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

by Charles Lachman

  “I learned last night that McCune had started the story and told it to newspapermen (one at least) that I had nothing to do really with the subject of the Telegraph story—that is, that I am innocent—and that my silence was to shield my friend Oscar Folsom,” Cleveland wrote Daniel Lockwood. “Now is this man crazy or does he want to ruin anybody? Is he foolish enough to suppose for a moment that if such was the truth (which it is not, so far as the motive for silence is concerned) that I would permit my dead friend’s memory to suffer for my sake? And Mrs. Folsom and her daughter at my house at this very time!

  “This story of McCune’s of course must be stopped. I have prevented its publication in one paper at least.”

  Maria Halpin’s name swiftly circulated around the nation. Newspapers in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and, of course, the Scripps publications in Detroit and Cleveland all went with the story on July 22 or 23. By the end of the week, more than one hundred newspapers had reported “A Terrible Tale” or some abridged version of it. The Sun, under the leadership of the flamboyant editor Charles Dana, called on Cleveland to withdraw as the Democratic standard-bearer. Zemro Smith’s Boston Journal finally published the results of its investigation on July 30. “The whole story was in our hands before any publication in detail had appeared,” the Journal crowed. “We preferred to obtain, not through ‘obscure newspapers, ’ but from the lips of those who ought to know, the exact situation.” Unsurprisingly, the Journal failed to allude to James Blaine’s role in tipping off the newspaper.

  Many Democrat and mugwump publications refused to give the Halpin scandal much play, rationalizing their restraint on grounds that the accusations were too lurid for a family newspaper. “They would bring the blush to the cheek of every son and daughter of the Empire State who read them,” explained one broadsheet in Rochester. The New York Times and the pro-Cleveland Buffalo Courier and Buffalo Express were also stricken deaf and dumb. Dead silence too from the Buffalo Evening News, whose owner, Edward Butler, was a friend of Grover Cleveland’s. Daniel Manning’s Albany Argus also suppressed the story, referencing it only in the context of an editorial that disparaged the coverage of the scandal as “beneath notice.” Other newspapers rallied to Cleveland’s defense. Pulitzer’s New York World denounced the Evening Telegraph as “unscrupulous” and categorized the attacks on Cleveland’s character as “gross, cowardly and unmanly.”

  In Buffalo, John Cresswell continued pouring it on.

  “The Telegraph is little, but it is mighty and will prevail,” Cresswell wrote. He called Cleveland a “moral leper” who “should never have been allowed to become governor.” Cresswell claimed that his paper had performed a disagreeable but nevertheless imperative public service in stripping the mask from Cleveland and exposing the candidate’s “hideous moral deformity.” It also addressed the gentlemen of the press who were expressing holy horror over the graphic language used in reporting “A Terrible Tale.”

  “You print as bad stories as that every day—stories of rape, incest, seduction, abduction. You deceive nobody. The Telegraph ’s story needed to be told.”

  Cresswell gleefully noted how Cleveland’s managers seemed to have been afflicted with paralysis—“when everybody knows that they would make a fearful noise if the charge had been groundless. His partisans here do not deny it, they merely grate their teeth in rage and abuse the paper that dared to tell the truth.” He had a point, and other newspapers also noted the absence of any official refutation of the facts by the governor.

  “What Grover Cleveland’s defense in this Halpin case may be, if he ever attempts one, I am unable to discover,” declared the managing editor of the Detroit Evening Journal.

  Letters poured into the Evening Telegraph. Mrs. O. K. Smith of West Eagle Street in Buffalo wrote, “All honor to the bravest paper in Buffalo! Women, if you have any influence use it.” A clergyman who requested anonymity mailed this letter to the editor:

  You are to be commended for the cleanliness of your recital—it was not your fault that its details were so gross and shocking. For what you have so boldly and yet carefully done, you deserve a hearty vote of thanks from the whole American people.

