This Day in Presidential History (Cleveland’s Covert Cancer Operation)

July 1, 1893—Taking care that skittish financial markets not be further unnerved, Grover Cleveland had a cancerous lesion removed from his left upper jaw, in an operation performed not only a hospital or a doctor’s house but aboard a private yacht floating in New York’s East River, away from the prying eyes of reporters.

The details of the President’s surgery, as recounted in a fine short biography by my old Columbia University professor of history, Henry Graff, are excruciating to read. The President, terrified of cancer, did not bring the lesion to the attention of his doctors for several weeks, by which time the condition had spread. A 1975 reexamination of the tissue showed that it was a verrucous carcinoma of the hard palate and gingival, often caused by alcohol (Cleveland enjoyed beer and had the protruding abdomen to prove it) and tobacco (he relished a good cigar, too).

The yacht’s salon was converted into an operating room. Cleveland sat in a chair lashed to the interior mast during the operation while his doctors used far more anesthesia than they’d expected. Not only was the public not informed of the procedure (in fact, when one paper leaked the news, the administration vigorously denied it), but even his Vice-President, Adlai Stevenson (grandfather of the future Democratic Presidential nominee), does not appear to have been informed. In fact, the full story was not publicly revealed only nearly a decade after the President’s death, almost a quarter century after the operation.

There was a reason for this secrecy. Wall Street feared what would happen if Cleveland, a “sound money man” who backed the gold standard, were succeeded by Stevenson, who backed the use of silver in currency.

Cleveland’s secret surgery, while one of the first instances of concealment of Presidential medical conditions, still does not rank as the worst. Take your pick among John F. Kennedy, whose doctors conspired with him to hide from the public the fact that he had Addison’s Disease, an adrenal insufficiency that required daily dosages of steroids and other medications for the last 16 years of his life; Franklin Roosevelt, whose ghastly physical appearance in his third term contrasted with denials that anything was amiss; and Woodrow Wilson, who suffered a devastating stroke in 1919 while campaigning for the League of Nations—and could not perform his normal Presidential duties for the remaining year and a half of his term.

My pick for the biggest coverup was the one stage-managed by Edith Wilson and her husband’s physician-friend, Cary Grayson. The latter refused to say that the President had even suffered a stroke, let alone that he was disabled by it. As for Mrs. Wilson: Though Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign as the first female candidate with a serious chance to win the Presidency was rightly considered precedent-shattering, in a number of ways Woodrow Wilson’s wife might be considered the first to fill the office.

Though Mrs. Wilson insisted that she did nothing without informing the President, and it is certainly true that she was his most trusted confidante before his stroke, it is an open question whether she spoke to him all the time in great detail about issues after he was incapacitated. She would not allow him to be seen, allowing all kinds of rumors to circulate. She also downplayed the true nature of his condition, claiming that he had only suffered a nervous breakdown.

Most startling, she did not inform the Vice-President, Thomas Marshall, of Wilson’s condition. Marshall had to hear about the true nature of his boss’s medical state from a friendly intermediary. Witty but insecure, Marshall was not prepared to insist upon assuming power because of the President’s incapacity—and Wilson, with the help of his wife, would not yield it.

Had Wilson died in office or stepped down voluntarily, Marshall might have been able to effect a compromise that would have saved the President’s cherished League of Nations. The President’s stubbornness, exacerbated by his stroke, assured that his dream ended in disaster.

This year, as Americans go to the polls, they will, of course, consider the candidates’ stances on issues. But they should also, to the extent they are able, consider each candidate’s physical and emotional readiness for the toughest office in the world.