Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, serving from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. He was the first U.S. president to serve two nonconsecutive terms and the first Democrat elected president after the American Civil War.
Born in Caldwell, New Jersey, Cleveland was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and governor of New York in 1882. While governor, he closely cooperated with state assembly minority leader Theodore Roosevelt to pass reform measures, winning national attention. He led the Bourbon Democrats, a pro-business movement opposed to high tariffs, free silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to businesses, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the time. Cleveland also won praise for honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to classical liberalism. His fight against political corruption, patronage, and bossism convinced many like-minded Republicans, called "Mugwumps", to cross party lines and support him in the 1884 presidential election, which he narrowly won against Republican James G. Blaine.
During his first presidency, Cleveland signed the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which made the railroad industry the first industry subject to federal regulation by a regulatory body, and the Dawes Act, which subdivided Native American tribal communal landholdings into individual allotments. This policy led to Native Americans ceding control of about two-thirds of their land between 1887 and 1934. In the 1888 election, Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the electoral college and therefore the election to Benjamin Harrison. He returned to New York City and joined a law firm.
In a rematch against Harrison for the 1892 election, Cleveland won both the popular vote and electoral college, returning him to the White House. One month before his second presidency began, the Panic of 1893 sparked a severe national depression. An anti-imperialist, Cleveland opposed the push to annex Hawaii, launched an investigation into the 1893 coup against Queen Liliʻuokalani, and called for her restoration. Cleveland intervened in the 1894 Pullman Strike to keep the railroads moving, angering Illinois Democrats and labor unions nationwide; his support of the gold standard and opposition to free silver alienated the agrarian wing of the Democrats. Critics complained that Cleveland had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term. Many voters blamed the Democrats, opening the way for a Republican landslide in 1894 and for the agrarian and free silver seizure of the Democratic Party at the 1896 Democratic convention. By the end of his second term, he was highly unpopular, even among Democrats.
After leaving the White House, Cleveland served as a trustee of Princeton University. He joined the American Anti-Imperialist League in protest of the 1898 Spanish–American War. He died in 1908.
Early life
Childhood and family history
Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey, to Ann and Richard Falley Cleveland. Cleveland's father, originally from Connecticut, was a Congregational and Presbyterian minister. His mother was from Baltimore and was the daughter of a bookseller. On his father's side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors who first emigrated to Massachusetts from Ipswich, England, in 1635. On his mother's side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-Irish Protestants and German Quakers. Cleveland was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city of Cleveland, Ohio, was named.Cleveland, the fifth of nine children, was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the time. He became known as Grover in his adult life. In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, where Grover spent much of his childhood. Neighbors later described him as "full of fun and inclined to play pranks", and fond of outdoor sports.
In 1850, Cleveland's father Richard moved his family to Clinton, New York, accepting a job there as district secretary for the American Home Missionary Society. Despite his father's dedication to his missionary work, his income was insufficient for the large family. Financial conditions forced him to remove Grover from school and place him in a two-year mercantile apprenticeship in Fayetteville. The experience was valuable, though brief. Grover returned to Clinton and his schooling at the completion of the apprentice contract. In 1853, missionary work began to take a toll on Richard's health. He took a new work assignment in Holland Patent, New York, and moved his family once again. Shortly after, Richard Cleveland died from a gastric ulcer. Grover was said to have learned about his father's death from a boy selling newspapers.
Education and moving west
Cleveland received his elementary education at the Fayetteville Academy and the Clinton Grammar School. After his father died in 1853, he again left school to help support his family. Later that year, Cleveland's brother William was hired as a teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind in New York City, and William obtained a place for Cleveland as an assistant teacher. Cleveland returned home to Holland Patent at the end of 1854, where an elder in his church offered to pay for his college education if he promised to become a minister. Cleveland declined, and in 1855 he decided to move west.He stopped first in Buffalo, New York, where his cousin Lewis F. Allen gave him a clerical job. Allen was an important man in Buffalo, and he introduced Cleveland to influential men there, including the partners in the law firm of Rogers, Bowen, and Rogers. Cleveland later took a clerkship with the firm, began to read the law with them, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1859.
