But as journalist Fareed Zakaria argues, "But while Cleveland retarded the speed and aggressiveness of US foreign policy, the overall direction did not change." Historian Charles S. Campbell argues that the audiences who listened to Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas E Bayard's moralistic lectures "readily detected through the high moral tone a sharp eye for the national interest." {{cite book
last =Campbell
first =Charles S.
authorlink =
coauthors =
year =December 1976
title = Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865-1900
publisher =Harpercollins
location =
id =ISBN 006090531X p. 77 Cleveland supported Hawaiian free trade (reciprocity) and accepted an amendment that gave the United States a coaling and naval station in Pearl Harbor. Naval orders were placed with Republican industrialists rather than Democratic ones, but the military build up actually quickened.
In his second term Cleveland stated that by 1893, the American navy had been used to promote American interests in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, and Hawaii. Under Cleveland, the U.S. adopted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.Fareed, p. 146
Crusade against protective tariff
In December 1887, Cleveland called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs:
The theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him... the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice. This wrong inflicted upon those who bear the burden of national taxation, like other wrongs, multiplies a brood of evil consequences. The public Treasury... becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder.
He failed to pass the Lower Mills Tariff and made it the central issue of his losing 1888 campaign, as Republicans claimed a high tariff was needed to produce high wages, high profits, and fast economic expansion.
Miscellaneous
In October 1886, Cleveland performed the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in front of thousands of onlookers.
Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 presidential election. Although he won a larger share of the popular vote than Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes and thus lost the election.
The primary issues for Cleveland for the 1892 campaign were reducing the tariff and stopping free minting of silver which had depleted the gold reserves of the U.S. Treasury. Cleveland was elected again in 1892, thus becoming the only President in U.S. history to be elected to a second term which did not run in succession with the first.
Politics
Shortly after Cleveland was inaugurated, the Panic of 1893 struck the stock market, and he soon 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. With the aid of J. P. Morgan and Wall Street, he maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.
Cleveland's humiliation by Gorman and the sugar trust; cartoon by W. A. Rogers
He fought to lower the tariff in 1893-94. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act introduced by Wilson and passed by the House would have made significant reforms. However, by the time the bill passed the Senate, guided by Democrat Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, it had more than 600 amendments attached that nullified most of the reforms. The "Sugar Trust" in particular made changes that favored it at the expense of the consumer. It imposed an income tax of two percent to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions. Cleveland was devastated that his program had been ruined. He denounced the revised measure as a disgraceful product of "party perfidy and party dishonor," but still allowed it to become law without his signature, believing that it was better than nothing and was at the least an improvement over the McKinley tariff.
Cleveland refused to allow Eugene Debs to use the Pullman Strike to shut down most of the nation's passenger, freight and mail traffic in June 1894. He obtained an injunction in federal court, and when the strikers refused to obey it, he sent in federal troops to Chicago, illinois and 20 other rail centers. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered." Most governors supported Cleveland except Democrat John P. Altgeld of Illinois, who became a bitter foe in 1896.
His agrarian and silverite enemies seized control of the Democratic party in 1896, repudiated his administration and the gold standard, and nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Silver Platform. Cleveland silently supported the National Democratic Party (United States) (or "Gold Democratic") third party ticket that promised to defend the gold standard, limited government, and oppose protectionism. The party won only 100,000 votes in the general election (just over 1 percent). Agrarians again nominated Bryan in 1900, but in 1904 the conservatives, with Cleveland's support, regained control of the Democratic party and nominated Alton B. Parker.
Typewriters were new in 1893, and this cartoon depicts that Cleveland cannot work the Democratic party machine without jamming the keys (the key politicians in his party)
Foreign affairs
Invoking the Monroe Doctrine in 1895, Cleveland forced the United Kingdom to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. His administration is credited with the modernization of the United States Navy that allowed the U.S. to decisively win the Spanish-American War in 1898, one year after he left office.
In 1893, Cleveland sent former Congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawaii to investigate the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of a republic. He supported Blount's scathing report; called for the restoration of Liliuokalani; and withdrew from the Senate the treaty of annexation of Hawaii. When the deposed Queen announced she would execute the current government in Honolulu, Cleveland dropped the issue.
Women's Rights
Cleveland was a stout opponent of the women's suffrage (voting) movement. In 1905 in the Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland wrote, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence." * [1]
Just after Cleveland began his second term in 1893, Doctor R.M. O'Reilly found an ulcerated sore a little less than one inch (24 mm) in diameter on the left lingual surface of Cleveland's hard palate. Samples taken proved the growth to be a malignantcancer. Because of the financial depression of the country, Cleveland decided to have surgery performed on the tumor in secrecy to avoid further market panic. The surgery occurred on July 1, to give Cleveland time to make a full recovery in time for an August 7 address to Congress, which had recessed at the end of June.
