A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [64]
Cleveland took off his overcoat and was at once encircled by well-wishers. There were eight hundred people in all, including General Winfield Scott Hancock, the defeated Democratic nominee for president in 1880, thus the titular head of the party, and the philanthropist Peter Cooper, whom Cleveland took particular pleasure in meeting. Supper was an informal buffet, and when the guests were seated in the dining hall, the club’s president, Aaron Vanderpoel, clanged his champagne glass for attention and offered a toast.
“I propose the health of Governor Grover Cleveland and wish him a most successful and honorable administration.”
Cleveland returned to Buffalo to pack his bags while a thousand little details still had to be attended to—plus, he had to write his inaugural address. He hired a stenographer and had a printing press standing by to copy it. William Sinclair—Cleveland called him his “colored servant”—was about to set out for Albany to take charge of the executive mansion; and Cleveland’s sister Mary Cleveland Hoyt volunteered to help out with the housekeeping. Cleveland notified Daniel Lamont that he would be on the 8:00 a.m. train for Albany that would get him to the state capital at 4:30 p.m. on December 30, and that he would like Lamont to meet him at the depot.
When Cleveland arrived in Albany and strolled the snowy streets of the state capital with Bissell and Lamont at his side, he went unrecognized. As a courtesy, Governor Alonzo Cornell had already vacated the Executive Mansion so Cleveland, who called it Cornell’s “surrender,” moved right in even though he was not yet officially governor. That night, Cornell, the son of the founder of Cornell University, came by to wish Cleveland well.
Cleveland and Cornell had met once before, and detested each other. A month after Cleveland had become mayor of Buffalo, he had journeyed to Albany to make a personal appeal to Cornell to commute the death sentence of a laborer who had been convicted of the stabbing murder of his plant foreman. Cornell listened as Cleveland and a delegation of Buffalo lawyers argued that the jury had failed to take into account the defendant’s drunken state as a mitigating factor. After two hours, Cornell had had enough and exploded in anger. How much longer was this going to take? he wanted to know.
Cleveland sprang to his feet. “We come to you as the king, pleading for mercy. It is your duty to hear us and hear us to the end.” Public executions always touched a raw nerve in Cleveland, a former Erie County sheriff who had presided over two hangings; while Cornell was taken aback by Cleveland’s ferocity. They stared each other down in a test of wills between two men who were used to being in absolute command of their domain. Cleveland rattled on for another fifteen minutes while Cornell stewed and, in the end, did the right thing: He commuted the Buffalo defendant’s sentence to life.
Years later, Cornell recounted, “I was so impressed with the sincerity and the legal cocksureness of the man that I commuted the sentence.”
Over brandy and cigars on the eve of Cleveland’s inauguration, Cornell generously offered him whatever assistance he could provide.
Cleveland spent an uneasy first night in the mansion, which was just too enormous to suit his simple bachelor taste. It had been erected in 1856 as a two-story Italianate at 138 Eagle Street, on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. The furniture was heavy and traditional, the library paneled in rich black walnut. An excellent greenhouse offered a daily supply of fresh-cut flowers, and there was an arched porte cochere that was of little use to Cleveland as he owned neither horses nor a carriage; he intended to walk to work. For a man who had spent his adult life residing in boardinghouses and hotels, it was all too much, and he let it be known that he wanted to move out and establish himself at a hotel so he could “live the