Stephen Grover Cleveland

Twice elected president of the United States, Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) owed his early political successes to reformism. His efforts to stem economic depression were unsuccessful, and the conservative means he used to settle internal industrial conflicts were unpopular.

Grover Cleveland's political career developed while the wounds of the Civil War and Reconstruction were healing and just as the serious social and economic problems attendant upon industrialization and urbanization were unclearly emerging. Although a lifelong Democrat, Cleveland was not skilled in party politics; he had emerged from a reform wing of his party and had only a few years of public experience before becoming president. Interested in public issues, he used the presidency to try to shape legislation and public opinion in domestic areas. Yet, by his second term of office, the old, familiar debates over tariffs and currency had been called into question and traditional political alignments began to tear apart. Cleveland, however, was not sensitive to the problems of party harmony; instead, he stood on principle at the price of party unity and personal repudiation. In the depression of the 1890s, his concern for the flow of gold from the Treasury led him to force Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and this action caused division of the Democratic party. The depression worsened, and by his intervention in the Pullman strike of 1894 he alienated the laboring class, thus losing all effectiveness as president. In 1896 Cleveland was rejected by his party.

Cleveland was born in New Jersey but spent most of his life in New York. Despite the early death of his father, a Presbyterian minister, and his consequent family responsibilities, he studied law in a respected Buffalo firm and gained admission to the New York bar in 1859. He joined the Democratic party, acting as ward delegate and ward supervisor before being appointed assistant district attorney for Erie County in 1863. Diligent and devoted, Cleveland set a good, though not brilliant, record. Enactment of the Conscription Act of 1863 caught him in the dilemma of whether to serve in the Army or find a substitute. To continue supporting his mother and sisters, he took the latter option, remaining in Buffalo to practice law. This was a costly decision, for a military record was expected of almost any aspirant to public trust. Though without public office from 1865 to 1870, he steadily enlarged his law practice and gained stature in the community.

Cleveland became sheriff in 1870, a post which promised large fees as well as frustrating experiences with graft and corruption. Although he was respected for his handling of official responsibilities, he made many enemies and won few admirers, for most citizens looked with disfavor on the office of sheriff. After 3 years he returned to legal practice, concentrating now on corporate law. His legal aspirations (and fees) were modest. His qualities as a lawyer were a good index to the whole of his public service: he was thorough, careful, slow, diligent, serious, severe, and un-yielding. His sober approach to his career contrasted sharply with the boisterous humor of his private life, for he was a popular, if corpulent, bachelor.

Quickly Up the Political Ladder

In 1881 Buffalo Democrats, certain that a reform candidate could sweep the mayoralty election, turned to Cleveland. In his one-year term as mayor he stood for honesty and efficiency—exactly the qualities the New York Democrats sought in a candidate for governor in 1882. New York State was alive with calls for reform in politics; a trustworthy candidate was much in demand. Elected governor by a handsome margin, Cleveland favored reform legislation and countered the interests of the New York-based political machine called Tammany Hall and its "boss," John Kelly, to such an extent that it caused a rift between them. After one term as governor, Cleveland was seen as a leading contender for the presidential nomination of 1884. His advantages lay in his having become identified with honesty and uprightness; also, he came from a state with many votes to cast, wealthy contributors, and a strong political organization. Pitted against Republican nominee James G. Blaine, Cleveland even won the support of reform-minded Republican dissidents known as Mugwumps. Several forces favored him: Tammany's eventual decision to support him in New York State, blame for the depression of the 1880s falling on the Republicans, and temperance workers' ire with the Republican party.

Thus, in 4 years, riding a crest of reform movements on municipal, state, and national levels, Cleveland moved from a modest law practice in upstate New York to president-elect. The rapidity of this political success had several implications for the balance of his career—he had not had to make compromises in order to survive, he had not become identified with new programs or different systems, he owed fewer debts to special-interest groups than most new presidents, and he had come to the presidency on the strength of his belief in simple solutions of honesty and reform.

