A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, part 3: Grover Cleveland, First Term by Grover Cleveland
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engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the
obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an eye single to the interest of my employers." The Democratic national convention met at Chicago July 8, 1884. On July 11 he was nominated as their candidate for President. The Republicans made James G. Blaine their candidate, while Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, was the Labor and Greenback candidate, and John P. St. John, of Kansas, was the Prohibition candidate. At the election, November 4, Mr. Cleveland received 219 and Mr. Blaine 182 electoral votes. He was unanimously renominated for the Presidency by the national Democratic convention in St. Louis on June 6, 1888. At the election in November he received 168 electoral votes, while 233 were cast for Benjamin Harrison, the Republican candidate. Of the popular vote, however, he received 5,540,329, and Mr. Harrison received 5,439,853. At the close of his Administration, March 4, 1889, he retired to New York City, where he reentered upon the practice of his profession. It soon became evident, however, that he would be prominently urged as a candidate for renomination in 1892. At the national Democratic convention which met in Chicago June 21, 1892, he received more than two-thirds of the votes on the first ballot. At the election in November he received 277 of the electoral votes, while Mr. Harrison received 145 and Mr. James B. Weaver, the candidate of the People's Party, 22. Of the popular vote Mr. Cleveland received 5,553,142, Mr. Harrison 5,186,931, and Mr. Weaver 1,030,128. He retired from office March 4, 1897, and removed to Princeton, N.J., where he has since resided. He is the first of our Presidents who served a second term without being elected as his own successor. President Cleveland was married in the White House on June 2, 1886, to Miss Frances Folsom, daughter of his deceased friend and partner, Oscar Folsom, of the Buffalo bar. Mrs. Cleveland was the youngest (except the wife of Mr. Madison) of the many mistresses of the |
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