President Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland is one of the only presidents in the United States history to enter as a bachelor without being married before stepping into office. That all changed as Grover Cleveland became the first president to get married while in office as he married Frances Folsom, a young girl who was only twenty-one years old at the time. They married in June of 1886.
President Grover Cleveland does not have much history written about him in the White House but many of his political policies were aimed at farming bills. He vetoed a bill that would’ve given $10,000 to distribute seed grain to drought stricken farmers in Texas. He hated given out federal aid, even to many groups who desperately needed it. Other bills he vetoed were pension bills to Civil War veterans. He vetoed a bill that passed through Congress that would’ve given more property to the railroad industries and made the railroad industries return 81,000 acres of land to the federal government.
In 1887 he had a bill passed to reduce high protective tariffs. Many people to this day say that this was Grover Cleveland’s undoing. The Republicans attacked this position on tariffs and as a result Grover Cleveland lost the presidential re-election in 1888. Grover Cleveland was an idealist and felt that it wasn’t his job to please other people. He wanted his years in office to be known for the choices that he did and didn’t make. In the presidential election of 1888 he still received more votes from the American public than his rival candidate, Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison.
Still determined to serve all eight years as president of the United States, Grover Cleveland ran again as president at a time when other candidates who have lost re-election simply quit and went home; their political careers never the same again. Grover Cleveland ran in 1892 and this time he won the election.
Harrison’s final four years in office were centered around the treasury crises in which many businesses at the time were closing and hurting the American economy. Grover Cleveland also repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which would have changed the American currency to silver. Instead he asked the advice of the merchants and financial advisors on Wall Street in New York City who persuaded him to stick with the gold standard and the Treasury’s gold reserve. Had the country switched to a silver standard the entire world economy would have possibly fallen apart because most of the economies on the world were based on the United States’ gold standard.
One of Grover Cleveland’s most famous acts as president was sending in federal government troops to break up the work strike of the railroad workers in Chicago. This strike had halted much of the United States commerce and trade and railroads were vital to the United States economy. Grover Cleveland decided that the railroads must continue running so he sent the troops in which at the time made him seem like a hero to the American public. This move gave Americans pride in their president and Grover Cleveland received a very high approval rating.
However, his ratings spiraled downward with his unpopular policies during the depression and the Democratic Party nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896 who promptly lost the election.
President Grover Cleveland died in 1908 while living in Princeton, New Jersey.
