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

by Charles Lachman

  Nineteen days later, the first issue of the Evening Telegraph was published; the weighty event was modestly noted in James Scripps’s diary: “The Telegraph, our new Buffalo paper, made its appearance today.”

  Buffalo had not seen anything like the Evening Telegraph. Like its distant cousin the Penny Press, the Telegraph was edited to contain “not a line of uninteresting matter.” News was conveyed in nuggets, boiled down to its essence; some stories got just a single line. Brevity was key to making the paper an easy read, but human-interest stories and exposés were given plenty of room to breathe. Like other Scripps publications, the Evening Telegraph was meant to appeal to all classes and political persuasions. As Ed Scripps once put it, “We have no politics.... We are not Republican, nor Democrat, nor Greenback, and not Prohibitionist. We simply intend to support good men and condemn bad ones.”

  Ed and James Scripps were absentee owners; Ed lived in Cleveland and James in Detroit. A guiding principle of the Scripps chain was that local editors knew their city best and had to be given autonomy to run the newspaper as they saw fit. Hiring the right people was vital. In the case of the Evening Telegraph, an able staff was engaged at a start-up cost of $25,000, not counting the purchase of the building on Main Street. Noting with envy the size of the editorial workforce at the Evening Telegraph, a rival publication had to acknowledge, “Everything was done to make the paper a success.”

  Nevertheless, it was a struggle from day one. The Telegraph’s first editor was Henry Little, brought in from Ohio, where he had been lured out of retirement after being laid up for a year with rheumatism. Little arrived in Buffalo vowing to “exterminate” the Evening News inside of ninety days. He lasted a year, and when he left, the Evening News was bigger than ever. Henry Griffin, a veteran of the Detroit newspaper wars, came next, followed by John A. Cresswell, the former managing editor of the Detroit News.

  By the time Cresswell got to Buffalo, the Scripps brothers had poured $70,000 into the Evening Telegraph, and it was still in the red—the only newspaper in the Scripps chain to be hemorrhaging money. Cresswell was nonetheless confident that he could steer a path to profitability in the crowded Buffalo marketplace. He found a place to live on Delaware Avenue with his wife, Lief, and their six-year-old daughter; and in October 1883, Lief Cresswell gave birth to a son. Two weeks later, at the age of thirty-four, Lief died at their home from complications due to childbirth and diphtheria. A sorrow-stricken Cresswell buried his wife in her hometown of Grand Rapids, and then returned to Buffalo to resume his leadership of the Evening Telegraph and raise his two youngsters. The circulation of the Evening Telegraph was holding steady at 10,000, not a terrible failure but not yet a success.

  Cresswell was thirty-four when the greatest story of his life landed on his desk.

  A few days after the Democrats nominated Grover Cleveland for president, the Reverend George Ball asked Cresswell to come see him. Ball would later explain that he went with the Evening Telegraph rather than a more established newspaper because he knew Cresswell to be a churchgoing Christian and had high regard for the editor’s personal code of ethics. As Ball laid everything out, Cresswell took careful notes. There was a tremendous amount of material to go over, and he knew that every word reported by the Evening Telegraph would come under attack by Cleveland partisans. The reputation, and perhaps even the existence, of his newspaper would be on the line.

  Another newspaperman had also gotten a whiff of the Maria Halpin scandal.

  In mid-July, Zemro Smith, the forty-seven-year-old editor of the Boston Journal, got word that James Blaine wanted to see him. Smith boarded the first train out of Boston and got off in Augusta, Maine, on the banks of the Kennebec River. Blaine lived in a magnificent mansion that he had purchased in 1862 as a gift for his wife, Harriet. It was one of the finest estates in Augusta, just across the street from the Maine State House. Blaine’s favorite room was the study—his children called it Father’s Library, and next to this was the large octagonal Billiard Room, site of a grand ball held in 1873 for President Grant. Every room in the Blaine mansion had its fitting name. There was the Ash Room, named for the color of its painted walls; Alice’s Room, where Blaine’s daughter Alice slept; and Aunt Susan’s Room for Blaine’s sister-in-law, Susan Stanwood, who for a time lived with the family.