First Term as President

Cleveland's victory margin in 1884 was slim. His Cabinet appointees were men of substance, though not of prominence: Thomas Bayard as secretary of state, Daniel Manning as secretary of the Treasury, and William Endicott as head of the War Department. All shared the conviction that government should be neither paternalistic nor favorable to any special group and that contesting economic groups should settle their differences without government intervention. With little administrative experience and few reasons to think highly of party organization, Cleveland in his first term advocated improved civil service procedures, reform of executive departments, curtailment of largesse in pensions to Civil War veterans, tariff reform, and ending coinage based on silver. He failed to stop silver coinage but achieved at least modest success in the other areas. In one regard Cleveland was an innovative president: he used his office to focus attention on substantive issues, to pressure for legislation, and to define and determine the lines of congressional debate. Previously (and again after Cleveland), U.S. presidents left issues of legislation to Congress, spending most of their efforts on party leadership. Thus, in 1887 Cleveland took a strong position on tariff reform and later supported passage of the Mills Bill of 1888. Although the Mills Bill provided for only moderate tariff reductions, it was viewed as a step in the right direction, a way of reducing the embarrassingly large annual government surpluses.

Private Citizen

The Republicans mobilized to meet tariff reduction head on, stopping the Mills Bill and substituting a protective tariff measure, going into the election of 1888 with the tariff as the key issue. Renominated for the presidency in 1888 without challenge, Democrat Cleveland was opposed by Republican Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, who had the support of businessmen and industrialists favoring protective tariffs. Superior Republican organization, Democratic party feuding, and election fraud lost the 1888 election for Cleveland, although he won a plurality of the popular vote. He moved back to New York to practice law and enjoy his family.

Out of office, Cleveland withdrew from politics for a year but then began again to behave like an interested candidate. Stirred into attacking the McKinley tariff of 1890 and taking a strong position against currency expansion through silver-based coinage, he gained the Democratic presidential nomination in 1892.

Cleveland's campaign against incumbent President Harrison was a quiet one, with the Democrats aided by the 1892 Homestead strike, in which prominent Republicans were involved in the effort to break labor power and to maintain special benefits for the powerful steel magnates. The Democrats scored smashing victories in 1892, not only electing Cleveland but winning control of both House and Senate.

Second Term As President

To his second Cabinet, Cleveland named Walter Gresham as secretary of state, John G. Carlisle as secretary of the Treasury, Daniel S. Lamont as head of the War Department, and Richard Olney as attorney general. Like Cleveland's earlier Cabinet, these men agreed on extreme conservatism in handling economic issues. It was to Carlisle, Lamont, and Olney that Cleveland listened most closely, although in the final analysis he made his own decisions.

Policies in Time of Depression

Cleveland had scarcely taken his oath of office when the worst financial panic in years broke across the country. A complex phenomenon, the Panic of 1892-1893 had its roots in over expansion of United States industry, particularly railroad interests; in the long-term agricultural depression that reached back to the 1880s; and in the withdrawal of European capital from America as a result of hard times overseas. As the panic broadened into depression, the American public tended to focus debate about its cause and cure on one item: the money question. On one side the argument was that businessmen (alarmed by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act requiring a purchase of silver each month) had lost confidence in the monetary system and feared depletion of the gold reserves; to regain their confidence and a return to prosperity, the buying of silver by the Federal government had to be halted. On the opposite side of the argument, silver exponents maintained that what was needed was more money in circulation, which could be achieved only if more, not less, silver was purchased by the government and used as a basis for coinage.

Cleveland, long afraid of silver as a threat to economic stability, determined that repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act would stem the drain of gold reserves and end the depression by restoring confidence to businessmen; he called a special session of Congress for its repeal. Protracted and bitter debate ensued. The Democratic party divided along sectional lines, with western and southern Democrats standing against repeal. The repeal, however, was voted, but it was ineffective, and gold reserves continued to dwindle. Meanwhile the depression became worse during 1893 and 1894.

