Just one historic website bears the identify of America’s twenty second and twenty fourth president—and it’s no Monticello.
The Grover Cleveland Presidential Library and Museum occupies a one-story constructing in Caldwell, New Jersey, behind the home the place its namesake spent the primary few years of his life. The museum is the scale of a small lounge. A Dunkin’ sits throughout the road.
The positioning befits Cleveland’s legacy. He was a big man however not bigger than life; his two phrases within the White Home had been most outstanding for the 4 years that separated them.
Till November 5, Cleveland held the excellence of being the one U.S. president to regain the workplace after voters turned him out: He gained the White Home in 1884, misplaced his reelection bid in 1888, after which gained once more in 1892. Donald Trump matched Cleveland’s achievement by profitable final yr’s presidential election, robbing him of his unique declare to historical past but in addition renewing curiosity in a president whom time has largely forgotten. The 2 males share little else in widespread. Cleveland curtailed authorities corruption, adhered to a restrictive view of presidential authority, and opposed expansionism; Trump flouts moral norms left and proper, chafes at limits to his energy, and needs to purchase Greenland. But their new bond might reshape Cleveland’s legacy.
A grandson of the previous president, George Cleveland, has been fielding calls from reporters and historical past buffs for months. “Something that shines a lightweight on a dimmer a part of historical past is an efficient factor,” he advised me. “It’s a Grover Cleveland renaissance!” joked Louis Picone, a historian who sits on the board of the Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Affiliation.
One wet night final month, the affiliation gathered in Caldwell—a small city about 20 miles west of New York Metropolis—for its annual assembly. The occasion doubled as a ribbon-cutting for a newly renovated room within the museum that the group is making an attempt to broaden. In the intervening time, the exhibit isn’t a lot: some pictures, a desk, a chair Cleveland used within the White Home.
The occasion drew a pair dozen folks, who listened to Picone ship a chat on “extraordinary” presidential elections. However he didn’t talk about any of the previous three, which weren’t precisely abnormal. Picone talked about Trump solely glancingly and ignored his new connection to Cleveland.
Certainly, Trump is a sensitive subject for the keepers of the Cleveland flame, not all of whom are comfortable to see their man joined eternally in historical past alongside the forty fifth and soon-to-be-Forty seventh president of the US. Paul Maloney, the affiliation’s president, politely declined to reply once I requested him how he felt about Cleveland shedding his distinctive distinction. “We’ve got a political determine that I’m making an attempt to maintain the politics out of. I understand how odd that’s,” Maloney advised me. “I don’t need anybody to deduce any perspective that our group might need.”
The group’s vp, Bunny Jenkins, wasn’t as diplomatic: “It needed to be Trump?!”
In addition to their comeback connection, Cleveland and Trump are about as completely different from one another as any two presidents. Trump was born into New York wealth; Cleveland was a minister’s son who helped present for his household after his father’s early loss of life. He was a tough employee and, at occasions, a tough drinker; Trump abstains from each lengthy hours and alcohol.
Each Cleveland and Trump campaigned as anti-corruption populists, however Cleveland adopted by way of on his dedication to scrub authorities. (His dedication was literal at occasions: As mayor of Buffalo, New York, he helped assemble a contemporary sewer system for the foul-smelling metropolis.) A Democratic reformer, Cleveland fought Tammany Corridor as governor of New York. After he gained the presidency in 1884, he insisted on paying his personal practice fare to Washington, in response to a 2022 biography by Troy Senik. He as soon as refused to just accept a canine {that a} supporter despatched him as a present, deeming it inappropriate.
As president, Cleveland developed such a popularity for public integrity that he earned the nickname “Grover the Good.” He curbed the spoils and patronage system that pervaded politics on the time—and that Trump has begun to re-create.
Whereas Trump has repeatedly stretched the bounds of presidential energy, Cleveland revered them. He interpreted the president’s constitutional tasks narrowly and didn’t attempt to whip votes for his agenda in Congress. However inside his authority, Cleveland acted aggressively: He vetoed 414 payments throughout his first time period, greater than all 21 of his predecessors mixed.
Few of the political controversies that Cleveland confronted as president are related anymore; the pensions of Civil Conflict veterans and the gold commonplace had been main flashpoints within the late Nineteenth century. However one main fiscal debate has lingered—tariffs—and he and Trump took reverse sides. Cleveland pushed for decrease tariffs despite the fact that they had been well-liked, a stance that possible price him his first try at profitable a second time period.
Regardless of his popularity for good governance, President Cleveland had vital flaws, together with ones that a lot of his Nineteenth-century citizens would have neglected. He opposed ladies’s suffrage, and he made nearly no effort to guard Black folks within the South from the phobia and disenfranchisement of Jim Crow.
