Cleveland, Grover (1837-1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States
Grover Cleveland, a two-term president of the United States, was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on March 18, 1837. He was the fifth of nine children born to Richard Falley Cleveland, a Presbyterian minister, and Ann Neal. Cleveland had only a rudimentary formal education. The death of his father in 1853 removed any hope Cleveland may have had of attending college. In 1855 he settled in Buffalo, New York, where he studied law and joined the Democratic Party. He was admitted to the New York bar in 1859. Cleveland remained a bachelor until June 1886, when he married Frances Folsom in the Blue Room of the White House. They had five children.
In public life Cleveland was noted for his honesty and frugality. In 1863 he became the assistant district attorney for Erie County, New York, and in 1871 was elected sheriff. Between terms in public office, Cleveland became one of the most successful private attorneys in Buffalo. His meteoric rise to the presidency began in 1881 when he was elected mayor of Buffalo with the support of a coalition of Democrats, reform-minded Republicans, and independents. As mayor, Cleveland stopped an attempt to defraud the city of $200,000 on a street-cleaning contract and vetoed several bills passed by Buffalo’s aldermen that he felt perpetuated political graft. Rising above partisan politics as mayor earned Cleveland both the nomination and election in 1882 as governor of New York.
Cleveland brought to the governor’s mansion the same dedication to “good government” and independence that he had shown as mayor of Buffalo. Most state governments at this time operated on the spoils system, whereby politicians in office gave government jobs to those members of their party who had assisted them in getting elected. However, Cleveland appointed people to office based not on their party affiliation but on their skills. As governor, Cleveland signed the first state civil service reform law in America. He also liberally used his veto power on appropriations bills and often challenged Tammany Hall, New York City’s Democratic machine.
In 1884 the Republicans nominated James G. Blaine of Maine for president. Political pundits of the day realized that the candidate who carried New York would win the election. At their 1884 national convention, the Democrats nominated Cleveland for president. In a bitterly fought campaign, Cleveland narrowly won New York, defeated Blaine by a count of 219 electoral votes to 182, and became the first Democratic president since the Civil War. As president, Cleveland extended the merit system (civil service reform) for federal employees, promoted a policy of tariff reduction, was an advocate of “sound money” principles, and used the presidential veto power to reject bills that he believed would drain the national treasury. By scrutiniz-
Commission.
Grover Cleveland (Library of Congress)
Ing veterans pensions bills closely, he offended the powerful Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) veterans organization.
Cleveland was renominated by the Democrats in 1888 but lost the election to Benjamin Harrison. Although Cleveland led Harrison in the popular vote 5,540,050 to 5,444,337, Harrison carried the electoral college by a vote of 233 to 168. Clever exploitation of the tariff issue, however, enabled Cleveland to defeat Harrison in the 1892 election and become the only president in American history to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office (1885-89, 1893-97).
Within four months of Cleveland’s second inauguration a panic gripped Wall Street that plunged the nation into a severe depression. The nation’s gold reserve, which had been dwindling as a result of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, dropped below the $100-million mark just prior to the panic, and after the onset of the panic it fell rapidly to $80 million by the end of 1893, threatening to drive the United States from the gold standard. Cleveland believed that the cause of this financial crisis was fear of inflation caused by agitation over Free Silver. He was firmly opposed to any schemes of currency inflation and called for the repeal of the Sherman Act, which obligated the government to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver monthly that could be redeemed in gold. In 1893 the law was repealed as several Republicans and northeastern Democrats sided with the president. Cleveland’s campaign against that act alienated southern and western Democrats. They were further alienated by bond sales in 1894 and 1895 to bankers at exorbitant rates to shore up the gold reserve, which fell as low as $41 million in early 1895. Cleveland saved the gold standard but at an enormous political cost.
Conflicts between business and labor also marked Cleveland’s second administration. During the Pullman Strike (1894) the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, protested a cut in wages at the Pullman Palace Car Company, called for a boycott of Pullman cars, and paralyzed the major midwestern rail lines. In response to the crisis, Cleveland broke the strike by deploying federal troops on the pretext that the strikers had impeded the delivery of the U. S. mail.
In foreign affairs, Cleveland steadfastly refused to aid rebel movements in Hawaii and Cuba. In 1895 he invoked the Monroe Doctrine to force an arbitrated settlement of a boundary dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela. The dispute was settled a year later by an arbitration
Cleveland’s stubborn independence led to his repudiation by the Democratic Party. In 1896 it embraced inflation, nominated William J. Bryan for president, and went down in defeat. Cleveland retired from public office to Princeton, New Jersey, where he died on June 24, 1908.
See also currency issue; Free Silver movement.
Further reading: J. Rogers Hollingsworth, The Whirligig of Politics: The Democracy of Cleveland and Bryan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957); Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932); Richard Welch, The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1988).
—Phillip Papas
World History
