A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [68]
Frances was also a skilled debater for the Phoenix Society, the campus debating club, which tackled such serious subjects as free trade, the tariff and protectionism, and all the hot-button political topics of the day. On every issue, ever loyal to her guardian, Grover Cleveland, she took the official Democratic Party line. Politics was second nature to her.
Deemed the most beautiful student on campus, in the art studio above Morgan Hall, Frances posed for a photograph as Urania, goddess of astronomy, which was turned into a poster to promote an evening of mythology and revelry. Without any other student who came close to matching her goddess-like physical beauty, it was perfect casting. And her whimsical fondness for her masculine pet name Frank seemed to add to her charm.
The dorm room of Frances Folsom and Katherine Willard resounded with giggles and the innocent girlish commotion of young women always running in and out. Sometimes Frances entertained her friends with stories of her life back in Buffalo as the ward of the newly elected Governor Grover Cleveland. And her stories would be even more entertaining when he became a potential candidate for the presidency.
Helen Smith never missed a thing. In a college packed with girls who came from wealth and upper-class privilege, at some point she recognized how exceptional Frances was, and undertook the mission of educating the teenager. Whether through insight or intuition, she saw the unique role Frances could play in American history. The word on the Wells College campus—heard “more than once”—was that Miss Smith was preparing Frances “specifically for the White House.”
8
STIRRINGS OF A SCANDAL
IN THE EARLY months of 1884, politicians began to gear up for the presidential election. A wave of momentum was building for the former governor of New York, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, who had been robbed of the presidency in what was called the Crime of ’76, the most disputed presidential election in American history.
Tilden had won the popular vote over Rutherford B. Hayes by 250,000 votes, but after some double-dealing in the Electoral College, it was Hayes who ended up in the White House. When it seemed that the United States was tottering on the brink of another civil war, Tilden earned the esteem of history by graciously accepting defeat. Having sacrificed his presidential ambitions for the sake of national harmony, he retired a political martyr and was living as a recluse at his country estate, Greystone, outside Yonkers, New York. Such was the enduring bitterness over the 1876 election it was thought that Tilden could have the Democratic nomination with a snap of his fingers—if he truly desired it.
A sympathetic journalist who went to interview the Sage of Greystone found him in failing health: Would Tilden throw his hat in the ring? he asked him. Tilden smiled meekly and said, “My boy, don’t you see it is impossible?”
Whether Tilden would declare was a touchy subject within the party. Daniel Manning, state party chairman, owed his political career to Tilden and would not offend him under any circumstances. Grover Cleveland not only appreciated Manning’s position, he also concurred with it, and was ambivalent about seeking the nomination anyway. Like most of the other potential Democratic nominees, he was willing to step aside should the great Tilden declare he was a candidate for the office he had been cheated out of eight years before.
As the party convention loomed, one day when Manning thought Cleveland aide William Hudson was becoming too aggressive in promoting his boss’s standing on the national stage, he warned, “Cleveland is not yet a candidate, and Tilden is not out of the way.”
But