Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th President, was the first Democrat-appointed after the Civil War in 1885, and he was the only President to vacate the White House and rejoin 4 years later for a subsequent time (1885-1889 and 1893-1897).
Grover Cleveland was an American lawyer and politician serving as President of the United States for two terms, from 1885 to 1889 and 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president to have served two non-consecutive sessions in the White House. He was elected president three times, in 1884, 1888, and 1892, and was one of just two Democrats to accomplish so during the Republican presidential dominance that lasted from 1861 to 1933.
Cleveland was praised for his sincerity, self-reliance, morality, and devotion to classical liberalism's ideas. He attacked injustice, favoritism, and bossism in politics. Cleveland's reputation as a reformist was such that in the 1884 campaign, the like-minded element of the Republican Party, known as 'Mugwumps,' largely left the GOP democratic nominee and flipped to his favor. As his 2nd term began, the nation was struck by calamity when the Panic of 1893 triggered a devastating national downturn. It decimated his Democratic Party, paving the stage for a Republican victory in 1894 and the agricultural and Silverite takeover of the party in 1896. The outcome was a constitutional crisis that marked the end of the Third Party System and the beginning of the Progressive Era.