Grover Cleveland
The United States has had 43 Presidents in its history. But only 42 men have held the office.
Wait….what ?
Well, the individual who counts as two of our Presidents served in the White House from 1885-1889 and again from 1893-1897. And as the only man to serve two non-consecutive terms as President, Grover Cleveland holds a unique place in American history.
Steven Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey on March 18, 1837. He dropped Steven from his name as a youth and grew up in western New York. Cleveland worked as a lawyer and then served as mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York in the early 1880s as a Democrat. With Americans growing weary of Republican Presidents in the post-Civil War period, Democrats sensed they had a possible winner in the honesty and integrity found in Cleveland. And they were right. Cleveland defeated Republican James Blaine in the 1884 election and became the nation’s first Democratic President since James Buchanan – a stretch of almost 25 years.
Cleveland was known as a tireless, individualistic worker in the White House. He believed in the gold money standard, and in self-reliance of states and the country’s citizens. Repeatedly he turned down pension requests from Union Civil War veterans and their widows, calling them excessive, and denied aid to Texas after it suffered through drought in 1886. One of Cleveland’s major proposals was a reduction in the country’s protective tariff, which would have meant an increase in free trade. This issue divided the Democrats near the end of his first administration, which opened the door for a Republican challenge in 1888. And the Republicans capitalized. Indiana’s Benjamin Harrison proved a worthy opponent to Cleveland in the 1888 election. Although Cleveland won the popular vote, he was defeated by Harrison in the Electoral College.
Cleveland returned to private life but remained an interested observer in the U.S. political scene. Failed legislation and an uprising of the nation’s farmers put Harrison’s presidency on thin ice, to the point where Republicans discussed nominating another candidate in 1892. A third political party – the People’s, or Populist Party - also gained traction as it represented the farming community and advocated coinage of silver. Democrats felt Cleveland was their best hope among the possible nominees, and he was chosen on the first ballot at the 1892 Democratic convention. In what author Henry Graff described as one of the “dullest in memory” campaigns, Cleveland won the popular and electoral vote in 1892 and returned to the White House.
His second administration was marked by a major event – the Panic of 1893, which kept the country in a depression for nearly four years. The great financier J.P. Morgan was called on to buy government bonds and keep the nation’s gold reserve intact. Cleveland increased his workaholic reputation and went further into seclusion in the White House, as he did in his first term. Sensing a lame duck, the Democrats turned away from Cleveland in 1896 and nominated the great orator William Jennings Bryan as its nominee. Cleveland left office the following March. He died on June 24, 1908.
I finished Henry Graff’s biography of Grover Cleveland this week. Graff presents Cleveland as an honest, hard-working president, who sought to surround himself in his administration with the “best men”. His long-time friends and associates were passed over for better qualified candidates, as Graff explains, which was a departure from the spoils system. Cleveland was not regarded as a particularly dynamic leader, and was excessively modest after his first election win in 1884. He regarded his impending presidency “as a dreadful self-inflicted penance for the good of my country. I see no pleasure in it and no satisfaction, only a hope that I may be of service.”
Some other interesting anecdotes about Grover Cleveland:
1) The Civil War was in full swing in 1862, as the 25-year old Cleveland worked in a law office in Western New York. But Cleveland was not called to military service. As Graff explains, Cleveland “…legally avoided the military draft by obtaining a substitute, a thirty-two-year-old Polish immigrant, to take his place for $150 – and who, it must be noted, survived the war.”
2) Grover Cleveland is the only President who ever married in the White House itself. On June 2, 1886, the 48-year old Cleveland married 21-year old Frances Folsom in the executive mansion.
3) The Clevelands’ oldest child was named Ruth, born in 1891. She died at age 13 and was given the name “Baby Ruth” by the newspapers. In 1921, the Curtiss Company gave one of their candy bars her name, and so was born the “Baby Ruth” bar.
4) Cleveland was diagnosed with a cancerous lesion in his mouth shortly after he returned to office in 1893. He needed surgery, and in order to keep the procedure from the American public, doctors operated on him aboard a yacht in New York’s East River. The public amazingly did not find this out until one of his doctors spoke about the surgery in 1917.
5) Cleveland is one of only two men to win at least three popular elections in U.S. presidential history. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won four straight from 1932-1944.
All in all, an interesting book from Henry Graff on Grover Cleveland, our 22nd (and 24th) President.
