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

by Charles Lachman

  Kent also lived in a mansion on Delaware Avenue. Even in 1871, he was old-fashioned in business matters. He wanted to stick with what he knew: bolts, lace, and hose. Notions or knickknacks—the buttons, trims, embroidery, braids, and ornamentation so necessary in accessorizing clothing—were sold as incidental items at a small counter on the first floor. When a shrewd young store manager suggested expanding the line, Kent responded dismissively, “Send them to Barnum’s.” Barnum’s was Flint & Kent’s down-market competitor on Main Street.

  Maria excelled at Flint & Kent. The customers in what was still a frontier town appreciated her big-city sophistication, and she was an intriguing fresh face—“beautiful, virtuous and intelligent.” She had started in the collar-making department, but it was obvious that she was going places.

  “I always felt that I had the confidence and esteem of my employers,” Maria said of Messrs. Flint and Kent.

  Through her work, Maria got to know many of Buffalo’s leading citizens, one of whom was Emma Folsom, the pretty wife of the lawyer Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland’s best friend. Maria’s familiarity with Oscar Folsom would later become an issue in the scandal that marked her history. On this point, Maria was utterly certain: “I never spoke a word to that man in my life. I know his wife because she traded with me in Buffalo.”

  Because Maria worked in the men’s department at Flint & Kent, Grover Cleveland may have first encountered her when she waited on him from behind the counter. Perhaps Emma Folsom, trying to make a match, spoke to him of this eye-catching young widow who spoke fluent French. Grover Cleveland was attracted to the tall and slender saleswoman, and Maria said of him, “He sought my acquaintance and obtained an introduction to me from a person in whom I had every confidence, and he paid me very marked attention.”

  Maria never divulged the identity of the person who made that formal introduction, but she said that Cleveland was “persistent” in his desire to meet her, which was not in his nature. As a widow and congregant of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Maria made the necessary inquiries and determined that her suitor’s character “so far as I then knew, was good, and his intensions I believed were as pure and honorable.”

  Grover Cleveland had one more onerous duty to perform before his term of office as sheriff was over, and that was the public execution of yet another prisoner.

  Jack Gaffney was a hard case. He had coal-black hair and a mustache, very pale skin, and blue eyes. He stood five foot eight and had a well-built and slender physique. Gaffney grew up in the slums of Buffalo and ran with the Break-o’-day Johnnies, a notorious Irish street gang. His criminal record was shocking for its depth of wickedness. For no apparent reason, he had shot a woman in the hip as she sat at her window. He shot a minstrel singer on the street without the slightest provocation. He bashed in the skull of a saloonkeeper with a stone. He grabbed a silk hat off a stranger’s head on Canal Street, for which crime at least the law came down on Gaffney; he was fined $10. As his first wife lay on her deathbed, she told him she was glad to be dying just to be rid of him.

  Justice finally caught up with Gaffney when he turned twenty-seven. It was four in the morning, and he was playing draw cards at Sweeney’s saloon, a dive on Canal Street near the waterfront, in the heart of the “vilest of the vile sections of the city.” He was in a foul mood, down $8, all the money he had, when he pulled out a pistol and shot a sailor named Patrick Fahey in the head. No one mourned for Fahey, who, it was said, was a “loafer, vagrant, thief” and apparently preferred to earn a living in any manner other than honest labor. In any event, Gaffney, while sticking to his story that he had had nothing to do with the murder, said of Fahey: “Dead or alive, he’s a son of a bitch.” The appeals judge really let Gaffney have it when the sentencing was affirmed.

  “John Gaffney, stand up. There is blood on your hands, and there is blood upon your soul, and we do pray you go to the only source by which you can be purged.” His hanging was set for September 27, 1872.

