A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland

by Charles Lachman

  “Girls, wouldn’t it be pretty nice for me to spend a winter at the White House?” she wondered dreamily.

  “Why, of course,” one student answered. “But you must be sure to invite all of us to see you.”

  The prospects for victory seemed dim, however; Frances’s friend confided as much in a letter home. “I am sadly afraid she will never spend such a winter, aren’t you?”

  Time would soon tell. The election was almost here. Frances told everyone she was on her way to Albany. She and her mother had been invited by Grover Cleveland to await the returns at the governor’s mansion.

  The day before the election, Grover Cleveland made a stealthy return to Buffalo, arriving in the city at 7:00 a.m. Only a few citizens who happened to be at the depot greeted him. Cleveland shook their hands, declined a ride uptown, and walked to one of his favorite restaurants, Gerot’s, for breakfast. On the surface, he seemed serene and in good spirits.

  Cleveland spent the rest of the morning with Bissell at the law firm. He also got a haircut at Barthauer’s barbershop, where he told an old friend who happened to be sitting in the chair next to his that he was confident of victory but would accept defeat if that was to be the outcome. At noon, he took lunch at the Tifft House. Word had gotten out that he was in town, and throngs were now following him everywhere. He had a cheery word for all who came to shake his hand; he could hardly take a step without running into some acquaintance from the old days.

  At 6:00 p.m., Cleveland dined at the City Club with Bissell, Charles Goodyear, John Milburn, and several other dear friends. Later that evening, he went to the theater, sitting in a box at the Academy of Music for a production of the comedy fittingly titled Our Governor, starring the popular actor William J. Florence. Cleveland left before the play was over and checked into his room at the Tifft House. When he awoke the following morning, Election Day, he went to his designated polling place in the Ninth Ward to cast his ballot. There were six men ahead of him in line, and they made way for the governor to go first. When several ballots were thrust in his hand, he said good-naturedly, “A fellow can’t cast but one, you know.” Cleveland finished in time to catch the 9:00 a.m. train to Albany. Nine hours later, he was back in the Executive Mansion.

  Just the menfolk were invited to join Cleveland for dinner: Lamont, Apgar, and a few other intimates. Cleveland’s two sisters, Mary and Rose, kept the Folsom ladies company. Then Cleveland and his political team gathered in a room on the second floor to await the returns. A telephone was the only direct means of communication with the outside world, but unfortunately, early in the evening, a deluge knocked out phone service. From then on it took a steady stream of messengers from the telegraph office to keep them informed of how the election was faring.

  The first reports from downstate were encouraging. Mugwumps were turning out in force in prosperous Republican neighborhoods like Murray Hill and Brooklyn Heights, although Blaine was performing better than expected in the Irish slums. It was like reading tea leaves: The election could go either way. When returns from the upstate counties started drifting in, the news from Jefferson County was disappointing. “That hurts,” Cleveland said. William Sinclair laid out a buffet supper for everyone. It was going to be a long night.

  In this black hole of information, Cleveland’s assistant secretary, William Gorham Rice, was sent to the offices of the Albany Argus newspaper. As Daniel Manning owned the Argus, Rice was assured full and unfettered access to the Associated Press wire services. After he’d reviewed the fragmentary election data coming into the newsroom, Rice surmised that New York was going to be a squeaker. The “drift,” as he put it, favored Cleveland, but only by a slender margin, perhaps 2,000 votes in total out of more than 1,000,000 votes cast. That was all. Everyone back at the Executive Mansion had assumed that the state would give Cleveland a large majority. The numbers startled Rice. He jotted them down and ordered a special messenger to deliver his handwritten analysis directly to Lamont.

  Up in Maine, Blaine was spending election night at his mansion in Augusta, where Western Union had strung a special wire into the family library. As Blaine looked at the numbers coming in, even with twenty-five years of experience in national politics, he couldn’t tell which way the night would go. Outside, a storm was rolling in. A vast front, roaring its way east, was making this a soaking-wet Election Day from Chicago to New England. Rain was usually a bad omen for Republicans; it was asking a lot for traditionally Republican farmers to toil their way into town in a storm over muddy country roads to cast their ballots. Blaine, stressed out, had had enough and said, “I’m going to bed,” to his private secretary. “Don’t disturb me unless something decisive comes in.”

