November 8, 1892: Cleveland vs. Harrison II

November 8, 1892: For the 1st time, a former President is returned to the office. Grover Cleveland, the 22nd President of the United States, becomes the 24th President (a ruling by the State Department has decided that he is designated as the 22nd and the 24th), defeating the man who, under dubious circumstances, defeated him 4 years earlier, the 23rd President, Benjamin Harrison.

It was a 3-way race, and, as a result, for the 3rd time, Cleveland finished 1st in the popular vote without getting a majority: He had 46 percent, Harrison 43 percent, and James B. Weaver of the Populist Party 8.5 percent. Cleveland won 277 Electoral Votes, Harrison 145, and Weaver 22. Weaver won 5 States, all in the West: Colorado Idaho, Kansas, Nevada and North Dakota.

In 1884, Cleveland had won with Thomas A. Hendricks as his running mate. He had been Governor of Indiana and a U.S. Senator, and had previously been nominated for Vice President with Samuel Tilden in 1876. In 1884, with Cleveland, he won, but he died before the 1st year of the Administration was out.

So in 1888, Cleveland's running mate was former Senator Allen Thurman of Ohio. In 1892, he turned to a former Congressman from Illinois, Adlai Stevenson. Cleveland, a former Governor of New York, chose well: His State, with its 36 Electoral Votes, and Stevenson's, with 24, were both very close. Had they gone the other way, Cleveland would still have led in Electoral Votes, 217-205, but would have fallen short of the 223 needed to win, and the election would have gone to the House of Representatives to decide.

The McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, both passed in 1890, had hit the economy hard. Both were written by Ohio politicians: The Tariff by Representative William McKinley, and the Silver Purchase Act by Senator John Sherman, brother of General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman hung on to his seat, McKinley didn't -- and neither did Harrison.

But within weeks of Cleveland taking office, the economy was still shaky, and the stock market collapsed in the Panic of 1893. A depression set in, worse than any the nation had yet seen. It wasn't Cleveland's fault, but he didn't do much about it, and the Democrats paid for it: After gaining both houses of Congress in 1892, they lost both in 1894, in the biggest landslide in Congressional election history.

And McKinley was elected Governor of Ohio. In 1896, Cleveland chose not to run again, and McKinley was elected, defeating William Jennings Bryan -- and appointed Sherman as his Secretary of State.

In 1900, McKinley beat Bryan again, despite Bryan now having Stevenson as his running mate. Stevenson's grandson, Adlai Ewing Stevenson II, would be elected Governor of Illinois in 1948, and was nominated for President by the Democrats in 1952 and 1956.

UPDATE: In 2024, Donald Trump became the 2nd former President to receive another term for the office. Despite being fat, he is little like Cleveland. Cleveland valued honesty, while Trump is the biggest liar in American history. Cleveland prided himself on his hard work, while Trump is the laziest President ever. While Cleveland was from New Jersey but embraced New York State, Trump was from New York City and abandoned it for Florida. And while Trump savagely attacked all opponents, Cleveland was generous: When rain fell on Harrison's Inauguration in 1889, Cleveland held an umbrella over his head as he repeated the Oath of Office. Trump won't even hold an umbrella over his own wife's head.

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November 8, 1892 was a Tuesday. Baseball season was over. Hockey was still all-amateur. Basketball had only been invented the preceding December. But there were college football games played, including by 5 of the teams that would one day make up the Ivy League:

* Harvard University played the Boston Athletic Association's football team in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and won, 16-12.

* Yale University went to New York City, and played the New York Athletic Club at Manhattan Field, next-door to the Polo Grounds, and won, 48-0.

* The College of New Jersey, which became Princeton University in 1896, went to the Orange Oval in East Orange, New Jersey, and beat the Orange Athletic Club, 23-0. (Rutgers College did not play that day.)

* The University of Pennsylvania hosted Lehigh University in Philadelphia, and won, 4-0 (under the scoring rules of the time).

* Cornell University hosted the University of Michigan in Ithaca, New York, and won, 44-0. It would take another few years for Michigan to legitimately become what its fight song has always claimed them to be, "the Champions of the West."