A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [40]
Grover Cleveland, however, was in a serious predicament: what to do about Maria Halpin. She was the stone in his shoe that would not go away.
Oscar Folsom Cleveland was now two and a half years old. After spending the first year of his life in the care of Dr. King’s sister-in-law, Minnie Kendall, Oscar was back living with his mother on East Genesee Street. Maria Halpin had won that skirmish, and Cleveland was realizing that this department store clerk made a formidable foe. She was relentless in pursuing her purpose: to salvage her family name. Remarkably, that meant marrying the man she claimed had raped her. From Maria’s perspective, marriage was the “only step possible to even partially repair the wrong he had done.” Marriage would save her son from shame, relieve her of her “misery,” and eradicate the “stain on her honor.” Maria made one more appeal for Cleveland to do the right thing. Cleveland was unwavering; he said no.
Cleveland’s communications with Maria were thorny at best; at times he even interpreted her statements to be threats to his life and the boy’s. He was “haunted” by the crisis with Maria Halpin and Oscar. There were days at work when he could think of nothing else. Sensing that a public scandal might erupt at any moment now, he became thoroughly alarmed.
Cleveland had not become as powerful as he was by waiting for things to happen. He focused on a chink in Maria’s armor. She had always appreciated a glass or two of wine at dinner, but now, he heard, her drinking was becoming a serious concern. Even her supportive neighbor, Mrs. Baker, had to agree.
“After the birth of her child she led a blameless life until her misery drove her to drink,” Mrs. Baker told a reporter in 1884. She said she understood the source of Maria’s problems: “She took to drink to drown the grief that was consuming her.” Whatever the rationale, this was the information Cleveland needed to finally go on the offensive.
His years in the district attorney’s office and as sheriff of Erie County had left him with innumerable law enforcement contacts. His first move was to seek out the services of the police, but in a strictly private capacity. He went to see John Byrne, the superintendent of the Buffalo Police Department.
Byrne was born in Ireland and came to America when he was five. In his teens, he was apprenticed to a carriage and coach manufacturer. He was twenty-two when the Civil War broke out, and was an authentic war hero with the battle scars to prove it. In an assault on the enemy works at the Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia, Byrne, then a major in the celebrated 155th New York State Volunteers Irish Regiment, was shot in the head with a bullet that entered his temple, blew apart the back of his eyeball, and exited his cheek. He not only survived but became a regimental legend when, after just ten weeks of convalescence, he returned to the field wearing patches on his wounds to take command. A month later, Byrne was captured by Confederate forces and spent six months in a POW camp before he was released in a prisoner exchange. At war’s end, he mustered out of the army having achieved the full rank of colonel.
Byrne was appointed Buffalo’s first police superintendent in 1872, and brought military discipline and professionalism to a force reputed to have been one of the most “untrustworthy” in the nation. On the day Cleveland went to see him about Maria Halpin, Byrne still bore his disfiguring war wounds. His left eye was gone, and he no longer had a sense of taste or smell.
Cleveland told Byrne about Maria Halpin’s drinking and threats and asked the police superintendent to assign some men to keep her under surveillance. Despite their political differences—Byrne was a Republican—and whatever Byrne may have privately thought of Cleveland for sitting out the war, the police superintendent said he would see what he