Grover Cleveland

• Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was
the 22nd and 24th President of the United States.
• Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms
(1885–1889 and 1893–1897) and therefore is the only individual to be
counted twice in the numbering of the presidents.
• He was the winner of the popular vote for president three times—
in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was the only Democrat elected to the
presidency in the era of Republican political domination that lasted
from 1860 to 1912.
• Cleveland's admirers praise him for his honesty, independence,
integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism.
• As a leader of the Bourbon Democrats, he opposed imperialism,
taxes, subsidies and inflationary policies.
• As a reformer he also worked against political corruption, patronage,
and bossism.
• Some of Cleveland's actions caused controversy within his own party.
• He used the presidential veto 584 times, far more than any president
before him.
• His intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 in order to keep the
railroads moving angered labor unions, and his support of the gold
standard and opposition to free silver alienated the agrarian wing of
the Democrats.
• Furthermore, critics complained that he had little imagination and
seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—
depressions and strikes—in his second term.
• Even so, his reputation for honesty and good character survived the
troubles of his second term.
• Biographer Allan Nevins wrote, "in Grover Cleveland the greatness lies
in typical rather than unusual qualities.
• He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have.
• He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common
sense.
• But he possessed them to a degree other men do not."
• Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837,
in Caldwell, New Jersey to Richard Falley Cleveland and Ann Neal
Cleveland.
• Cleveland's father was a Presbyterian minister, originally
from Connecticut.
• His mother was from Baltimore, the daughter of a bookseller.
• On his father's side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors,
the first Cleveland having emigrated to Massachusetts from
northeastern England in 1635.
• On his mother's side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-
Irish Protestants and German Quakers from Philadelphia.
• He was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland after whom the
city of Cleveland, Ohio, was named.
• Cleveland's birthplace, in Caldwell, New Jersey
• Cleveland was the fifth of nine children, five sons and four daughters.
• He was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First
Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the
time, but he did not use the name Stephen in his adult life.
• In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, where
Grover Cleveland spent much of his childhood.
• Neighbors would later describe him as "full of fun and inclined to play
pranks",[12] and fond of outdoor sports.
• In 1850, Cleveland's father took a job in Clinton, Oneida County, New
York, and the family relocated there.
• They moved again in 1853 to Holland Patent, New York, near Utica.
• Not long after the family arrived in Holland Patent, Cleveland's father
died.