III.

Early Political Career

Cleveland soon showed the political independence that characterized his future career. His uncle, the best-known citizen of Buffalo except for former President Millard Fillmore (1850-1853), had organized Erie County’s Republican Party, but Cleveland joined the Democratic Party. In later years, Cleveland said that he became a Democrat in 1856 because that party represented solid, conservative thought. On the other hand, he said, Republican presidential candidate John Charles Frémont struck him as flamboyant and theatrical.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), when other men of his age were in the Union Army, Cleveland borrowed money to hire a substitute to serve in his place. This was a practice permitted under the Federal Conscription Act and was widely used in the North. Cleveland defended his action, saying that he had to earn enough money to support his mother and sisters.

In 1863 Cleveland was appointed assistant district attorney of Erie County, New York. During the next three years he earned a name as a crusader against crime and corruption. In 1871 he became county sheriff. Between terms of public office he continued to practice law and became the most successful attorney in Buffalo. His success was generally attributed to hard work rather than brilliant legal talent.

A.

Mayor of Buffalo

In 1881 Cleveland was a 44-year-old, moderately wealthy bachelor. The Democrats of Buffalo, hoping to appeal to respectable citizens, nominated Cleveland for mayor because of his work against corruption. He declared, “Public officials are the trustees of the people,” the basis for the slogan later credited to him, “Public office is a public trust.” A coalition of Democrats, reform Republicans, and independents elected him mayor.

Mayor Cleveland fought the Buffalo aldermen, a corrupt circle of politicians from both parties. In his single year at city hall he stopped an attempt to defraud the city of $200,000 on a street-cleaning contract and vetoed numerous bills passed by the aldermen. Cleveland felt these bills were examples of political graft, a form of fraud in which a legislator passed laws that increased the value of his own private investments. Cleveland thus became known as the “veto mayor.”

Cleveland probably would have advanced no further in politics but for the deadlock in 1882 between two men wanting the Democratic nomination for governor of New York. The party leaders then decided that a new face was needed to reconcile quarreling factions and chose to nominate Cleveland. He went on to victory over his Republican opponent, who had been the choice of President Chester A. Arthur.

B.

Governor of New York

As governor, Cleveland demonstrated the same stubborn honesty and independence that he had shown in his other offices. Most state governments at this time operated on the spoils system, in which winning politicians gave government jobs to those loyal party members who had helped them get elected. Cleveland, however, appointed people to office based on their skills. When politicians demanded jobs to reward their services to the Democratic Party, he would frustrate them by saying, “I don’t know that I understand you.”

Cleveland liberally applied the veto to laws passed by the legislature. The most famous of these was his veto in 1883 of the Five Cent Fare bill, which would have lowered transit fares in New York City in violation of the transit company’s charter. Afterward he said, “I shall be the most unpopular man in the state of New York.” He later broke with Tammany Society, also called Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine in New York City, when he vetoed its bill for revising the city charter.

C.

Election of 1884

In 1884 the Republicans nominated Maine Congressman and former Secretary of State James G. Blaine for president. A group of Republicans who favored national reform were furious at Blaine’s nomination, since he had been accused of accepting bribes from railroad companies. These independents, derisively called Mugwumps (meaning “big chiefs”), appealed to the voters to support any Democrat who ran against Blaine, as long as he was honest. They believed, as did almost every politician, that the candidate carrying New York state in the November election would win the presidency, and that was Cleveland’s strength. The anti-Blaine independents could rally around Cleveland since his public record was unassailable.

At the Democratic National Convention in July 1884, Cleveland was nominated for president. The Cleveland-Blaine presidential campaign inspired many personal attacks by both sides, as well as by the smaller parties. Republican editors and orators charged that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child, which Cleveland courageously acknowledged. Democrats, for their part, accused Blaine of trying to aid the railroads at public expense.

Various factors combined to give Cleveland a slim victory over Blaine. Voters in New York City went heavily Democratic, in part because of an unfortunate statement by the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard, a Blaine supporter. Burchard called the Democrats the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion,” an insulting reference to Irish Americans, Roman Catholics, and Southerners, who all generally supported the Democratic Party. The statement lost Blaine any chance of getting the Irish American vote in New York City. The Mugwumps supported Cleveland because of Blaine’s political past. Even the Prohibition Party candidate received 25,000 votes that normally would have gone to the Republican candidate.

New York’s 36 electoral votes swung the election to Cleveland. He won the state’s vote by only about 1000 in a total vote of more than 1,000,000, and the national election by 219 electoral votes to Blaine’s 182.