A Secret Life

Skyhorse Publishing

Contents

PROLOGUE............................................ix1. BUFFALO..........................................12. THE BACHELOR.....................................273. MARIA............................................554. "WITHOUT MY CONSENT".............................735. THE ORPHAN.......................................956. PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY...........................1237. THE GODDESS......................................1518. STIRRINGS OF A SCANDAL...........................1719. "A TERRIBLE TALE"................................19510. DEFAMED.........................................21711. FINDING MARIA...................................23312. "A BULLET THROUGH MY HEART".....................25113. THE AFFIDAVIT...................................27714. PRESIDENT-ELECT.................................29315. ROSE............................................31316. THE BRIDE.......................................33117. DEATH OF A NEWSPAPER............................34718. THE TRIAL.......................................36319. KEEPER OF THE FLAME.............................397EPILOGUE............................................427ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.....................................431BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................435NOTES...............................................441INDEX...............................................471

Chapter One

WHEN GROVER CLEVELAND turned seventeen, the time had come for him to go forth into the world. The year was 1854, and he was living in the tiny hamlet of Holland Patent, New York, about nine miles north of Utica; but it was too inconsequential a place to offer much of a future, so he tried Utica and Syracuse, but nobody seemed to be hiring. It was an exasperating time. Grover passed the evening hours studying Latin to keep his mind alert, but he had to admit to his sister Mary, "I am kind of fooling away my time here."

Grover had a pet name for Mary—Molly; she was the big sister he could unburden his heart to. There were nine Cleveland children in all. Stephen Grover Cleveland (he dropped the "Stephen" early on) was born on March 18, 1837, the fifth child of Ann Neal Cleveland and the Reverend Richard Falley Cleveland. Grover was closest to Mary and his big brother William, a student at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, but William had not written in a while, and what he did write said very little. Grover sometimes found dealing with William very frustrating. Mary, though, was giving and wise. Grover wrote her that he was "heartily sick of studying at home," that he wanted to attend Hamilton College in Upstate New York, but it was a dream he would have to defer. "How is a man going to spend four years in getting an education with nothing to start on and no prospect of anything to pay his way with?" College, he said, with some bitterness, was not going to happen. "That's gone up."

Grover set himself a deadline: Come next spring, at the latest, he was going to be out of Holland Patent.

From nowhere Grover received a message from Ingham Townsend, a wealthy local property owner with a reputation as a thoughtful benefactor who had offered financial assistance to several promising young men from Holland Patent. Townsend was also a deacon in the Presbyterian church where Grover's father had been minister. Richard Cleveland died in 1853, at age forty-nine, of acute peritonitis brought on by a gastric ulcer, and Townsend had a genuine interest in doing all he could for the Cleveland family. So it happened that Townsend met with Grover, was very impressed with him, and offered to pay the boy's way through college. There was one catch: Grover had to make a commitment to enter the ministry following his graduation. Right then, Grover had to say no. That was his father's and his brother William's calling, not his. There was further discussion, and an idea came to Grover "like an inspiration." He now presented it to Townsend. He wanted to go west, to the booming city of Cleveland, Ohio.

"It's just the place for a young man to establish himself in," he told Townsend.

Cleveland was the city founded by Grover's forebear, Moses Cleaveland, a Connecticut lawyer and Revolutionary War officer. In 1796, he led a surveying party across Lake Erie to explore the Western Reserve, territory claimed by the state of Connecticut in what is now northeastern Ohio. At the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, General Cleaveland beheld a magnificent plain and proclaimed it to be the site of a settlement. It was named in honor of the leader of the expedition.

In 1820, Cleaveland's population had reached just one hundred and fifty. By 1854, the city's name had been shortened to "Cleveland." This came about because the editor of the local newspaper thought "Cleveland" looked cleaner than "Cleaveland" on the masthead. Cleveland's population had reached thirty thousand, and the city was on its way to becoming a vital port that, via the Erie Canal, linked the West to the Atlantic Ocean.

Deciding on the city of Cleveland made sense, even if, as Grover gamely acknowledged, he knew not a single soul there. Settling in a boomtown named for a distinguished kinsman would set him apart from all the other determined young men who were flocking to Ohio.

"I was attracted by the name. It seemed that it was my town because it had my name," Grover later said.

As Townsend listened to Grover sketch out his shrewd plan, he must have admired the magnitude of the young man's ambition. Right then he offered Grover the sum of $25 to finance his way west. It was a loan, but one that Townsend assured Grover he need never pay back. There was, however, one condition; and as did anything associated with Ingham Townsend, it came positioned as an act of philanthropy.

"If you ever meet with a young man in a similar condition, give it to him if you have it to spare," Townsend said.

Townsend handed Grover the $25 and a promissory note. He would forever be grateful for the money. It was, Grover would say many years later, "my start in life." Townsend could never have imagined that the simple gesture he made that day would have such profound consequences in American history.

Grover said good-bye to his family. His mother, Ann, was a fine-boned, pretty Southern belle, the daughter of a wealthy book publisher from Baltimore, when she had married Richard Cleveland at age twenty-three. Coming north as the bride of a young Presbyterian minister had been a culture shock. Though she had been advised in no uncertain terms not to take a black servant from a slave state North, her black maid had begged to go with her, and Ann had brought her along. That, and Ann's attire, made the villagers suspicious. The maid was sent home, along with Ann's jewelry and all her dresses of colors other than black, brown, and gray.

It had been a disciplined household. Every evening the Cleveland children would gather for prayers and brace themselves to be drilled by Reverend Cleveland on the basic principles of the Christian faith. In this manner, Grover and his siblings committed to memory the entire handbook of the Presbyterian catechism. The Sabbath was strictly observed, work and any form of play were forbidden from sundown on Saturday until sundown on Sunday. On Saturday evening, the children lined up for...