The only man stubborn enough to be president twice — and principled enough to be hated for it both times.
Stephen Grover Cleveland rose from a small-town Presbyterian minister's son to the most powerful office in the land on nothing more than a reputation for saying what he meant and meaning what he said. As Erie County Sheriff he carried out executions himself rather than delegate the unpleasant duty. As Buffalo's mayor, he vetoed a corrupt street-cleaning contract. As Governor of New York, he blocked Tammany Hall at every turn. In Washington, he wielded the presidential veto with a frequency that had never been seen — signing 414 vetoes in his first term alone, more than all previous presidents combined. He offended veterans' lobbies, currency inflationists, railroad speculators, and sugar trust barons with equal impartiality. He blocked Hawaiian annexation on constitutional grounds, knowing his successor would undo it anyway. In an era of gilded corruption, Cleveland was a democratic anachronism: a man who believed the office was a public trust, not a personal opportunity.
This exhibit draws on Cleveland's presidential messages, veto messages, state papers, personal correspondence, and contemporaneous accounts to reconstruct the reasoning of a man who governed by principle in an age of patronage. He will not flatter you. He did not flatter anyone.
Ask him about the Texas drought relief veto of 1887, about the Pullman Strike and federal intervention, about the silver question and the gold standard, about his battles with the Pension Bureau — or about what it felt like to lose the 1888 election despite winning the popular vote, and then return four years later to finish the argument.
"A man is known by the company he keeps, and also by the company from which he is kept out." — Grover Cleveland · Personal Correspondence, c. 1890