Second presidency of Grover Cleveland

The second tenure of Grover Cleveland as the president of the United States began on March 4, 1893, when he was inaugurated as the nation's 24th president, and ended on March 4, 1897. Cleveland, a Democrat from New York, who previously served as president from 1885 to 1889, took office following his victory over Republican incumbent President Benjamin Harrison of Indiana in the 1892 presidential election. Cleveland was the first U.S. president to leave office after one term and later be elected for a second term. He was succeeded by Republican William McKinley.

As his second term began, disaster hit the nation when the Panic of 1893 produced a severe national economic depression. Cleveland presided over the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, striking a blow against the Free Silver (silverite) movement, and also lowered tariff rates by allowing the Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act to become law. He also ordered federal soldiers to crush the Pullman Strike. In foreign policy, Cleveland resisted the annexation of Hawaii and an American intervention in Cuba. He also sought to uphold the Monroe Doctrine and forced Great Britain to agree to arbitrate a border dispute with Venezuela. In the midterm elections of 1894, Cleveland's Democratic Party suffered a massive defeat that opened the way for the agrarian and silverite seizure of the Democratic Party.

Cleveland was not a candidate for re-nomination at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, which nominated silverite William Jennings Bryan, who was defeated by Republican William McKinley in the subsequent election. Cleveland left office extremely unpopular, but his reputation was eventually rehabilitated in the 1930s by scholars led by Allan Nevins. More recent historians and biographers have taken a more ambivalent view of Cleveland, but many note Cleveland's role in re-asserting the power of the presidency. In rankings of American presidents by historians and political scientists, Cleveland is generally ranked as an average or above-average president.