50 Fun Facts About Grover Cleveland

As president in 1886, Cleveland presided over the dedication of which American landmark?

Statue of Liberty. Cleveland dedicated France's gift on October 28, 1886, and as that morning's parade passed the Stock Exchange, traders threw ticker tape from the windows, starting a New York tradition.

Which two numbers does Cleveland hold in the presidential sequence?

22nd and 24th. Because a defeat split his two terms, he is counted as two presidents, so the U.S. Mint struck two different Cleveland dollar coins in 2012.

Cleveland made his career in New York, but in which state was he born?

New Jersey. He was born in the Presbyterian manse at Caldwell, but his minister father moved the family to upstate New York when the boy was four.

What was Cleveland's actual first name, which he dropped in adult life?

Stephen. He was named Stephen Grover after the first pastor of the Caldwell church where his father preached.

Cleveland's early career was built in which city?

Buffalo. Heading west in 1855, he stopped there to see a relative, Lewis Allen, who gave him work and introduced him to the law firm where he trained.

How did Cleveland avoid serving in the Civil War under the 1863 Conscription Act?

He hired a substitute, as the draft law allowed, paying a Polish immigrant to serve in his place while he supported his mother and sisters; rivals later called him a slacker.

What duty did Cleveland perform personally as sheriff of Erie County?

Hanging two murderers. Cleveland sprang the trap himself in 1872 and again in 1873, and in the 1884 campaign Republicans branded him a hangman for it.

Which Democratic machine opposed Cleveland's 1884 nomination?

Tammany Hall. The New York City machine fought his nomination for president in 1884 and lost, and defying it made his national name as a reformer.

As mayor, Cleveland made his name vetoing a padded contract for what?

Street cleaning. Cleveland's veto of the padded contract made the new mayor a reform hero, and within a year Democrats had put him up for governor of New York.

Which future president worked with Governor Cleveland as assembly minority leader?

Theodore Roosevelt. The young Republican led the assembly minority in 1883, yet he teamed up with the Democratic governor on reform bills that first won Cleveland national notice.

As governor, Cleveland vetoed a bill cutting fares on whose elevated trains?

Jay Gould's. The five-cent fare bill was popular because the financier was widely hated, but Cleveland held that the state had to honour its contract with him.

Reform Republicans who backed Cleveland in 1884 were known by what name?

Mugwumps. Led by men such as Carl Schurz, they bolted because they judged their own party's nominee corrupt and saw Cleveland as an honest reformer.

Whom did Cleveland narrowly defeat in the 1884 presidential election?

Democrats chanted "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine".

What was Cleveland's 1884 campaign slogan?

"A public office is a public trust" compressed a principle Cleveland first voiced when running for mayor, and his clean record made it the Democrats' strongest card in 1884.

What did Republicans chant at rallies in 1884 about Cleveland's alleged child?

"Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" mocked his admission that the child might be his. After he won, Democrats supplied the answer: "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!"

Which Republican slur against the Democrats backfired and helped Cleveland carry New York in 1884?

"Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" was a minister's phrase at a rally for the Republican nominee, and Democrats made sure Irish Catholic voters heard it in the campaign's last days.

By about how many votes did Cleveland carry New York, and with it the presidency, in 1884?

About 1,200, out of more than a million cast. Had New York gone the other way, its electoral votes would have made his Republican opponent president instead.

What happened to Thomas Hendricks, Cleveland's first vice president, eight months into the term?

He died in office, in November 1885, and the vice presidency then sat empty for more than three years, until the next inauguration.

Which 1887 act signed by Cleveland made railroads the first federally regulated industry?

Interstate Commerce Act. It answered years of anger at railroads that gave big shippers rebates, banning the practice and setting up a commission to police the lines.

Which act signed by Cleveland broke Native American tribal lands into allotments?

Dawes Act. Cleveland believed private plots would lift Native Americans out of poverty; instead, by 1934 the tribes had lost about two-thirds of the land they held when he signed it.

Hundreds of Cleveland's 414 first-term vetoes killed bills for what?

Veterans' pensions. He judged hundreds of the private Civil War claims fraudulent, and in four years vetoed about twice as many bills as all earlier presidents combined.

In 1887 Cleveland vetoed seed aid for drought-hit farmers in which state?

Texas. A drought had ruined crops there, but Cleveland's veto message insisted that "though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."

Cleveland vetoed 584 bills over his two terms, a record that stood until which later president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who vetoed 635 bills in twelve years. Cleveland, who saw his job as a watchdog over Congress rather than a lawmaker, had rejected 584 in eight.

Cleveland was the second president to marry in office and the only one to marry where?

In the White House. The small ceremony took place in the Blue Room in June 1886, ending 15 months in which the bachelor president's sister had served as his hostess.

Who became First Lady at 21 by marrying President Cleveland in 1886?

Frances Folsom. Cleveland had known her all her life: as a girl she called him "Uncle Cleve", and he began quietly courting her after she visited the White House in 1885.

Whose daughter did Cleveland marry?

His law partner, who had died in a carriage accident when she was eleven. Cleveland then administered the estate and helped oversee her upbringing.

Which candy bar did its maker claim was named for Cleveland's daughter?

