Grover Cleveland

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Grover Cleveland Order: 22nd President 24th President Term of Office: March 4, 1885–March 4, 1889 March 4, 1893–March 4, 1897 Followed: Chester A. Arthur (1885) Benjamin Harrison (1893) Succeeded by: Benjamin Harrison (1889) William McKinley (1897) Date of Birth March 18, 1837 Place of Birth: Caldwell, New Jersey Date of Death: June 24, 1908 Place of Death: Princeton, New Jersey First Ladies: Rose Cleveland (sister) Frances Cleveland (wife) Profession: lawyer Political party: Democrat Vice President: Thomas A. Hendricks (1885, died in office) Adlai E. Stevenson (1893–1897)

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837–June 24, 1908) was the 22nd (1885–1889) and 24th (1893–1897) President of the United States, and the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. He was the only Democrat elected to the presidency in the era of Republican domination between the American Civil War and the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

Biography

Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey to Rev. Richard Cleveland and Anne Neal. He was one of nine children. His father was a Presbyterian minister. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him.

At 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and later, Governor of New York.

Presidency

Grover Cleveland was the first and only President married in the White House.

Cleveland won the Presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his opponent James Blaine of Maine. The campaign was one of the most vicious and negative up to that time. The Republicans had claimed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was still Governor of New York, and while Cleveland never admitted or denied the rumor, he did admit to paying child support to the woman who claimed he fathered her child. After Cleveland's election as President, newspapers printed the rhyme,, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Going to the White House! Ha Ha Ha!" A bachelor, Cleveland was ill at ease at first with all the comforts of the White House. "I must go to dinner," he wrote a friend, "but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find."

In June 1886, Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom; he was the second President to be married while in office (after John Tyler), and the only President to be married in the White House. Frances Cleveland was the youngest First Lady in the history of the US. More salacious sections of the press made light of the age difference of the two: Cleveland had been the girl's de facto guardian since she was 11 and was revealed to have bought her parents a baby carriage for her. Still more salacious allegations followed: in the election of 1888, Republicans spread rumors that Cleveland beat his wife.

Cleveland vigorously pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. . . . "

He also vetoed many private pension bills to American Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it, too.

Statue of Cleveland outside City Hall in Buffalo, New York

He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced them to return 81,000,000 acres (328,000 km&sup2). He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

In December 1887, he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs. Told that he had given Republicans an effective issue for the campaign of 1888, he retorted, "What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" But Cleveland was defeated in 1888; although he won a larger share of the popular vote than the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes and thus lost the election - a feat repeated by Al Gore in the 2000 election. Upon leaving the White House in 1889, Frances Cleveland told the servants, "I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now when we come back again....four years from today."

After running partly on a platform that a Republican victory would lead to civil rights for blacks and then "Negro domination", Cleveland was elected again in 1892. In office, Cleveland faced an acute economic depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act and, with the aid of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

He was an adamant opposer to most labor unions as shown in his dissparoval of the Pullman Strike. When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent Federal troops to enforce it. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered." Cleveland also forced the United Kingdom to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela.

Oil painting of Grover Cleveland, painted in 1899 by the Swedish painter Anders Zorn.

Cleveland ran for the Democratic nomination in 1896, but the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan.

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1904, some conservative pro-business Democrats talk of renominating Cleveland to oppose progressive Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. However, Cleveland declined to become reactive in politics. He died in 1908 from a heart attack.

Cleveland's portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill from 1928 to 1946. He also appeared on a $1000 of 1907, and the first few issues of Federal Reserve notes from 1914, on the $20.

Cleveland had an operation in which a cancerous lump on the left side of his upper lip (his cigar chewing side) was removed in a yacht in the ocean. The secret (known not even by Congress or the Vice President) was not released until several years after his death (25 years after the operation). The prosthetic piece put in the lump's place was made of India rubber. The lump was preserved and is on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

George Cleveland, the President's grandson and a New Hampshire social worker and broadcaster, is a Grover Cleveland re-enactor.

Cabinet (1885–1889)

Cabinet (1893–1897)

Portrait of Cleveland

Supreme Court appointments

Cleveland appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States during his first term.

• Lucius Quintus C. Lamar - 1888
• Melville Weston Fuller - Chief Justice - 1888

Cleveland appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court during his second term.

• Edward Douglass White - 1894
• Rufus Wheeler Peckham - 1896

Significant events during presidencies

• American Federation of Labor is created (1886)
• Haymarket Riot (1886)
• The Wabash Case (1886)
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
• Dawes Act (1887)
• Homestead Strike (1892)
• Omaha Populist Convention (1892)
• Panic of 1893
• Wilson-Gorman Tariff (1894)
• Coxey's Army (1894)
• United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895)

Related articles

• U.S. presidential election, 1884
• U.S. presidential election, 1888
• U.S. presidential election, 1892
• History of the United States (1865-1918)

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about Grover Cleveland.</div>

• White House biography
• First Inaugural Address
• Second Inaugural Address
• Obituary for Grover Cleveland

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