  A remarkably similar scene was playing out in Albany. Around midnight, Cleveland stretched, saying, “If you stay up much longer, you will be counting me out.” Then he announced that he was going to bed and advised everyone to do the same. They watched the candidate retire for the night. The moment he was gone, the wily Apgar and Lamont leapt into action. Now they were free to play some hardball politics. Something was definitely up. Returns from the Republican counties seemed “suspiciously slow,” and the two men suspected that the tabulations were being withheld until GOP leaders could determine to what extent the ballot boxes had to be stuffed to make up the difference. Apgar and Lamont divvied up the list of every Democratic Party county leader in the state and sent telegrams to all of them:

  “The only hope of our opponents is a fraudulent count in the county districts. Call to your assistance today vigilant and courageous friends, and see that every vote is honestly counted. Telegraph me at once your estimate.”

  To this telegram they affixed Daniel Manning’s name, for added weight. Across the state, party leaders were ordered to head to their respective county clerk’s office and remain there until the votes were tabulated and certified. No one wanted a replay of the election theft of 1876.

  The morning after the election, Americans were bewildered; the Democratic newspapers projected Cleveland as the next president while the Republican papers assured their readers that Blaine had emerged triumphant. No one knew for certain. Unofficially, in New York State, Blaine was ahead by just 988 votes, with thirteen election districts yet to report. Outside Democratic Party headquarters at the Hoffman House and GOP headquarters at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, vast partisan crowds gathered as the official count trickled in. Two bellwether states, New Jersey and Indiana, went for Cleveland. So had Connecticut—which cut into Blaine’s lock on New England. California was up in the air. Of course the entire Deep South had voted for Cleveland.

  Outside the Hoffman House, the shout went up, “Give us New York!” Everyone was waiting for the results from the Empire State; without his home state, Cleveland was done for. The propaganda machines went into overdrive, and accusations flew on both sides. The Western Union Telegraph Company, which was owned by the Republican robber baron Jay Gould, issued a communiqué, claiming that Blaine had taken New York by a plurality of 11,000 votes, but most people assumed it was just dust being thrown in the electorate’s eyes. In retaliation, an angry mob marched to Gould’s mansion on 5th Avenue, chanting, “We’ll hang Jay Gould to a sour apple tree.” Bulletins posted at the nation’s leading Republican newspaper, the New York Tribune, proclaiming Blaine victories in Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee were laughed off as “simply idiotic, ” and a throng of outraged Cleveland supporters stormed the Tribune building on Nassau Street. Had a quick-thinking janitor not slammed the iron doors shut just in time, the Tribune would have been taken over before reinforcements from the city hall police precinct got there and dispersed the horde.

  “I believe I have been elected president,” Cleveland informed the mayor of Troy, New York. “And nothing but the greatest fraud can keep me out of it, and that we will not permit.” Dan Manning even hinted at inaugurating Cleveland by force of arms if necessary.

  Writing to his father from his desk at the judge advocate’s office on Broadw
ay, Horatio King said the anxiety of the people “equaled anything I ever felt in the war.”

  “Cleveland is elected,” King declared, and any attempt to deny him the office “will be met by force. The people here are greatly excited, and it will take but a spark to create a riot.”

  On the Friday following Election Day, Cleveland finally took the official lead in New York. A recount for the entire state was ordered. When Cleveland learned that he had been defeated in Erie County—that the voters of his hometown, who knew him best, had gone for Blaine by a plurality of 1,490 votes—it was a bitter pill. Even the voters in his own ward had turned on him. Cleveland had George Ball to thank for that.

  Downstate, it was another story. In Manhattan, the Board of Aldermen met as board of canvassers. The air was so thick with tobacco smoke, it seemed to envelop everyone in a toxic brown haze. Democratic ward heelers and the rank and file sat on one side, Republicans on the other. Everyone watched as the sergeant at arms carried in armfuls of immense manila envelopes stuffed with the original election-night ballots. To the surprise of many who had feared Tammany Hall mischief, only a few were found to be defective. It was a rout for Cleveland—he took Manhattan by 43,000 votes.

