This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: I know that President’s Day was last month but yesterday was Grover Cleveland’s birthday, and he should be remembered. President Cleveland, who was elected as our 22nd president in 1884 and later as our 24th president in 1892, has largely been forgotten. This is a shame because he was a most colorful leader.
Cleveland was an unlikely president. He had limited political experience when he first ran for the highest office in the land. Three years before running for president he was the mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., a city of roughly 175,000 thousand people (about half the size of St. Louis at the time).
He was also an improbable president because he was a Democrat whereas between 1861 and 1912 all of our other presidents were Republicans. And almost all had served in the army during the Civil War. Many had been generals. Cleveland didn’t serve. Instead he took advantage of the Conscription Act of 1863, which allowed men to hire a substitute to take their place. He paid a Polish immigrant $300 to fight for him.
But Cleveland earned a reputation as an honest mayor who was committed to reform. Politics at the time was a shady business especially in New York where Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine known for graft and corruption, controlled politics. But in 1882, when reform-minded Democratic Party officials were looking for an honest politician to run for governor of New York they turned to the mayor of Buffalo and he won.
As governor, Cleveland courageously stood up to Tammany Hall and earned the title “Grover the Good.” Then, in the presidential election of 1884, where political corruption was a central issue, the Democrats selected him as their candidate to run against the Republican James Blaine. It was a nasty campaign.
After Cleveland received the nomination, a Buffalo newspaper implicated him in a sex scandal. The paper alleged that in 1874 Cleveland, who was a bachelor, had an affair with a widow named Maria Halpin. She gave birth to a son, and she claimed that Clevenand was the father.
Maria had been sleeping with a number of men at the time including Cleveland’s former law partner, Oscar Folsom. Cleveland wasn’t sure he was the father and apparently Maria wasn’t either as she named the kid Oscar Folsom Cleveland. It appears that she had narrowed it down to two suspects. Back then there was no way to prove who the father was, as The Maury Povich Show would not air for another hundred years. But Cleveland accepted responsibility, in large part because Maria’s other lovers were all married. His opponents tried to make an issue out of this, but he owned up to it and the gossip faded. On election day his supporters shouted :
“ Hurrah for Maria,
Hurrah for the kid,
We voted for Grover
And we’re glad we did”
The Republicans also accused Cleveland of being “a small man everywhere except on the hay scale.” Cleveland weighed in at 250 pounds and due to his love for beer he maintained a rather large beer belly. His nieces and nephews called him “Uncle Jumbo.”
The Democrats were not necessarily any more civil as they accused Blaine of being a liar.
What may have decided the election were the comments of a prominent Presbyterian minister who called Democrats the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” This pushed more of the Irish Catholics in New York to vote Democratic. Cleveland won New York by only 1,149 votes (out of more than 1 million cast) and by carrying that state “Grover the Good” was elected president.
His victory was also aided by votes from members of the reform wing of the Republican Party who were called “mugwumps” (seriously). They liked Cleveland because of his integrity as well as for the enemies that he had made, namely Tammany Hall.
The colorful Grover Cleveland was a bachelor when he moved into the White House in 1885 but speculation grew that the president might marry Emma Folsom, his ex-law partner’s widow. But Cleveland, who was almost 50 years old at the time, surprised nearly everyone by marrying Francis Folsom, her 21-year-old daughter. Generally I’d give Cleveland two thumbs up for this except that Francis had grown up calling him “Uncle Cleve,” which makes the whole thing kind of creepy. Fortunately for Uncle Cleve the country did not find the union disturbing and the American public soon warmed to her beauty and charm.
While Cleveland was a Democrat, party lines were not as clear then as they are today. President Cleveland was, above all, a reformer who believed “public office is a public trust.” His other policies were little different from the Republicans of today.
He is probably former congressman Ron Paul’s favorite president. Paul would have been very supportive of Cleveland’s backing of the gold standard, his opposition to high tariffs on imported goods, as well as his belief in limited government. Cleveland espoused the belief that “though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.” He felt that federal aid “encourages the expectation of paternal care” and “weakens the sturdiness of our national character.” Democrats don’t say that much anymore.
In 1888. Democrats renominated Cleveland at their convention here in St Louis but, despite winning the popular vote, he lost in the electoral college to the Republican Benjamin Harrison. Harrison won based on his argument that high tariffs were needed to protect American jobs. The campaign was less vicious than the previous one although the Republicans did accuse the president of being a drunk who beat his wife.
Mrs. Cleveland was so confident that her husband would win the next election that she told the White House staff to “take good care of the furniture and ornaments in the house for I want to find everything just as it is now when we come back again. We are coming back in four years.”
And sure enough she was right. In the election of 1892, which was a rematch of the 1888 election, Cleveland soundly defeated Harrison. This was due largely to the fact that Harrison found it increasingly difficult to defend the high tariffs and exorbitant government spending. Under Harrison, the Republicans spent like drunken sailors thus eliminating the government surpluses that had built up under the previous Democratic administration.
Unfortunately President Cleveland’s second term in office was not particularly successful, as the Panic of 1893, which was the worst depression in American history up to that point, struck shortly after he assumed office. And his strict adherence to the gold standard probably made the depression worse. Cleveland did not seek re-election and the Republicans won a solid victory in 1896.
After his second term ended, Cleveland lived another 11 years before dying of a heart attack in 1908. His wife later married a professor of archaeology who was only two years her senior. She was the first presidential widow to remarry.
So if you’re looking for a president to toast, raise a beer mug and toast President Grover Cleveland. He would have liked that.
John C. Wade, Wildwood, is a chief financial officer, amateur historian and self-proclaimed expert on the U.S. presidents. Wade is on a number of not-for-profit boards in St Louis including the World Affairs Council and Meds & Foods for Kids. He is a Churchill Fellow and on the board of governors of the National Churchill Museum.