A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [155]
“Well,” said Judge Daniels when Fullerton concluded his testimony. “Does the plaintiff desire to introduce any testimony?”
“Just a moment,” said Adlebert Moot. His brow was deeply furrowed as he carried on a whispered consultation with his law partner Frank Ferguson. Finally, Moot said he was recalling their client George Ball to the stand.
Ball looked nervous. Moot asked, “Dr. Ball, did you visit with Mr. Fullerton in his office during the campaign of 1881?”
“I have no definite recollection of such a visit.” But as he said this, he sounded evasive.
Franklin Locke handled the cross-examination. He asked Ball straight-out, “Will you swear that you did not have a conversation with Mr. Fullerton in his office during the campaign of 1881?”
“I think I might have had some conversation with Mr. Fullerton, but I am certain that I did not ask for money. We talked about the management and general expenses of a campaign.”
“And what possible object would you have had in talking with Mr. Fullerton about the general expenses of a campaign?”
Ball hesitated. “I would like to have the language of some of my previous answers read to see exactly what I said.” Ball had tied himself into an awkward knot of equivocation. Titters broke out in the courtroom. Judge Daniels looked sternly at the spectators, and his glare told everyone to be quiet.
It was now five o’clock. Judge Daniels cautioned the jurors not to say anything about the case and then he dismissed them for the night. His final instructions to the panel would take place the next day. Ball looked shell-shocked. Godkin was grinning for the first time in three days.
On the morning of February 7, 1890, Judge Daniels delivered his charge to the jury. Daniels had deep-set hazel eyes and a long thin mouth with a kindly expression that suggested an impish wit. He had only dim recollections of his early years and could not say when or where he was born. It could have been in 1825, which would make him sixty-five, in Wales or New York City. He just did not know. His father was an itinerant shoemaker who, as Daniels dryly recalled, “had certain habits which stood in the way of his success.” Daniels was sixteen when he happened to hear a lawyer plead a case before a jury. Then and there he was determined to become a lawyer. For the next five years, his books were lying on his cobbler’s bench as he hammered away, making shoes, to earn 25¢ a day—just enough to stay alive and buy more books. Every free hour he had he would slip into the county courthouse and watch the law play out. He lived by the adage that “labor conquered all.” He clerked nights for a Buffalo lawyer, was admitted to the bar in 1847, and elected to the bench in 1863. Frail but wiry, he hardened his body with calisthenics. Even in the coldest winter weather, he went without an overcoat and wore low shoes and thin clothes. His reputation as a jurist was one of absolute impartiality. He told his son that he could not make friends for fear his objectivity would be bent if a friend came before him in court. Railroad companies sent him free passes, but he would never use them because the railroads frequently appeared in court as litigants.
Now he was presiding over a case with historic repercussions. As usual, his charge to the jury was utterly evenhanded—“without the slightest leaning one way or the other.” He laid out the mass of evidence that had been presented. Sentence by sentence, he read for the jurors the articles in dispute and dwelled on their impact, implicit or not. He said that George Ball had a constitutional right to probe Grover Cleveland’s personal life, and it was for the jury to determine whether the investigative measures Ball had taken, such as interviewing Cleveland’s maid, warranted the Post calling him a guttersnipe. If Ball had libeled Cleveland in asserting that he had been drunk the night of Oscar Folsom