Wounds that had opened during the silver-repeal debate were not healed when Cleveland's administration turned to the long-promised issue of tariff reform. Cleveland had been identified for many years with downward revision of tariffs and more equitable distributions. Pressured by sectional interests, the Democrats in Congress were more divided than united over tariff legislation. In addition, the silver battle had virtually torn the party in half, leaving many Democrats with nothing but hatred for the President. The Wilson bill, from the viewpoint of the President, a fairly satisfactory measure for tariff reduction, was amended almost beyond recognition as it passed through the Senate, emerging with tariff rates only slightly lower than previous ones and carrying a host of provisions for special-interest groups. Highly dissatisfied but unsuccessful in his attempts to improve it, Cleveland allowed the Wilson-Gorman Act to become law without his signature.

To avert what he viewed as financial disaster, Cleveland became involved with four bond issues to draw gold into the Treasury. Not only was this effort to maintain gold reserves unsuccessful, but Cleveland was charged with having catered to Wall Street millionaires when other governmental policies had failed.

Beset by currency and tariff failures and hated by a large segment of the general population and by many in his own party, Cleveland further suffered loss of prestige by his actions in the Pullman strike of 1894. Convinced that the strike of the American Railway Union under Eugene V: Debs against the Pullman Company constituted an intolerable threat to law and order and that local authorities were unwilling to take action, Cleveland and Olney sent Federal troops to Chicago and sought to have Debs and his associates imprisoned. Although Cleveland prevailed and order was enforced, laborers throughout the country were angered by this use of Federal force.

Foreign Policies

The congressional elections of 1894 marked a sharp decline in Democratic power. Bitter at Cleveland and disheartened by worsening depression, American voters turned against the Democrats. Although Cleveland felt betrayed by his party and misunderstood by his constituents, he remained confident that his money policy had been correctly conceived and reasonably executed. Perhaps his party had split, but for him the defense of principle was more important than political harmony. Confronted with possibilities for compromise, Cleveland spurned such options and withdrew into isolation.

More successful in foreign policy, Cleveland exhibited the same determination and toughness. He would not be drawn into the Cuban rebellion against Spain; he would not sanction the Hawaiian revolution engineered by American commercial interests. Yet he took an equally stern posture vis-á-vis the boundary dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain in 1895-1896. Concerned about European influence in the Western Hemisphere, Cleveland and Olney carried the United States to the brink of war by insisting that the dispute be arbitrated. Business interests, clamoring for guarantees of open markets for their products, had considerable influence in shaping Cleveland's policy, which succeeded when Great Britain accepted arbitration.

Again a Private Citizen

Distrusted now and detested, Cleveland was convincingly repudiated by the Democratic Convention of 1896, which nominated William Jennings Bryan on a platform demanding free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the rate of 16 to 1. Cleveland took no role in the campaign. He retired to Princeton, N.J., as soon as his term ended. He occupied himself with writing, occasional legal consultation, the affairs of Princeton University, and very occasional public speaking, but after 1900 he became less reluctant to appear in public. Sympathetic crowds greeted his appearances as the conservative Democratic forces with which he had been identified took party leadership from William Jennings Bryan. Briefly stirred into activity in 1904 to support Alton B. Parker's candidacy for the presidency, Cleveland spent most of his retirement years outside political battles, increasingly honored as a statesman. After offering to assist President Theodore Roosevelt in an investigation of the anthracite coal strike of 1902, he was active in the reorganization of the affairs of the Equitable Life Assurance Society in 1905. His death in 1908 was the occasion for general national mourning.

