(Stephen) Grover Cleveland - Youth and early political career, First term as President (1885-1889)

US statesman and 22nd and 24th president (1885–9, 1893–7), born in Caldwell, New Jersey, USA. Basically self-educated, he was admitted to the bar in Buffalo, New York (1859) and began his climb up the political ladder as a Democrat, becoming a reformist mayor (1881) and New York governor (1882). His efficiency, honesty, and independence from the state political machine took him to the presidency in 1884. During his first term he pursued civil service reform and lowered a protective tariff that was damaging labour, but this action gained him the enmity of big-business interests who supported Benjamin Harrison, and he won the close election of 1888. Cleveland came back to beat the ineffectual Harrison in 1892, but his second term was troubled by economic problems and ensuing unrest, during which he alienated workers and most Democrats. Losing the nomination in 1896, he retired to pursue business interests, but he maintained his status as a respected statesman.

Stephen Grover Cleveland

22nd President of the United States 24th President of the United States
In office March 4, 1885 – March 4, 1889 March 4, 1893 – March 4, 1897
Vice President(s)   Arthur (1885) Benjamin Harrison (1893)
Succeeded by	Benjamin Harrison (1889) William McKinley (1897)
Born	March 18, 1837 Caldwell, New Jersey
Died	June 24, 1908 Princeton, New Jersey
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Frances Folsom Cleveland
Religion	Presbyterian
Signature

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.

Youth and early political career

Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, to the Reverend Richard Cleveland and Anne Neal. Following Buchanan's single term, the next Democrat elected president would be Cleveland himself, almost thirty years later.

First term as President (1885-1889)

1884 campaign

Cleveland won the Presidency in the 1884 election. To counter Cleveland's image of purity, his opponents reported that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo.

Although Cleveland never publicly admitted or denied the rumor, he did admit to paying child support in 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, the woman who claimed he fathered her child named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. (Cleveland is believed to have assumed responsibility because he was the only bachelor among them.) After Cleveland's election as President, Democratic newspapers added a line to chant used against Cleveland and made it: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?

Personal life

In June 1886, Cleveland married Frances Folsom, the daughter of his former law partner, in the Blue Room in the White House.

Politics

Cleveland's administration might be characterized by his saying: "I have only one thing to do, and that is to do right". Cleveland himself insisted that, as President, his greatest accomplishment was blocking others' bad ideas. Cleveland used the veto far more often than any President up to that time. Cleveland had an essentially negative view of Presidential power, telling a friend that his principal duty and greatest service to the country was in preventing Congress from enacting bad bills.

Cleveland started a well received campaign against the Southwestern Apache tribe in 1885.

President Cleveland angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by government grant, forcing them to return 81,000,000 acres (328,000 km²).

Foreign policy

Cleveland was a committed isolationist who had campaigned in opposition to expansion and imperialism. Cleveland often quoted the advice of George Washington's Farewell Address in decrying alliances, and he slowed the pace of expansion that President Chester Arthur had begun.

But as journalist Fareed Zakaria argued, "But while Cleveland retarded the speed and aggressiveness of U.S. foreign policy, the overall direction did not change." Campbell argues that the audiences who listened to Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas E. Cleveland supported Hawaiian free trade (reciprocity) and accepted an amendment that gave the United States a coaling and naval station in Pearl Harbor.

In his second term Cleveland stated that by 1893, the U.S. Navy had been used to promote American interests in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, and Hawaii. Under Cleveland, the U.S. adopted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.

Crusade against protective tariff

In December 1887, Cleveland called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs:

The theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him...

Miscellaneous

In October 1886, Cleveland presided over the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York City harbor before thousands of onlookers. Illinois (1886) Interstate Commerce Act (1887) Dawes Act (1887)

Administration and Cabinet

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Grover Cleveland	1885–1889
Vice President	Thomas A. Hendricks	1885
	None	1885–1889
Secretary of State	Thomas F. Bayard	1885–1889
Secretary of the Treasury	Daniel Manning	1885–1887
	Charles S. Fairchild	1887–1889
Secretary of War	William C. Endicott	1885–1889
Attorney General	Augustus H. Garland	1885–1889
Postmaster General	William F. Vilas	1885–1888
	Don M. Dickinson	1888–1889
Secretary of the Navy	William C. Whitney	1885–1889
Secretary of the Interior	Lucius Q. Lamar	1885–1888
	William F. Vilas	1888–1889
Secretary of Agriculture	Norman Jay Colman	1889

Supreme Court appointments

Cleveland appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States during his first term. Lamar – 1888 Melville Weston Fuller (Chief Justice) – 1888

