Some two years later, when the family circumstances were sufficiently eased so that he could strike out for himself, he set off westward, intending to reach Cleveland.Arriving at Buffalo, he called upon a married aunt, who, on learning that he was planning to get work at Cleveland with the idea of becoming a lawyer, advised him to stay in Buffalo where opportunities were better.Young Cleveland was taken into her home virtually as private secretary to her husband, Lewis F.Allen, a man of means, culture, and public spirit.Allen occupied a large house with spacious grounds in a suburb of the city, and owned a farm on which he bred fine cattle.He issued the "American Short-Horn Herd Book," a standard authority for pedigree stock, and the fifth edition, published in 1861, made a public acknowledgment of "the kindness, industry, and ability" with which Grover Cleveland had assisted the editor "in correcting and arranging the pedigrees for publication."With his uncle's friendship to back him, Cleveland had, of course, no difficulty in getting into a reputable law office as a student, and thereafter his affairs moved steadily along the road by which innumerable young Americans of diligence and industry have advanced to success in the legal profession.Cleveland's career as a lawyer was marked by those steady, solid gains in reputation which result from care and thoroughness rather than from brilliancy, and in these respects it finds many parallels among lawyers of the trustee type.What is exceptional and peculiar in Cleveland's career is the way in which political situations formed about him without any contrivance on his part, and as it were projected him from office to office until he arrived in the White House.
At the outset nothing could have seemed more unlikely than such a career.Cleveland's ambitions were bound up in his profession and his politics were opposed to those of the powers holding local control.But the one circumstance did not shut him out of political vocation and the other became a positive advantage.He entered public life in 1863 through an unsought appointment as assistant district attorney for Erie County.The incumbent of the office was in poor health and needed an assistant on whom he could rely to do the work.Hence Cleveland was called into service.His actual occupancy of the position prompted his party to nominate him to the office; and although he was defeated, he received a vote so much above the normal voting strength of his party that, in 1869, he was picked for the nomination to the office of sheriff to strengthen a party ticket made up in the interest of a congressional candidate.The expectation was that while the district might be carried for the Democratic candidate for Congress, Cleveland would probably fail of election.The nomination was virtually forced upon him against his wishes.But he was elected by a small plurality.This success, reenforced by his able conduct of the office, singled him out as the party's hope for success in the Buffalo municipal election; and after his term as sheriff he was nominated for mayor, again without any effort on his part.Although ordinarily the Democratic party was in a hopeless minority, Cleveland was elected.It was in this campaign that he enunciated the principle that public office is a public trust, which was his rule of action throughout his career.
Both as sheriff and as mayor he acted upon it with a vigor that brought him into collision with predatory politicians, and the energy and address with which he defended public interests made him widely known as the reform mayor of Buffalo.His record and reputation naturally attracted the attention of the state managers of the Democratic party, who were casting about for a candidate strong enough to overthrow the established Republican control, and Cleveland was just as distinctly drafted for the nomination to the governorship in 1882 as he had been for his previous offices.
