2017-01-27 Fri

An 1888 Grover Cleveland political medal publically criticises Queen Victoria who was celebrating her 50th anniversary as monarch in that year. These medals were issued from the 1840s and praised some leaders while ridiculed others.

Democrat Grover Cleveland was America’s only president who served two terms with a gap of four years of Republican rule (by Benjamin Harrison, 1888 to 1892). The holed brass 24.5-millimeter diameter, 2.3-millimeter thick medal featured a strange caricature of the president with the inscriptions G. CLEVELAND, / AND FREE TRADE. The reverse features a fat-faced woman wearing a British crown and the inscriptions VICTORIA REX, KEEP MY PAUPERS BUSY. VICTORIA REX translates to Victoria “King,” not like VICTORIA REGINA, “Queen.”

Instead of supporting free trade, President Cleveland went with freer trade with the remaining industrialised countries n his December 1887 annual message to Congress. Republican congressman William McKinley charged a Democratic Free Trade conspiracy that affected American manufacturers and trade to boost manufacturing in England on the other hand. Republican slogans in the next elections read “Cleveland Runs Well in England” and “America for Americans — No Free Trade.” Benjamin Harrison won the next election in 1888 and Free Silver became the main American political concern.