The First Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.
President Grover Cleveland came to Minnesota on October 11th. One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him. In 1862 with the Civil War being fought in the south, a Dakota uprising began in the western part of the state along the Minnesota River, precipitated by hunger caused by a crop failure in 1861 and long delays in the distribution of their annuity payments. As soon as news of the outbreak reached Governor Ramsey, Sibley was commissioned as a colonel and was placed in command of the emergency force on August 19, and by the next day he was moving up the Minnesota River on steamboat at the head of four companies of volunteers.
Thanks to Mr. Gunderson’s 6th grade class at Virginia-Roosevelt Elementary School for the research on October’s Day in History.
Thanks also to Minnesota’s Learn and Serve America Service Learning Program for their help.
Minnesota Sesquicentennial 