  Gaffney pulled every trick in the swindler’s handbook to delay his day of reckoning. Then, during a jailhouse visit, his brother-in-law said, “Why, Gaffney, you look as if you was crazy, and I believe you are crazy.” It gave Gaffney an idea. He went to sleep, and when he woke up, he complained about hearing “bees in my head.” That morning and for days thereafter, his ravings and profanities startled even the hardened deputies working at the Erie County Jail. No one believed for a minute that Gaffney was really insane, but Sheriff Cleveland, in concurrence with the county judge, appointed a twelve-man jury of inquiry to determine whether he should be certified a lunatic—grounds for a reprieve in New York State. Under Cleveland’s name, a telegram was sent to the governor, John Dix, requesting a stay of execution until the issue of Gaffney’s sanity could be determined. Clearly, Cleveland was doing what he could to sabotage the execution. The sour experience of springing the trap at Patrick Morrissey’s hanging was still fresh in his memory. That and the drowning of his brothers on the Missouri had brought enough death into Cleveland’s life, and he wanted to be spared another hanging.

  Dr. John Gray came in from Utica, where he was superintendent of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, to observe Gaffney in his cell. With him was Dr. Samuel Vanderpoel, chief quarantine surgeon of New York. Dr. Gray conducted a physical examination of the prisoner and noted that everything looked normal, from his tongue to his skin, which showed no evidence of being feverish or flushed. The two physicians studied Gaffney as he ranted on about cockfighting, swore, and paced his cell like a madman.

  “How unlike insanity this is,” Gray remarked to his colleague.

  Vanderpoel had to agree. He came from an old Dutch family in which his grandfather, father, and two uncles were also physicians. Locking eyes with the prisoner, he said, “Gaffney, you’re a miserable bungler.”

  After listening to the expert testimony, the jury of inquiry deliberated for half an hour before ruling that Gaffney was of sound mind. Construction of the gallows in the northeast corner of the jail yard commenced, and once Gaffney realized his fate was sealed, all his symptoms of mental illness disappeared, and he prepared to meet his maker. He engaged in a rational and thoughtful conversation with Cleveland. Then his son and daughter were permitted a final visit.

  “Johnny,” Gaffney told the youngster, “Papa’s going to die. I want you to promise me these things: that you will not drink any spirituous liquors, that you will never play cards, that you will never swear and never break the Sabbath, that you will go to church and Sunday school, that you will not be out nights and keep bad company as Papa has done.”

  Johnny Gaffney listened to his condemned father and replied with all the gravity he could muster, “Papa, I’ll do as you tell me.”

  Gaffney had similar words of counsel for his daughter, and the little girl also promised to always remember what he said.

  Execution day was set for the second Friday in February 1873. By tradition, hangings were always held on Fridays. It just so happened that this year the second Friday fell on Valentine’s Day of all days. Gaffney’s last meal was a breakfast of poached eggs, toast, and coffee. He ate with relish. Fifteen minutes before the clock struck noon, Cleveland, Undersheriff Smith, and two priests escorted the doomed prisoner to the gallows.

  Gaffney wore a black cap and a black gown that covered his body. The noose was already around his neck, and in his left hand he clenched a crucifix. He mounted the scaffolding with a steady step, without flinching. Undersheriff Smith read the death warrant, and Gaffney was asked if he had anything to say before his execution was carried out. He made some rant about how his friends had abandoned him and had stolen his money. He rambled on about the circumstances of the shooting that had led him to the gallows. Then Gaffney said he grieved for his second wife and children.

  “I hope and pray to God that you will believe me and forgive me. I beg your pardon for all the crime I have done, and I forgive all who have injured me.”

  Those were his final w
ords. The black cap was drawn over his eyes, and his legs and arms were pinioned. Then the signal was made to Sheriff Cleveland that all was ready. Cleveland did not hesitate. The next moment, he pressed the lever, and the trapdoor dropped.

  Gaffney’s body twitched. The five-foot drop broke his neck. But somehow, strangely, Gaffney still clutched the crucifix in his left hand. What followed was the realization of Cleveland’s worst fears.

  The sheriff thought he had done everything to ensure Gaffney’s merciful and humane death, but five minutes after the trapdoor had dropped, a physician took his vital signs, and he was still alive; his pulse read 145. At ten minutes, his pulse rate was 69. Finally—twenty-three minutes into the hanging—Gaffney’s heart ceased to beat, and he was pronounced dead.

