Grover Cleveland was a lawyer based in Buffalo, he went onto become the mayor of the city and later the Governor of New York before becoming the President of the United States. Grover Cleveland had two terms but not consecutive. His first term was from 1885 to 1889 and his second term was from 1893 to 1897. There are many Grover Cleveland major accomplishments to talk of. Here are just a few of them.
1. Grover Cleveland was a flourishing lawyer when he successfully defended a suit against the editor of a notable publishing house based in the city called Buffalo Commercial Advertiser.
2. When he was the mayor of the city, he had successfully reduced corruption at various levels. He used his veto power to dictate the norms for various auctions. He was famous and infamous for his vetoes, famous among the public and infamous for the corrupt. One of the most noteworthy vetoes of Cleveland was when he decided that the Common Council will award contracts to the highest bidder and not to the lowest bidder as was the prevalent practice. He prevented the misuse of public funds.
3. While he was the governor of the state, he had clamped down on corruption in his own party. This ruffled a few influential members of the party but the Democrats resorted to Cleveland when James G. Blaine was poised as the Republican presidential candidate. Grover Cleveland with his impeccable character and popularity among the masses was the perfect foil to the immoral and unethical Blaine.
4. As the President of the United States, Cleveland made it mandatory that candidates would be appointed at various positions on the virtue of merit and not due to favor. He cut down on the workforces in federal agencies to save public funds. He also reformed foreign policy.
5. One of the most noteworthy of Grover Cleveland major accomplishments in his first term was the vetoing of a bill to allocate $10,000 for the purpose of distributing seed grain to farmers in drought hit Texas. He argued his case by saying that no economic group or section of the populace should be eligible for any special privilege or grant based on their temporary challenges.
6. During his second term as the president, he got Great Britain to agree to an arbitration to settle a boundary dispute in Venezuela. Although it was not seen as a major accomplishment then, historians and foreign policy experts hail the move now.