Author Cleveland Grover

ered labor unions, and his support of the gold standard and opposition to free silver alienated the agrarian wing of the Democrats.[2] Furthermore, critics complained that he had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term.[2] 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."[3] Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey to Richard Falley Cleveland and Ann Neal Cleveland.[4] Cleveland's father was a Presbyterian minister, originally from Connecticut.[5] His mother was from Baltimore, the daughter of a bookseller.[6] On his father's side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors, the first Cleveland having emigrated to Massachusetts from northeastern England in 1635.[7] On his mother's side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-Irish Protestants and German Quakers from Philadelphia.[8] He was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland after whom the city of Cleveland, Ohio, was named.[9] Cleveland was the fifth of nine children, five sons and four daughters.[6] 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.[10] In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, where Grover Cleveland spent much of his childhood.[11] Neighbors would later describe him as "full of fun and inclined to play pranks",[12] and fond of outdoor sports.[13] In 1850, Cleveland's father took a job in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, and the family relocated there.[14] They moved again in 1853 to Holland Patent, New York, near Utica.[15] Not long after the family arrived in Holland Patent, Cleveland's father died.[15] Cleveland's education began in grammar school at the Fayetteville Academy.[16] When the family moved to Clinton, Cleveland was enrolled at the Clinton Liberal Academy.[17] After his father died in 1853, Cleveland left school and helped to support his family.[18] Later that year, Cleveland's brother William was hired as a teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind in New York City, and William obtained a place for Cleveland as an assistant teacher.[18] While there, he also acted as an occasional scribe for the poet and hymn-writer Fanny Crosby, who had been a student, and later a teacher at the school.[19] After teaching for a year, Cleveland returned home to Holland Patent at the end of 1854.[20] Back in Holland Patent, the seventeen-year-old Cleveland looked for work unsuccessfully.[20] An elder in his church offered to pay for his college education if he would promise to become a minister, but Cleveland declined.[20] Instead, the following spring Cleveland decided to make his way west to the city of Cleveland, Ohio.[20] He stopped first in Buffalo, New York, where his uncle, Lewis W. Allen, lived. Allen dissuaded Cleveland from continuing west, and offered him a job arranging his livestock herdbooks.[21] Allen was an important man in Buffalo, and he introduced his nephew to influential men there, including the partners in the law firm of Rogers, Bowen, and Rogers.[22] Cleveland later took a clerkship with the firm, and was admitted to the bar in 1859.[23] After becoming a lawyer, Cleveland worked for the Rogers firm for three years, leaving in 1862 to start his own practice.[25] In January 1863, he was appointed assistant district attorney of Erie County.[26] With the American Civil War raging, Congress passed the Conscription Act of 1863, requiring able-bodied men to serve in the army if called upon, or else to hire a substitute.[23] Cleveland chose the latter course, paying George Benninsky, a thirty-two year-old Polish immigrant, $150 to serve in his place.[27] As a lawyer, Cleveland became known for his single-minded concentration and dedication to hard work.[28] In 1866, he defended some participants in the Fenian raid of that year, doing so successfully and free of charge.[29] In 1868, Cleveland attracted some attention within his profession for his successful defense of a libel suit against the editor of the Commercial Advertiser, a Buffalo newspaper.[30] During this time, Cleveland lived simply in a boarding house; although his income grew sufficient to support a more lavish lifestyle, Cleveland continued to support his mother and younger sisters.[31] While his personal quarters were austere, Cleveland did enjoy an active social life and enjoyed "the easy-going sociability of hotel-lobbies and saloons."[32] From his earliest involvement in politics, Cleveland had aligned himself with the Democratic Party.[33] In 1865, he ran for District Attorney, losing narrowly to his friend and roommate, Lyman K. Bass, the Republican nominee.[28] Cleveland then stayed out of politics until 1870 when, with the help of his friend, Oscar Folsom, he secured the Democratic nomination for sheriff of Erie County.[34] At the age of thirty-three, Cleveland found himself elected sheriff by a 303-vote margin, taking office on January 1, 1871.[35] While this new career took him away from the practice of law, it was rewarding in other ways: the fees were said to yield up to $40,000 over the two-year term.[34] The most well-known incident of his term involved the execution of a murderer, Patrick Morrisey, on September 6, 1872.[36] Cleveland, as sheriff, was responsible for either personally carrying out the execution, or paying a deputy $10 to perform the task.[36] Cleveland had qualms about the hanging, but opted to carry out the duty himself.[36] He hanged another murderer, John Gaffney, on February 14, 1873.[37] After his term as sheriff ended, Cleveland returned to private practice, opening a law firm with his friends Lyman K. Bass and Wilson S. Bissell.[38] Bass did not spend much time at the firm, being elected to Congress in 1873, but Cleveland and Bissell soon found themselves at the top of Buffalo's legal community.[39] Up to that point, Cleveland's political career had been honorable but unremarkable. As biographer Allan Nevins wrote, "probably no man in the country, on March 4, 1881, had less thought than this limited, simple, sturdy attorney of Buffalo that four years later he would be standing in Washington and taking the oath as President of the United States."[40] In the 1870s, the government of Buffalo had grown increasingly corrupt, with Democratic and Republican political machines cooperating to share the spoils.[41] When, in 1881, the Republicans nominated a slate of particularly disreputable machine politicians, the Democrats saw the opportunity to gain the votes of disaffected Republicans by nominating a more honest candidate.[42] The party leaders approached Cleveland and he agreed to run for mayor, provided that the rest of the ticket was to his liking.[43] When the more notorious politicians were left off the Democratic ticket, Cleveland accepted the nomination.[43] Cleveland was elected mayor with 15,120 votes, as against 11,528 for Milton C. Beebe, his opponent.[44] He took office January 2, 1882. Cleveland's term as mayor was spent fighting the entrenched interests of the party machines.[45] Among the acts that established his reputation was a veto of the street-cleaning bill passed by the Common Council.[46] The street-cleaning contract was open for bids, and the Council selected the highest bidder, rather than the lowest, because of the political connections of the bidder.[46] While this sort of bipartisan graft had previously been tolerated in Buffalo, Mayor Cleveland would have none of it, and replied with a stinging veto message: "I regard it as the culmination of a most bare-faced, impudent, and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people, and to worse than squander the public money".[47] The Council reversed themselves and awarded the contract to the lowest bidder.[48] For this, and several other acts to safeguard the public funds, Cleveland's reputation as an honest politician began to spread beyond Erie County.[49] As his reputation grew, state Democratic party officials began to consider Cleveland a possible nominee for governor.[50] Daniel Manning, a party insider who admired Cleveland's record, promoted his candidacy.[51] With a split in the state Republican party, 1882 looked to be a Democratic year and there were several contenders for that party's nomination.[50] The two leading Democratic candidates were Roswell P. Flower and Henry W. Slocum, but their factions deadlocked and the convention could not agree on a nominee.[52] Cleveland, in third place on the first ballot, picked up support in subsequent votes and emerged as the compromise choice.[53] The Republican party remained divided against itself, and in the general election Cleveland emerged the victor, with 535,318 votes to Republican nominee Charles J. Folger's 342,464.[54] Cleveland's margin of victory was, at the time, the largest in a contested New York election, and the Democrats also picked up seats in both houses of the legislature.[55]