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| White House wedding day. |
It
was a quiet, dignified affair, if somewhat subdued because of the august
personage of the groom, a portly 49
year old life-long bachelor. The ceremony, witnessed by a handful of family,
friends, and the groom’s staff, was held in an elegant second
floor parlor overlooking a spread of
lawn known as the Blue Room. A military
band led by a fellow named John Philips Sousa provided the music,
his own composition for the
occasion. The bride was a stunning 21
year old brunette in a simple white
brocaded dress. She wore no veil.
At the conclusion of the service the new husband did not offer his new
wife the customary kiss. He had been advised that it might look unseemly. Instead the couple led the assembly to another
well appointed room where an
afternoon reception was laid. After a suitably brief attendance the couple retired
to their private quarters.
There
was no honeymoon at Niagara Falls, the popular destination
of the fashionable. They were both, after all, from nearby Buffalo, New York and had presumably
seen them before. Instead the busy man
returned to his official duties the next day. He did not even have to leave home. His office was on the premises.
There he presumably scanned the morning newspaper to see what notice had been taken. The wedding
had created, as was to be expected, something of a stir but so far none of the scandal
some had feared. He was, after all,
the sitting President of the United States, Grover Cleveland and the bride, the former Frances Folsom, had official been his ward since the death of her father,
a former law partner.
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| The happy couple. |
It
was the first and only marriage ceremony by a President ever held in the White
House. One other Chief Executive, John Tyler,
had been married while in office but did not hold the nuptials at the White House.
The widower had married the
25 year old daughter of a New York Congressman
who had been killed, along with senior members of the administration, when
a gun exploded on the deck of the USS
Princeton as the couple flirted over tea below. That marriage
turned out to be a long and happy one with seven offspring. But people had
forgotten about Tyler, the first accidental
president and a deeply unpopular one who had also become the only former Commander in Chief to take up arms
against the government he had once led as a delegate to the Provisional
Confederate Congress and Congressman
elect of the Rebel House before
his death.
Later
another Presidential widower, Woodrow Wilson
would marry Edith Bolling in
1915 during his first term, but again would have the union solemnized in a church. The formidable Edith would go on to pretty
much run the country after her
husband suffered a stroke campaigning
for his beloved League of Nations.
The
future for Cleveland and his wife was sunnier than either of the other matches. The couple’s first daughter, Ruth, was born while Cleveland was on hiatus from the presidency in 1891 but was raised in the White House during his second, non-consecutive,
term. Baby Ruth, as she was called in the press, became the object of national adoration. Unfortunately she died at age 12 in 1904 of diphtheria. The nation mourned and
the Curtiss Candy Company named a candy
bar after her.
 |
| Ruth Cleveland about age 8. |
The
couple’s first daughter, Ruth, was born while Cleveland was on hiatus from the presidency in 1891 but was raised in the White House
during his second, non-consecutive, term.
Baby Ruth, as she was called
in the press, became the object of
national adoration. Unfortunately she
died at age 12 in 1904 of diphtheria.
The nation mourned and the Curtiss Candy
Company named a candy bar after her, or at least that is what they told the
lawyers for the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth.
The
Clevelands had four other children, including Esther who was born in 1893 in the White House, the last
Presidential baby born there until John
John Kennedy. The couple remained
happily married until Grover’s death in 1908 at the age of 68. Francis lived on as a widow until 1947.
Cleveland
was the second President from Buffalo.
The first was the hapless Millard
Fillmore, who can usually be found on lists of worst Presidents. None the
less, the city is mighty proud of both of its favorite sons, each of whom
figured prominently in local history independently of their nation political
careers. Statues of both stand proudly
in front of the Buffalo City Hall.
Cleveland
was born on March 18, 1837 in Caldwell,
New Jersey. His Presbyterian minister father brought the family to Up State New York when Grover was just
a boy. He gave up his education at the Clinton Liberal Academy in 1853 after
his father died to help support his family as clerk. Two years later he
relocated to booming Buffalo, the key port on Lake Erie connecting to New
York City and eastern markets via the Erie Canal and Hudson River. There he
clerked and read law with law firm of
Rogers, Bowen, and Rogers. After
passing the bar in 1859 he established his own firm in 1962 as the Civil War was raging. As the support of his widowed mother and
younger siblings, Cleveland elected to hire
a substitute for $150 to serve in his place when he was drafted.
That would make him the first President since Ulysses S Grant not to have served in some capacity, although his
predecessor Chester Alan Arthur served
as a high ranking New York Militia General
who seldom left the state and never saw combat. Republicans would later use his lack of
service against him.
