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The letters were clever works of propaganda. Real names were cited to enhance the credibility of the allegations. One letter in circulation attributed to William Arkell, publisher of the Albany Evening Journal, the statement to a friend that Cleveland frequented whorehouses in the state capital. Arkell was so offended, he went public, branding the letter a lie and challenging anyone who “has the cheek to make any such claims” to come forward.

Another letter told the story of a gentleman from Buffalo who had been invited to spend the night at the governor’s mansion.

“On coming down to breakfast one morning [he] discovered a female duly installed as mistress of the Executive Mansion, who had been transferred to her position from a bawdy house,” the letter went. The origin of the story was traced to John Palmer, a trustee of the old soldier’s and sailor’s home in Bath, New York. Moving aggressively to bury the tale, Cleveland’s private secretary, Dan Lamont, commanded Palmer to come to Albany for a face-to-face confrontation. Palmer apologized and disclosed his source, James Johnson, a former newspaper reporter with close ties to the Republican state committee. When Lamont contacted Johnson, he denied responsibility. On it went.

Cleveland’s friends were concerned, but in his Broad Street offices at Spencer Trask & Co., New York banker George F. Peabody (cousin of the philanthropist George Foster Peabody) was confident of victory come November. “Everything looks well for Cleveland,” he reported. But he also wanted Cleveland to know that “certain parties who are troubled at the Halpin scandal but got over it are suspicious that there is some basis in truth for these whispers and they state openly that if they are true, they will not vote for him—this time they will not come back. These whispers I do not like.” Peabody was a friend of Reverend Samuel Smith Mitchell of the First Presbyterian Church in Buffalo. “He writes me that the worst about Cleveland has not been published.”

Observing all this drama were Henry Ward Beecher and his wife, Eunice Bullard Beecher. He who is without sin let him cast the first stone, went the Scripture, and Beecher, the most famous man in America—nine years after standing trial for adultery—was inclined to go with Cleveland. Mrs. Beecher was less certain. Like Maria Halpin, Eunice Beecher had suffered the ignominy of public humiliation. Maria’s story resonated with her.

Eunice Beecher’s brother had been Henry’s roommate at Amherst College. She was eighteen when she became engaged to Henry, and made an attractive bride, with her thick auburn hair and full-bodied figure. Eunice was raised in a strict New England household. Once when she came to dinner in what her father, a physician, observed to be a low-cut dress, he threw a bowl of hot soup at her, saying that since she must be cold, the soup would warm her up. There were seven brothers in her family who teased her unmercifully and left her an “oversensitive and insecure” woman.

Certain women found the muscular Beecher incredibly attractive, and throughout their marriage, Eunice had heard rumors about her husband’s philandering. It was said that he had fathered their next-door neighbor’s daughter. Imagine Eunice’s misery as Henry doted on the little girl, who grew up looking more like him each passing year. So Eunice had experienced firsthand the anguish a husband’s dalliances could bring to a family.

Women did not age well in the 19th century. When Henry Ward Beecher was brought to trial for adultery in 1875, his wife, seventy-two, was white-haired, stooped, and worn-out, having given birth to ten children, three of whom survived to adulthood. She was at court every day, sitting loyally behind the defense table, even on days when her husband showed his contempt for the proceedings by not bothering to be there. For six months she sat stern-faced and stoic in her simple black dress, listening to witnesses give provocative evidence about her “abysmal” marriage and philandering