A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [148]
Moot asked Godkin about the circulation of the Post. Godkin said it reached about twenty thousand people daily. The Nation, which had reprinted several of the Post’s articles about Ball, had a weekly circulation of nine thousand. Godkin acknowledged that he had personally written or edited all the articles regarding Ball. He said this without equivocation or discomfit. In point of fact, his authorship gave him pleasure. Surprisingly, after just a few minutes, Godkin was off the stand and back in his seat at the defendant’s table.
That was all. Moot rose and announced that the defense rested. It had taken only one afternoon to present the evidence. Moot had not even called Ball to the stand. His strategy had been daringly straightforward: The articles published in the Post and The Nation spoke for themselves. No further evidence of libel was necessary.
John Milbank’s partner, Franklin Locke, gave the opening statement for the defense. Locke was a forty-seven-year-old graduate of Hamilton College. Such was his knowledge of the law that it was said he could dictate an entire corporate charter without a reference book. Locke was also a voracious reader. Gibbon’s six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was his favorite work.
Locke stood before the jury, with his noble forehead crowned with a thicket of white hair, looking like an Old Testament prophet. Addressing the panel, he recalled the time of the presidential election of 1884, six years before. Until that political campaign, Locke said, “Not one word had been spoken against [Cleveland’s] character.” The man was a “saint upon this earth.” Then came the day when George Ball stepped onto the political stage—“this crank,” as Locke contemptuously called him.
Locke produced the letter Ball had written to the Boston Journal about the Beaver Island Club and the circumstances surrounding the death of Oscar Folsom in 1875. In it, Ball had claimed that on the night Folsom had been killed, he and Cleveland had been “beastly drunk” on their return from the Beaver Island Club—which Ball called a “place of drunkenness and lust.”
Locke looked at the jurors. “The Beaver Island Clubhouse was just as pure and reputable a place as Dr. Ball’s church!”
Locke closed by asking the jurors to find in favor of the Post and against Ball. A message had to be sent. Ball should stick to the business of education and religion. “Tell him to keep out of politics, for which he is evidently unfitted.”
With that, Locke was finished. It was now John Milburn’s turn to take over the defense. Milburn called his first witness. It was George Ball.
Ball took the witness chair and faced the well of the courtroom. He looked vexed and weary. His rimless glasses were planted on the bridge of a long sharp nose, and his face was framed in a heavy beard of iron grey. His upper lip was clean-shaven, and the top of his head was entirely bald.
Milburn got right to it. He showed Ball the Boston Journal letter. Ball owned up to the fact that he had been in error; Cleveland had not been with Folsom the night of the buggy collision. Milburn demanded to know where he had heard the story that Cleveland had been drunk.
Just then the clock struck five. Court was adjourned for the day. Ball would be back on the stand the next day.
On the second day of George Ball’s testimony, the courtroom was filled with the city’s leading clergymen, there in force to show their support for their beleaguered colleague. Ball braced himself. He was going up against Buffalo’s leading lawyer, a master at courtroom tactics and the technique of cross-examination.
People were surprised when John Milburn spoke