  Zemro Smith sat down with Blaine. The presidential candidate and former secretary of state had the most extraordinary document in his possession. It was a copy of the letter Reverend George Ball had written to the Chicago Advance in which Ball claimed that Grover Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate son. Ball had written the letter on July 12. Five days later, it was in Blaine’s hands. How the letter got to Blaine has never been determined, but one likely source was Boss John Kelly, who had apparently obtained a copy on the final day of the Democratic Convention in Chicago and may have slipped it to Blaine. It must have killed Kelly to realize that had he obtained the letter just a few days earlier, Cleveland would surely have been denied the nomination. Be that as it may, Kelly had a copy now; and given his blood feud with Grover Cleveland, he would have done anything to bury his arch-foe, even go so far as to conspire to throw the election to the Republicans.

  That morning, Blaine and Smith sat in “secret consultation” for several hours. The Republican nominee had the utmost faith in Zemro Smith’s discretion. Zemro’s brother Joseph had been secretary of the Republican state committee in Maine when Blaine was chairman. And it was said that Zemro owed his position at the Boston Journal to Blaine’s money and influence. As a Republican organ backing Blaine’s candidacy, the Journal could be depended on to aggressively investigate Grover Cleveland.

  Smith caught the afternoon train back to Boston, arriving late that night. The next morning he went to his offices at the Journal and assigned one of his reporters to the story. The reporter was on the very next train to Buffalo, arriving on July 19, a Saturday. His first stop was the obvious one—the Free Baptist Church on Hudson Street, where he found Reverend George Ball in the rectory. Ball said he was “deeply impressed” that a journalist from Boston had come to Buffalo to investigate the allegations. The minister told the reporter that he was still in a state of “outrage” that Cleveland had won the nomination. But then Ball informed him that he had already given everything he had to John Cresswell of the Evening Telegraph, no doubt considerably alarming the newsman. Now he had competition to deal with. All he could do was pick up his pace and hope for the best.

  Ball said he was aware that the “responsibility for the disclosures” would fall on his shoulders, but he believed it was his public duty. He didn’t have anything personal against Cleveland, he said. The Democratic nominee had always been an “obscure man” with a reputation in Buffalo as an “average lawyer,” and like the rest of the nation, Ball said, he had been amazed at the staggeringly swift trajectory of Cleveland’s political climb.

  Since he’d launched his probe into Cleveland’s private life, however, the minister told the reporter, he was now of the opinion that Cleveland had “low associations.” Ball passed along several stories he had heard proving Cleveland’s “licentiousness and debauchery.” He also suggested that the Boston Journal investigate the circumstances of Oscar Folsom’s death in 1875. The real story, Ball insinuated, had yet to be told. The reporter steered the interview back around to the contents of Ball’s letter to the Chicago Advance, and Ball urged him to look into the allegations and determine for himself that he was speaking the truth. He also gave him the name of the man who had adopted Grover Cleveland’s illegitimate son—Dr. James E. King—and added that it was Dr. King who had been “instrumental in the kidnapping of the mother,” Maria Halpin. These were facts of “common repute” in Buffalo, the minister said. There were witnesses who could verify everything.

  Ball remained seated as the reporter wrote his summary of the interview. It read as follows:

  That Mr. Cleveland, about seven to ten years ago, accomplished the seduction of Maria Halpin, who
was in the employ of Flint & Kent of Buffalo, in charge of their cloak and lace department; that the woman, so far as known, had borne an irreproachable character up to that time; that her employers, with whom she had been about four years, had a high regard for her and considered her a virtuous Christian woman; that Mr. Cleveland had her taken to the Lying-In Hospital during her confinement; that he afterward placed her and the child, a boy, with Mrs. William Baker, on Broadway, to board; that the woman became depressed and desperate and threatened his life; that he became apprehensive that she might attempt some injury to him or herself and appealed to the Chief of Police, Col. John Byrne, to keep her under surveillance; that Mr. Cleveland had her taken by force from her room at Mrs. Baker’s to the Providence Lunatic Asylum on Main Street, an institution under the charge of Sisters of Charity; that the man who took her there were one Watts, a policeman, and one Dr. King; that she was seen there by Dr. Ring, the visiting physician, who did not think her insane; that after several days she escaped, and no efforts were made to retake her; that she put her case into the hands of Mr. Whitney, Esq., an attorney, alleging kidnapping and false imprisonment; that she finally gave up the child, and received $500 from Mr. Cleveland; that the boy, who was named Oscar Folsom, in memory of a friend of Mr. Cleveland, is now living in Buffalo, with the Dr. King who was instrumental in the kidnapping of the mother; and that these are matters of common repute in Buffalo, to substantiate which numerous witnesses can be found, among whom are Mrs. Baker, Col. Byrne, Mr. Whitney, Dr. Ring, (and) Messrs. Flint and Kent.

  After Ball read the statement over for accuracy, he signed it “George H. Ball,” and affixed the date: July 20, 1884.

  It was twilight that Saturday when the reporter bid Ball farewell. He still had a few hours left before calling it a night and decided to seek out Dr. William Ring. He found Ring at his offices on Niagara Street and informed the doctor that he had come to “inquire” about Maria Halpin.

  Ring was on edge during the entire interview. He said he knew “very little about” Maria Halpin and would not recognize her if he saw her on the street today. Her case, he said, was one of hundreds he had dealt with over the years as medical director of the Providence Insane Asylum. When Reverend Ball and John Cresswell of the Evening Telegraph had recently queried him about Maria Halpin, Ring said, he had to look up the asylum records because he could not recall anything about the woman. The records indicated that Maria had definitely been committed: Her name was on the asylum register.

  “I have seen it there,” Ring said. The date of commitment was hard to make out because the record book had faded with age. He suggested that the Boston journalist speak with Sister Rosaline, who ran the institution. She could show him the records—“if she chose to.” When he was asked whether Sister Rosaline would cooperate, Ring said that he didn’t know, but she was a “very wise” woman.

  What else did he remember from that night?

  Ring recalled that Mrs. Halpin had been brought to the asylum by a police officer.

  “Was the policeman’s name Watts?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” Ring answered.

  “Did he exceed his authority in taking the woman there?”

  Ring said that was something for Officer Watts to “account for.”

  “She was not insane,” Ring said of Maria Halpin, but she did appear to be “boozy,” meaning under the influence, but at all times she had behaved like a lady. And that was all he wished to say about Maria Halpin. End of discussion. As the reporter was packing his things, Ring suddenly told him, “I guess you had better let Cleveland alone in these matters.”

  The Boston reporter stared at the doctor. “But I haven’t mentioned Mr. Cleveland to you.”

  “Yes, I know, but I understand what you are after. Are you a newspaperman?”

  “More or less.”

  “Well, don’t say anything about me, or the asylum or Sister Rosaline.” Ring said he was a Republican, and he wanted to keep his name out of the papers and out of this mess. “We shall beat Cleveland in New York by fifty thousand, without regard to such matters as this.”

  The reporter’s next interview took him to No. 103 Broadway. He found Maria Halpin’s landlady, Maria Baker, on the second floor above a store where she rented rooms. Mrs. Baker didn’t want to talk. She had already spoken to the Evening Telegraph and didn’t want to get any more involved. She had nothing left to say about Maria Halpin except that she was intelligent and principled and a good woman who had gone through misery when she lived in Buffalo.

  “How long ago was she with you?” she was asked.

  “About seven years,” Mrs. Baker said. “I cannot tell exactly. Possibly my husband could fix the date.”

  “How long was she with you?”

  “About a year.”

  “What sort of person was she?”