Further Reading

There is an abundant literature on Cleveland. Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (1944), is the best overall treatment. A less sympathetic portrayal of Cleveland is Horace S. Merrill, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party (1957). Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1930 (1967), credits Cleveland's efforts to shape legislation, whereas J. Rogers Hollingsworth, The Whirligig of Politics: The Democracy of Cleveland and Bryan (1963), criticizes him as a party leader. Cleveland's diplomacy is discussed in Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (1963). A detailed account of the 1892 campaign is George H. Knoles, The Presidential Campaign and Election of 1892 (1942), and of the 1896 campaign, Stanley L. Jones, The Presidential Election of 1896 (1964). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971), is valuable as a source on the four campaigns of 1884-1896. □

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)

President of the united states, 1885-1889, 1893-1897

Source

Reformer and Fiscal Conservative. The only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, Grover Cleveland was also the only Democrat to serve in the White House between 1861 and 1913. Willing to take unpopular stands on the issues of his day, he endorsed civil-service reform, while opposing U.S. imperialism, currency inflation, and militant labor unionism. His refusal to distribute positions to loyal party members hurt him politically, as did his opposition to the free-silver movement and the railway unions.

Background. Born on 18 March 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey, Stephen Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, and spent much of his childhood in Fayetteville, New York, outside Syracuse. The family had intended that Grover Cleveland would attend Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, like his older brother, but the death of their father in 1853, when Grover was sixteen, forced him to take a job as an assistant teacher at a school for the blind in New York City so he could help to support his mother and younger siblings. By the end of 1854 he was back in upstate New York, where an uncle in Buffalo hired him to assist in compiling a herd book of shorthorn cattle. In December 1855 Cleveland began clerking and reading law with a Buffalo attorney.

Entering Politics. By the time he was admitted to the bar in 1859 he had become involved in local Democratic politics and was appointed assistant district attorney by the newly elected Democratic district attorney of Erie County in November 1862. During the Civil War—with one brother a newly married, poorly paid clergyman and the other two in the army—Cleveland was solely responsible for supporting his mother and sisters, and rather than enter the military he borrowed money to pay a substitute to take his place. After losing an election for district attorney of Erie County in 1865, he became a popular and successful attorney in private practice and served three years as sheriff of Erie County (1871-1873). Known for his honesty and impartiality, he was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881 on a platform that promised to clean up a corrupt city government controlled by a Republican machine. During the political scandals that swept the New York State Republican Party in the 1880s, Democrats realized they could win over many dissatisfied Republicans if they put forward young, reformminded Democrats for office. Thus the forty-five-year-old Cleveland was elected governor of New York State in 1882.

Running for President. In 1884 the Democratic Party selected Cleveland as its candidate for the presidency. After the publication of letters implicating Republican candidate James G. Blaine in corruption, Republicans tried to find some scandal associated with Cleveland, who had never used political office for personal gain or to grant favors. They found, however, that the unmarried Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child, whom he supported financially. When asked by his campaign managers what to say about the revelation, Cleveland said to tell the truth. After a bitter campaign, Cleveland was elected to the presidency. He was inaugurated on 4 March 1885, just two weeks before his forty-eighth birthday.

First Term. Cleveland married Frances Folsom, who was more than twenty-five years his junior, at the White House in 1886, and his personal life continued to be a subject of great interest to the press and his political op-ponents, who tried to implicate him in a variety of personal scandals. Besieged by Democratic job-seekers expecting patronage appointments from the first member of their party to serve as president since before the Civil War, Cleveland nonetheless continued the civil-service reform started under Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, and Chester A. Arthur. He also fought for lower tariffs and was conservative in his views on federal spending.

Losing in 1888. Cleveland’s civil-service reforms and his veto of a bill that would vastly expand the number of Civil War veterans eligible for federal pension hurt him in the election of 1888, which he lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison. He garnered more popular votes than Harrison but lost in the electoral college. Cleveland returned to New York and the practice of law. Opposition to Benjamin Harrison mounted after the passage of the McKinley Tariff of 1890, which raised import duties, and in 1892 the Democrats once again chose Cleveland as their presidential candidate. He beat Harrison in the election, using against his opponent not only the tariff issue but also the drain of the new pensions on the federal budget.

