Pandemonium reigned. Delegate after delegate rose and demanded to be recognized so that they too could switch their votes to Cleveland. It was a stampede.
At 4:00 a.m., the final tally came in: Cleveland, 211 and Slocum, 156. Flower’s support had gone up in smoke. He ended with only 15 votes.
The band struck up the “Red, White and Blue.” In the gallery, Mahoney shouted himself hoarse with joy and watched in pure bliss as a Cleveland lithograph he had brought with him to such mockery was unfurled on the platform.
News from the convention reached New York City during one of the most drenching rainstorms in the city’s history—more than six inches of water fell in the deluge, rinsing the filthy streets of mud and garbage until the water looked as pure as a mountain stream. Old-timers said they could not recall a day when New York seemed so cleansed. Over at Grand Central Depot, the rain-delayed train from Syracuse pulled in two hours late. Boss Kelly, wearing a white straw hat, alighted from the drawing-room car with his crew of Tammany warriors, grinning like a “conqueror” and declaring that Cleveland was sure to win the big race in November. The Tammany boss was last seen that night getting into a carriage that went rattling down the cobblestone streets to his home on Madison Avenue.
In Buffalo, the telegraph service flashed word of the Cleveland victory with these words from Bissell: “You are nominated.” A cheering mob of Democrats awaiting the results at City Hall moved en masse to Billy Dranger’s saloon, where they heard that Cleveland was having a drink. Dranger’s was known locally as the Sewer, for the restaurant in the basement.
Cleveland saw the horde spilling into the streets outside the saloon. He went to the balcony, where everyone could have a good look at him.
“My friends . . . I cannot but remember tonight the time when I came into your midst, friendless, unknown, and poor. I cannot but remember how, step-by-step, by the encouragement of my good fellow citizens, I have gone on to receive more of their appreciation than is my due, until I have been honored with more distinction, perhaps, than I deserve.”
The crowd roared.
7
THE GODDESS
FRANCES FOLSOM HAD been only eleven when her father died, and ever since, Grover Cleveland had been a guiding force in her life. She called him Uncle Cleve, and he called her Frank. He was always there for her, like a second father.
Cleveland showered Frances with generous gifts, the most memorable being a frisky bull terrier puppy; and on warm summer days, he took her to Beaver Island. Reachable only by steam launch, this small jut of land, a thousand acres or so off the head of Grand Island, was where Cleveland and other prominent citizens of Buffalo had organized a social community of movers and shakers known as the Beaver Island Club. The Jolly Reefers, as they called themselves, were used to seeing Cleveland holding the chubby little girl by the hand as he showed her around the island’s rose garden and towering trees or brought her to a picnic or a clambake. They were aware that in Cleveland’s capacity as executor of the Oscar Folsom estate, he was involved in Frances’s life, and it was also taken for granted that he would one day marry the widow Emma Folsom. Even Emma thought so.
When Frances reached the end of her childhood, Cleveland stood ready to offer her his guidance on the major choices that confront every adolescent girl. She was an excellent student with a genuine curiosity about things, whose teachers appreciated the extra effort she put into her schoolwork. Tall, about five foot seven, she had rich chestnut hair that cascaded onto her shoulders, and dreamy violet eyes. She had blossomed into a young lady of indisputable glamour and what her cousin Isabel Harmon had called “witchery.”
Frances had just begun her senior year at Central High School in Buffalo, the city’s preeminent public high school, when she became besotted with Mr. Charles Townsend. A few weeks later, she dropped out, announcing that she was getting engaged to young Townsend. This hit Cleveland like a swift kick in the teeth.
Frances’s departure from school upset Cleveland for several reasons, not least of which was that he had suggested she enroll at Central High, so he took her failure to graduate personally. Then there was this Townsend fellow.
