Cleveland Democrats
CLEVELAND DEMOCRATS
CLEVELAND DEMOCRATS. Members of the Democratic Party who supported the policies and presidential candidacies of Grover Cleveland, primarily during Cleveland's first term (1885–1889), when his reputation as a reformer and his conservative Democratic credentials attracted wide support ranging from southern Bourbons to northern renegade Republican Mugwumps. Cleveland Democrats were conservative reformers holding traditional Democratic views on property rights, low tariffs, states' rights, and minimal government; however, they supported civil service and municipal government reform.
Cleveland's inability to mediate between party factions and his unwillingness to compromise eroded his support. During his second term (1893–1897), his administration revoked the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and used federal troops to put down the 1894 Pullman Strike. Seen as Wall Street lackeys, his supporters were routed at the 1896 Democratic convention by William Jennings Bryan and the Silver Democrats.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hollingsworth, J. Rogers. The Whirlygig of Politics: Democracy from Cleveland to Bryan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
McFarland, Gerald W. "The Breakdown of Deadlock: The Cleveland Democracy in Connecticut, 1884–1894," Historian 31, no. 3 (May 1969): 381–397.
———. Mugwumps, Morals, and Politics, 1884–1920. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1975.
Welch, Richard E., Jr. The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988.
C. WyattEvans
See alsoDemocratic Party .