Second Term. Like the Populists of the 1890s, many Democrats supported the idea of inflating the currency through coinage of silver. Cleveland, however, opposed this movement and alienated the Silver Democrats by calling Congress into special session in 1893 to abolish the issuance of silver-backed notes redeemable in silver. The repeal helped to end the drain on the gold reserve that caused the Panic of 1893, but it alienated an influential faction in Cleveland’s own party. Many Democrats were also angry in 1894, when Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to break up the Pullman railroad strike, on the grounds that the strikers had interfered with the delivery of the mails. In 1895, when he made an arrangement with J. P. Morgan and other financiers to help shore up the gold reserve, Cleveland appeared to be working hand-in-hand with big business and lost still more support within the Democratic Party. At a time when public sentiment seemed to lean toward overseas involvement, Cleveland remained a staunch anti-imperialist. He opposed and put a stop to U.S. involvement in both Cuba and Hawaii, and he negotiated a settlement with Great Britain regarding British claims against Venezuela. Cleveland died on 24 June 1908.

Source

Richard E. Welch Jr., The Presidency of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988).

Grover Cleveland (Stephen Grover Cleveland), 1837–1908, 22d (1885–89) and 24th (1893–97) President of the United States, b. Caldwell, N.J.; son of a Presbyterian clergyman. Cleveland's independence and conscientiousness in office marked him as a man of courage and personal integrity.

Early Career

A lawyer in Buffalo, N.Y., he became (1882) the "veto mayor" who drove corruption from the city administration. He won the attention of Daniel Manning and the reform Democrats and was elected governor of New York. Cleveland further built his reputation as an enemy of machine politics by breaking violently with the Tammany leader, John Kelly , and supporting the bills prepared by Theodore Roosevelt to improve the government of New York City.

Presidency

First Term

By 1884 he was a national figure, and he was nominated as Democratic "clean-government" candidate for President to oppose James G. Blaine . Cleveland, hated by Tammany and favored by political reformers, got the votes of many reform Republicans—the "mugwumps," who voted against their party. The campaign was notably bitter and was marked by the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" speech of a Blaine supporter, which deeply offended Roman Catholics and may have swung the vote to Cleveland in the key state of New York.

Cleveland as President continued his independent and conscientious but conservative course. He did not go far enough in civil service reform to satisfy the zealots, but at the same time by keeping Republican government employees who were not "offensive partisans" he offended the Democratic spoilsmen. Cleveland was continually at odds with the Republican-controlled Senate.

The surplus revenue accumulating in the treasury largely because high Civil War tariffs were still in force fostered much "pork barrel" legislation. Cleveland vetoed such laws and argued for a lower tariff, devoting the whole of his annual message to Congress in 1887 to the question. The tariff was a major issue in the 1888 election. Cleveland received a popular majority but lost the electoral majority to his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison . A romantic note in his first administration was his marriage (1886) in the White House to his former ward, Frances Folsom.

Second Term

In 1889 he retired to private life as a New York City lawyer, but opposition to measures of the Republican administration, notably the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, brought him a new following. In 1892 he was again elected President. The Panic of 1893 struck a hard blow at his administration. Though the more radical Democrats saw salvation in free coinage of silver, the independent President sought to improve the economic situation by securing repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act with the help of conservative Republicans.

Cleveland still urged lower tariffs, although the best opportunity had passed, since the treasury now had a deficit rather than a surplus. The Wilson Bill, embodying Cleveland's tariff ideas, passed the House of Representatives but was so altered by Senator A. P. Gorman and other protectionist Democrats that Cleveland, in disgust, refused to sign it. The rift between the President and the radical Democrats widened, especially over the gold standard, which Cleveland upheld. In the Pullman strike in 1894, Cleveland, on the grounds that the movement of U.S. mail was being halted by the strikers under Eugene V. Debs , sent troops into the area over the protest of Gov. J. P. Altgeld of Illinois. The strike was broken by the use of federal injunctions and the arrest of the strike leaders.

