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

by Charles Lachman

  At age twenty-eight, Cleveland was still living at the Southern Hotel, though he was now sharing a room with another gifted young lawyer, Lyman K. Bass. They were the same age, and like Grover Cleveland, Bass came from humble roots; his father owned a hardware store in Buffalo. Politically, however, they played in different arenas. A few days after Cleveland informed his roommate that he was running for district attorney as a Democrat, Bass came home with some news of his own.

  “Well, Cleve, I have been offered the nomination for district attorney against you.”

  “Well,” responded Cleveland, “why don’t you take it?” And Bass did, running on the Republican ticket.

  The roommates enjoyed each other’s company and remained steadfast friends, getting together on many occasions to hoist a few beers even during the heat of the campaign. At one of these sit-downs, Cleveland and Bass made a gentlemen’s agreement to restrict their consumption of beer to just four glasses a night from then to Election Day in November. One summer evening, after yet another round of drinks, the two men, behaving more like college frat brothers than candidates for district attorney, reached the conclusion that four beers was far too meager a ration. Thereafter, they settled on a new agreement that permitted them to “anticipate” (borrow from, really) consumption of the beer they’d allotted for every sitting to come for the duration of the campaign. Not too many boozy days passed before Bass said, “Grover! Do you realize we have by now ‘anticipated’ the whole campaign?”

  The next night, the issue was settled: Cleveland and Bass met for drinks, and each ordered a glass—but the “glass” was a capacious German stein. So four glasses of beer was fine, as long as each glass was the size of a tankard, which in the 19th century was about forty eight ounces. In this manner, they could consume well over a gallon of beer a night.

  Bass was a brilliant orator and debater, but Cleveland, after three years as a prosecutor, was the better-known candidate. Even so, this was 1865, and with the North rejoicing in victory, Cleveland’s political timing was all off. Running as a Democrat, he found himself on the wrong side of history and went down to defeat by 600 votes. Although Cleveland outpolled his roommate in seven of Buffalo’s thirteen wards, Bass’s electoral strength lay in the towns outside Buffalo’s city limits. There were no hard feelings; Cleveland offered his congratulations to Bass and cleared out his desk at the district attorney’s office. Part of him was probably relieved; now he could go about the business of building a lucrative law practice. He opened a firm in partnership with a politically connected lawyer, Isaac K. Vanderpoel, who had been state treasurer of New York from 1858 to 1859.

  With all that drinking, Cleveland’s weight had ballooned, and he grew a large paunch. Folks who knew him back when remarked on how “husky” he had grown, and his friends took to calling him “Big Steve”—a throwback to his birth name, Stephen Grover Cleveland. Most of his socializing took place at German beer halls, and it was said that he also knew the “inside of dozens of saloons.” A perfect evening for Cleveland was playing poker or pinochle or the popular card game euchre with the boys. Everything about saloons he found irresistible: the lusty male camaraderie, the thick fog of cigar smoke, and the crunch of sawdust under his boot. His memory held a library of jovial drinking songs. A favorite was, “There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea.”

  In this atmosphere of swaggering spirits and alcohol, brawls were inevitable. After one genial evening at a saloon, Cleveland was heading home when he got into an argument over Democratic Party politics with one of his drinking companions, Mike Falvey. When Falvey called Cleveland a liar, the future president squared off against the Irishman. Falvey raised his fists, but Cleveland landed the first punch. Then they went at it hammer and tongs. The fight spilled down Seneca Street, with Cleveland and Falvey raining blows on each other, and they did not call it quits until they reached Swan Street. At that point, the breathless brawlers had had enough. They dusted off their hats, shook hands, and everyone adjoined to the nearest saloon, Gillick’s, whereupon the armistice was sealed with drinks to everybody’s health.

