A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [156]
The spectators gathered into small clusters of conversation. A general consensus was reached: The jurors would either be hung or vote for Godkin and the New York Evening Post. No one expected a victory for Ball.
The panel was out for less than four hours. At 2:45 p.m., a court officer announced that the jurors had come to a verdict. Everyone scrambled to find seats. The jurors filed back into the courtroom.
“Gentlemen, have you reached a verdict?” asked the clerk of the court. A hush fell.
“We have,” said the foreman. He rose. “We find a verdict of no cause of action.”
Ball sank in his chair, crushed. Characteristically, Godkin exhibited no visible reaction, even in his moment of victory. Ball left the courtroom without saying a word. Moot vowed to appeal. Later, it emerged that when the jurors began deliberations, they had taken a secret ballot to see where things stood. Eight men had voted in favor of Godkin and three for Ball. One ballot was blank. It had taken six more ballots before reaching a unanimous verdict.
One month later, Godkin was back at the editor’s desk at the Post in Manhattan. Before him was a check in the amount of $856.82, signed by none other than Grover Cleveland. The former president had made good on a private pledge he had made five years before to pay a substantial portion of Godkin’s legal fees. He had full faith in the editor’s eagerness to keep the transaction strictly confidential. A grateful Godkin took pen to paper.
My Dear Mr. Cleveland,
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your check for $856.82 being half the bill of Rogers Locke Milburn [the full name of Milburn’s law firm.]
Let me add that we all here think your contribution to the expense of the suit ample and in all respects satisfactory to us. Allow me at the same time to congratulate you most humbly on the result of the trial, for it was a triumph for you as well as for us.
Two years later, Grover Cleveland won the Democratic nomination for president. His running mate was Adlai Stevenson, the former congressman from Illinois who had served as his assistant postmaster general. The general election of 1892 was a replay of the 1888 campaign, but this time, Cleveland emerged triumphant, defeating President Harrison with 46 percent of the vote to Harrison’s 43 percent, and becoming the first and only United States president to serve nonconsecutive terms of office.
19
KEEPER OF THE FLAME
DEATH CAME TO Maria Halpin on February 6, 1902, at the age of sixty-six.
Maria had known when the end was near, and there were things she had to take care of before she passed on. The first was to notify her son, Frederick Halpin, now forty-nine and living in Matamoras, Pennsylvania. A telegram informed him that his mother was dying and he must come at once to New Rochelle.
Two days before she passed away, Maria wrote out a will. It was a simple document—her personal property was a paltry two hundred dollars, and her real estate holdings amounted to $2,000. That was all. She bequeathed everything to her third husband, Wallace Hunt, whom she had married three years earlier.
On her deathbed, Maria gave Hunt specific instructions regarding her interment.
“Do not let the funeral be too public. I do not want strangers to come and gaze on my face. Let everything be very quiet. Let me rest.”
Frederick arrived in time to bid his mother farewell. Then she was gone, the cause of death recorded as bronchial pneumonia by her doctor, Samuel Beyea. In the little parlor of her home at 47 Hudson Street, she was laid in repose in a stained pine coffin, costing $75. Her sister sat with her, sobbing.
It was a plain funeral, conducted without a church service. Then a hearse carried the coffin down a rain-slicked