Under the guise of a vacation, Cleveland, accompanied by lead surgeon Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York. Bryant, joined by his assistant Dr. John F. Erdmann, Dr. W.W. Keen Jr., Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck (dentist and anesthesiologist), and Dr. Edward Janeway, operated aboard the yacht Oneida as it sailed. The surgery was conducted through the mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. The team, sedating Cleveland with nitrous oxide (laughing gas), removed his upper left jaw and portions of his hard palate. The size of the tumor and the extent of the operation left Cleveland's mouth severely disfigured. During another surgery, an orthodontist fitted Cleveland with a hard rubber prosthesis that corrected his speech and covered up the surgery.
A cover story about the removal of two bad teeth kept the suspicious press somewhat placated. Even when a newspaper story appeared giving details of the actual operation, the participating surgeons discounted the severity of what transpired during Cleveland's vacation. In 1917, one of the surgeons present on the Oneida wrote an article detailing the operation. The lump was preserved and is on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Oil painting of Grover Cleveland, painted in 1899 by Anders Zorn.
After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, bringing him into opposition to the school's president Woodrow Wilson. Conservative Democrats hoped to nominate him for another presidential term in 1904, but his age and health forced them to turn to other candidates. Cleveland died in 1908 from a heart attack. He was buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.
Cleveland's portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill from 1928 to 1946. He also appeared on a $1000 bill of 1907 and the first few issues of the $20 Federal Reserve notes from 1914.
Since he was both the 22nd and 24th President, he will be featured on two separate dollar coins to be released in 2012 as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.
Many public schools across the country are named in his honor.
*George Cleveland, the president's grandson, is now an impersonator and historical reenactor of his famous grandfather. George Cleveland is currently running for the New Hampshire State Senate from Tamworth, New Hampshire as a Democrat. *The president's granddaughter Philippa Foot is a philosopher at Oxford University. *The baseball player Grover Cleveland Alexander is named after him. *A joke of the day had the First Lady waking in the middle of the night and whispering to Cleveland, "Wake up, Grover. I think there's a burglar in the house." Cleveland sleepily mumbled, "No, no. Perhaps in the Senate, my dear, but not in the House." *Because Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms, the protocol was unclear as to whether he was officially the 22nd or 24th President of the United States. A special Act of Congress resolved the issue by decreeing that was both the 22nd and the 24th President. *The street on which Cleveland's summer home was located (Bourne, Massachusetts) is now called President's Road. In the location where his "Summer Whitehouse" stood is now a scaled replica (the building burned in 1973).
* Bard, Mitchell. "Ideology and Depression Politics I: Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)" Presidential Studies Quarterly 1985 15(1): 77-88. Issn: 0360-4918 *David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,"Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75. * Blodgett, Geoffrey. "Ethno-cultural Realities in Presidential Patronage: Grover Cleveland's Choices" New York History 2000 81(2): 189-210. Issn: 0146-437x when a German American leader called for fewer appointments of Irish Americans, Cleveland instead appointed more Germans * Blodgett, Geoffrey. "The Emergence of Grover Cleveland: a Fresh Appraisal" New York History 1992 73(2): 132-168. Issn: 0146-437x cover Cleveland to 1884 * Dewey, Davis R. National Problems: 1880-1897 (1907), survey of era * Doenecke, Justus. "Grover Cleveland and the Enforcement of the Civil Service Act" Hayes Historical Journal 1984 4(3): 44-58. Issn: 0364-5924 * Faulkner, Harold U. Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890-1900 (1959), survey of decade, * Ford, Henry Jones. The Cleveland Era: A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics (1921), short overview * Graff, Henry F. Grover Cleveland (2002), short overview. * Hirsch, Mark D. William C. Whitney, Modern Warwick (1948) * Hoffman, Karen S. "'Going Public' in the Nineteenth Century: Grover Cleveland's Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act" Rhetoric & Public Affairs 2002 5(1): 57-77. Issn: 1094-8392 * Meador, Daniel J. "Lamar to the Court: Last Step to National Reunion" Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook 1986: 27-47. Issn: 0362-5249 * McElroy, Robert. Grover Cleveland, the Man and the Statesman: An Authorized Biography (1923) * Morgan, H. Wayne. From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877-1896 (1969), political survey * Nevins, Allan. Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (1932) Pulitzer prize biography in depth * Summers, Mark Wahlgren. Rum, Romanism & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 (2000) campaign techniques and issues * Welch, Richard E. Jr. The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (1988) detailed overview of his administrations * Wilson, Woodrow, Mr. Cleveland as PresidentAtlantic Monthly (March 1897): pp. 289-301 onlineWoodrow Wilson became President in 1912; he was a Bourbon Democrat when he wrote the favorable essay
Primary sources
* Cleveland, Grover. The Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland (1892) full text online at Google Books * Cleveland, Grover. Presidential Problems. (1904) * Cleveland, Grover. about Hawaii. (1893). * Nevins, Allan ed. Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850-1908 (1934) * Sturgis Amy H. ed. Presidents from Hayes through McKinley, 1877-1901: Debating the Issues in Pro and Con Primary Documents (2003) * William L. Wilson; The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896-1897 1957 ** This is the handbook of the Gold Democrats who strongly supported Cleveland and justified his policies, while opposing Bryan.
