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

by Charles Lachman

  As Abraham and Mary Lincoln shook hands with hundreds of local residents later that evening, Lincoln seemed grave and “sad in the eye,” weighed down by the Southern rebellion. One elderly gentleman who was presented to the President-elect was heard to say in a trembling voice: “You must save the Union. May God help you do it.” The next day, in a gesture of national unity, former president Millard Fillmore escorted the Lincolns to Sunday services at the Unitarian church where he worshipped. Fillmore, who was known for sympathizing with the “just rights of the South,” was showing the citizens of his state that in this time of national crisis he stood with the Union.

  On April 13, 1861, Fort Sumter came under fire by rebel forces, triggering the Civil War. In Buffalo, a huge crowd gathered outside the Metropolitan Theatre. That day Democrats and Republicans spoke with one voice. Millard Fillmore rose and said the country faced an emergency in which no man, however low in rank, had a right to stand neutral.

  “Civil War has been inaugurated, and we must meet it. Our government calls for aid, and we must give it.”

  By April 18, hundreds of Buffalo’s men had come forward to sign up for two years of military duty. Fillmore was elected captain of a company of volunteers. On May 11, the entire city, with cheers and tears, turned out to bid the regiment Godspeed as they marched off to war.

  The four Cleveland boys took different paths. In New York City, Grover’s brother Lewis Frederick Cleveland, who was known as Fred, heard the call to arms and fought for two honorable years, mustering out a first lieutenant. Cecil Cleveland, living in Indiana when war broke out, served with Generals Fremont and Grant in the Western Theater, and rose to the rank of second lieutenant. William Cleveland, now an ordained Presbyterian minister in Southampton, Long Island, had just gotten married and made the choice that in his situation, family came before country. To complicate matters, William’s wife was from Georgia, and he was “lukewarm” to the notion of doing battle against the South. Grover Cleveland also made up his mind to sit this one out.

  Grover would later try to explain himself, saying his priority was supporting his widowed mother and sisters, who were now solely dependent on him for financial assistance. Of his two eldest sisters, Anna Cleveland Hastings was a missionary in faraway Ceylon, and Mary Cleveland Hoyt was raising a family. But Susan was eighteen and entering college, and Grover had promised to pay her tuition; Rose, the baby of the family, was fifteen and living with their mother in Holland Patent, but she was a bright student and also aspired to attend college. It was a daunting financial burden for a young man like Grover, who was just starting out. That, at least, was the story Grover later put out for public consumption. Apologists for Grover Cleveland added assertions that Mrs. Cleveland was “filled with anxiety for the fate of her two boys” who had gone to war, and that Grover remained his mother’s “greatest earthly comfort” in those troubled times. It was also said that the four Cleveland brothers drew straws from the family Bible to determine by lot who would stay home and who would go to war—but even Grover Cleveland said that was a myth.

  The war dragged on, and the Union Army faced hard fighting. In Buffalo, a steady line of soldiers strode out of Fort Porter behind drum and bugle and marched down Delaware Street to the railroad depot on their way to the front lines. News of an important battle down South sent civilians surging to the offices of the Buffalo Daily Courier, the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, and the other newspapers where casualty lists were posted. Hundreds of families in Western New York were in grief over the loss of loved ones. As casualties mounted, enthusiasm for enlisting waned, which was only natural. Both sides were suffering appalling losses. Union and Confederate killed or wounded at the Battle of Shiloh came to 23,000 in just two days of fighting. Gettysburg was even worse—50,000 men killed, wounded, or captured.

  Facing a profound shortage of volunteers, in 1863, Congress passed the first conscription act in American history. It made all able-bodied men between eighteen and thirty-five (forty-five if unmarried) eligible for the draft. A furor arose due to a provision in the act that permitted draftees to secure exemption from national service if they paid a commutation fee of $300. Or they could arrange for a substitute to take their place. It was now a rich man’s war and the poor man’s fight. At least that was the perception.