  Cleveland usually took his meals at local saloons. A scruffy place called the Shades, at Main and Swan, was a favorite watering hole. It had no bar, no chairs, and not even a bartender. You stood as you ate and drew your own liquor. There were clean glasses on one table and linen and silverware on another, and the place was run on the honor code. You left money in a pot on a counter in the center of the tavern and made your own change. The absentee bar owner claimed that not one of his patrons had ever cheated him. Another bar, Boas’s, had better accommodations, but not by much; it had five chairs, but the proprietor discouraged his customers from sitting on them.

  “Boas used to say he preferred to have his patrons take one drink and then take a walk,” said John C. Level, who owned a livery stable that served as a local hub for political gossip.

  There came a time when Cleveland tried to cut back on his drinking and pub crawling, and when he found himself missing the hand-rolled cigars available at his favorite German beer garden, he had the owner send a box of them to his room. Cleveland lit one up. As always, he positioned it on the left side of his mouth—the chewing side. He inhaled deeply, then let the smoke linger in his lungs. But something was strangely bland about the cigar. Nothing seemed different about the tobacco—it still had that premium woodsy aroma, but it just didn’t taste the same. He lit another, and another, and eventually, after he had gone through the entire box, the problem finally dawned on him. Everything about the cigar was the same; it was the ambiance of the beer garden that was missing. Cleveland went back to drinking. There were times, he later had to admit, when he got so wasted he was forced to “lose a day.”

  After the Civil War, when Grover Cleveland was in his late twenties, something of a social revolution began to take hold. It was the dawning of the Age of the Bachelor. Young men were moving to boomtowns like Buffalo and finding solidarity and companionship with other unmarried young men. In some cities, bachelors constituted as much as 50 percent of the male population between twenty-five and thirty-five years old. At that time, toward the end of the 1860s, the trend was a shocking departure from the social order, and bachelors like Grover Cleveland came to be regarded as outcasts. Far from being seen as the male counterpart of the lonely spinster, an object of pity, almost every portrayal of bachelors in popular culture was negative. They were pariahs, indifferent to the bonds of holy matrimony, dangerous, and possibly even degenerate.

  During this period of Cleveland’s life, there is no record of his having pursued women or ever having a serious relationship. One must reach back to Valentine’s Day 1856, when he was nineteen, for evidence of a budding romance. On that day, in the morning mail, he received a charming little card of embossed lace from a lady admirer. It was apparently unexpected, but common courtesy required Cleveland to reciprocate, so he had to scramble to send her his valentine before the end of the day. It was a hectic day for him because he had sent a flirty little verse to another young lady that began, “How doth the little busy B,” but at least he was certain that one of his two cards would “hit the mark.” Yet, whatever interest he might have had in women and the rituals of courtship, it seemed to have faded as time went on. The physical presence of women seemed to make him uneasy, possibly because he had little tolerance for small talk and was lacking in the social graces. There was also misogyny in his way of thinking, as is later revealed. As to the inevitable question of Cleveland’s sexuality, there is no evidence that he was a suppressed homosexual. There is, nevertheless, little doubt that he preferred the company of men.

  Every year, the premier society ball of the season was held at the Genesee Hotel for the Charity Organization Society of Buffalo. Against his better judgment, Cleveland allowed his friends to twist his arm to attend; it may well have marked the “end as well as the beginning” of his high-society social life.

  The night of the ball, Cleveland seemed to be in fine spirits. Many
of the eligible young bachelors in attendance had taken dance lessons at the Cobleigh Dancing Academy in the polka and other popular formal dances, like the lancer. If you didn’t know the moves, the best advice was to steer clear of the floor.

  Cleveland, who had never had a dance lesson in his life, found his friend the lawyer George Sicard and said jovially, “Let’s dance the step-over.”

  “Who’ll be your pard?” Sicard asked uncertainly.

  Proceeding with confidence, Cleveland stepped forward and found a willing young lady to be his dancing partner. Apparently, his moves were pitiful. A leading Buffalo socialite with a gift for mockery even wrote a verse about the spectacle of observing Grover Cleveland on the dance floor. It was the last time he attended the ball.

