2 Presidency

Cleveland won the Presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his opponent James Blaine of Maine. The campaign was one of the most vicious and negative up to that time. The Republicans had claimed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was still Governor of New York, and while Cleveland never admitted or denied the rumor, he did admit to paying child support to the woman who claimed he fathered her child. After Cleveland's election as President, newspapers printed the rhyme,, "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Going to the White House! Ha Ha Ha!" A bachelor, Cleveland was ill at ease at first with all the comforts of the White House. "I must go to dinner," he wrote a friend, "but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find."

In June 1886, Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom; he was the second President to be married while in office (after John Tyler), and the only President to be married in the White House. Frances Cleveland was the youngest First Lady in the history of the US. More salacious sections of the press made light of the age difference of the two: Cleveland had been the girl's de facto guardian since she was 11 and was revealed to have bought her parents a baby carriage for her. Later there were allegations that Cleveland was a violent husband.

Cleveland 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 many 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 it, too.

He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced 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.

In December 1887, he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs. Told that he had given Republicans an effective issue for the campaign of 1888, he retorted, "What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" But Cleveland was defeated in 1888; although he won a larger share of the popular vote than the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes and thus lost the election - a feat repeated by Al Gore in the 2000 election. Upon leaving the White House in 1889, Frances Cleveland told the servants, "I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now when we come back again....four years from today."

After running partly on a platform that a Republican victory would lead to civil rights for blacks and then "Negro domination", Cleveland was elected again in 1892. In office, Cleveland 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 and, with the aid of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent Federal troops to enforce it. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered." Cleveland also forced the United Kingdom to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela.

Oil painting of Grover Cleveland, painted in 1899 by the Swedish painter Anders Zorn.

Cleveland ran for the Democratic nomination in 1896, but the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan.

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. He died in 1908 from a heart attack.

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

Cleveland had an operation in which a cancerous lump on the left side of his upper lip (his cigar chewing side) was removed in a yacht in the ocean. The secret (known not even by Congress or the Vice President) was not released until several years after his death (25 years after the operation). The prosthetic piece put in the lump's place was made of India rubber. The lump was preserved and is on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

2.1 Cabinet (1885–1889)

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 J. Colman	1889

2.2 Cabinet (1893–1897)

OFFICE	NAME	TERM
President	Grover Cleveland	1893–1897
Vice President	Adlai E. Stevenson	1893–1897
Secretary of State	Walter Q. Gresham	1893–1895
	Richard Olney	1895–1897
Secretary of the Treasury	John G. Carlisle	1893–1897
Secretary of War	Daniel S. Lamont	1893–1895
Attorney General	Richard Olney	1893–1895
	Judson Harmon	1895–1897
Postmaster General	Wilson S. Bissell	1893–1895
	William L. Wilson	1895–1897
Secretary of the Navy	Hilary A. Herbert	1893–1897
Secretary of the Interior	Hoke Smith	1893–1896
	David R. Francis	1896–1897
Secretary of Agriculture	Julius S. Morton	1893–1897

2.3 Supreme Court appointments

Cleveland appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States during his first term.

• Lucius Quintus C. Lamar - 1888
• Melville Weston Fuller - Chief Justice - 1888

Cleveland appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court during his second term.

• Edward Douglass White - 1894
• Rufus Wheeler Peckham - 1896

2.4 Significant events during presidencies

• American Federation of Labor is created (1886)
• Haymarket Riot (1886)
• Wabash Case (1886)
• Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
• Dawes Act (1887)
• Homestead Strike (1892)
• Omaha Populist Convention (1892)
• Panic of 1893
• Wilson-Gorman Tariff (1894)
• Coxey's Army (1894)
• United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895)

3 Related articles

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

4 External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about .

• White House biography
• First Inaugural Address
• Second Inaugural Address
• Obituary for Grover Cleveland

Preceded by: (first term) Chester A. Arthur	President of the United States 1885–1889, 1893–1897	Succeeded by: (first term) Benjamin Harrison
Preceded by: (second term) Benjamin Harrison		Succeeded by: (second term) William McKinley
Preceded by: Alonzo B. Cornell	Governor of New York 1883–1885	Succeeded by: David B. Flower

Preceded by: Winfield Scott Hancock

Democratic Party Presidential candidate 1884 (won) - 1888 (lost) - 1892 (won)

Followed by: William Jennings Bryan

Presidents of the United States of America

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Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Grover

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