Charles Townsend came from solid stock: His grandfather, also named Charles Townsend, had founded the Buffalo Savings Bank and been one of Niagara County’s first sitting judges. Eight years older than Frances Folsom when they announced their engagement, Charles had lived with his parents in Europe for five years during which he studied in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. He had a wry sense of humor, and in his breezy writing style, he wrote articles that he submitted to travel magazines and the Buffalo newspapers. After his father’s death in Germany, Townsend returned to Buffalo to study at the Auburn Theological Seminary with the intention of becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister when he asked Frances to marry him.
The wedding of Frances Folsom and Charles Townsend would have been deemed a fine match between two socially connected Buffalo families. Alas, their engagement lasted just a few weeks before Frances sent her fiancé a “Dear Charles” letter. In the envelope, she also sent back the ring. As breakups go, it was amicable, and Townsend never bore a grudge. What role, if any, Grover Cleveland may have played in the drama remains a mystery, but with young Townsend out of the picture, the way was clear for Cleveland to pursue an unambiguously romantic relationship with Frances Folsom. (Townsend, it seemed, could never escape Cleveland’s shadow. When he died in 1914, Townsend’s address was 55 Cleveland Street in Orange, New Jersey; and on his deathbed, he officiated at the wedding of his daughter Gladys to a Mr. Guy Cleveland—no relation to Grover.)
It was decided that Frances would attend college. Cleveland pulled a few strings and obtained certification from Central High School that Frances had completed her studies in good standing. Then, with Cleveland’s encouragement, she settled on Wells College on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake in Auburn, about 120 miles from Buffalo. Cayuga Lake is one of a chain of lakes in New York’s Finger Lakes region, so named for their similar shape.
Frances satisfied the language requirements, passing entrance exams in Latin and German (she also spoke French), and in February 1882, although she had dropped out of high school and skipped the entire fall semester of college, she was admitted to Wells as a freshman with “advanced standing.”
In those days, Wells College enrolled only women and was run like a finishing school though it boasted a respectable liberal arts curriculum. Every afternoon the students, in long formal dresses, gathered to sip tea from china cups. Frances played the piano and took classes in painting and photography, but she also took challenging courses in botany, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, geology, and logic; and she was close to being a straight-A student.
Her roommate, Ms. Katherine “Pussy” Willard, had a beautiful singing voice, spoke fluent German, and was the niece of the famous suffragette Frances Willard, who was president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. As Cleveland was vehemently opposed to prohibition and to women getting the right to vote, he and Frances may have had some lively discussions about one or both issues. It was pure luck that Frances and Katherine were reputed to be the only Democrats on the entire Wells College campus and happened to be assigned to the same room. They shared something else: Like Frances, Katherine knew what it was like to lose her father; she was twelve when Oliver Willard died.
Not long after she settled in at Wells College, Frances received a shipment of fresh-cut red roses; when they died, another shipment arrived, and then another—a fresh bouquet every week, filling their room with the fragrance of roses. They were from her beau, she said, but would never utter the gentleman’s name. She could never let it be known that her admirer was Grover Cleveland, twenty-seven years her senior.
At some point, Cleveland wrote Emma Folsom to ask her what he should do with a treasured Folsom family heirloom that had come into his possession, a sword that had once been owned by her late husband, the sword that Oscar Folsom had carried when he fought in
the Civil War. In the letter, he also, just in passing, asked Emma for permission to write to Frances. He may have felt a little uncomfortable doing so, but he was in a bind because Wells College required parental consent to permit correspondence with its students. Emma gave her blessing, presumably considering Cleveland’s request the innocent gesture of a guardian who wanted to keep in touch with his ward who had gone off to college.