  At least Cleveland could still enjoy the easy congeniality of his male friends. He found true contentment with his band of bachelor brothers.

  Observing all this with a disapproving eye was his Aunt Margaret, Uncle Lewis’s wife. Her nephew had stopped attending church and was associating himself with some very “queer people,” she remarked. (At that time, queer meant “odd,” not “homosexual,” just as gay would have meant “carefree.”) Margaret found everything about her nephew’s personal life offensive. From her home in Holland Patent, Ann Cleveland was distressed to hear these reports of her son, the incorrigible bachelor. She herself sometimes found his personality inflexible, and she also noted with “pain” that of all her nine children, Grover alone was capable of being rude.

  Cleveland and his law partner, Vanderpoel, rented out space at the old post office at Seneca and Washington streets and hung up their shingle. John C. Level, the livery owner, gave the firm its first $100 retainer.

  “They needed it too,” Level said. Level was one of those local political players who were considered a “good man to know.” He was in and out politics, at various times serving as chief of detectives, United States marshal, and Overseer of the Poor. But mostly he ran the livery stable.

  Those early days were a struggle. Cleveland’s former boss, Dennis Bowen, tried to throw a little business his way and arranged for him to handle the estate sale of a house owned by a man suffering from a mental disorder—a “lunatic” in Cleveland’s estimation. The work netted Cleveland a $15 referee’s fee, but when the payment was late, Cleveland had to write Bowen to expedite it, saying, “I am a trifle hard up today.”

  He detested taking on criminal cases. It was said that he would never accept a retainer from a client he knew to be guilty—and he absolutely refused to defend murderers. Cleveland preferred civil litigation and negotiating settlements. A lawsuit was like a gun, he once said—a dangerous instrument that could go either way without “lock, stock or barrel.” When a wealthy grain dealer sued the editor of the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser newspaper for libel, Cleveland took the case and won. He had an impressive aptitude for crystallizing legal issues and articulating the law in a common-sense style that jurors found genuine and believable. It was said that he could work through the night, take a bath at dawn, wake himself up with a pot of hot coffee, and make a first-rate presentation in court.

  Cleveland was still sending his mother and sisters whatever spare change he could when he finally scrounged up the $25 to repay Ingham Townsend, his kindly benefactor from Oneida County who had loaned him funds when he was a teenager to set out for the west. It may have taken twelve years, but it was a matter a pride for Cleveland to take care of the debt, with interest. He wrote Townsend a letter.

  My Dear Mr. Townsend:

  I am now in a condition to pay my note which you hold given for money borrowed some years ago. I suppose I might have paid it long before. But I never thought you were in need of it, and I had other purposes for my money.... The loan you made me was my start in life, and I shall always preserve the note as an interesting reminder of your kindness.

  Yours respectfully,

  Grover Cleveland

  Cleveland had moved out of the Southern Hotel and was now living in a boardinghouse at 47 Niagara Street. It had once been the mansion of William G. Fargo, cofounder of the great stagecoach and banking concern Wells Fargo & Company. Fargo had built the ornate brick Italianate mansion in 1851, and it was now a boardinghouse, run by a widow, Alison B. Ganson, with the help of her comely daughter Alice. If Cleveland was interested in Alice Ganson, he failed to pursue the young lady, and Alice ended up marrying another boarder. Cleveland tried to make the room his own in small ways; above his bed he hung a framed proverb from Deuteronomy that his mother had given him for comfort: “As thy days are, so shall thy strength be.”

  Mrs. Ganson ran a tight ship. No cooking was permitted in the rooms. Dinner was served at a certain hour in the formal dining room downstairs. All the boarders had to adjust their eating habits to the schedule of the landlady. As a prominent lawyer in town, Cleveland held an honored position at the head of the long common table. To his left sat Edward Hawley, a well-liked insurance salesman and volunteer fireman. After dinner, Cleveland and the other bachelors gathered in the drawing room to smoke cigars—just about every man smoked. There in the wood-paneled parlor they relaxed and engaged in casual conversation about politics or current events. In other words, all the comforts of home without the wife.

