Cleveland, Grover

(1837–1908)

   Because he served two nonconsecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897), Grover Cleveland is considered the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He was born Stephen Grover Cleveland on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey. A Democrat in a Republican age, Cleveland nonetheless had a meteoric rise from mayoralty of Buffalo, New York to the presidency within four years. A courageous and upright man, he believed in the call of conscience in handling the external affairs of the nation. He opposed the rising imperialist sentiment in the country, and in his second term refused the annexation of Hawaii. He was against assigning Hawaii the status of a protectorate, doubting that the U.S. Constitution could be made to work for a non-Caucasian society so far away, yet saw islands as an ideal location for a naval base to help defend the Pacific Coast. In the Venezuela-British Guiana boundary dispute of 1895, Cleveland applied the Monroe Doctrine, a bellicose turn that annoyed the British government yet ultimately led it to agree to arbitration. Cleveland died in Princeton on June 24, 1908.

   FURTHER READING:

    Ford, Henry Jones. The Cleveland Era: A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1919;

    Welch, Richard E. The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988.

   PATIT PABAN MISHRA