States admitted to the Union

Utah, January 4, 1896

1888 campaign for reelection

Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 presidential election. He actually led in the popular vote over Benjamin Harrison (48.6% to 47.8%), but Harrison won the Electoral College by a 233-168 margin, largely by squeaking out a barely-over-1% win in Cleveland's home state of New York; in fact, had Cleveland won his home state, he would have won the electoral vote by a count of 204-197 (201 votes then needed for victory). Note, though, that Cleveland earned 24 of his electoral votes in states that he won by less than 1% (Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Cleveland thus became one of only four men to win the popular vote but lose the presidency;

Administration (1893-1897)

Campaign

The primary issues for Cleveland for the 1892 campaign were reducing the tariff and stopping free minting of silver which had depleted the gold reserves of the U.S. Treasury. Cleveland was elected again in 1892, thus becoming the only President in U.S. history to be elected to a second term which did not run in succession with the first.

Politics

Shortly after Cleveland was inaugurated, the Panic of 1893 struck the stock market, and he soon faced an acute economic depression.

Cleveland refused to allow Eugene Debs to use the Pullman Strike to shut down most of the nation's passenger, freight and mail traffic in June 1894.

Cleveland's agrarian and silverite enemies seized control of the Democratic party in 1896, repudiated his administration and the gold standard, and nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Silver Platform. Cleveland silently supported the National Democratic Party (United States) (or "Gold Democratic") third party ticket that promised to defend the gold standard, limited government, and oppose protectionism.

Foreign affairs

Invoking the Monroe Doctrine in 1895, Cleveland forced the United Kingdom to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela.

In 1893, Cleveland sent former Congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawaii to investigate the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of a provisional government. Following the Turpie Resolution of May 31, 1894, which vowed a policy of non-interference in Hawaiian affairs, Cleveland dropped all support for reinstating the Queen, and further went on to officially recognize and maintain diplomatic relations with the Republic of Hawaii declared on July 4, 1894.

Women's Rights

Cleveland was a stout opponent of the women's suffrage (voting) movement. *

Significant events

Panic of 1893 Cleveland withdraws a treaty for the Annexation of Hawaii, and attempts to reinstate Queen Liliuokalani (1893) Cleveland withdraws his support for the Queen's reinstatement after further investigation by Congress in the Morgan Report (1894) Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act (1894) Pullman Strike (1894) Coxey's Army (1894) United States v. Knight Co. (1895)

Administration and Cabinet

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Grover Cleveland	1893–1897
Vice President	Adlai E. Stevenson	1893–1897
Secretary of State	Walter Q. Gresham	1893–1895
	Richard Olney	1895–1897
Secretary of the Treasury	John G. Carlisle	1893–1897
Secretary of War	Daniel S. Lamont	1893–1897
Attorney General	Richard Olney	1893–1895
	Judson Harmon	1895–1897
Postmaster General	Wilson S. Bissell	1893–1895
	William L. Wilson	1895–1897
Secretary of the Navy	Hilary A. Herbert	1893–1897
Secretary of the Interior	Hoke Smith	1893–1896
	David R. Francis	1896–1897
Secretary of Agriculture	Julius Sterling Morton	1893–1897

Supreme Court appointments

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

Edward Douglass White – 1894 Rufus Wheeler Peckham – 1896

Two of Cleveland's nominees were rejected by the Senate.

States admitted to the Union

Utah – January 4, 1896

Cancer

Just after Cleveland began his second term in 1893, Doctor R.M.

Under the guise of a vacation cruise, Cleveland, accompanied by lead surgeon Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York.

Later life and death

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he had constructively worked while Governor of New York decades before.

Cleveland died in 1908 from a heart attack, with his wife at his side.

Honors and memorials

Cleveland's portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill from 1928 to 1946. George Cleveland, the president's grandson, is now an impersonator and historical reenactor of his famous grandfather. Cleveland got along better with the members of the U.S. House of Representatives than with the United States Senate. Because Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, the protocol was unclear as to whether he was officially the 22nd or 24th President of the United States. The street on which Cleveland's summer home was located (Bourne, Massachusetts) is now called President's Road. Of the presidents who followed Abraham Lincoln to William McKinley, Cleveland was the only one who had not served in the Civil War (he hired a subsitute, as the conscription law of the time permitted). Cleveland was the first of only two police officers to became President {Theodore Roosevelt was a deputy sheriff in the Dakota Territory and a New York City Police Commissioner}. Grover Cleveland 1892 campaign speech (file info) — play in browser (beta) Audio clip of the first minute of Cleveland's 1892 campaign speech. "Ethno-cultural Realities in Presidential Patronage: Grover Cleveland's Choices" New York History 2000 81(2): 189-210. The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland (1892) full text online at Google Books Cleveland, Grover.