Excerpt from A History of the Presidency: From 1897 to 1909 Tan election of 1896 restored to the Republican party the full control of the national government in all its departments. The situation during the second half of President Cleveland's second administration was abnormal and unsatisfactory, for the government was divided against itself to an unprecedented de gree. The Senate was still controlled by the Democrats and their Populist allies, by the narrowest of majorities, and the President was a Democrat; but the House of Representatives was Republican in the proportion of five of that party to two of the combined opposition.l Moreover, there was no real political accord between the Senate and the President. Ou the great issue of the times, the free and unlimited coinage of sil ver, they were actively antagonistic; and the closing chapter of the history of the Tariff Act of 1894 was still remembered by some leading Democratic senators, and the breach in their relations with Mr. Cleveland remained. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.