During Cleveland’s entire six-week campaign for governor, the acceptance speech he delivered from the balcony of Billy Dranger’s saloon turned out to be the only formal address he gave. Having refused to travel the stump circuit, the only electioneering he did was in the form of two letters he wrote for publication and a pamphlet extolling his virtues, which was published by the Democratic state committee and distributed throughout New York. He was coasting to victory on a wave of history. What was the point of campaigning when his triumph was a foregone conclusion? Cleveland’s Republican opponent, Charles Folger, had had to acknowledge that his nomination had come about through “fraudulent practices,” and even his friends were calling on him to withdraw. Major Republican newspapers bemoaned the corruption that had sullied the party of Lincoln and were openly advocating Cleveland’s election. At a Republican rally, America’s most renowned clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, said that he would see his right arm “wither” before he would vote for Folger.
“I will vote for Mr. Cleveland,” Beecher declared.
On Election Day, Cleveland cast his vote in the morning, then went to his office at Buffalo City Hall. He was alone except for an artist from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper who was rendering a sketch of the man of the hour for an article that was to run in the following week’s edition. Cleveland seemed at ease, but in fact, he missed his mother very much. In this pensive state, seated at his desk, Cleveland penned a letter to his brother William.
“I have just voted,” he wrote. “If Mother were here, I should be writing to her.” He wrote William that he was “certain” of success in the election. But something was vexing him; the middle-aged bachelor was aware that once he was ensconced in the governor’s mansion in Albany, an active “social life” would be expected of him. Balls, dinner parties, receptions, social teas were obligatory for a governor. Who would serve as his first lady? The matter was giving him much “anxious thought,” and Cleveland wrote William that he was thinking about cutting back on some of the “purely ornamental” duties of the office.
“Do you know that if Mother were alive I should feel so much safer? I have always thought her prayers had much to do with my success.”
Then suddenly his office became the scene of frenzied activity: Wilson Bissell, the newspaper publisher Charley McCune, and Cleveland’s old law partner Sherman S. Rogers were running in and out, wishing him well and handling last-minute political matters. The Mutual Union Telegraph Company strung a wire in his office, and around six o’clock, the returns started coming in. It was a rout. His victory was ensured.
In New York City, a sea of humanity had gathered at the cluster of newspaper offices on Park Row to await the results, but an eerie silence hung in the night air. People seemed dazed by the votes being posted for Cleveland, wondering if the figures could be trusted. A steady murmur began about Cleveland advancing to the front row of candidates for president in 1884, just two years away.
When the final tally came in, Cleveland’s total came to 535,318 to Folger’s 342,464. Cleveland’s margin of nearly 200,000 votes was the largest majority ever recorded from any state in American history up to then.
Even Cleveland took pity on Folger, finding it preposterous that someone with as distinguished a career as the treasury secretary’s could suffer such a humiliating defeat at the hands of a politician “wholly unknown outside my own small community.” Twenty-five years later, his victory still confounded him. Looking back, Cleveland said he was “unable to understand it.”
Cleveland now faced six weeks of relentless activity. His first order of business was to tender his resignation as mayor, which he did on November 20, after serving only eleven months. He then turned over his law partnership to Bissell and the firm’s junior partner, George Sicard. Everything was happening so fast he had to candidly admit that he needed help. He reached out to Daniel Manning and asked the party chairman to recommend someone smart who knew Albany inside and out. Manning suggested Daniel S. Lamont, the clerk of the state assembly. Lamont was a former correspondent for the Albany Argus newspaper, which was owned by Manning. Like Edgar Apgar, Lamont had total command of the political and bureaucratic apparatus of the state government. He knew where all the bodies were buried. Manning directed Lamont to give Cleveland a hand, and when he arrived in Buffalo and introduced himself to the governor-elect, there was an immediate connection. Cleveland found the thirty-two-year-old Lamont to be just as smart as Apgar. Together they worked on policy and personnel for the incoming administration. There were just three weeks to go before the inauguration.