  “Ladylike. Intelligent and fine appearing. About thirty-five years old. She was a widow and had lost her husband just before she came to Buffalo and was dressed in mourning. She had been employed in a responsible position at Stewart’s in New York before coming to Buffalo. I never heard of anything in the least against her until the time of her trouble when she came to board with me.”

  “Was she there at Mr. Cleveland’s expense?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say.”

  “But you wouldn’t say that she was not there at his expense?”

  “No, of course I couldn’t say that. Mrs. Halpin was very much depressed and broken down by her trouble, and she drank some, but that made it worse.”

  What about the night Maria Halpin was taken to the Providence Lunatic Asylum? he asked her. “Was she taken to the asylum against her will?”

  “Yes, of course, she didn’t want to go.”

  “Who took her?”

  “A policeman.”

  “Was his name Watts?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Was there anyone else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it Dr. King?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long was she at the asylum?”

  “Seven days.”

  Mrs. Baker’s recollection was faulty. Records from the asylum indicate that Maria Halpin was a patient for three days.

  “Was she under the influence of liquor at the time she was taken?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the boy called?”

  “Oscar Folsom.” Mrs. Baker said it was a name chosen by Cleveland, to honor his best friend.

  “Is he now in the family of Dr. King?” All Mrs. Baker could say was that she believed this to be the case.

  When it was finally time to go, the Boston Journal reporter thanked Mrs. Baker for everything and returned to his hotel room for the night. The next morning was Sunday—perfect for knocking on doors. He went to 476 Franklin Street—an address he got either from Reverend Ball or straight out of the city directory. There, on the front porch enjoying the morning breeze, was Milo A. Whitney, Maria Halpin’s former lawyer.

  Whitney was now fifty-six years old. His daughter, an infant when Maria Halpin had first hired him to represent her in the lawsuit against Grover Cleveland, was now a little lady of eight. Like Dr. Ring and Mrs. Baker, Whitney did not want to say much. John Cresswell had already been to see him, and before Cresswell it had been the Reverend Ball. There were other people who knew far more than he did about Maria Halpin, and yet it was being made to seem as if the “whole matter” rested with him. It was not right. He also said his memory was hazy. He couldn’t recall the year when Maria had come to see him. He thought it was sometime in 1876, but more likely 1877. In any event, the whole case struck him as an “outrage.” No, he said, breach of promise was not alleged, only kidnapping and false arrest. He had to drop the lawsuit because it had been “compromised.” If he had had his way, the case would have been filed and brought to trial, but he had no choice except to step aside once Maria’s brother-in-law had interfered.

  Whitney said that Cleveland had paid Maria Halpin $5
00 to go away.

  The reporter closed his notebook. There were three other crucial witnesses listed in Reverend Ball’s signed statement: Colonel John Byrne and the department store merchants Flint and Kent; but for some reason, the reporter decided to leave Buffalo without speaking to any of them. He may have been eager to get back to Boston to write his story and scoop the Evening Telegraph. He later explained, “I did not think it necessary to pursue the inquiry further.” That was a strange thing for any journalist to admit. Certainly it would have been interesting to hear what these three prominent citizens had to say. Had he probed deeper, the reporter would have ascertained several interesting facts. Colonel Byrne was no longer the police chief. He was now working in the private sector—he owned the Buffalo Detective Agency. His partner in the firm was former police officer Robert Watts, who figured so prominently in the Maria Halpin scandal.

  The reporter returned to Boston and presented his findings to Zemro Smith. A strange thing happened next. Smith sat on the story. He had the jump on the political scandal of the decade, and yet the Journal did nothing. One reason may have been that he received orders from higher up—perhaps from Blaine himself; any charges published by the Journal would have been suspected of being Blaine propaganda. Blaine’s fingerprints were all over the paper, and especially its editor Zemro Smith. The smart move was to wait. The decision was made. Of Buffalo’s newspapers, the Evening Telegraph was the new kid on the block. Let the “obscure” Telegraph have first crack at it. Then the Journal would pounce.