In foreign affairs both of Cleveland's administrations were marked by a strong stand on the Venezuela Boundary Dispute , which called forth a statement greatly enlarging the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. He refused to recognize the government set up in Hawaii by a revolution that was engineered by Americans who expected speedy annexation to the United States (although he recognized the republic in 1894), and he tried to discourage support of the revolutionists in Cuba. The more radical wing of the Democrats—the Silver Democrats—got control of the party in 1896 and nominated William Jennings Bryan, repudiating Cleveland. His strong second term had put him at odds with many (he was nicknamed the Great Obstructionist), and his Presidential Problems (1904) was mainly a defense of his own attitude on some of the major issues.

Bibliography

See R. E. Welch, Jr., The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (1988); biographies by R. McElroy (1923), A. Nevins (1932), H. S. Merrill (1957), R. G. Tugwell (1968), and A. Brodsky (2000); C. Lachman, A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland (2011).

Cleveland, Grover (1837–1908), twenty‐second and twenty‐fourth president of the United States.Born in Caldwell, New Jersey, Cleveland spent most of his early life in Buffalo, New York, where he practiced law and held minor offices. (He also fathered a child out of wedlock, an indiscretion that his political opponents would later use against him.) In 1881, running as a Democrat, he won election as mayor of Buffalo. The following year he was elected governor of New York, establishing in both positions a reputation for honesty and courage. Elected president in 1884, narrowly defeating James G. Blaine, he became the first Democrat to serve in that office since the Civil War. As president, he worked for civil service reform and tariff reform. Seeking to restrain governmental expansion, he vetoed over two‐thirds of the bills passed by Congress, more than all his predecessors combined.

Losing a close reelection race to the Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888, Cleveland returned to his legal practice. He regained the presidency in 1892, defeating Harrison and the Populist party candidate James B. Weaver, thereby becoming the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. In response to a devastating depression that began in 1893, Cleveland persuaded Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which he believed undermined the government's economic stability. In 1894, he vetoed a compromise silver measure, led an inept attempt at tariff reform, and sent federal troops to Illinois to put down the Pullman railroad strike. Leaving office under a cloud of unpopularity, he retired to Princeton, New Jersey, where he died in 1908.

Cleveland's stature rose posthumously, boosted in 1932 by Allan Nevins's Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage, which praised his honesty and forthrightness. While historians in 1948 and 1962 ranked him “near great,” subsequent scholarly assessments, dwelling on his ineffective handling of the crises of the 1890s, placed him in the “average” category.

If not a great president, Cleveland was nonetheless an important one. In initiatives like the repeal of the Tenure of Office Act in 1887 (an act, passed in 1867, that prohibited a president from removing appointed officials without the approval of the Senate), his brisk use of the veto power, reforms in federal land and Indian policy, and efforts at tariff reform, he recaptured for the presidency some of the powers it had lost during Reconstruction. Although not closely involved with its passage, Cleveland signed into law the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, a pioneering federal regulatory measure. Establishing important precedents, he used a sweeping court injunction to end the Pullman strike and sent federal troops to Illinois without a request from the governor. Cleveland also asserted presidential authority in foreign policy, giving it a moral dimension akin to Woodrow Wilson's. He tried unsuccessfully to reverse the 1893 revolution that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, citing wrongful involvement by U.S. officials and business interests in Hawai'i. In settling an 1895 border dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela, he gave the Monroe Doctrine additional force in U.S. foreign policy.

Cleveland, however, showed little understanding of the large forces of industrialization and urbanization unfolding in the late nineteenth century. Following the Democratic philosophy of states' rights and limited government, he devoted himself principally to maintaining the gold standard. His actions during the depression of the 1890s split the Democratic party, heightened the influence of its agrarian wing, and strengthened the Republican party.
See also Depressions, Economic; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Free Silver Movement; Gilded Age; Monetary Policy, Federal; Populist Era; Pullman Strike and Boycott.

