• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

At some point, the boy was informed that he would now be known by another name. He had been born Oscar Folsom Cleveland. For the first year of his life, the woman who was his caregiver had called him Jack. Henceforth, the puzzled little boy was told he would be known as James. From this day on, he was James E. King Jr., the doctor’s son.

6

PATH TO THE PRESIDENCY

GROVER CLEVELAND COULD never have imagined that as he swung open the doors of Billy Dranger’s saloon he was taking the first step on a journey that in just three years would catapult him from a lawyer unknown outside the city of Buffalo to the presidency of the United States.

It was October 22, 1881, around seven thirty on a Saturday evening. Cleveland was forty-four years old. Five years had passed since that unpleasant business with Maria Halpin, an episode in his life that, as far as he was concerned, was now ancient history. The Halpin woman had vanished from the city of Buffalo; Cleveland had no idea where she was living. From what he gathered, his biological son, now known as James E. King Jr., was doing well, although whispers of the boy’s true heritage and his link to Grover Cleveland remained a steady undercurrent of gossip. For all its big-city complexity, Buffalo fundamentally remained a small town.

Cleveland walked into the saloon at Eagle and Pearl, positioned his large belly against the bar, and ordered a drink. Off at a corner table, some men were talking in raised voices. Cleveland turned and saw they were five Democratic Party leaders having a drink and a bite to eat. One of them was Warren F. Miller, the lawyer who was in Oscar Folsom’s buggy that terrible summer night in 1875 when Folsom was killed. They hailed Cleveland over. He sat down, wondering what had brought them to Dranger’s.

It turned out that Miller and the others made up the search committee that county chairman Peter Doyle had appointed to find a Democratic candidate to run for mayor, preferably an eminent businessman with an unblemished record. They had a short list of top men and had first called on the banker Stephen Clarke. They moved on to businessman Delavan Clarke and the merchant prince Stephen Barnum. Then to Charles Sweet, president of the Third National Bank, and Charles Curtis, president of the Board of Trade. They had started at the top of their list, and offered all of them the nomination. Every one of them had turned it down. It had been a day of mounting frustration, and with just three days left before the Democrats of Erie County were to hold their convention, this was shaping up to be a huge embarrassment for the party. In short, the first contender to answer in the affirmative would have the nomination.

As they vented, Cleveland listened. Republicans outnumbered Democrats in Buffalo; in this election cycle, Buffalo’s citizens were expected, as usual, to go Republican. The mayor earned a salary of $2,500 a year—for a job with so many headaches, Cleveland totally understood why these estimable businessmen had all said no.

Then somebody on the committee had an inspiration. The solution to their problem was staring them in the face. Grover Cleveland was the man!

Cleveland shook his head and told them not a chance. He had zero interest in running for elective office again. Besides, he told them, he was a lawyer, and the mandate from Doyle was to find a rich businessman whose integrity and reputation for honesty could not be questioned. But the more Miller and the others thought about it, the more Cleveland seemed like the perfect candidate. Plus, they were desperate. Cleveland protested vigorously; then he started to waver. This buoyed the committee. Everyone knew Cleveland as a proven vote-getter, and he had been elected sheriff with the support of independents and Republicans, a coalition he would need to cobble together to win the mayoral race.

Finally, Cleveland said, “All right, I’ll run, but only on condition that the rest of the ticket is made up to suit me.”

He wanted John C. Sheehan, the incumbent city comptroller, booted off the ticket. Sheehan