  Grover Cleveland had never been opposed to the death penalty. And as a hunter and fisherman, it was said that he did not have a squeamish bone in his body. But this execution left him in profound angst. He ordered the seventy witnesses to clear the yard. Then Gaffney’s body was cut down and placed in a rosewood coffin lined with white velvet and merino—the finest and softest wool in existence.

  4

  “WITHOUT MY CONSENT”

  CLEVELAND’S TERM AS sheriff was coming to an end. On his last full day in office, New Year’s Eve 1873, he had a beefsteak dinner at Weber’s restaurant with his political crony, the livery owner John C. Level. The new sheriff was to be sworn in the following day, relieving Cleveland of the burden of a job he’d never wanted. Cleveland was in a cheery mood as he and Level sat down for a celebratory feast.

  Beefsteak dinners on New Year’s Eve were a New York political tradition, and part of the custom was that men ate only with their fingers, caveman-style. Typically, an enormous quantity of food was ordered. For starters, hamburger, lamp chops, and kidneys wrapped in bacon. That was just the appetizer. The entrée consisted of a huge broiled steak, washed down by copious amounts of beer.

  Cleveland, his lips perhaps loosened by alcohol, was unexpectedly open about his tenure as sheriff of Erie County.

  “Grover told me that night that during his three years in office, he had cleaned up $20,000,” Level said. It was a gross undervaluation; others would later put Cleveland’s actual take as sheriff at $60,000, all in legal revenues. For every writ that was executed and summons served in Erie County, payment of a fee to the sheriff was required, and Cleveland took his fair percentage. As sheriff, he had also supervised the sale of foreclosed properties, and evictions; and for every such service he received a commission. It was grubby and squalid work, which was why the shrievalty was traditionally a magnet for dishonest political hacks. The office may have been beneath Cleveland’s dignity, but it had left him, at age thirty-five, on a solid financial footing for the first time in his life.

  Returning to private practice, Cleveland had started a new law firm with his old bachelor roommate, the former district attorney Lyman K. Bass. The third named partner in the firm was a bright newcomer, Wilson S. Bissell, a Yale graduate. On the night Cleveland and Level were enjoying their beefsteak dinner, Bissell was celebrating his twenty-sixth birthday. Cleveland and Bissell had a lot in common. Physically, both were large in stature, and Bissell also appreciated a good joke.

  Meanwhile, Bass was continuing his steady climb in politics. Having just been elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican, he was spending half the year in Washington. It was also an eventful time in his personal life. His days of confirmed bachelorhood were almost surely coming to an end. He was squiring one of Buffalo’s prettiest socialites, Frances Metcalfe, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of James Metcalfe, president of the First National Bank. The Metcalfes were celebrated in Buffalo for their sophisticated parties and social events, and Frances lived in her family’s Italianate villa on Mansion Row. The works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, and Goethe filled their magnificent library; and come the first sign of winter, servants would light its huge fireplace, which would remain lit until spring.

  The firm of Bass, Cleveland & Bissell rented space in a five-story brick office building at the corner of Main and Swan known as the Weed Block. The National Weather Service also had an office in the building, as did a popular bookstore, and the Buffalo branch of Manufacturers and Traders Bank. The offices at Bass, Cleveland & Bissell were on the second floor. There was nothing lavish about them; their walls were lined with books, and in the main room there was a conference table and a cast-iron barrel stove resting on a large zinc plate. The space was illuminated with gas fixtures.

  Cleveland’s living arrangements could not have been more convenient. In the back of the Weed Block, he found a small third-floor apartment with windows that faced south onto Swan Street. It required less than two minutes of exertion to get to work, down a flight of stairs and up another. Cleveland decorated his suite of rooms with all the predictable accoutrements of a well-to-do bachelor: deep easy chairs; a well-stocked library with books on history and law and some fiction, indicating a taste for literature; a collection of fishing and hunting trophies; and a humidor to keep his stash of cigars moist. Curiously, scattered about the apartment were photographs of youngsters—an indication, according to an authorized biography published in 1884, of his “fondness for children.”