Early career and the American Civil War
Cleveland worked for the Rogers firm for three years before leaving in 1862 to start his own practice. In January 1863, he was appointed assistant district attorney of Erie County, New York. With the American Civil War raging, Congress passed the Conscription Act of 1863, requiring able-bodied men to serve in the army if called upon, or else to hire a substitute. Cleveland chose the latter, paying $150,, to George Benninsky, a Polish immigrant, to serve in his place.As a lawyer, Cleveland became known for his single-minded concentration and dedication to hard work. In 1866, he successfully defended some participants in the Fenian raid, working pro bono. In 1868, Cleveland attracted professional attention for his winning defense of a libel suit against the editor of Buffalo's Commercial Advertiser. During this time, Cleveland assumed a lifestyle of simplicity, taking residence in a plain boarding house. He devoted his growing income to the support of his mother and younger sisters. While his personal quarters were austere, Cleveland enjoyed an active social life and "the easy-going sociability of hotel-lobbies and saloons". He shunned the circles of higher society of Buffalo in which his uncle-in-law's family traveled.
Political career in New York
Sheriff of Erie County
From his earliest involvement in politics, Cleveland aligned with the Democratic Party. He had a decided aversion to Republicans John C. Frémont and Abraham Lincoln, and the heads of the Rogers law firm were solid Democrats. In 1865, he ran for District Attorney, losing narrowly to his friend and roommate, Lyman K. Bass, the Republican nominee.In 1870, with the help of friend Oscar Folsom, Cleveland secured the Democratic nomination for sheriff of Erie County, New York. He won the election by a 303-vote margin and took office on January 1, 1871, at age 33. While this new career took him away from the practice of law, it was rewarding in other ways: the fees were said to yield up to $40,000,, over the two-year term.
Cleveland's service as sheriff was unremarkable. Biographer Rexford Tugwell described the time in office as a waste for Cleveland politically. Cleveland was aware of graft in the sheriff's office during his tenure and chose not to confront it. A notable incident of his term took place on September 6, 1872, when Patrick Morrissey was executed. He had been convicted of murdering his mother. As sheriff, Cleveland was responsible for either personally carrying out the execution or paying a deputy $10 to perform the task. In spite of reservations about the hanging, Cleveland executed Morrissey himself. He hanged another murderer, John Gaffney, on February 14, 1873.
After his term as sheriff ended, Cleveland returned to his law practice, opening a firm with his friends Lyman K. Bass and Wilson S. Bissell. Bass was later replaced by George J. Sicard. Elected to Congress in 1872, Bass did not spend much time at the firm, but Cleveland and Bissell soon rose to the top of Buffalo's legal community. Up to that point, Cleveland's political career had been honorable and unexceptional. As biographer Allan Nevins wrote, "Probably no man in the country, on March 4, 1881, had less thought than this limited, simple, sturdy attorney of Buffalo that four years later he would be standing in Washington and taking the oath as President of the United States."
It was during this period that Cleveland began courting a widow, Maria Halpin. She later accused him of raping her. It is unclear if Halpin was actually raped by Cleveland or if their relationship was consensual. In March 1876, Cleveland accused Halpin of being an alcoholic and had her child removed from her custody. The child was taken to the Protestant Orphan Asylum, and Cleveland paid for his stay there. Cleveland had Halpin admitted to the Providence Asylum. Halpin was only kept at the asylum for five days because she was deemed not to be insane. Cleveland later provided financial support for her to begin her own business outside of Buffalo. Although lacking irrefutable evidence that Cleveland was the father, the child became a campaign issue for the Republican Party in Cleveland's first presidential campaign, where they smeared him by claiming that he was "immoral" and for allegedly acting cruelly by not raising the child himself.