In 1904, the conservatives, with Cleveland's support, regained control of the Democratic Party and nominated Alton B. Parker.[259]

Outgoing President Cleveland, at right, stands nearby as William McKinley is sworn in as president by Chief Justice Melville Fuller.
After leaving the White House on March 4, 1897, Cleveland lived in retirement at his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey.[260] For a time, he was a trustee of Princeton University, and was one of the majority of trustees who preferred the dean Andrew Fleming West's plans for the Graduate School and undergraduate living over those of Woodrow Wilson, then president of the university.[261] Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909) but was financially unable to accept the chairmanship of the commission handling the Coal Strike of 1902.[262] Cleveland still made his views known in political matters. In a 1905 article in The Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland weighed in on the women's suffrage movement, writing that "sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.