All this time, Cleveland continued to fret about the social life awaiting him as governor. For a while, he considered naming his sister Rose his official hostess. Since the death of their mother, Rose Cleveland had been living alone at the Cleveland homestead in Holland Patent. Now thirty-six, she was just like her brother, intellectually gifted but something of a misfit in social situations. Cleveland realized right away that it would not be a good fit. Then he came up with a temporary fix, at least in terms of running the mansion. William Sinclair was chief steward at the City Club in Buffalo. Everyone liked Sinclair. He’d be perfect. The two men sat down for a discussion, and Cleveland made him a nice offer. The next thing Sinclair knew, he had quit his job at City Club to serve as Cleveland’s valet and manservant.
In early December, Cleveland took a break from the transition to go to New York City for a reception in his honor at the elite Manhattan Club. Accompanied by Bissell, he left Buffalo by train on a Monday evening and pulled into Manhattan the following day at 11:00 a.m.
The reception at the Manhattan Club at 96 5th Avenue was shaping up to be a major event. It was Cleveland’s coming-out party, and the first opportunity for Democratic big shots on the national level to have a good look at the politician who was generating so much attention.
All the furniture in the Manhattan Club’s parlor had been taken out to accommodate the swarm of guests—it was “denuded,” went one description. Nevertheless, it was so crammed with power brokers it became almost impossible for anyone to move, and the orchestra had to be stationed one flight up to make room. A carriage was sent to the Windsor Hotel to pick up Cleveland, and at nine thirty, he was ushered in to thunderous applause.
Cleveland took off his overcoat and was at once encircled by well-wishers. There were eight hundred people in all, including General Winfield Scott Hancock, the defeated Democratic nominee for president in 1880, thus the titular head of the party, and the philanthropist Peter Cooper, whom Cleveland took particular pleasure in meeting. Supper was an informal buffet, and when the guests were seated in the dining hall, the club’s president, Aaron Vanderpoel, clanged his champagne glass for attention and offered a toast.
“I propose the health of Governor Grover Cleveland and wish him a most successful and honorable administration.”
Cleveland returned to Buffalo to pack his bags while a thousand little details still had to be attended to—plus, he had to write his inaugural address. He hired a stenographer and had a printing press standing by to copy it. William Sinclair—Cleveland called him his “colored servant”—was about to set out for Albany to take charge of the executive mansion; and Cleveland’s sister Mary Cleveland Hoyt volunteered to help out with the housekeeping. Cleveland notified Daniel Lamont that he would be on the 8:00 a.m. train for Albany that would get him to the state capital at 4:30 p.m. on December 30, and that he would like Lamont to meet him at the depot.
When Cleveland arrived in Albany and strolled the snowy streets of the state capital with Bissell and Lamont at his si
de, he went unrecognized. As a courtesy, Governor Alonzo Cornell had already vacated the Executive Mansion so Cleveland, who called it Cornell’s “surrender,” moved right in even though he was not yet officially governor. That night, Cornell, the son of the founder of Cornell University, came by to wish Cleveland well.
Cleveland and Cornell had met once before, and detested each other. A month after Cleveland had become mayor of Buffalo, he had journeyed to Albany to make a personal appeal to Cornell to commute the death sentence of a laborer who had been convicted of the stabbing murder of his plant foreman. Cornell listened as Cleveland and a delegation of Buffalo lawyers argued that the jury had failed to take into account the defendant’s drunken state as a mitigating factor. After two hours, Cornell had had enough and exploded in anger. How much longer was this going to take? he wanted to know.
Cleveland sprang to his feet. “We come to you as the king, pleading for mercy. It is your duty to hear us and hear us to the end.” Public executions always touched a raw nerve in Cleveland, a former Erie County sheriff who had presided over two hangings; while Cornell was taken aback by Cleveland’s ferocity. They stared each other down in a test of wills between two men who were used to being in absolute command of their domain. Cleveland rattled on for another fifteen minutes while Cornell stewed and, in the end, did the right thing: He commuted the Buffalo defendant’s sentence to life.
Years later, Cornell recounted, “I was so impressed with the sincerity and the legal cocksureness of the man that I commuted the sentence.”
A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland Page 14