Bibliography

Robert McElroy , Grover Cleveland: The Man and the Statesman, 2 vols., 1923.
Horace Samuel Merrill , Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party, 1957.
J. Rogers Hollingsworth , The Whirligig of Politics: The Democracy of Cleveland and Bryan, 1963.
Rexford G. Tugwell , Grover Cleveland, 1968.
H. Wayne Morgan , From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896, 1969.
John F. Marszalek, ed., Grover Cleveland: A Bibliography, 1988.
Richard E. Welch Jr. , The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland, 1988.

R. Hal Williams

CLEVELAND, STEPHEN GROVER

Grover Cleveland was born stephen grover cleveland on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey. He pursued legal studies in Buffalo, was admitted to the bar in 1859, and established his law practice in Buffalo. He was subsequently granted a doctor of laws degree from Princeton University in 1897.

From 1863 to 1866 Cleveland performed the duties of assistant district attorney of Erie County, New York, and, four years later, served as sheriff for three years. He entered politics in 1881 with his election as mayor of Buffalo and gained public attention with his forceful policy against corruption in the Buffalo government. In 1882 he became governor of New York and, for the next two years, achieved prominence for his reform policies.

"Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."
—Grover Cleveland

Cleveland was elected to the presidency of the United States in 1884. He advocated civil service reforms and less stringent tariffs on foreign commerce and opposed excessive pensions awarded to Civil War veterans. He ran for reelection in 1888 against benjamin harrison but lost. Four years later he successfully waged another campaign for the presidency, defeating the incumbent President Harrison.

The second presidential administration of Cleveland was fraught with difficulties. The financial panic of 1893 caused a controversy between factions favoring the free coinage of silver and those advocating the gold standard; Cleveland belonged to the latter group and pushed to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which had provided for an increase in the purchase of silver. The following year workers of the Pullman Parlor Car Company staged a strike, causing a stoppage of the delivery of the U.S. mail. Cleveland viewed this as sufficient reason to dispatch federal troops to intercede.

Cleveland's decisions in the silver crisis and the pullman strike earned him great disfavor. He was strong in foreign policy, however, and staunchly opposed force by Britain in that country's boundary dispute with Venezuela.

At the end of his second term in 1896 Cleveland settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the remainder of his years in retirement. In 1904 he wrote Presidential Problems, which attempted to explain his views on many of the controversial issues of his administration.

Cleveland died June 24, 1908, in Princeton.

further readings

Bordsky, Alyn. 2000. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character. New York : St. Martin's Press.

Graff, Henry F. 2002. Grover Cleveland. New York: Times Books.

Jeffers, Paul S. 2000. An Honest President: the Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland. New York: W. Morrow.

Cleveland, (Stephen) Grover (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th US president (1885–89, 1893–97). Cleveland rose to prominence as a reforming Democratic mayor of Buffalo (1881–82) and governor of New York (1883–84). With the help of Republican mugwumps, he defeated James G. Blaine to become the first Democratic president since the Civil War. His reforms of the civil service had mixed success, and his attempt to reduce the tariff contributed to Benjamin Harrison's electoral victory in 1888. In his second term, Cleveland faced a monetary crisis (1893), and was forced to send troops to crush the Pullman Strike (1894) called by Eugene V. Debs. His attempt to maintain the gold standard angered radical Democrats and tariff reform proposals were shelved.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents

Cleveland, Grover (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States (1885–89, 1893–97), born Stephen Grover Cleveland in Caldwell, New Jersey. As governor of New York (1883–85), Cleveland reorganized the militia, promoted efficient government, and opposed corrupt Tammany Hall. In the tight, mud-spattered presidential election of 1880, he was elected as a reform Democrat. Cleveland supported lower tariffs and civil service reform, reduced Civil War pensions, and signed the Interstate Commerce Act (1887).

Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 (though he won the popular vote), but retook the White House from Harrison in 1892, thereby becoming the only U.S. president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.

Cleveland, (Stephen) Grover (1837–1908) US Democratic statesman, 22nd and 24th President of the USA (1885–89; 1893–97). His first term was marked by efforts to reverse the heavily protective import tariff, and his second by his application of the Monroe doctrine to Britain's border dispute with Venezuela (1895).