geekyDuring the 1884 election, Grover Cleveland ran as the candidate for the Democratic party against Republican James G. Blaine. During the campaign, Blaine had the odor of scandal attached to him, in part due to something called "the Mulligan Letters". In 1876, a Boston bookkeeper named James Mulligan had found letters showing that Blaine had sold his influence in Congress to various businesses. One such letter ended with the phrase "burn this letter", and Democrats mocked Blaine with the slogan "Burn, burn, burn this letter!" In just one deal, he had received $110,150 (over $1.5 million in 2010 dollars) from the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad for securing a federal land grant. Democrats contrasted this with their candidate, who they dubbed "Grover the Good" because of Cleveland's reputation for personal integrity. In the past three previous years Cleveland had become Mayor of Buffalo and then the Governor of the state of New York, cleaning up large amounts of Tammany Hall's corruption in the process. In order to counter this, the Republicans needed to mount some sort of attack on Cleveland's reputation and paint him with the aura of scandal.
On July 21, 1884, during the campaign, the Republicans found their issue.A Buffalo newspaper, the Evening Telegraph, printed a story entitled "A Terrible Tale," in which it alleged that Grover Cleveland was connected to a Buffalo woman named Maria Crofts Halpin. Cleveland was suspected of being the father of her illegitimate son, who was later placed in an orphan asylum.
The story was spread by telegraph all over the United States and the Republican press gave it legs. One publication, the Independent, called on members of the clergy to use their pulpits to use the story to preach for Cleveland's defeat.
The Telegraph added a series of articles with new allegations. Two Buffalo ministers, Rev. C. W. Winchester of the Plymouth Methodist Episcopal Church, and Rev. George H. Ball, D.D., of the Hudson Street Baptist Church, led the charge against Cleveland. They charged that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo. Republicans began the chant "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?"
When confronted with the scandal, Cleveland instructed his supporters: "Above all, tell the truth." Cleveland admitted to paying child support in 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, the woman who claimed he fathered her child, which she named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Halpin was reported to be involved with several men at the time, including Cleveland's friend and law partner, Oscar Folsom, for whom the child was named. Cleveland insisted that he did not know which man was the child's father (apparently including himself). He assumed responsibility for the child he said because he was the only bachelor among them.
Shortly before election day, The Republican media published an affidavit from Halpin in which she stated that until she met Cleveland her "life was pure and spotless", and "there is not, and never was, a doubt as to the paternity of our child, and the attempt of Grover Cleveland, or his friends, to couple the name of Oscar Folsom, or any one else, with that boy, for that purpose is simply infamous and false."
Democratic spin doctors launched their own use of media and clergy. The Rev. Dr. Kinsley Twining conducted an inquiry that concluded that Cleveland was being truthful. An organization known as the Boston Committee of One Hundred sent a lawyer named Hodges to Buffalo. On invitation from Reverend George Ball, Hodges investigated Ball's evidence, and concluded that it was false. The Buffalo Courier later published a letter from Ball in which he admitted the falsity of some of the statements he had relied on.
It seems that in 1884, in the days before 24 hour news networks, email and the internet, the pathway of spin was in the newspapers, public meetings and in the churches. A number of people spoke out in defense of Cleveland, including Henry Ward Beecher. On October 22 he spoke at a large meeting in Brooklyn and read a letter which Cleveland had written to Beecher repudiating all the principal charges. Beecher told the group that he did not believe that "lies so cruel, so base, so atrocious as those concerning Mr. Cleveland" had ever been told. Several leading Buffalo also clergymen defended Cleveland. A report prepared by sixteen well-known Republicans of Buffalo declared:
"Our examination of the general charges which have been made against Governor Cleveland's private character shows that they are wholly untrue. In every instance in which the reports and insinuations have been tangible enough to furnish us a clue to guide us in our investigations they have been positively proved to be false. The attack upon Governor Cleveland's character is thoroughly discredited when we consider the sources from which it comes."
Maria Halpin had been a young widow from Pennsylvania. She moved to Buffalo from Jersey City in 1871, leaving two children behind. In Buffalo she found employment, first as a collar-maker and then in a dry goods store. She was described as tall and pretty and she spoke French. She attended St. John's Episcopal Church in Buffalo where she made numerous friends. For a time, in the parlance of the day, "she accepted the attentions of several men", including Cleveland. She gave birth to a son out of wedlock on September 14, 1874, and she named her son Oscar Folsom Cleveland. She named Cleveland as the child's father. Cleveland wrote a Boston friend when President, and stated that he did not know whether he was the child's father or not, but he consented to make provision for the child. Many in the community thought that Mrs. Halpin was uncertain who the child's father was, and she focused on Cleveland because he was a bachelor and she hoped to make him marry her. Cleveland supposedly did not question her charge because the other men where were potential fathers were all married men.
Rev. Kinsley Twining stated, "After the preliminary offense, his conduct was singularly honorable, showing no attempt to evade responsibility, and doing all that he could to meet the duties involved, of which marriage was certainly not one." But Cleveland took no part in the child's life.
While nursing the child, it was reported that Marian Halpin began drinking heavily and neglecting her child. Clevelandasked his friend, former county judge Roswell L. Burrows, to look into the matter. Without Cleveland's knowledge, Burrows had Mrs. Halpin taken to the Providence Asylum, an institution for the mentally ill, managed by the Sisters of Charity. Mrs. Halpin remained there briefly, while legal steps were taken to commit the child to the Protestant Orphan Asylum on March 9, 1876. Cleveland paid the board rate of $5 a week for the child's care.He also paid to have Mrs. Halpin start a business of her own in Niagara Falls. But she returned to Buffalo and retained lawyer Milo A. Whitney to attempt to recover her son. She was unsuccessful. On April 28, 1876, she attempted to abduct the child and in July there was a final commitment of the boy to the orphanage. The child was later he was adopted by a wealthy in western New York.
Mrs. Halpin disappeared and was not heard from locally until twenty years later, in 1895, when she had remarried and was living in New Rochelle, N. Y. She sent President Cleveland two letters asking for money and threatening to publish uncomplimentary facts about him.
The scandal received too little notice in the election to be much of an issue. There was no evidence to suggest that James G. Blaine had any part personally in publicizing the scandal. There is a story suggesting that during the campaign, an unseemly rumor began about Blaine's marriage and that a packet of alleged "evidence" was brought to Cleveland for sale and he paid for it. According to the story, Cleveland then proceeded to rip up the supposed incriminating evidence and have it burnt. He is reported to have said "The other side can have a monopoly of all the dirt in this campaign." Whether this story is true or not, it supplements the legend of "Grover the Good."
When Cleveland won the election, Democrats added a line to his critics' verse "Ma, ma, where's my pa?" Their rejoinder was "Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!"