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 political domination between 1860 and 1912, and he was the first Democrat to be elected after the Civil War. His admirers praise him for his honesty, independence and integrity, and for his adherence to the principles of classical liberalism [Wilson 1897]. Critics complained that he had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic problems in his second term. He lost control of his Democratic party to the agrarians and silverites in 1896.

Youth and early political career

Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, to Reverend Richard Cleveland and Anne Neal. He was one of nine children. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and as the church frequently transferred its ministers, the family moved many times, mainly around central and western New York State.

As a lawyer in Buffalo, New York, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him. He was elected sheriff of Erie County, New York in 1870 and, while in that post, carried out at least two hangings of condemned criminals. Political opponents would later hold this against him, calling him the "Buffalo Hangman." Cleveland stated that he wished to take the responsibility for the executions himself and not pass it along to subordinates.

At age 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, with the slogan "Public Office is a Public Trust" as his trademark of office. In 1882, he was elected governor of New York.

First term as President (1885-1889)

1884 campaign

Cleveland won the Presidency in the 1884 election. He won with combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans called "Mugwumps", who denounced his opponent, Senator James G. Blaine of Maine as corrupt.

The campaign was relatively negative. To counter Cleveland's image of purity, his opponents reported that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo. Republican crowds chanted, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"

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. Halpin was involved with several men at the time, including Cleveland's law partner and mentor, Oscar Folsom, for whom the child was named. (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 the sound-bite used against Cleveland and made it: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House! Ha Ha Ha!"

Personal life

In June 1886, Cleveland married Frances Folsom, the daughter of his former law partner, in the blue room in the White House. He was the second President to be married while in office, and the only President to have a wedding in the White House itself. Folsom was also the youngest First Lady in the history of the U.S. In October 1886, Cleveland performed the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in front of thousands of onlookers.

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. He 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 hundreds of 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 that, too. Cleveland used the veto far more often than any President up to that time.

Cleveland started a sensational campaign against the Apache Indians in 1885. These Indians of the South-west headed by Chief Geronimo were the scourge of the white settlers in that region. In 1886 General Miles captured the Indians and the campaign was over.

He 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). He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

Foreign policy

Publically Cleveland was a committed isolationist who had campaigned in opposition to expansion and imperialism. The President 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 reestablished. Cleveland refused to promote Arthur's Nicaragua canal treaty, calling it an "entangling alliance". Free trade deals (reciprocity treaties) with Mexico and several South American countries died because there was no Senate approval. Cleveland withdrew from Senate consideration the Berlin Conference treaty which guaranteed an open door for U.S. interests in Congo.^[1]

But as journalist Fareed Zakaria argues, "But while Cleveland retarded the speed and aggressiveness of US foreign policy, the overall direction did not change."^[1] Historian Charles S. Campbell argues that the audiences who listened to Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas E Bayard's moralistic lectures "readily detected through the high moral tone a sharp eye for the national interest."^[2] Cleveland supported Hawaiian free trade (reciprocity) and accepted an amendment that gave the United States a coaling and naval station in Pearl Harbor. Naval orders were placed with Republican industrialists rather than Democratic ones, but the military build up actually quickened.^[1]

In his second term Cleveland stated that by 1893, the American 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.^[3]

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... the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice. This wrong inflicted upon those who bear the burden of national taxation, like other wrongs, multiplies a brood of evil consequences. The public Treasury... becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder.

He failed to pass the Lower Mills Tariff and made it the central issue of his losing 1888 campaign, as Republicans claimed a high tariff was needed to produce high wages, high profits, and fast economic expansion.

Administration (1885-1889)

Significant events

• American Federation of Labor was created (1886)
• Haymarket Riot (1886)
• Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. 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. C. 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.

• Lucius Q. C. Lamar – 1888
• Melville Weston Fuller (Chief Justice) – 1888

States admitted to the Union
None

1888 campaign for reelection

Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 presidential election. Although he won a larger share of the popular vote than Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes and thus lost the election.

