Cleveland, (Stephen) Grover 1837-1908
US statesman and 22nd and 24th President

Born in Caldwell, New Jersey, the son of a Presbyterian minister, he was admitted to the Bar in 1859 and began to practise at Buffalo. From 1863 to 1866 he was assistant district attorney for Erie County, and in 1870 was chosen sheriff. As Mayor of Buffalo (from 1882), he became known as a reformer independent of political posses, and after a year in office was elected Governor in New York (1882). He was nominated by the Democrats for the presidency (1884), and took his seat as President in 1885 after a campaign marked by energetic mud-slinging on all sides. In his first term (1885-89) he advocated tariff reduction and Civil Service reform, and he invested much effort into making sure that government appointments and pensions were granted on the basis of merit. His stand on the tariff issue was unpopular, and he lost the 1888 election to the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, but four years later he defeated Harrison to win a second term as President (1893-97). The panic of 1893 prompted Cleveland to force the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, thus angering free-silver advocates in the West, and his intervention of the side of the railroads in the Pullman strike of 1894 also aroused much protest. In foreign affairs he invoked the Monroe Doctrine to resolve Great Britain's boundary dispute with Venezuela, and he showed admirable integrity by refusing to recognize the Hawaiian government set up largely by US planters. By 1896 he had lost the support of his party, and the Democratic nomination went to William Jennings Bryan.