Which U.S. president was in office when the Panic of 1893 began?

Grover Cleveland was the U.S. president when the Panic of 1893 began.

Cleveland had begun his second, nonconsecutive presidential term on 4 March 1893, succeeding Benjamin Harrison. The financial crisis erupted soon afterward, with the failure of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in February and the collapse of the National Cordage Company in May helping intensify public concern.

A major pressure point was the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which required the U.S. Treasury to buy large amounts of silver with notes redeemable in gold. As confidence weakened, people demanded gold, reducing the Treasury’s reserves. The failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company had played a similar confidence-shaking role in the earlier Panic of 1873.

Cleveland responded by seeking repeal of the silver-purchase requirement. The Panic of 1893 became one of the most severe economic downturns in nineteenth-century America, with widespread bank and railroad failures and very high unemployment.