Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) was born, fifth in a family of nine children, in the town of Caldwell, Essex County, N.J. He came of good colonial stock, but the death of his father prevented his receiving a college education. About 1855 he drifted westward with $25 in his pocket, and not long afterward began to read law in a law office in Buffalo, where he was admitted to the bar in 1859. He was assistant district attorney of Erie County, of which Buffalo is the chief city, in 1863, was elected sheriff on the Democratic ticket in 1869, and mayor of Buffalo in 1881, although the city was normally Republican. As mayor he attracted wide attention by his independence and business-like methods--qualities which distinguished his entire career. After his election as governor in the following year, the Democratic party chose him as their candidate against James G. Blaine. He was the first Democrat to be elected president for 24 years. His administration was marked by firmness and justice; he stood staunchly by the new civil service law, and during his first term vetoed 413 bills, more than two-thirds of which were private pension bills. He vigorously attacked the high tariff laws then in effect, but the administration tariff bill was blocked by his Republican opponents. In 1888 Cleveland was defeated for re-election by Benjamin Harrison, but in 1892 he was again nominated and defeated President Harrison by a large majority. The most important event of his second administration was the repeal of the silver legislation which had been a growing menace for 15 years. The panic of 1893 was accompanied by an outbreak of labor troubles, the most serious of which was the Pullman strike at Chicago (1894). When Gov. Altgeld of Illinois failed to act, President Cleveland sent troops to Chicago to clear the way for mail trains, and the strike was settled within a week. He also acted decisively in the Venezuela affair, with the result that Great Britain agreed to arbitrate on terms which safeguarded the national dignity on both sides. At the end of his term, Cleveland retired to Princeton, N.J. The Pan-American Exposition in celebration of the progress of the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century, was held here May 1-Nov. 2, 1901. It was during a reception in the Temple of Music on the Exposition grounds that President McKinley was assassinated on Sept. 6. He died at the home of John A. Milburn, the president of the exposition. President McKinley's assassin was Leon Czolgosz, a young man of Polish parentage, who shot the president with a revolver at close range. For a while it was thought that the president would recover, but he collapsed and died on Sept. 14, 1901. Czolgosz professed to belong to the school of anarchists who believe in violence. He was executed in October, 1901.