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CLEVELAND, Grover
(1837–1908), 22d and 24th president of the U.S. (1885–89,
1893–97), the only chief executive to be reelected after
defeat. Cleveland adopted the credo “a public office is
a public trust” and in his two nonconsecutive terms spent
much of his energies resisting partisan influences and the political
favoritism characteristic of that era.
Cleveland was born the son of a country clergyman in Caldwell,
N.J., on March 18, 1837. His family soon moved to New York, settling
in Fayetteville and then Clinton, where this family of nine children struggled
on the father’s modest salary. Prevented by his father’s
death from attending college, Cleveland moved to an uncle’s
home near Buffalo, N.Y., and clerked for a law firm. Studying by
himself, he was admitted to the bar in 1859.
In a series of minor political offices, Cleveland won a reputation
for scrupulous honesty. This earned him the Democratic nomination
for mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and he won the office on a reform
platform. In his inaugural address, he launched an attack on the notoriously
corrupt board of aldermen, and in the ensuing battles to reduce
graft and break the board’s power, Cleveland earned the
title of the Veto Mayor. With bipartisan support in Buffalo, he
became the Democratic nominee for governor in 1882 and achieved
an enormous victory.
Pursuing reform in his first year as governor, Cleveland found
two of his favorite bills stalled in the legislature by allies of
New York City’s Democratic chairman, John Kelly (1822–86).
In the subsequent conflict, the city’s Democrats became
his permanent enemies. Cleveland experienced a crisis of public support
in his brief tenure as governor when he vetoed a bill that would
have reduced the fare on elevated railroads in New York City. The
public favored the lower rate, but the change would have violated
the company’s charter. When Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt
(later president) reversed his vote and supported Cleveland, the
governor won.
In 1884 Cleveland’s supporters proposed that he run
for president. The Republican convention had chosen as its candidate
James G. Blaine, whose political career had been marred by suggestions
of corruption in aiding the railroad industry years before. A sizable
reform faction in the Republican party, however, opposed Blaine’s
nomination, and they seceded, earning the label Mugwumps. They promised
to vote for the yet unchosen Democratic candidate if he supported
reform. Cleveland’s past public service therefore made him
the likely candidate despite Tammany’s opposition. The
promise of Mugwump votes swayed enough delegates to give him the
needed margin.
Cleveland won the election after a close race that was marred by
various personal accusations against both candidates. Taking office
in 1885, he resisted the petitions of thousands of party members
and supporters for jobs and continued the civil service reforms
begun by his predecessor, Chester A. Arthur. This disappointed many
Democrats who were hoping for lucrative jobs after 24 years of Republican
rule. In 1887 Cleveland persuaded Congress to repeal the Tenure
of Office Act, which had restricted the president’s right
to dismiss federal officeholders without the consent of the Senate.
This left him free to remove officials appointed by the previous
administration before their terms expired, to carry out reforms
in government agencies, and to reassert the independence of the
president’s powers. In two other controversial moves, he
vetoed a general pension bill that would have allowed American Civil
War veterans to collect pensions for disabilities suffered after
they had left the army, and he opposed protective tariffs on imported
goods. Cleveland narrowly lost the election of 1888 to the Republican
Benjamin Harrison despite winning a majority of the popular vote.
Under the Harrison administration, inflation increased the
price of consumer goods, and public sentiment turned against the
protective tariff the Republicans passed in 1890. Cleveland was
persuaded to seek office again in 1892, and he ran on an antitariff
platform. Winning the election, he returned to Washington in 1893
to face the beginnings of a depression.
The Sherman Act of 1890, designed to stimulate the silver
industry in the West, compelled the Treasury Department to buy 4.5
million oz of silver each month. Greenbacks and treasury notes were
used to buy the silver and, to maintain parity, were redeemable
in gold or silver. Economic panic in 1893 created a run on treasury
reserves of gold as the value of silver fell. The purchase of silver
then contributed to the outflow of gold and threatened monetary
disaster. Cleveland sought legislation to repeal the Sherman Act.
In the months of congressional infighting he lost the support of
a large faction of western and southern Democrats, led by William
Jennings Bryan, who favored free silver coinage.
Cleveland worked to reduce the so-called McKinley Tariff,
which had protected some American goods from competition but harmed
other industries that needed imported materials. The Democrats’ tariff
bill was so weakened in the Senate, however, that when it emerged
as the Wilson-Gorman Act, Cleveland refused to sign it, and it became
law without his endorsement.
As the depression worsened, the Pullman Co. in 1894 reduced
workers’ wages and fired some who objected to the reduction.
Workers belonged to the American Railway Union, and sympathizers
blocked the passage of trains pulling Pullman cars. At the request
of company leaders, and despite the protests of Gov. John Peter
Altgeld of Illinois, Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to
restore order and ensure the passage of mail trains, thereby upholding
federal law. The momentum of the strike was broken, but so was the
Democratic party. Workers, suffering farmers, and silverites combined
in 1896 to nominate Bryan for the presidency. The Cleveland “gold Democrats” refused
to support Bryan, and the Republican William McKinley was victorious.
In 1897, Cleveland returned with his family to Princeton, N.J.,
where he pursued private life, occasionally giving lectures at universities.
He died at Princeton, on June 24, 1908.
Cleveland’s political rise was due largely to factionalism
in national politics; but he is remembered for his desire to protect
the public trust and to assert the power of the presidency.