  Grover followed the grim news from his desk at Rogers, Bowen & Rogers. With his legal career finally taking off, he ran for ward supervisor from Buffalo’s second ward and was elected by 509 votes. When Buffalo elected a Democrat as district attorney, Grover was offered the post of assistant DA; but he had a lot to think through before he could accept the job. His salary at the district attorney’s office would be $500 a year—half the salary he was pulling in at the law firm. Dennis Bowen did not want to lose Grover, but he was also urging his young associate to see the big picture and take the prosecutor’s position. One other factor moved Grover to finally say yes. The new DA was Cyrenius C. Torrance, already an old man when he won the election by 1,700 votes. The major focus of his life was operating a mill he owned in a village outside Buffalo, so in all likelihood, he would be an absentee DA. Grover would pretty much have a free hand in running the office. He was sworn in as assistant district attorney on New Year’s Day 1863.

  Seven months later, in July 1863, the Civil War draft began. The names of eligible recruits were written on small pieces of paper and then stuffed inside a drum-shaped box that was turned on an axle. The local enlistment board drew the names at the provost marshal’s office. These came from the so-called first class of eligibility—unmarried men from twenty to forty-five years of age, and married men from twenty to thirty-five. Erie County’s quota came to about 2,000 men. Just his luck, Grover Cleveland’s name was pulled on the first day.

  Buffalo was a tinderbox. Just a week earlier, riots had erupted on the docks between Irish laborers and black longshoremen. One antiwar politician was accused of inciting the rabble to drive out every Negro and “black Republican.” The city braced for an outbreak of violence.

  When Fred Cleveland heard that his brother Grover had been drafted, he sent word offering to take his place. But Fred, who had mustered out of the army two months earlier, had “done enough,” Grover decided. Besides, Grover said, “I have my man.”

  George Beniski was thirty-two years old when he met Grover Cleveland for the first time. Beniski was a sailor on the tugboat Acme, which carried cargo of flour, pork, lard, and other goods from Buffalo to Detroit, across Lake Erie. A Great Lakes sea captain, George Reinhart, had heard that Grover was looking for a conscript to take his place in the Union Army. Reinhart knew it was a knotty problem and suggested George Beniski. On August 20, 1863, six weeks after Grover was drafted, Reinhart took Beniski to see Grover in his grimy little prosecutor’s office at the Erie County courthouse. When Grover was introduced to Beniski, he must have thought, here was the perfect man. The Polish-born Beniski had immigrated to the United States in 1851, spoke English with a thick accent, and stood just under five foot four. He had a round face, big ears, a low forehead, and elaborate tattoos on his hands. Beniski was illiterate and had no family. He could not even spell his name—he wrote the letter X as his mark.

  Cleveland got right down to business. He offered to hire Beniski for $150 to serve as his substitute in the war. Beniski definitely got the impression that Grover had borrowed the money from Reinhart, and the sailor may have been illiterate, but he knew how to drive a bargain. “I knew that the bounty then was three hundred dollars,” Beniski later recalled. So he asked Grover for better terms. “I told him if he would . . . help me out if I came out alive, I would go for him. This he agreed to.” Beniski also asked Grover to “get an office or something for Captain Reinhart” as a sort of finder’s fee.

  The next thing Beniski knew, the three of them shook hands on it and were out the door, headed straight for a swearing-in ceremony. Perhaps Grover did not want to risk Beniski changing his mind if he had time to think things over. After Beniski took th
e oath of allegiance, Grover gave him the $150. Then it was off to Fort Porter, a military encampment overlooking the Niagara River; but first Grover suggested they stop for a beer. That was fine with Beniski. When Grover paid for the drinks, he showed Beniski what was in his wallet.

  “There, George, do you see how little you’ve left me?”

  That was true, Beniski thought, but at least this Grover Cleveland got to stay home while he went to war in his stead. He kept these sentiments to himself.

  Fort Porter was a scene of frenetic activity, with raw recruits on the parade grounds drilling and training and adjusting to army discipline. Beniski went before a three-man enlistment board, which certified that he was able-bodied and sober. The conscript was presented with a Substitute Volunteer Enlistment form, on which he committed to three years’ military service as a proxy for Grover Cleveland. He signed his mark, X.

