Editing Grover Cleveland (section)

===Civil rights and immigration===
Under Cleveland, gains in civil rights for African Americans were limited.<ref>{{Citation |last=Bergeson-Lockwood |first=Millington W. |title=A Recognized and Respected Part of the Body Politic: Grover Cleveland and Pursuit of Patronage |date=May 21, 2018 |work=Race Over Party |pages=86–108 |url=https://academic.oup.com/north-carolina-scholarship-online/book/16963/chapter/174239650 |access-date=July 27, 2024 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |doi=10.5149/northcarolina/9781469640419.003.0006 |isbn=978-1-4696-4041-9}}</ref> Cleveland, like a growing number of Northerners and nearly all white Southerners, saw [[Reconstruction era|Reconstruction]] as a failed experiment,<ref>{{Cite journal |date=Spring 2001 |title=Grover Cleveland: A Powerful Advocate of White Supremacy |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2679168 |journal=[[The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education]] |issue=31 |pages=53–54 |doi=10.2307/2679168 |jstor=2679168 |access-date=27 July 2024 }}</ref> and was reluctant to use federal power to enforce the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] of the [[U.S. Constitution]], which guaranteed voting rights to African Americans.<ref name="welch65">Welch, 65–66</ref> Though Cleveland appointed no black Americans to patronage jobs, he allowed [[Frederick Douglass]] to continue in his post as [[recorder of deeds]] in Washington, D.C., and appointed another black man ([[James Campbell Matthews]], a former New York judge) to replace Douglass upon his resignation.<ref name="welch65" /> His decision to replace Douglass with a black man was met with outrage, but Cleveland claimed to have known Matthews personally.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.blacksandpresidency.com/grovercleveland.php |title="No Force bill! No Negro Domination in the South!": President Grover Cleveland and the Return to Power of the Democratic Party |website=African-Americans & the Presidency |first=Christopher Brian |last=Booker |year=2014 |access-date=November 15, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161017175406/http://www.blacksandpresidency.com/grovercleveland.php |archive-date=October 17, 2016 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

Although Cleveland had condemned the "outrages" against Chinese immigrants, he believed that Chinese immigrants were unwilling to [[Cultural assimilation|assimilate]] into white society.<ref>Welch, 72</ref> Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard negotiated an extension to the [[Chinese Exclusion Act]], and Cleveland lobbied the Congress to pass the [[Scott Act (1888)|Scott Act]], written by Congressman [[William Lawrence Scott]], which prevented the return of Chinese immigrants who left the United States.<ref name="welch73">Welch, 73</ref> The Scott Act easily passed both houses of Congress, and Cleveland signed it into law on October 1, 1888.<ref name="welch73" />