  But within the Evening Telegraph’s uncompromising posture there lay a nub of concern. The newspaper said it was confining its coverage strictly to the Maria Halpin case, leaving George Ball (whom it had yet to publicly identify as its principal source) on his own to defend the assertions—that Cleveland had been beastly drunk and had associated with lewd women—published in “A Citizen’s Statement.” In regard to these claims, the Evening Telegraph signaled that it was up to Ball to fend for himself.

  It was the Chicago Tribune that finally outed Ball. Somehow the Tribune had obtained a copy of the letter Ball had written to the Christian newspaper Chicago Advance. The Tribune republished the Advance letter, identifying Ball as the preacher who had been the informant for “A Terrible Tale.” Ball seemed to accept the leak as inevitable and wrote the Tribune a droll but barbed letter in which he said he did not “particularly care” that he had been named:

  I had carefully investigated the case and found the evidence of his guilt overwhelming. The sole object in writing it was to put the Advance on its guard and draw its attention to Mr. Cleveland’s immoralities.

  Ball praised the Evening Telegraph and John Cresswell, saying the newspaper’s reporting had been truthful, thorough, and written “without exaggeration.”

  “The editor of that paper is a Christian gentleman who would not knowingly publish an untruth. He took great pains to ascertain the facts before disclosing anything.

  Like a stern pastor scolding his wayward flock, Ball asked Chicagoans to stop writing him and instead direct their inquiries to the Evening Telegraph if they wanted to order a copy of “A Terrible Tale”—singly or in bulk. “If people will send for it instead of writing to me, I shall be greatly obliged.”

  By the first week of August, the entire country knew the name “George Ball.”

  It was at this point that Henry Ward Beecher found himself thrust into the maelstrom. Beecher was the flamboyant minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. His sister was, of course, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Beecher’s irreverent sermons in which he preached unconditional love and women’s suffrage proved so popular that he had become New York’s number one tourist attraction and, it was said, also the most famous man extant in America.

  Beecher had championed Grover Cleveland’s run for governor of New York in 1882, and like the other independent Republicans of his era, he had been expected to join the bolt from Blaine and, in the name of reform and good government, endorse Cleveland in the 1884 presidential race. But a letter that Beecher wrote to George Peck, a prominent lawyer from Kansas, was leaked to the press and sent the Cleveland campaign into a tailspin of concern:

  “Owing to late developments from Albany, I cannot and will not now, support Grover Cleveland the Democratic nominee for President in the coming election.”

  The correspondence was replete with melodrama. As everyone knew, nine years before, Beecher had been sued for adultery following accusations that he seduced a married parishioner, Elizabeth Tilton. Jurors deliberated for six days but were unable to reach a verdict. It had been one of the most celebrated trials of the 19th century.

  Beecher had somehow survived his sex scandal, while Cleveland was in the earliest stage of struggling to manage his own disgrace. The Cleveland campaign found itself facing yet another crisis: Beecher’s defection could potentially swing the election. In Brooklyn, he was a genuine political force. And it was said that as Brooklyn went, so would go the state of New York; and as New York went, so would go the nation.

  Bringing Beecher back to the Cleveland fold was now the highest priority. General Horatio C. King was designated to talk things over with the preacher.

  King came from a politically connected family; his father had served as U.S. postmaster general durin
g the last three weeks of the Buchanan administration. Horatio King had been graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and, when war broke out, was commissioned a captain in the Union Army. He fought gallantly at the Battle of Five Forks in Virginia, was discharged with the rank of colonel, and then returned to New York City to practice law. In 1871, King was named publisher of the Christian Union magazine—a publication whose editor in chief was Henry Ward Beecher. So King and Beecher had a history. Also, at Beecher’s recommendation, Governor Cleveland had recently named King to the post of judge advocate of the New York State National Guard, with the rank of general. King, like Beecher, lived in Brooklyn. He was the perfect emissary to go before Beecher on bended knee.