  A young law clerk from the firm took care of Cleveland’s laundry, and every morning the milkman left a quart of milk outside his door. A new favorite eating place was Gerot’s, a French restaurant just a block away. Sunday mornings he usually had breakfast with a friend, Major Milton Randall, at a restaurant where the specialty of the house was turtle. Cleveland’s Sunday evenings were set aside for sausages and sauerkraut at Schenkelberger’s.

  Every so often a relative would visit Cleveland, for one, his nephew Cleveland Bacon, the son of his sister Louise and the architect from Toledo, Ohio, she had married. Uncle Grover’s drinking and consumption of fatty red meat diet had ballooned his weight to almost three hundred pounds; and young Bacon, who had a tart tongue, mocked him with the sobriquet “Uncle Jumbo.” Bacon was well aware that his uncle ate all his meals out, so he was surprised to see an icebox in the apartment. He asked Cleveland what was in it.

  Cleveland’s eyes twinkled. “Watermelons!”

  The bonds of affection Cleveland developed with his male comrades could be profound, even romanticized, but there was no man, not even Bass, whom Cleveland held in as much esteem as he did his best friend, Oscar Folsom. Like Cleveland, Folsom was tall and stout—“built in about the same mold.” Cleveland and Folsom were inseparable; and sometimes, when they stood next to each other, it was hard to tell them apart.

  Impossibly handsome, Folsom was Cleveland’s ideal of what a man should be. Women found him debonair and roguishly charming, but he also excelled in hunting and fishing; so in that regard, Folsom was a man’s man. For a brief period before Cleveland ran for sheriff, he and Folsom had been law partners. Folsom had a fine mind, and even if he was not entirely studious, his contemporaries described him as a naturally gifted lawyer. One day, Folsom asked Cleveland for advice on a matter of law.

  “Go look it up,” Cleveland told him, “and then you’ll remember what you learn.”

  Sound advice, but Folsom begged to differ. “I want you to know that I practice law by ear, not by note.” Cleveland roared with laughter. Only Folsom could get away with a crack like that.

  Folsom radiated a swashbuckling aura wherever he went, and Cleveland found him a joy to be around—except when he had to watch Folsom driving a rig. Folsom worshipped fast trotters and could be incredibly reckless with his mare, White Cloud, who was celebrated in Buffalo for her speed. Time and again, when Folsom was holding his buggy’s reins, Cleveland warned him to show some common sense.

  Politically, Cleveland and Folsom were ideological twins. The night of the 1872 presidential election, hundreds of Democrats gathered at the party’s headquarters in Buffalo to await the returns. Folsom, with his natural stage presence, was given the honor of reading the returns
as they poured in. The incumbent, Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant, was running for reelection against Horace Greeley. When Folsom was handed a bulletin with some early returns, he glowered, then crunched the paper in his hand and proclaimed, “Grant’s reelected, and the country’s gone to hell.” It was a landslide victory for the Civil War hero. Horace Greeley, broken in mind and body, died twenty-four days later.

  Folsom had grown up in a Federal-style house in Cowlesville, a small town thirty miles outside Buffalo. His family was so prominent locally that the town was sometimes informally known as Folsomville. He attended the University of Rochester and met his wife, Emma Harmon, in 1859 at a Fourth of July picnic, where he delivered the keynote address. Folsom married Emma in 1863, when he was twenty-six and she twenty-three. Their daughter Frances Clara Folsom was born on July 21, 1864; they gave her the pet name Frank, or Frankie.

  Several weeks after Frances’s birth, Cleveland and Lyman K. Bass paid a congratulatory call on the proud parents. They were living in a picturesque little red brick house on Edward Street, just north of downtown, on the border of a Buffalo neighborhood known as Allentown, named after Cleveland’s uncle Lewis Allen. Cleveland arrived bearing a generous gift—a baby carriage for Frances, an adorable child with a perfectly round head and deep violet eyes. Cleveland was utterly charmed by this enchanting little creature and, it was said, beheld her in wonder as she lay in her crib.

  Over the years, Cleveland watched Frances blossom into a charming young lady, popular with her classmates and “very pleasing in appearance.” Cleveland visited the Folsoms frequently and doted on the girl, who called him Uncle Cleve.