  Cleveland always held to the belief that Beniski was entirely aware of what he was getting into, and he never expressed regret for dodging the draft. Almost twenty-five years later, Cleveland was still arguing that Beniski had made out well. After all, plenty of substitutes were being hired at “even less” than the $150 he had paid out. Cleveland also insisted that he had never struck a side deal with Beniski promising the man a bonus should he survive the war.

  “The terms . . . were distinctly repeated by me and perfectly understood. There was no hint or suggestion of anything more being paid or of any additional obligation on my part.”

  Cleveland put forward a curious defense. “Being then the assistant district attorney of Erie County, I had abundant opportunity to secure without expense a substitute from discharged convicts and from friendless persons accused of crime if I had wished to do so.” Certainly, such a deed would have been a gross ethical, and perhaps criminal, violation, even by slipshod 19th-century standards. But Grover Cleveland never saw it that way. And neither have his biographers, who sought to excuse the hiring of Beniski as an act of altruism, namely Cleveland’s commitment to his mother and sisters. Allan Nevins, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1933 for his biography of Grover Cleveland, spun Cleveland’s war record from the most benevolent perspective imaginable. As for the Polish immigrant, Nevins wrote that Beniski had an “uneventful” history in the war.

  “He served briefly . . . injured his back, was then detailed to orderly duty in the military hospitals of Washington, and was never in any important battle as a combatant.” In other words, there was not much more to say about the hapless George Beniski.

  The truth was, George Beniski’s Civil War experience ruined him.

  Beniski served as a private in F Company, 76th New York Regiment. Less than a week after he enlisted, he was shipped out by rail and found himself in Virginia, on the shores of the Rappahannock River, the natural barrier that divided Union and Confederate forces. Eight months earlier, the Rappahannock had been the scene of the ferocious Battle of Fredericksburg, a big victory for the South.

  Beniski was ordered to unload a wagon filled with fresh supplies for the troops. What happened next was one of those stupid little accidents that can happen in war. It may even have seemed unimportant at the time, but it changed a man’s life in a flash. As Beniski was lifting a carton of provisions, he apparently made too abrupt a motion to the left and felt something pull. He knew immediately that it was a serious injury. Writhing in agony, he had to be lifted into an ambulance and transported to a military hospital in Washington, where he remained for two weeks. Then he was transferred to DeCamp General Hospital, on David’s Island off the coast of New Rochelle, New York. It was a vast hospital facility set on seventy-eight acres. Prisoners of war were also treated there, wounded Southern fighting men who made a pathetic picture, landing at David’s Island barefoot and in rags, looking “frightfully filthy,” and infected with lice.

  Beniski’s medical records show that he had apparently suffered a testicular torsion; his spermatic cord had twisted around his left testicle. Doctors now understand that a testicular torsion is an acute medical emergency that must be treated within hours, not weeks. Beniski was almost certainly liquored up before surgery, probably lasting no more than thirty minutes, to cut out his testicle. Primitive as it was, the procedure probably saved his life from the onset of gangrene, and Beniski was declared “unfit for duty.” For him, after just ten days of military service, the war was over. He was put on medical furlough and permitted to go home to recuperate.

  Beniski returned to Buffalo—not the conquering hero, but a lonely convalescing soldier weighed down with worry about his future. Somehow, Grover Cleveland heard about the injury suffered by his substitute in war and stopped by to see how Beniski was doing. Certainly Beniski appreciated the gesture. At this point, no one really knew how much damage had been done to Beniski’s body, or whether the operation had rendered him sterile. He stayed in Buffalo for eight days then returned to David’s Island. From there, he was sent to Fort Wood on Bedloe’s Island in New York City Harbor, then back to Washington . An alarming word started making its way into Beniski’s medical records: invalid.

  It is here that Beniski disappears from the annals of Grover Cleveland’s life story. But he would resurface many years later, with harsh consequences to Cleveland’s good name and place in history.

  2

  THE BACHELOR

  MARIA HOVENDEN WAS a talented dressmaker with bright blue eyes, bow-shaped Cupid lips, a thin waist, and a full womanly figure. Statuesque, she stood just under five foot eight and carried herself with a proud and regal countenance. She lived with her family in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, which was then an independent city on the other side of the East River from Manhattan.