  When the recount was finally certified, Cleveland had won the national popular vote by just 25,000 out of 10,000,000 cast. He had taken New York State by a scant 1,246 votes. A turnover of just over 600 votes would have made Blaine the president. As it was, New York went to Cleveland, giving him a total of 219 votes in the Electoral College, versus Blaine’s 182. One observer estimated that Reverend Burchard’s “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” crack had cost Blaine 50,000 votes in New York alone. Others put the figure at 30,000. In any event, it turned the tide in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A shower of insults came down on Burchard, and no one held him in more contempt than the man whose presidential ambitions he had unintentionally dashed. “An ass in the shape of a preacher” had cost him the election, said Blaine. Overnight, Burchard became a pariah. On Broadway, actors tossed his name into their routines for an “easy laugh”; his own congregation abandoned him, and church elders forced him into early retirement. To his dying day, in 1891, Burchard maintained that “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion” should never have been regarded as more than a clever turn of phrase; he just liked its alliteration. But he came to be indelibly marked as the man who “opened his mouth and swallowed a presidency.”

  As for Maria Halpin, joyous Democrats took to the streets, chanting this memorable couplet:

  Hurray for Maria, hurrah for the kid!

  We voted for Grover, and damned glad we did!

  Another little verse also swept the country, a spiteful, in-yourface rhyme that turned on its head that famous Judge cartoon caption from the early days of the campaign:

  Ma, Ma, where’s your pa?

  Gone to the White House, Ha Ha, Ha!

  The Southern states celebrated. In Richmond, the old capital of the Confederacy, crowds sang hymns. In Atlanta, five thousand people poured into the state legislative building and cheered the rebirth of the Democratic Party. But Southern blacks expressed real anxiety, and some of them even fear, that slavery would be restored.

  In Albany, Cleveland could finally relax. He was the president-elect. It was official, and Blaine finally conceded defeat. “I am glad they yield peaceably,” Cleveland remarked. “If they had not, I should have felt it my duty to take my seat anyhow.”

  But the bitterness of the Halpin scandal and its chief architect George Ball were still in his thoughts even in these days of triumph.

  “It’s quite amusing to see how profuse the professions are of some who stood aloof when most needed,” he wrote his truest friend, Wilson Bissell. “I intend to cultivate the Christian virtue of charity toward all men except the dirty class that defiled themselves with filthy scandal and Ballism. I don’t believe God will ever forgive them, and I am determined not to do so.”

  Cleveland also aimed his wrath at the Evening Telegraph and asked Bissell, “Is there any chance of having a decent and ably conducted Democratic paper in Buffalo?”—overlooking the fact that he already had the Courier and the Evening News in his corner. Ten days later, the issue still nagged him. “How much would it cost to start an evening Democratic paper in Buffalo? Something ought to be done, but I suppose the expense will stand in the way.” Apparently, he wanted to hit the Evening Telegraph where it would hurt most, in the bottom line, by starting up a competitive afternoon publication. At the forefront of his concern was what future grief the Evening Telegraph might be intending. The matter was of such great consequence to Cleveland, he was actually thinking about making a clandestine trip to Buffalo so that he and Bissell could discuss it in person.

  In the meantime, Cleveland had to adjust to life as the president-elect. He found the social demands on his time grating. He woke up one morning to the irritating sight of a Buffalo socialite who had invited herself to breakfast. She was there to insist that Cleveland have dinner with her family before he left for Washington. “Did you ever see such work?” Cleveland asked Bissell. One night in late November, he arrived home to find that a grateful citizen had sent him a sweet-tempered black Newfoundland dog. Cleveland sent the hound back by express rail at his own expense, saying he was “averse” to accepting gifts from admirers. Cleveland saw the next four years as a “dreadful self-inflicted penance for the good of my country.”

  “I can see no pleasure in it and no satisfaction . . . ”

  He couldn’t get Buffalo out of his head. It wasn’t just George Ball. He took the fact that the city had turned on him in the presidential election as a personal betrayal.