  King was forty-seven when he made his heartfelt appeal to the preacher to reassess his opposition to Cleveland. Speaking to Beecher as a public figure who had felt the humiliating sting of his own bout with sexual indiscretion, King’s words fell on sympathetic ears. Beecher said he was open-minded and suggested that King go to Buffalo to personally look into the Evening Telegraph’s charges and report back to him. This King agreed to do. How a political appointee of Grover Cleveland’s could be expected to conduct a credible investigation was not apparent, but in any event, King went to Buffalo on Monday, August 4, determined, he said, to get to the bottom of the case and put Beecher’s mind at rest. King seems to have spent most of his time with an Erie County supervisor who personally assured King that he had never heard of any “immoral” conduct on the part of Grover Cleveland. Two days later, he was on his way to Albany to call on Grover Cleveland at the state capital. The two men had a serious heart-to-heart.

  “I told him,” King later said, “that Mr. Beecher was very much disturbed by these stories that have been circulated about him, and that I would like a statement from him about them.” Cleveland insisted that the account published in the Evening Telegraph was “false and scandalous.”

  “I acted throughout as any honorable man should,” Cleveland informed King. As King recalled, “No man could have looked at the governor and not have felt that he was speaking the truth.” Cleveland asked King to do what he could to obtain a public endorsement from Beecher.

  King proceeded on to Peekskill, where Beecher owned a magnificent estate that he had christened Boscobel, set on thirty-six acres of rich farmland. He had erected the mansion in 1879 at the then-enormous cost of $70,000, money he had earned from his lecture tours and books; but over the years, he had poured another $200,000 into expanding and improving his country manor. There were twenty-three rooms with breathtaking views of the Hudson River, and wallpaper so “exquisite” Beecher couldn’t bear to hang anything on them. But his favorite room was the tiny carpenter’s shop where in the summer he could often be found tinkering and hammering on his woodworking projects. Beecher had personally designed the gardens; groves of trees had been artfully grouped according to species, shape, and color of foliage. He also grew his own corn, peas, and strawberries; but considering the enormous expense of running Boscobel, he liked to joke that every cabbage he raised cost him $5.

  When King called on Beecher, the great preacher showed him eighteen copies of “A Terrible Tale” that had been mailed to him from friends around the country. Everyone wanted to know what Beecher thought about the scandal. George Ball had also reached out, sending Beecher a personal letter explaining his involvement in the investigation. Now Beecher was eager to hear what King had unearthed in Buffalo.

  “The paper in which the slander was originally published is an insignificant, sensational sheet,” King told Beecher, “and one of the strangest things is that other papers in good standing seem to give credence to the story.” Beecher must have nodded knowingly, perhaps recalling the lurid coverage of his own trial for adultery in 1875. King claimed that certain unnamed “prominent men”—no doubt meaning Blaine—were behind the Evening Telegraph’s allegations. All of Buffalo was “indignant” over the newspaper exposé, the general sentiment being one of utter contempt for the Evening Telegraph.

  “I went everywhere and did quite a little bit of detective work on my own account. I learned enough to convince me that Cleveland had been wrongfully accused,” King said. “Like many men, Cleveland likes good living and good company, but he never goes to excess in anything.” It was a deft argument that must have resonated with Beecher, as Cleveland sounded very much like Beecher himself, at least in respect to their personal shortcomings.

  After Beecher considered everything King had to say, he was satisfied that the scandal had been overblown, the result of the “foolish peccadilloes of a young man committed fourteen or fifteen years ago” and should not weigh on Cleveland’s current life or candidacy. He added that he was embarrassed to have been “wrongfully made to mistrust Governor Cleveland” and would now do anything to show his “appreciation” of the man.

  “I am going to stand by the governor,” Beecher informed King.