Baby Ruth. That was the Curtiss Candy Company's account of its 1921 bar, but Ruth Cleveland had died 17 years earlier and Babe Ruth was then baseball's biggest star, so sceptics have long doubted it.

Cleveland's granddaughter, the philosopher Philippa Foot, introduced which thought experiment?

Trolley problem. Foot, the child of Cleveland's daughter Esther, posed it in a 1967 paper on abortion to test when harming one person to spare five can be justified.

Cleveland's chief justice oversaw which ruling?

Plessy v. Ferguson: Melville Fuller, Cleveland's 1888 choice, joined the 1896 majority that upheld "separate but equal" rail cars, a doctrine the Court threw out unanimously in 1954.

In 1888 Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the presidency to whom?

Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland led the nationwide count by less than one percentage point but lost his own state of New York, and with it the Electoral College.

Leaving Washington in 1889, Cleveland's wife told a servant that the family would do what?

Return in exactly four years. "We are coming back just four years from to-day," she said, asking him to look after the furniture, and on March 4, 1893, the family duly moved back in.

Who was Cleveland's running mate in the 1892 election?

Adlai E. Stevenson. The Illinois silver man was added to balance Cleveland's hard-money ticket, and his grandson and namesake was the Democrats' presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956.

James B. Weaver carried several Western states in 1892 as the candidate of which new party?

Populist Party. Weaver promised free silver and an eight-hour day and drew many Western Republicans, which eased Cleveland's return to the White House.

In the depression that followed the Panic of 1893, Cleveland turned to which financier to refill the Treasury's gold reserve?

J. P. Morgan. His syndicate bought government bonds for gold and steadied the Treasury, but Cleveland was derided for leaning on Wall Street instead of helping ordinary Americans.

The 1894 tariff Cleveland refused to sign also imposed which tax?

Income tax. The rate was two percent on incomes above $4,000, added to replace lost tariff revenue, and the Supreme Court struck it down the following year.

What was the name of the protest march on Washington that Cleveland faced in 1894?

Coxey's Army. Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey led jobless men to demand public road-building jobs, but only a few hundred reached Washington, and he was arrested for walking on the Capitol grass.

Cleveland sent federal troops into Chicago in 1894 to break which labor action?

Pullman Strike. Because the trains carried the mail, he vowed that if it took the entire army and navy "to deliver a postcard in Chicago, that card will be delivered."

After repudiating Cleveland and the gold standard in 1896, whom did Democrats nominate for president?

William Jennings Bryan. He ran on free silver, so Cleveland quietly backed a breakaway ticket of Gold Democrats, which drew few votes as the Republicans won.

Which union leader led the sympathy strikes that paralyzed the railroads in 1894?

Eugene V. Debs. Jailed for six months for defying the federal injunction, the American Railway Union leader read socialist works in his cell and later ran for president five times.

Days after returning to office in 1893, Cleveland withdrew a treaty to annex which territory?

Hawaii. Cleveland concluded that U.S. Marines had helped sugar planters overthrow Queen Liliuokalani, called the landing an "act of war" and tried in vain to restore her.

Which holiday did Cleveland sign into federal law in June 1894?

Labor Day. Cleveland signed the bill two days into a nationwide rail boycott, and within a week he had sent federal troops to break it.

Cleveland invoked the Monroe Doctrine in a border row between Britain and which country?

Venezuela. Cleveland's threat of war pushed Britain to accept arbitration, but the tribunal's 1899 ruling gave most of the disputed land to British Guiana anyway.

Where did surgeons secretly remove a tumor from Cleveland's mouth in 1893?

On a friend's yacht, the Oneida. To avoid alarming the markets, the public was told he had only had teeth pulled, and a reporter who printed the truth was disbelieved until a surgeon confirmed it in 1917.

Which state joined the Union in 1896 after Cleveland signed its enabling act?

Utah. It had petitioned for statehood since 1849 and been refused over Mormon polygamy; four years after the church renounced the practice, Cleveland signed the act that let it in.

Cleveland spent his retirement in which university town?

Princeton. He named his house Westland after his friend Dean Andrew West, and as a university trustee backed West against its president, Woodrow Wilson, in a fight over the graduate college.

What were Cleveland's reported last words in 1908?

"I have tried so hard to do right" is the line his biographers record. By the time he left office in 1897, his own party's convention had repudiated his policies.

In retirement, Cleveland joined which protest group, alongside Andrew Carnegie?

Anti-Imperialist League. Formed in 1898 to fight the annexation of the Philippines, it put the former president in the same ranks as Mark Twain.

Cleveland's portrait appeared on which high-denomination U.S. bill in 1928 and 1934?

$1,000. The big notes were last printed in 1945, and in 1969 the Treasury and the Federal Reserve stopped issuing them for lack of use.

Cleveland was the first Democrat elected president since whom?

James Buchanan, elected in 1856. Democrats then lost six presidential elections in a row, including 1876, when Samuel Tilden won the popular vote but lost the disputed count.

In 1905 Cleveland wrote that "sensible and responsible women" had no wish to do what?

To vote. Writing in the Ladies' Home Journal in retirement, Cleveland argued that the places of men and women had been settled "long ago by a higher intelligence than ours".