  “I am overwhelmed with all kinds of things and perplexed more than I can tell you, but nothing is so annoying to me as my thoughts connected with Buffalo.

  “I feel this moment I would never go there again if I could avoid it,” he confessed to Bissell. “Elected president of the United States, I feel I have no home at my home.” He had to shut down his Buffalo bachelor apartment, but he so dreaded going back, he wondered whether he could conduct his business in one day and leave before anyone knew he was there. They were “scum”—this “dirty and contemptible portion of the Buffalo population.”

  “I wish you’d try to put yourself in my place and imagine how all this thing seems to me.”

  It was a bitterly cold and lonely Christmas Day for the president-elect. The Folsom women had gone, leaving him without companionship except that of his sisters’.

  “I wish you a very ‘Merry Christmas’ from the bottom of my heart,” Cleveland wrote Bissell. He had apparently sent Bissell a wool sweater for Christmas several days before—a gift that Cleveland said could not possibly match what Bissell meant to him. “If I had the world, I’d give you half of it at least.”

  The two men again exchanged correspondence on New Year’s Eve. Bissell’s letter arrived first. Cleveland retreated to his den to write a reply.

  It was time for Cleveland to set about the task of selecting a cabinet and reading up on the great policy issues of the day. He was determined to take Dan Lamont with him to the nation’s capital. That other Dan—Daniel Manning—would be rewarded for his loyalty with his appointment as secretary of the treasury. Cleveland had another critical choice to make. He would be the second president in American history, after James Buchanan, to enter the White House a bachelor. But even a bachelor required a first lady.

  At Wells College, Frances Folsom was giddy with excitement. She had received a special invitation to attend the inauguration of Grover Cleveland, and she was determined, come March, to be at the ceremony—even if it meant missing exams.

  In Buffalo, George Ball could not let go. The election had left his reputation in tatters. In the not-too-distant future, he would seek his vengeance.

  In New Rochelle, Maria Halpin passed into history, her name forever soiled. Like George Ball, she was not yet through with Grover Cleveland.

  15

  ROSE
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br />   PRESIDENT-ELECT CLEVELAND CONSIDERED naming his even-tempered married sister Mary Hoyt his First Lady, but in the end, he decided that his youngest sister, Rose, would be more suitable.

  Rose Elizabeth Cleveland lived in Holland Patent, nestled in the foothills of Oneida County, about a dozen miles from the city of Utica. It was a charming but isolated hamlet, populated by just five hundred people. Holland Patent’s winters were harsh, with January temperatures that rarely rose above eighteen degrees and Nor’easters that could bury the place in snow. Forty years after Samuel Morse had revolutionized American communications with his immortal message, “What Hath God Wrought,” in 1884, Holland Patent still had no telegraphic connection with the outside world.

  Rose was the mistress of the Cleveland homestead and its sole inhabitant. The house was filled with carefully placed family heirlooms: her father’s armchair in the library, her mother’s easy chair in the bedroom, and in the dining room a great mahogany sideboard dating back to the Cleveland clan’s early days in America. A special treasure was the piano her mother Ann Cleveland had once played, and all the parlor furnishings that had been her mother’s were now Rose’s. A visitor would have been hard-pressed to find any evidence of feminine interests or endeavors in Rose’s home—no sewing basket or cookery manuals—but there were plenty of books and literary magazines.

  Rose was a creature of rigid habit. She took breakfast at eight and by nine was in her library where she spent the morning reading literature or history; her specialty was the Middle Ages. In the afternoons, even when the weather was harsh, the solitary figure of Rose Cleveland could be seen climbing the surrounding hills, crossing the meadows, or disappearing into the woods, defiant of wind and rain.

  The townspeople had known Rose since she was a precocious seven-year-old, the youngest child in the Cleveland family of nine. She had been educated at the Houghton Seminary, taught history and English at a girls’ school in Pennsylvania, and returned to Holland Patent to take care of her ailing mother in Ann Cleveland’s final years. She remained there after Ann’s death in 1882 and built for herself a tranquil if solitary life, but for attending the church where her late father had once served as pastor and teaching the girls’ Sunday school Bible class.