Second term as President, 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. 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. With the aid of J. P. Morgan and Wall Street, he maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

He fought to lower the tariff in 1893-94. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act introduced by Wilson and passed by the House would have made significant reforms. However, by the time the bill passed the Senate, guided by Democrat Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, it had more than 600 amendments attached that nullified most of the reforms. The "Sugar Trust" in particular made changes that favored it at the expense of the consumer. It imposed an income tax of two percent to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions. Cleveland was devastated that his program had been ruined. He denounced the revised measure as a disgraceful product of "party perfidy and party dishonor," but still allowed it to become law without his signature, believing that it was better than nothing and was at the least an improvement over the McKinley tariff.

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. He obtained an injunction in federal court, and when the strikers refused to obey it, he sent in federal troops to Chicago, illinois and 20 other rail centers. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered." Most governors supported Cleveland except Democrat John P. Altgeld of Illinois, who became a bitter foe in 1896.

His 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. The party won only 100,000 votes in the general election (just over 1 percent). Agrarians again nominated Bryan in 1900, but in 1904 the conservatives, with Cleveland's support, regained control of the Democratic party and nominated Alton B. Parker.

Foreign affairs

Invoking the Monroe Doctrine in 1895, Cleveland forced the United Kingdom to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. His administration is credited with the modernization of the United States Navy that allowed the U.S. to decisively win the Spanish-American War in 1898, one year after he left office.

In 1893, Cleveland sent former Congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawaii to investigate the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of a republic. He supported Blount's scathing report; called for the restoration of Liliuokalani; and withdrew from the Senate the treaty of annexation of Hawaii. When the deposed Queen announced she would execute the current government in Honolulu, Cleveland dropped the issue.

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. E. C. Knight Co. (1895)

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.

• William Hornblower, on January 15, 1894, by a vote of 24-30.
• Wheeler Hazard Peckham, (the older brother of Rufus Wheeler) on February 16, 1894, by a vote of 32-41.

States admitted to the Union

• Utah – January 4, 1896

Cancer

Just after Cleveland began his second term in 1893, Doctor R.M. O'Reilly found an ulcerated sore a little less than one inch (24 mm) in diameter on the left lingual surface of Cleveland's hard palate. Samples taken proved the growth to be a malignant cancer. Because of the financial depression of the country, Cleveland decided to have surgery performed on the tumor in secrecy to avoid further market panic. The surgery occurred on July 1, to give Cleveland time to make a full recovery in time for an August 7 address to Congress, which had recessed at the end of June.

Under the guise of a vacation, Cleveland, accompanied by lead surgeon Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York. Bryant, joined by his assistant Dr. John F. Erdmann, Dr. W.W. Keen Jr., Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck (dentist and anesthesiologist), and Dr. Edward Janeway, operated aboard the yacht Oneida as it sailed. The surgery was conducted through the mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. The team, sedating Cleveland with nitrous oxide (laughing gas), removed his upper left jaw and portions of his hard palate. The size of the tumor and the extent of the operation left Cleveland's mouth severely disfigured. During another surgery, an orthodontist fitted Cleveland with a hard rubber prosthesis that corrected his speech and covered up the surgery.

A cover story about the removal of two bad teeth kept the suspicious press somewhat placated. Even when a newspaper story appeared giving details of the actual operation, the participating surgeons discounted the severity of what transpired during Cleveland's vacation. In 1917, one of the surgeons present on the Oneida wrote an article detailing the operation. The lump was preserved and is on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Later life and death

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, bringing him into opposition to the school's president Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was the only other Democrat elected President of the U.S. between 1856 and 1932. Cleveland died in 1908 from a heart attack. He was buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Honors and memorials

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

Since he was both the 22nd and 24th President, he will be featured on two separate dollar coins to be released in 2012 as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.

Many public schools across the country are named in his honor.

Trivia

• George Cleveland, the president's grandson is now an impersonator and historical reenactor of his famous grandfather.

• The president's granddaughter Philippa Foot is a philosopher at Oxford University.

• The baseball player Grover Cleveland Alexander is named after him.

