Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/46

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16
GROVER CLEVELAND

Hawaii. "By an act of war," he said, "committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of congress, the government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people has been overthrown. A substantial wrong has thus been done which a due regard for national character, as well as the rights of the injured people, requires we should endeavor to repair." The position thus taken rendered invincible two years later during the dispute with Great Britain touching the Venezuelan territory, the strongest declaration of the Monroe Doctrine ever made. "It will, in my opinion, be the duty of the United States to resist by every means in its power, as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which, after investigation, we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela."

At the end of his second term on March 4, 1897, Grover Cleveland purchased a home in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lives in dignified retirement.