After
the war Cleveland rose quickly in Buffalo legal services making a name for
himself—and earning the gratitude of Irish
voters for his pro bono defense of
some of the Fenians arrested after
their failed raid on Canada. He also won a high profile libel case brought against the editor
of the Commercial Advertiser. He chose to live simply in a rooming house while continuing to
support his family from his rising income and shunned the largely Republican
elite in the city, preferring the company of young men and the convivial lures
of the tavern.
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| Mark Twain was a Buffalo newspaper man while Cleveland was Sheriff of Erie Count. Later he became one of the reform Republicans--Mugwamps--who support him the tainted James G. Blaine. In his Autobiography he recalled visiting the president and telling him "In Buffalo you were nothing but a Sheriff. I was in society." |
|
He was a natural Democrat and threw his lot with the
party early in his career. In 1886 he
ran for District Attorney and
narrowly lost to his best friend and boarding house roommate Lyman K. Bass. In 1870 he was elected Sheriff of Erie County by just 300
votes. His term as a lawman was marked
by personal rectitude in a
department noted for its corruption. He was best known for saving the county
$10 twice on hangman’s fees by
personally slipping the noose around
the necks of convicted murderers
despite his personal opposition to the
death penalty.
Cleveland declined to run for
a second term fearing that corruption in the department might later taint his
career. But his two years behind the badge made him moderately wealthy because of the $80,000 in fees which he collected from the courts for the performance of some of
his duties.
He then joined Bass and
another young lawyer in a new firm at which he was the principle litigator while Bass was off to Congress.
It was during this period that Cleveland, Bass, and other young buck
lawyers dabbled with a young widow, Maria Crofts Halpin who became inconveniently pregnant. Cleveland accepted
responsibility and afterward supported Mrs. Halpin and the child. He would later claim that the real father
could not be determined among several candidates but as the only bachelor among
the suspects he volunteered to take the rap.
 |
| Republicans taunted Cleveland with cries of "Pa, Pa, Where's My Pa?' After he was elected anyway Democrats shot back, "Gone to the White House. Ha, Ha, Ha!" |
Historians are divided on the reliability of this
claim. When he first ran for President
Republicans mocked him with cries of “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” The smear
was meant to counter Cleveland’s otherwise spotless reputation of personal rectitude as contrasted to his opponent
Senator James G. Blaine of Maine who had been implicated in a
number of financial scandals and suspected corruption. Although middle
class women might not have been so forgiving, they did not have the
vote. Except for die-hard Republican Stalwarts, Cleveland’s frank admission
of the facts and the suggestion of gallantry
in shielding his friends, actually won the admiration of many men and was
offered as proof of his essential integrity.
Cleveland
won that reputation by his scrupulous honesty as he rose in New York politics
and his reputation as a zealous reformer
and champion of Civil Service Reform. In 1881 he handily won election as Mayor of Buffalo and quickly challenged corrupt machine politicians of both parties. He forced the unwilling Common Council to accept a low
bid on a street sweeping contract instead
of a bloated contract to a political insider.
Then he enlisted the State
Legislature to support the construction of a new local sewer system saving city taxpayers millions of dollars over a
locally concocted scheme.
Such
unheard of concern for the taxpayers earned him the unexpected nomination for Governor.
In November 1882 after less than a year as Mayor, Cleveland was
swept into office in a tidal wave of support for reform by the largest margin
in the state’s history. And his coat
tails were long enough to bring Democrats to power in both houses of the
Legislature. Despite this, the new
Governor quickly locked horns with the corrupt New York City Democratic Tammany Hall machine. On the other hand reform minded Republicans
like rising start Theodore Roosevelt
swung support to the Governor’s agenda on many issues allowing him to initiate
sweeping reforms. New York based popular national newspapers like Harpers
Illustrated which were typically Republican partisans, none the less
brought Cleveland’s reform crusades to wider audiences.
In
1884 the previous Democratic champion and sentimental favorite Samuel Tilden was too ill to make a
second run for the White House. In a
crowded field and against the opposition to Tammany, Cleveland was nominated on
the second ballot over Massachusetts’s radical Benjamin Butler, the wall-eyed former Union general who was the champion of free silver Democrats, labor,
and a supporter of women’s
suffrage.
It
was a hotly contested election.
