GROVER CLEVELAND
THE 22nd and 24th President
The first Democrat elected after
the Civil War in 1885, Grover
Cleveland was the only President
to leave the White House and
return for a second term four
years later.
(1885-1889 and 1893-1897)
Early life and career
• Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New
Jersey, on March 18, 1837.
• In 1841, the family moved to upstate New York,
where Cleveland’s father served several
congregations before his death in 1853.
• Unable to afford a college education, he worked as a
teacher in a school for the blind in New York City and
then as a clerk in a law firm in Buffalo, New York.
• After clerking for several years, Cleveland passed the
state bar examination in 1859.
• He started his own law firm in 1862.
Sheriff, Mayor and Governor
• Cleveland’s political career began in 1871 when he became the
sheriff of Erie County, New York. He returned to his law practice
in 1873 and was persuaded to run for the mayor of Buffalo in
1881.
• He won the election and quickly gained a reputation for being
an honest man. People knew that Cleveland did not participate
in the corrupt politics and dealings of the time period, and he
became very popular.
• Soon, Cleveland was asked to run for governor of New York,
and he became the governor in 1883. He fought against
unnecessary government spending and vetoed eight bills in his
first two months.
• Although he made some political enemies, Cleveland became
even more popular with voters. He was soon seen as a possible
presidential candidate.
First Term in the White House: 1885-89
Cleveland won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884.
Once in office, Cleveland continued the policy of his predecessor, Chester
Arthur (1830-86), in basing political appointments on merit rather than
party affiliation. He tried to reduce government spending, using the veto
more often than any other president up to that point. Cleveland was a
noninterventionist in foreign policy and fought to have protective tariffs
lowered.
The tariff issue came back to haunt Cleveland in the presidential election of
1888. As a result, he did not win and even lost his home state of New York
in that election. He returned to New York City and took a position in a law
firm for the next four years.
In 1886, Cleveland married
Frances Folsom, a student at
Wells College in New York
who was 27 years his younger.
Although Cleveland was not
the first president to marry
while in office, he is the only
one who had the ceremony in
the White House. At age of 21,
Frances became the youngest
first lady in U.S. history. The
Clevelands would go on to
have five children.
Second Term in the White House:
1893-97
Cleveland’s second term, however, opened with the worst
financial crisis in the country’s history. The Panic of 1893 began
with a railroad bankruptcy in February 1893, followed rapidly by
bank failures, a nationwide credit crisis, a stock market crash and
the failures of three more railroads. Unemployment rose to 19
percent, and a series of strikes crippled the coal and
transportation industries in 1894. The American economy did not
recover until 1896-97, when the Klondike gold rush in the Yukon
touched off a decade of rapid growth.
Cleveland was inconsistent in his social views. On the one hand,
he opposed discrimination against Chinese immigrants in the
West. On the other hand, he did not support equality for African
Americans or voting rights for women, and he thought Native
Americans should assimilate into mainstream society as quickly as
possible rather than preserve their own cultures. He also became
unpopular with organized labor when he used federal troops to
crush the Pullman railroad strike in 1894.
Final Years
• By the autumn of 1896, Cleveland had become unpopular with some factions in
his own party. Other Democrats, however, wanted him to run for a third term, as
there was no term limit for presidents at that time. Cleveland declined, and
former U.S. Representative William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) of Nebraska won
the nomination.
• After leaving the White House in 1897, Cleveland retired to his home in Princeton,
New Jersey, and served as a trustee of Princeton University from 1901 until his
death. His health began to fail rapidly at the end of 1907 and he died of a heart
attack at the age of 71 on June 24, 1908. According to two of Cleveland’s
biographers, his last words were, “I have tried so hard to do right.”
Another interesting facts
• The portrait of Grover Cleveland
appeared on the $1,000 bill until it
was discontinued in 1945.
• The Statue of Liberty was dedicated by Grover Cleveland on October
28, 1886. Originally the statue was known as "Liberty Enlightening the
World," it was a gift from the people of France and stands 151 ft
(46m) high.
• Proclamation, signed by Grover Cleveland on 4 January 1896,
admitted Utah as the forty-fifth state .
