The only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, Grover Cleveland was also the only Democrat to serve in the White House between 1861 and 1913. Willing to take unpopular stands on the issues of his day, he endorsed civil-service reform, while opposing U.S. imperialism, currency inflation, and militant labor unionism. His refusal to distribute positions to loyal party members hurt him politically, as did his opposition to the free-silver movement and the railway unions.

Background.

Born on 18 March 1837 in Caldwell, New Jersey, Stephen Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, and spent much of his childhood in Fayetteville, New York, outside Syracuse. The family had intended that Grover Cleveland would attend Hamilton College, in Clinton, New York, like his older brother, but the death of their father in 1853, when Grover was sixteen, forced him to take a job as an assistant teacher at a...