  By 1870, when Grover Cleveland was thirty-three, there was talk of him running for Congress, but when Erie County Democrats held their convention in late September, party elders, put off by Cleveland’s identification with saloons and what was called the “livery-stable set,” steered the congressional nomination to a retired railroad executive, David Williams. Cleveland was awarded a consolation prize: the nomination for Erie County sheriff, and he surprised everyone by accepting. Sheriffs were responsible for enforcing the local gaming and liquor laws—vices Cleveland was certainly acquainted with, so in that regard, he was eminently qualified. But his heart did not seem to be in the race, and he ran a feeble campaign. Part of the problem was his opponent, the war hero John Weber. At age nineteen, Weber had enlisted as a private in the Civil War. By war’s end, he had attained the rank of colonel, serving with the Eighty-ninth Colored Infantry. Perhaps deep inside Cleveland considered Weber the more deserving candidate, because he made just five campaign speeches. But Cleveland had the backing of party loyalists and the Buffalo Daily Courier, which called him the “most popular man in the Democratic Party of the county.... so true a gentleman, so generous, modest, and lovable a man, that we have never heard of anybody’s envying him.” Cleveland could not have asked for a heartier endorsement had he paid for a full-page ad himself.

  Electioneering in those days required candidates to solicit votes where men congregated in packs. That meant saloons. Cleveland was at a saloon in the twelfth ward when he declared an open bar, on his tab.

  “Come on up, boys, have a drink with the next sheriff. My name is Cleveland, and I want you all to vote for me.”

  Just as he said this, a gentleman strolled into the saloon. Cleveland saw him and said, “Come on up, little fellow, have a drink with me.”

  The man came over to Cleveland. “Who did you say you were?”

  “I am Grover Cleveland.”

  “I am the other fellow.” It was Cleveland’s opponent, John Weber. The two candidates had never met before.

  Cleveland burst into laughter and said, “Well, let’s have a drink together.”

  The year 1870 was a Democratic year in New York. When the votes were tabulated, Cleveland squeaked past Weber by just 303; but although he won, he came in last among the Democrats running for office in Erie County. Once again, the base of his popular support had come from the German American wards. They had taken to Grover Cleveland as if he were one of their own.

  Cleveland took office on New Year’s Eve 1871. His predecessor had invited all his friends over for a big send-off, and Cleveland took the oath of office in an atmosphere of revelry and high spirits—liquor and cigars for everyone. He had his work cut out for him; Buffalo, it was said, had more saloons
and taverns per head than any other city in the world. It seemed there was a bar on every corner—more than six hundred saloons for a population of less than 150,000. Sailors, canal hands, and roustabouts working the city’s ports roamed the tenderloin district looking for a good time. Brothels operated in the open seven days a week. Buffalo was a “sink of iniquity,” with more “social eyesores” than any other city of its size in America.

  The undersheriff in office when Cleveland took over was William L. G. Smith, a Democratic lawyer who had earned a national reputation as the author of Life at the South, or “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as It Is, a pro-slavery plantation novel published in 1852 as a “refutation” of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book. In Smith’s work, slaves were loyal and content and their masters benign. The villain was an abolitionist from the North who worms his way into the confidence of Tom the black slave and convinces him to escape to Canada. Tom realizes the error of his ways and returns to “good Old Virginia.” Somehow Cleveland was able to look beyond Smith’s politics and see an able, if fussy, administrator who could keep the sheriff ’s office running like an efficient machine. “You could set your watch by the time he arrived and departed from the office,” went one depiction of Smith—“precise in every word and action.” So exacting were his daily routines that it was said Smith would never deviate from the number of steps it took him to get from his house to the office. It was the same every day—“without clipping off an inch.”