President Grover Cleveland was born on this day in 1837 in Caldwell, N.J. The first Democrat to win the presidential election after the Civil War, he was also the first U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms, a record broken only this year. In 1863, Cleveland was appointed the assistant district attorney of Erie County, N.Y. He later ran for county sheriff and won the nomination at 33 years old. He went on to serve as the mayor of Buffalo and governor of the state in the early 1880s. But his eventual run for the presidency was troubled.
While campaigning, Cleveland was accused of avoiding military service during the Civil War (he'd paid someone else to go, which was permitted at the time). Horrifically, after facing accusations from a woman that he'd assaulted and impregnated her, Cleveland had the woman institutionalized and took custody of the child. Despite his glaring flaws, he beat out the Republican candidate by a narrow margin.
Cleveland's first major act as president was to completely overturn the "spoils system," in which supporters of the president were given cushy appointments based on their service to the party in power instead of being evaluated based on their merit. He was a veto machine, shutting down attempts to provide private pensions to Civil War veterans as well as aid to farmers during a drought, on the principle that the government ought not hand out favors to specific groups.
In 1888, though he'd won the popular vote, Cleveland was ousted by Republican Benjamin Harrison after losing the electoral college by a large margin. His wife, while moving out of the White House, instructed staff to take care of the furniture, since they'd be "coming back four years from today."
She was right. Cleveland beat Harrison (who hadn't campaigned at all) in 1892. Upon re-entering office he almost immediately confronted an economic depression and major labor unrest. He was also a fierce anti-imperialist and forcefully opposed attempts to annex Hawaii because of the lack of consent from the native population, also building better relationships in Latin America by resisting any new colonial efforts in that region by other countries.
You can learn more about Cleveland at the White House Historical Society.
