Until Trump’s 2024 victory, Grover Cleveland was best known as the only American president elected to two nonconsecutive terms. Elected America’s 22nd president in 1884, he won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College in 1888. He bounced back, and was elected America’s 24th president in 1892. His public life was widely praised as commendable. In his private life, however, Cleveland was creepy.
Grover Cleveland’s Scandals Were on the Heavy End
A Democrat reformer, Stephen Grover Cleveland (1837 – 1908) left his mark by fighting the day’s endemic political corruption. His political brand was built on a a reputation for integrity and honesty. He was also known for surviving scandals that would sink any Democrat today. With some exceptions, such as Thomas Jefferson, most presidential bedroom scandals involved consensual hanky panky, or boorish workplace sexual harassment. Inappropriate behavior, to be sure, but not out and out violently criminal behavior. Not so with Grover Cleveland.
Cleveland’s biggest scandal involved straightforward assault, followed by shocking levels of corruption and abuse of power to covering it up. It began on the evening of December 15th, 1873, with a chance encounter in Buffalo between Maria Halpin and Cleveland. He was then a prominent lawyer, and former Sheriff of Erie County, which included Buffalo. Cleveland, a stocky six footer, had been courting Halpin for months. He invited her to dinner at a restaurant, and she accepted. After a pleasant meal, he escorted her back to her boarding house. There, as seen below, the pleasantness stopped.
Grover Cleveland’s Scandals Included Assault and a Corrupt Coverup
According to Maria Halpin’s sworn affidavit, Grover Cleveland assaulted her “by use of force and violence and without my consent”. When she threatened to report him, the former sheriff threatened her into silence. As her affidavit continued, Cleveland: “told me he was determined to ruin me if it cost him $10,000, if he was hanged by the neck for it. I then and there told him that I never wanted to see him again, and commanded him to leave my room, which he did”. A few weeks later, Halpin discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to a baby boy in September, 1874. When she declared that Cleveland was the father, he used his connections to shut her up. He had the child removed from his mother’s care and placed in an orphanage. He also arranged to have Halpin committed to a mental asylum.
Halpin was quickly released after an evaluation concluded that she was not insane. She had only been sent to an asylum in an egregious abuse of power by corrupt political elites. Because real life is not fair, and justice and karma are often a joke, Cleveland got away with it. He went on to get elected Mayor of Buffalo, then Governor of New York, before running for president in 1884. News of the scandal and his illegitimate child came out during the presidential campaign. Unsurprisingly, Cleveland’s foes attacked him for the contrast between his do-gooder public persona, and his seedy private life. A chant by opponents that mimicked a baby crying “Ma! Ma! Where’s my Pa?!” dogged the Cleveland campaign. He won, however, and his supporters retorted with a counter chant: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”
Grover Cleveland’s Other Scandal
Forcing himself upon a date and fathering an illegitimate child upon his victim was the worst thing (that we know of) about Grover Cleveland. However, it was not his only seedy act. Another item from his personal life, which would amount to an icky sex scandal if it happened today, was the iffy relationship between Cleveland and his eventual wife, Frances Clara Folsom (1864 – 1947). Frances was the only surviving child of Oscar Folsom, a lawyer and longtime close friend of Cleveland.
At age twenty seven, the future president met his future wife and future First Lady shortly after she was born. Cooing over the newborn, Cleveland took an interest in baby Frances while she was still in swaddling clothes. He bought her a pram, used to babysit her as “Uncle Cleve”, and doted on her. Frances’ father was killed in an accident while racing his carriage in 1875, and left no will. So a court appointed Cleveland to administer his deceased friend’s estate. That brought him in even closer and more frequent contact with Frances.
Grooming a Child Bride
After her father’s death, Grover Cleveland became the orphaned Frances Folsom’s new father figure, as well as her hero. Unlike Frances’ real father, who had been notoriously careless of both his life and his family, “Uncle Cleve” was dependable, quite attentive, and doting. He continued to dote on her as she grew up, and at some point, things went from doting to grooming. Cleveland began to send her flowers, with notes saying things like “I am waiting for my bride to grow up”.
People thought Cleveland was kidding. As things turned out, he was in deadly earnest. After Cleveland was elected president and while Frances was in college, he sent her a letter proposing marriage. The president then fretted and sweated her reply like a schoolboy. She agreed, and on June 2nd, 1886, as the Marine Band was conducted by John Philip Sousa, twenty one year old Frances Folsom wed the forty nine year old president in the White House’s Blue Room. To date, it is the only time a president was married in the White House or while in office.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Graff, Henry F. – Grover Cleveland (2002)
Washington Post, July 3rd, 2014 – The First Celebrity First Lady: Frances Cleveland
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