of their own citizens … but as agents of the Christian world … to enforce such conduct of Turkish government as will refrain fanatical brutality.”

The next year, President Grover Cleveland stated, December 7, 1896:

“The rage of mad bigotry and cruel fanaticism … wanton destruction of homes and the bloody butchery of men, women, and children, made martyrs to their profession of Christian faith …

The outbreaks of blind fury which lead to murder and pillage in Turkey occur suddenly and without notice …”

Cleveland concluded:

“… I do not believe that the present somber prospect in Turkey will be long permitted to offend the sight of Christendom.

It so mars the humane and enlightened civilization that belongs to the close of the 19th century that it seems hardly possible that the earnest demand of good people throughout the Christian world for its corrective treatment will remain unanswered.”

At this same time, 1897-1898, a young British soldier named Winston Churchill fought in northwest India, Egypt and Sudan, serving under the command of British General Herbert Kitchener.

Churchill entered the British Parliament and went on to become Britain’s Prime Minister. He wrote in his two-volume work, The (Nile) River War:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! …

The fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog …

Insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live …

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.”

Churchill continued:

“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities … but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.”

Churchill concluded:

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.

It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step;

and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill convinced the British Navy to modernize from using coal to oil from Iran.

The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was formed, which later became British Petroleum (BP).

In 1938, Standard Oil Company discovered oil in Saudi Arabia, which led to the forming of the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco).

Within a generation, Saudi Arabia went from the poorest Muslim country to the richest, becoming a magnet pulling Middle East countries toward its extremist wahhabi version of Islam.

In 1938, Hilaire Belloc, the President of the Oxford Union who had been a member of the British Parliament, wrote in The Great Heresies(1938):

“Mohammedism was a perversion of Christian doctrine … He eliminated the Trinity … He was content to accept all that appealed to him…and to reject all that seemed to him too complicated …

… He was born a pagan, living among pagans, and never baptized. He adopted Christian doctrines … and dropped those that did not suit him … The success of Mohammedanism … was an extreme simplicity which pleased the unintelligent masses …”

Continuing his 1938 book, The Great Heresies, Hilaire Belloc ended with an almost prophetic warning:

“… Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world which will shake off the domination of Europeans – still nominally Christian – and reappear again as the prime enemy of our civilization? …

… The future always comes as a surprise but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be.

And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam …

… In view of this, anyone with a knowledge of history is bound to ask himself whether we shall not see in the future a revival of Mohammedan political power, and the renewal of the old pressure of Islam upon Christendom;

yet over and over again they have suddenly united under a leader and accomplished the greatest things …”

Hilaire Belloc concluded:

“… Now it is probable enough that on these lines – unity under a leader – the return of Islam may arrive.

There is no leader as yet, but enthusiasm might bring one and there are signs enough in the political heavens today of what we may have to expect from the revolt of Islam at some future date perhaps not far distant.”