Thread by @jessnevins

Okay, enough people are interested. I'll try tokeep it brief. But, be warned, the story is pretty bad, there's no happy ending, and victims of sexual violence might be triggered by it. So when I put in #TW I mean it.

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). 22nd & 24th President. 1/

Historian Allan Nevins (no relation) praised Cleveland's "honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense." Of course, he wrote that in 1932, when white male historians generally thought of women as objects & impediments rather than human beings.
2/

In 1873 Cleveland is Sheriff of Erie County (NY). While shopping in a department store he sees Maria Halpin, a store clerk. He thinks she's very attractive and begins pestering her for a date. After *several months* of rejecting him Halpin finally agrees to a date. 3/

Undoubtedly she just wanted to have the one date and get it over with so that he wouldn't keep bothering her.

They have dinner, and he escorts her back to her room.

#TW

4/

#TW

He violently rapes her. All rape is violence, of course, but he was physically brutal to her and used every bit of force he could to hold her down, beat her, and shut her up as he raped her.

5/

#TW

After it's over she orders him from her room. He goes, but not before threatening to "ruin" her if she tells anyone what happened. She's only a store clerk, while he's the county Sheriff--he can do what he threatens--so she doesn't tell anyone what happened.

6/

Six weeks later she discovers she's pregnant. She's unmarried, with no family to rely upon, so she does the only thing she can do, which is to contact Cleveland and ask for some money.

Cleveland sends his two most terrifying detectives and a judge to meet her.

7/

(sorry--this was after the birth of her son, not when she found out she was pregnant).

They try to silence her, using words and threats of further sexual violence. She refuses. They try to get her admit that Cleveland isn't the father. She refuses.

8/

Those having failed, they carry out their fallback orders, which were to "work some scheme by which she and her child could be separated and removed."

Let's pause right here to say: what an asshole.

9/

At Cleveland's direction, the judge & detectives keep threatening Halpin, but start offering money to her, if she'll send the boy to an orphanage and then leave town.

They wear her down, and she takes Cleveland's money and gives the child up to the Buffalo Orphan Asylum.

10/

She moves to Niagara Falls. But she soon regrets her decision, and returns to Buffalo, breaks into the Orphan Asylum, and retrieves her son.

When Cleveland is told about this, he sends a search party made up of his detectives to covertly find her and deal with her.

11/

They find her, literally rip the child from her arms, send it back to the orphanage for adoption, and then drag her, kicking and screaming--literally kicking and screaming--to the Providence Insane Asylum in Buffalo, where she is confined by force for the sin of "onomania."

12/

"Onomania" is one of those "disorders" that Victorian men used to have their wives diagnosed with, so that the men could have their "insane" wives put into asylums and then divorce, all so that the men could then marry a younger woman.

13/

(Victorian men: no matter how bad you thought they were, they were worse).

Symptoms of onomania in women include alcohol consumption, excessive talking, giving in to "wayward" impulses, and "strangeness."

This is what Cleveland had Halpin confined with.

14/

Fortunately for Halpin, after three days of confinement, the doctors at the Insane Asylum get around to examining her, and then end up declaring her "sane" and releasing her.

Halpin has no idea where her child is now, and knows that Cleveland can have her confined again. 15/

So when Cleveland offers her $500 to go to Niagara Falls and stay there, she has no choice but to agree.

She hires a lawyer, but by the time the orphanage people agree to see him, Halpin's son has been adopted. She never sees him again.

Story's not done, though.

16/

In 1881, when Cleveland is running for mayor of Buffalo, she talks to the press about what he did to her. The press ask him about it. His response is that the child wasn't his and that she was a big slut who was sleeping with everyone.

The press run side with him.

17/

Although Halpin does eventually find love, she dies at age 55 of a prolonged illness after spending years despised as a "whore" by polite society.

Cleveland, meanwhile, becomes governor in 1883 and president in 1885. He also marries.

Funny story about his wife.

18/

His wife, Frances, was the daughter of his best friend (who died in 1875, 11 years before Cleveland married Frances, so we can't blame Frances' father for the following). Cleveland knew her *from the time she was a baby*. He doted on her as an infant and a child.

19/

After Frances' father died--1875, when she's 11--Cleveland steps into the role of father figure to Frances.

When Frances is in college, Cleveland decides he's waited long enough and starts pursuing her. He proposes as soon as she graduates from college, and she accepts.

20/

She's 21. He's 48--not an unheard-of age gap at the time, but it really wasn't common at all for the much older husband to have groomed the much younger bride all her life.

That's Grover Cleveland. A bad person *even by the standards of the 19th century*.

21/

But, of course, nobody believed Halpin, or wanted to believe her, so Halpin was dropped in the memory hole and later historians, like Allan Nevins, got to pretend that Cleveland was a good man.

Grover Cleveland: Burning in Hell a.t.m.

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