Grover Cleveland in the context of "Free silver"

The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the U.S. acquiring sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and establishing a protectorate over Cuba. It represented U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence and Philippine Revolution, with the latter later leading to the Philippine–American War. The Spanish–American War brought an end to almost four centuries of Spanish presence in the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific; the United States meanwhile not only became a major world power, but also gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.

The 19th century represented a clear decline for the Spanish Empire, while the United States went from a newly founded country to a rising power. In 1895, Cuban nationalists began a revolt against Spanish rule, which was brutally suppressed by the colonial authorities. W. Joseph Campbell argues that yellow journalism in the U.S. exaggerated the atrocities in Cuba to sell more newspapers and magazines, which swayed American public opinion in support of the rebels. But historian Andrea Pitzer also points to the actual shift toward savagery of the Spanish military leadership, who adopted the brutal reconcentration policy after replacing the relatively conservative Governor-General of Cuba Arsenio Martínez Campos with the more unscrupulous and aggressive Valeriano Weyler, nicknamed "The Butcher." President Grover Cleveland resisted mounting demands for U.S. intervention, as did his successor William McKinley. Though not seeking a war, McKinley made preparations in readiness for one.

Mount Cleveland (also known as Cleveland Volcano) is a nearly symmetrical stratovolcano on the western end of Chuginadak Island, which is part of the Islands of Four Mountains just west of Umnak Island in the Fox Islands of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Mount Cleveland is 5,675 ft (1,730 m) high, and one of the most active of the 75 or more volcanoes in the larger Aleutian Arc. Aleutian natives named the island after their fire goddess, Chuginadak, who they believed inhabited the volcano. In 1894 a team from the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey visited the island and gave Mount Cleveland its current name, after then-president Grover Cleveland.

One of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutian Arc, Cleveland has erupted at least 22 times in the last 230 years. A VEI 3 eruption in 1944 produced the arc's only known volcanic fatality. Most recently Mount Cleveland has erupted three times in 2009, twice in 2010, once in 2011 and in 2016 and 2017. The volcano's remoteness limits opportunities for its study, and the Alaska Volcano Observatory relies heavily on satellites for monitoring. The volcano is primarily hazardous to aircraft; many of the flights over the north Pacific approach the vicinity of the volcano, and volcanic ash released from eruptions can damage sensitive electronic equipment and sensors.

The length of a full four-year term of office for a president of the United States usually amounts to 1,461 days (three common years of 365 days plus one leap year of 366 days). The listed number of days is calculated as the difference between dates, which counts the number of calendar days except the first day (day zero). If the first day were included, all numbers would be one day more, except Grover Cleveland would have two more days, as he served two full nonconsecutive terms.

Of the individuals elected president, four died of natural causes while in office (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt), four were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy), and one resigned from office (Richard Nixon).

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties of the United States political system and the oldest active political party in the country. Founded in 1828, the Democratic Party is the oldest active voter-based political party in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence. Once known as the party of the "common man", the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs. In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s (known as the Second Party System), under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually defeated the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins.

Before the American Civil War, the party generally supported slavery or insisted it be left to the states. After the war until the 1940s, the party opposed civil rights reforms in order to retain the support of Southern white voters. The Republican Party was organized in the mid-1850s from the ruins of the Whig Party and Free Soil Democrats. It was dominant in presidential politics from 1860 to 1928. The Democrats elected only two Presidents during this period: Grover Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892) and Woodrow Wilson (in 1912 and 1916). Over the same period, the Democrats proved more competitive with the Republicans in Congressional politics, enjoying House of Representatives majorities (as in the 65th Congress) in 15 of the 36 Congresses elected owing largely to their dominance of the Solid South, although only in five of these they formed the majority in the Senate. Furthermore, the Democratic Party was split between the Bourbon Democrats, representing Eastern business interests, and the agrarian party elements representing poor farmers in the South and West. After the Republican landslide in the 1894 House elections, the agrarian element, marching behind the slogan of free silver (i.e. in favor of inflation), captured the party. They nominated William Jennings Bryan in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 presidential elections, although he lost every time. Both Bryan and Wilson were leaders of the progressive movement in the United States (1890s–1920s) and opposed imperialistic expansion abroad while sponsoring liberal reforms at home despite supporting racism and discrimination against blacks in government offices and elsewhere.

The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. Under the U.S. Constitution, the officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

The first president, George Washington, won a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. The incumbent president is Donald Trump, who assumed office on January 20, 2025. Since the office was established in 1789, 45 men have served in 47 presidencies. The discrepancy is due to the nonconsecutive terms of Grover Cleveland (counted as the 22nd and 24th president) and Trump (counted as the 45th and 47th president).

The Committee of Safety, formally the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, was a 13-member group of the Annexation Club. The group was composed of mostly Hawaiian subjects of American descent and American citizens who were members of the Missionary Party, as well as some foreign residents in the Hawaiian Kingdom. The group planned and carried out the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. The goal of this group was to achieve annexation of Hawaii by the United States. The new independent Republic of Hawaii government was thwarted in this goal by the administration of President Grover Cleveland, and it was not until 1898 and under the administration of William McKinley that the United States Congress approved a joint resolution of annexation, creating the U.S. Territory of Hawaii.

The Republic of Hawaii (Hawaiian: Lepupalika o Hawaiʻi, pronounced [lepupəˈlikə o həˈvɐjʔi]) was a short-lived one-party state in Hawaiʻi between July 4, 1894, when the Provisional Government of Hawaii had ended, and August 12, 1898, when it became annexed by the United States as an unincorporated and unorganized territory. In 1893, the Committee of Public Safety overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani, the monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, after she rejected the 1887 Bayonet Constitution. The Committee of Public Safety intended for Hawaii to be annexed by the United States; however, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat opposed to imperialism, refused. A new constitution was subsequently written while Hawaii was being prepared for annexation.

The leaders of the Republic, such as Sanford B. Dole and Lorrin A. Thurston, were Hawaii-born descendants of American settlers who spoke the Hawaiian language but had strong financial, political, and family ties to the United States. They intended the Republic to become a territory of the United States. Dole was a former member of the Royal Legislature from Koloa, Kauai, and Justice of the Kingdom's Supreme Court, and he appointed Thurston—who had served as Minister of the Interior under King Kalākaua—to lead a lobbying effort in Washington, D.C., to secure Hawaii's annexation by the United States. The issue of overseas imperialism was controversial in the United States due to its colonial origins. Hawaii was annexed under Republican President William McKinley on 12 August 1898, during the Spanish–American War. The Territory of Hawaii was formally established as part of the U.S. on June 14, 1900.

Thomas Nast (/næst/; German: [nast]; September 26, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a German-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist often considered to be the "Father of the American Cartoon".

Nast was deeply involved in the political issues of the day, often as a member of the Republican party. He promoted the platform of the Radical Republicans against President Andrew Johnson and supported Republican presidential candidates Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison. Despite his attachment to the Republican party, Nast prominently and repeatedly criticized 1884 nominee James G. Blaine, informally joining the Mugwump faction of Republicans who supported Democrat Grover Cleveland's candidacy.