Accusations of misconduct in his private life almost derailed his first bid for the presidency. A Buffalo newspaper reported that he had fathered a toddler out of wedlock years earlier with a widow named Maria Halpin. The story alleged that Cleveland employed detectives to abduct Halpin, take the infant, and pressure Halpin right into a psychological establishment. Just a few months later, and simply earlier than Election Day, the allegations grew to become far worse. In keeping with Senik, Halpin signed an affidavit testifying that Cleveland had “achieved my smash by means of pressure and violence and with out my consent.” Days later, nevertheless, Halpin denied her personal prices and stated she had signed the doc with out studying it. Cleveland gained the election, and his opponents didn’t carry up the allegations in subsequent campaigns.
Whether or not or not he assaulted Halpin stays unclear. “The one two individuals who know are lifeless,” Picone advised me. However historians, together with Senik, have usually “given Grover Cleveland the advantage of the doubt” due to his popularity for honesty, Picone stated. “It was so out of character,” he stated of the allegations. Cleveland did acknowledge, although, that he had been romantically concerned with Halpin, and he by no means denied that he was the daddy of her baby. In 2020, the historian Susan Smart Bauer wrote in The Atlantic that Cleveland had managed to current himself as “the upstanding, hapless sufferer” in the entire affair, creating a brand new playbook for politicians accused of sexual misconduct.
The Republican Benjamin Harrison beat Cleveland in 1888 thanks partly to Cleveland’s aggressive push to decrease tariffs, a place that united the GOP in opposition and divided his personal social gathering. “What’s using being elected or reelected until you stand for one thing?” he requested a staffer, in response to Senik’s guide. Cleveland took his ouster way more gracefully than Trump would greater than a century later when he tried to overturn an election. Requested why he misplaced, Cleveland replied merely, “It was primarily as a result of the opposite social gathering had essentially the most votes.” Whereas Trump skipped his opponent’s inauguration, Cleveland held an umbrella over Harrison’s head to guard him from the rain as he took the oath of workplace.
Trump started contemplating a comeback bid virtually as quickly as he left the White Home in 2021. Cleveland didn’t, however his spouse, Frances Cleveland, had an inkling he would possibly return. Because the Clevelands had been making ready to depart the White Home in early 1889, she advised a staffer, “I wish to discover every part simply as it’s now, after we come again once more.” The confused aide requested when she deliberate on visiting. “We’re coming again simply 4 years from right this moment,” she replied with a smile.
Trump was the primary former president in a long time to attempt to return to the White Home. However comeback makes an attempt had been extra widespread within the Nineteenth century. Cleveland was motivated to run once more partly as a result of Harrison had deserted fiscal constraint, presiding alongside what grew to become often known as “the Billion Greenback Congress.” Cleveland gained a marketing campaign that drew comparatively little curiosity from the general public, however the mark he set—a second, nonconsecutive presidential time period—would stand for 132 years.
The Grover Cleveland Birthplace Memorial Affiliation has been making an attempt to construct a correct library and museum for many years. New Jersey, which owns the historic website, has agreed to foot many of the invoice, however crimson tape has precipitated delays. The Cleveland house remains to be present process refurbishments, and the museum gained’t totally open to the general public for not less than one other few months. “We’re breaking our backs making an attempt to get this place open,” Dave Cowell, the affiliation’s 86-year-old secretary of the board and former president, advised me.
Over the previous three a long time, guests to the Cleveland birthplace have grown from about 300 yearly to roughly 9,000 a pair years in the past, he stated. That also pales compared to the expansive presidential museums devoted to Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, which draw a whole lot of 1000’s of individuals yearly. However Cleveland is gaining on second-tier presidential rivals equivalent to Martin Van Buren, America’s eighth president, whose historic website in New York receives about 13,000 folks a yr, Cowell stated.
The affiliation is planning a grand opening for the museum later this yr. Trump shall be invited, Picone stated. However the group gained’t attempt to leverage the Trump connection for further consideration. No exhibitions inspecting their new hyperlink in historical past are within the works. It’s simply too quickly, Paul Maloney advised me. “Now, 10 years down the highway? Fifteen years down the highway? We’d suppose in another way.”
As Cleveland’s followers are fast to notice, his presidential comeback is only one a part of his legacy. His story has receded from nationwide reminiscence largely as a result of his presidency didn’t coincide with momentous occasions; the nation was not at conflict, and he didn’t die in workplace. Maloney, a retired social-studies trainer, admitted that Cleveland didn’t even make it into his U.S. historical past curriculum. However, Picone argued, “he was a wonderful president.”
That Cleveland’s most well-known achievement has now been matched, his grandson George conceded, is a loss. “Nothing lasts eternally,” he advised me. However he took solace within the thought that Trump’s return to the White Home gained’t utterly erase his grandfather’s report comeback. In any case, George stated, “he’s nonetheless the primary.”