• A joke of the day had the First Lady waking in the middle of the night and whispering to Cleveland, "Wake up, Grover. I think there's a burglar in the house." Cleveland sleepily mumbled, "No, no. Perhaps in the Senate, my dear, but not in the House."

• 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. A special Act of Congress resolved the issue by decreeing that was both the 22nd and the 24th President.

See also

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

References

Secondary sources

• Bard, Mitchell. "Ideology and Depression Politics I: Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)" Presidential Studies Quarterly 1985 15(1): 77-88. Issn: 0360-4918

• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900," Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.

• Blodgett, Geoffrey. "Ethno-cultural Realities in Presidential Patronage: Grover Cleveland's Choices" New York History 2000 81(2): 189-210. Issn: 0146-437x when a German American leader called for fewer appointments of Irish Americans, Cleveland instead appointed more Germans

• Blodgett, Geoffrey. "The Emergence of Grover Cleveland: a Fresh Appraisal" New York History 1992 73(2): 132-168. Issn: 0146-437x cover Cleveland to 1884

• Dewey, Davis R. National Problems: 1880-1897 (1907), survey of era

• Doenecke, Justus. "Grover Cleveland and the Enforcement of the Civil Service Act" Hayes Historical Journal 1984 4(3): 44-58. Issn: 0364-5924

• Faulkner, Harold U. Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890-1900 (1959), survey of decade,

• Ford, Henry Jones. The Cleveland Era: A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics (1921), short overview

• Graff, Henry F. Grover Cleveland (2002), short overview.

• Hirsch, Mark D. William C. Whitney, Modern Warwick (1948)

• Hoffman, Karen S. "'Going Public' in the Nineteenth Century: Grover Cleveland's Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act" Rhetoric & Public Affairs 2002 5(1): 57-77. Issn: 1094-8392

• Meador, Daniel J. "Lamar to the Court: Last Step to National Reunion" Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook 1986: 27-47. Issn: 0362-5249

• McElroy, Robert. Grover Cleveland, the Man and the Statesman: An Authorized Biography (1923)

• Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896 (1969), political survey

• Nevins, Allan. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (1932) Pulitzer prize biography in depth

• Summers, Mark Wahlgren. Rum, Romanism & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 (2000) campaign techniques and issues

• Welch, Richard E. Jr. The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (1988) detailed overview of his administrations

• Wilson, Woodrow, Mr. Cleveland as President Atlantic Monthly (March 1897): pp. 289-301 online Woodrow Wilson became President in 1912; he was a Bourbon Democrat when he wrote the favorable essay

Primary sources

• Cleveland, Grover. Presidential Problems. (1904)
• Cleveland, Grover. Message about Hawaii. (1893).
• Nevins, Allan ed. Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850-1908 (1934)
• Sturgis Amy H. ed. Presidents from Hayes through McKinley, 1877-1901: Debating the Issues in Pro and Con Primary Documents (2003)
• William L. Wilson; The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896-1897 1957
• National Democratic Committee (1896). Campaign Text-book of the National Democratic Party.
  • This is the handbook of the Gold Democrats who strongly supported Cleveland and justified his policies, while opposing Bryan.

External links

• Works by Grover Cleveland at Project Gutenberg
• White House biography
• Audio clips of Cleveland's speeches
• First Inaugural Address
• Second Inaugural Address
• Obituary for Grover Cleveland
• Our Libertarian President
• Statesman, President, Hangman
• Cleveland's grandson, George, impersonating him on Heritage Day in Tamworth, New Hampshire. August 2005

Preceded by: Alexander Brush	Mayor of Buffalo 1882	Succeeded by: Marcus Drake
Preceded by: Alonzo B. Cornell	Governor of New York 1883 – 1885	Succeeded by: David B. Hill
Preceded by: Winfield Scott Hancock	Democratic Party presidential nominee 1884 (won), 1888 (lost), 1892 (won)	Succeeded by: William Jennings Bryan
Preceded by: Chester A. Arthur	President of the United States March 4, 1885 – March 3, 1889	Succeeded by: Benjamin Harrison
Preceded by: Benjamin Harrison	President of the United States March 4, 1893 – March 3, 1897	Succeeded by: William McKinley

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