Democrats, as usual, were expected to sweep the Solid South—the states of the old Confederacy—plus most of the Border States. The Republicans expected to retain
traditional support of New England,
the Mid West, and Far West. The Middle States of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware, together rich in Electoral College votes, would be the
hard-fought battle ground. Blaine, who’s
wife was Irish Catholic thought he
might be able to peel away enough of the traditional Democratic Irish vote to
take New York and maybe the other states.
Then, shortly before the election a prominent Republican speaker Rev. Samuel Burchard told a New York City audience
that Cleveland represented the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” Democrats gleefully published the slur
and the Irish flocked to the ballot box to support Cleveland.
 |
| A cartoon in usually Republican Harper's Illustrated show Cleveland's appeal to GOP reformers by contrasting him to a Tammany Brave. |
Meanwhile Republican reformers,
labeled Mugwamps by their enemies, abandoned the tainted Blaine and
supported Cleveland. He swept the
contested states plus Indiana.
Although the popular vote was close, Cleveland handily won a 219–182 majority in the Electoral College.
Cleveland is sometimes referred to as a Bourbon Democrat. That is not entirely true. He was not, like some ante-bellum Democrats a “Northern man of Southern principles.” He did
act on the Democratic platform of dismantling what was left of Reconstruction in the South, but much
of that had already been started by his Republican predecessor, Arthur. Cleveland was a pro-business conservative and an ideological devotee of laissez-faire classic liberalism. He stood for
the gold standard and against both Greenback schemes and free
silver. He opposed high
tariffs. He was for frugality in
government, Civil Service Reform. He was
mildly supportive of “responsible labor” but opposed to strikes and
“public disorder.” When push came
to shove he would unhesitatingly pit the power of the Federal government
against strikers despite the objections of pro-union local Democrats
like Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld.
Cleveland
would go on to a largely successful first term.
His popularity was even boosted, not harmed by his late marriage. Four years later the Republicans would run on
a protective tariff platform and narrowly took back some of those swing
states. Once again Cleveland won the popular vote but amid some controversy
over possible shenanigans in Indiana lost the Electoral vote.
On
her way out of the White House in March of 1889 Francis Cleveland told a member
of the domestic staff, “Now, Jerry, I want
you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I
want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again.” When asked
when she would return, she confidently averred, “We are coming back four years
from today.”
And
she was right. After a new, even higher
Republican tariff had stiffly raised prices on imported goods, Cleveland swept
back into office with an impressive victory in which he won back all of the
swing states he lost four years earlier and picked up Illinois, Wisconsin, and California
while the Greenback Party took five High Planes and Western silver mining
states. He crushed incumbent Benjamin Harrison and Francis got her
house back.
Unfortunately
for Cleveland the next four years were much tougher than his first term. The nation was plunged into a deep depression and widespread unemployment by the Panic of 1893, one of the most severe
of the 19th Century. Coxey’s
Army marched on Washington to
protest his conservative policies in dealing with the crisis by not dealing
with it at all. Labor unrest swept the
country including a violent West
Virginia coal strike and the Pullman
Boycott/Strike led by Eugene V. Debs
and the American Labor Union. Cleveland ordered Federal troops to “move the
mails” and crush the strike. As a
result he alienated many trade unionists
and their supporters.
Meanwhile
has adamant hard money policies
resulted in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which was the
beginning of the end of bimetallism and
the rise of the Gold Standard, which had devastating deflationary effects and ruined many farmers and small business
people. That caused a permanent rift between conservative
Democrats and western Populists. After Cleveland’s term the Populists and
urban working class would unite to remake the Democrats, at least outside the
South inaugurating the so-called Fourth
Party System.
Cleveland was in the midst of a bruising battle to lower
tariffs when he discovered a tumor on
his jaw. To prevent panic over the health of the
President, he had the tumor surgically removed in secret aboard a borrowed yacht.
In a second operation he was fitted with a hard rubber prosthesis to replace a section of his jaw.
When Cleveland left office William Jennings Bryan and the Populists seized control of the
Democratic Party. He supported a
break-away Gold Democrat ticket that
was trounced at the polls. Republican William McKinley swept into the White
House.
The Clevelands moved to an estate in Princeton, New Jersey where he served on the Board of Trustees of the University. They raised their growing family and the
former President still occasionally weighed in on national issues, particularly
for Hard Money and the Gold Standard.
Always conservative, he disparaged agitation for Women’s Suffrage.
In declining health he died of a heart attack on June 28, 1908.
His last words were reported to be, “I have tried so hard to do right.” He was buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau
Presbyterian Church. Nearly 40 years
later Frances was laid along side of him.
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