Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected since the Civil War, was the only president to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837 and raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he was determined and focused. Acting as a reformer, he was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and later governor of New York. He first became president in 1884 with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans known as the «Mugwumps.»

After losing the presidency to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, he returned to office in 1892. As the 24th president, Cleveland faced an economic depression. He dealt directly with the financial crisis, not with business bankruptcies, farm mortgage foreclosures and unemployment. He got the slightly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed and, with the help of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury’s gold reserves.

When railroad strikers in Chicago violated the injunction, Cleveland sent federal troops to enforce it. His harsh treatment of railroad strikers made many Americans proud, as did his forceful manner in forcing Britain to agree to arbitration over a disputed border in Venezuela. But overall his policies during the Depression were unpopular, and in 1896 his party nominated William Jennings Bryan instead. After leaving the White House for the second time, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey, and died in 1908.

Numismatics begins with a single coin and continues in the VPcoins catalogue.