A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [8]
In May 1859, after three and a half years of devoted learning, Grover Cleveland went before the New York State Supreme Court, presented his credentials and letters of recommendation, and was admitted to the bar. He was twenty-two years old.
Grover stayed on at Rogers, Bowen & Rogers, but now in the bumped-up position of managing clerk, at an annual salary of $1,000. Good son that he was, each month Grover tucked what extra cash he could spare into an envelope and mailed it to his widowed mother in Holland Patent. Ann Cleveland was the glue that bound the far-flung Clevelands together as a family. Even as his relationship with his other kin, even Mary, grew more distant, Grover worshipped his mother. “The truth is I have a great deal to do nowadays and am getting quite out of the habit of writing letters,” he informed Mary. Grover also cut his ties with another beloved relative, his uncle Lewis Allen. His regular visits to Black Rock had dropped off, and after he received his law license, it ceased altogether, except when Grover had important family news to communicate that made the trip absolutely necessary. The great issue of slavery, which was tearing North and South apart, was crushing Grover’s attachment with the uncle who had done so much to launch his career.
Grover was a partisan Democrat. To him, abolitionists were extremists, and the Democratic Party was solid and conservative—values that held real appeal for him and also happened to match his personality. In 1856, he marched in the torchlight procession that celebrated the victory of James Buchanan in the presidential election. Under the guidance of Dennis Bowen, who had once served as a Democratic alderman from the tenth ward, he started taking an interest in politics, volunteering as a ward heeler. It was pound-the-pavement machine politics at the street level. Assigned to Buffalo’s second ward, a neighborhood populated by German immigrants, Grover was handed a list of reliable Democratic voters and issued instructions to lead them to the polls on Election Day. Going door-to-door was humbling, but for a young lawyer keen on making his mark in local politics, it was compulsory work.
As Lewis Allen watched Grover’s political stance take shape, he mourned; it was like experiencing a death in the family. Lewis was a proud Yankee who had presided over the first Republican Party convention in Erie County in 1855. For him, the Fugitive Slave Act was a hateful piece of legislation. Remarks he made thirty years later indicate that his nephew’s political evolution still rankled: Allen stated that he was a “pronounced opponent” of Cleveland’s position. “Politically, we differed,” he simply said.
In the transformational presidential election of 1860, Grover Cleveland supported the Democratic Party standard-bearer, Stephen A. Douglas, over the candidacy of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln won the election and took New York State’s thirty-five electoral votes. Buffalo also went for Lincoln. The nation now stood on the brink of civil war.
President-elect Lincoln bade Springfield, Illinois, farewell on a wet and bitterly cold morning and embarked on a twelveday journey via railroad to his inauguration in Washington. On Saturday afternoon, February 16, the train pulled into Buffalo for a tumultuous reception at the railroad depot. Crowd control was nonexistent, and for a few terrifying moments, it was feared that Lincoln was in physical danger from the crushing throng; but he was able to make his way to the balcony of the American Hotel, and there he delivered a speech advising his countrymen to “maintain your composure” in these perilous times.
As Abraham and Mary Lincoln shook hands with hundreds of local residents later that evening, Lincoln seemed grave