  Her father, Robert Hovenden, was an officer in the Brooklyn police department. Sometimes he would work sixteen-hour shifts, and one night, on routine patrol at two in the morning, he saw someone trying to break into a dry-goods store at Graham Avenue and North Second Street. Hovenden gave chase, but the out-of-shape cop was no match for the fleet-footed burglar. After two blocks, Hovenden did not have the energy to continue the pursuit. All he could make out was the thief’s coattails vanishing around the corner of Powers Street. It was just as well. In those days, police officers were not authorized to carry personal firearms. The only weapon Hovenden wielded was a twenty-six-inch-long nightstick made of solid oak, which could be used to bring down a perpetrator or to send a signal to other officers on patrol by rapping it against a curbstone.

  Maria Hovenden’s beau was a young man from the neighborhood, Frederick Halpin, whose father, also named Frederick, was a portrait engraver from Worcester, England. The Halpins had immigrated to the United States in 1842, when Frederick Junior was seven, and had settled in Brooklyn. The elder Halpin was regarded as one of the finest engravers in America. He specialized in steel plate etchings, which even in the 1850s was considered a dying craft. His engraving of the great scholar Noah Webster remains an iconic image to this day. Halpin once presented Fletcher Harper, a founder of the Harper & Brothers publishing empire, with an engraving that he had stippled for a book Harper & Brothers was publishing. Harper, who supervised all illustrations for the company, was impressed. “It is a very fine piece of work, Mr. Halpin. What is your bill?”

  Halpin hesitated a moment before finally saying, “One hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Is that all?” Fletcher Harper paid the bill before adding, “I wish for your sake it was more.”

  It must have delighted Police Officer Hovenden to see his daughter being squired by the son of such an important English gentleman. But Hovenden was also apprehensive. For one thing, Frederick Halpin Jr. appeared to have inherited none of his father’s aptitude with the graver. Frederick was learning to be a bookbinder, which was a fine and respectable craft, but he always seemed to be ailing, with a chronic cough and a pallid hue to his skin. In general, he was in “poor health,” and it made Hovenden wonder whether this was the right match for his daughter.

  The dark clo
uds of war were passing. The South had surrendered, slavery was abolished, and the Union had been preserved, but at a staggering cost—620,000 dead. That is more than the combined number of American casualties in the two world wars that were to come in the 20th century. Confederate soldiers staggered back to their homes, and the 1-million-warrior-strong Grand Army of the Republic that had saved the Union was disbanded. The nation now faced an uncertain peace.

  After these four lost years of blood-soaked conflict, family life resumed. Maria Hovenden married her beau from Brooklyn, and in quick order, first came a son, Freddie, born in 1863; and two years later, a daughter, Ada.

  The Halpins were settling in and raising their children when Freddie, at age four, became seriously ill. A photo taken of Freddie in 1867 shows the boy in distress. In that era it was a ritual for a child who was facing death to be dressed for a photo in his or her Sunday best so that, should the worst happen, the little one’s memory would be preserved. In Freddie’s photograph, he is in misery—so fragile and bent it looks as though he could slip off the chair. He’s wearing knickers fluffed up at the knees, and significantly, his high-button shoelaces hang untied. According to Halpin family lore, Maria could not tie them because Freddie’s feet were so swollen, which may suggest that he was suffering from acute rheumatic fever, which can sometimes lead to kidney damage and edema in the legs. On the back of the photo is written, “Sick and expected to die.” By some miracle, Freddie pulled through, and Maria Halpin was able to breathe again.

  As Maria was raising her family, three hundred miles away in Buffalo, Grover Cleveland was enjoying the freedom of confirmed bachelorhood.

  As he had predicted, his appointment as Erie County assistant district attorney to the elderly and infirm Cyrenius C. Torrance had left him de facto in charge of the office. For the three years that Cleveland stayed on as prosecutor, his workload was intense. Cleveland personally tried half the criminal cases that went to trial in Erie County. It was common to find Cleveland toiling at his desk in the county courthouse until three o’clock in the morning, preparing for trial, and then see him come in at 8:00 a.m., ready to argue the case before a jury. In 1865, the ineffectual Torrance was forced into retirement by party power brokers, and Cleveland was awarded the nomination for district attorney.