  An ecstatic King returned to Brooklyn and promptly got the word out that Beecher had returned to the Cleveland column. When a reporter for the New York Tribune went to Boscobel to check out the reports of this remarkable conversion, he found Beecher’s wife, Eunice, in the library. Beecher, she said, was currently unavailable. He was resting in another room.

  “My husband has been quite ill for several days, and I don’t think it best to disturb him.” Mrs. Beecher said she had been up for forty-eight hours nursing him. Doctors said it was an attack of colic, but Mrs. Beecher suspected something else.

  “The truth of the matter is, worry and anxiety about this Cleveland scandal have been the main difficulty with Mr. Beecher. It came upon him like a flash of lightning. He had always regarded Mr. Cleveland as a clean man. He was completely prostrated when he heard reports to the contrary.”

  There was a commotion. The great Henry Ward Beecher was awake. Mrs. Beecher jumped from her chair.

  “Henry, it is another reporter.”

  The man from the Tribune apologized for the intrusion and showed Beecher clippings from recent newspaper articles asserting that he was now, with a “clear conscience” backing Cleveland for the presidency—“unless something more damaging than has yet been published is produced.” Beecher impatiently tossed the articles aside.

  “I know perfectly well what they contain, and in a measure they tell the truth. I wrote a hurried and private letter to an old friend, Mr. Peck, in which I said substantially that if the charges against Mr. Cleveland were proved, I should not support him. If he is such a man as this, I am done. This letter was entirely private, and I am pained that extracts from it should have found their way into print. I have now suspended judgment and am awaiting more light. You know that sometimes one gropes in the dark for a time, but the exercise of a little patience will generally show the way.”

  Meanwhile, Horatio King arranged for his own interview with the New York World. He declared that he had gone to Buffalo determined to get to the bottom of the case. The story that ran the next day was nothing short of a full-blown attack on Maria Halpin. King had taken his cue from Charley McCune’s tall tale and run with it. Here was King’s account:

  The facts seem to be that many years ago when the governor was “sowing his wild oats,” he met this woman, with whom his name has been connected, and became intimate with her. She was a widow and not a good woman by any means. Mr. Cleveland, hearing this, began to make inquiries about her and discovered that two of his friends were intimate with her at the same time as himself.

  When a child was born, Cleveland, in order to shield his two friends, who were both married men, assumed the responsibility of it. He took care of the child and mother like a man, and did everything in his power for them, and he provided for them until the woman became a confirmed victim of alcoholism and made it impossible by her conduct for him to have anything to do with her. He never separated the mother and child, nor did he do anything to injure the woman. He was throughout the affair a victim of circumstances. He accepted responsibilitie
s that not one man in a thousand has shouldered and acted honorably in the matter.

  After the child was born the woman made a habit of visiting every man with whom she had been intimate and demanded money under a threat of exposure. Three of her four admirers—for she was an attractive woman—were married and the man who in reality was the father of the infant had an interesting daughter whom he idolized. He was in constant dread lest his offense should reach his wife and child, and Cleveland, being the only unmarried man, relieved him of the embarrassment by shouldering all of the responsibility. That man is dead and the child is his perfect image in manner and looks. Cleveland acted a heroic part, suffering the obloquy that his friends might not bring unpleasantness to their hearthsides.

  Then King brought in his conversations with Cleveland.

  “The governor frankly told me that my version of the stories was substantially correct, and that the account published in the Buffalo Telegraph was false and scandalous.”

  The King interview created a sensation. At last the Cleveland campaign was fighting back. Here was a high-level Cleveland mouthpiece going on the record with the first spirited defense of the presidential candidate and his relationship with Maria Halpin. And what a story it was. King’s portrayal of Maria could not have been more cutting. She was “not a good woman”—stinging words in the Victorian Age. The woman’s morals were so loose she couldn’t positively identify the father of her child. It could have been any of two or four men who were passing her around Buffalo like a sexual plaything. In King’s rendering, Cleveland was a selfless hero who had assumed responsibility for the boy when he might not have been the father.