Title: Destiny of the Republic
Rating: 5 Stars
This threads together three different story lines. One is the story of James Garfield, assassinated a scant three months after his inauguration and then dying in agony about three months after that. Another is that of Charles Guiteau, the man who assassinated him. The third thread is that of Alexander Graham Bell. Already famed as an inventor, he thought that he could possibly help save the injured President’s life by inventing a device that could locate the bullet lodged in his body.
I’m going to dispense with the Bell thread first. Although certainly interesting, Bell played at best a peripheral role in the Garfield assassination drama. Other than to pad the work a bit, his story didn’t really need to be included. Since it was interesting, I don’t regret that Millard included it, but it seemed unnecessary.
Although I gave it my highest rating, the fact that Millard felt inclined to include the Bell story does highlight a problem with the subject. Since Garfield only functioned as President for about three months, from the point of view of his presidency, there just isn’t much there. Most of those three months was centered around job seekers and fighting the Stalwart senator Roscoe Conkling.
This paucity of information is reflect in the book’s length. It tells three different life stories and it still comes in around 260 pages.
Even so, Millard makes very good use of those 260 pages.
After you read them, you realize what a missed opportunity a Garfield presidency was. Garfield was, quite simply, a good man. Born into abject poverty, he used an iron work ethic and a brilliant mind to rise up out of it. Toiling in manual labor on a river, a near drowning convinced him to make something of his life.
He attended a small college, and by his second year (while still a student!) he was named an associate professor. He was president of a college at the age of 26. When the Civil War struck, he immediately enlisted and became an officer. In a crucial battle in Kentucky, he used ingenious tactics to overwhelm a much larger Confederate force and help keep Kentucky out of the Confederacy. Promoted to Brigadier General, instead Abraham Lincoln called him to serve in the House of Representatives, saying that he needed men like Garfield in the House.
Garfield was warm and gregarious, with a loud and hearty laugh. Incapable of holding a grudge, at the sight of enemies that he’d forsworn, he’d walk over, give them a big hug, and say that he can never stay mad.
After the Civil War, the Republican party split into two. There were the Stalwarts, who believed in political patronage, and the Half-Breeds, who believed in civil service reform. This political schism came to a head during the 1880 Presidential campaign. Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwarts, put form US Grant for a third term. The Half-Breeds nominated James G Blaine. James Garfield gave a rousing nomination speech for a third candidate, John Sherman (William Tecumseh’s brother).
The convention was deadlocked for dozens of ballots with no end in sight. On a later ballot, one elector threw his support to Garfield. Horrified, Garfield tried to stop it. From that small beginning, eventually there was a groundswell of support and, on the 36th ballot, Garfield was the Republican nominee, having neither sought it nor desired it.
With his staunch support of civil rights, his natural brilliance, his willingness to compromise but also willingness to stand up for principle, Garfield had a bright presidential future ahead of him.
Alas, it was not to be.
Whatever natural gifts that Garfield made maximum use of, Guiteau had none of them. A failure at nearly everything, he landed at the Utopian community of Oneida. Despite its philosophy of promiscuity, even here Guiteau failed, where the women there nicknamed him ‘Gitout’. He tried and failed to be an evangelist. He wrote a mostly plagiarized religious book that did not sell. Perennially short of money, one of his favorite tricks was to pass as a gentlemen at a boarding house. He’d give various excuses for not paying and then skipping out in the dead of night. He’d move from city to city, one step ahead of bill collectors.
Mentally unstable, he survived a boat collision that convinced him that he was saved for a higher purpose. Somehow caught up in the Republican party, he decided to become a Garfield supporter. He wrote a mostly plagiarized speech in support of Garfield. When Garfield won, Guiteau was convinced that he was the reason for Garfield’s success. Guiteau then proceeded to lobby for a prominent post (eg consul of Paris). He wrote numerous letters and habitually hung around Garfield’s office seeking an interview.
The Presidency was much different in those days. There was a Secret Service, but it was concentrated on stopping counterfeiting. There was one young male secretary that would screen Garfield’s visitors. Anyone could and pretty much did walk around the White House. Garfield never had bodyguards. He regularly walked around Washington DC by himself.
Guiteau made himself enough of a pest that James G Blaine, now the Secretary of State, told him to his face that he will never get a post and to never bother the administration again.
Infuriated at the rebuff and convinced that Garfield was going to destroy the country, Guiteau resolved to assassinate Garfield, leaving the field open for his Stalwart Vice President, Chester Arthur. After following him for some weeks, Guiteau saw his chance at a train station and shot Garfield twice. He was immediately captured. Blaine was at the station with Garfield and recognized the disgruntled office seeker.
Garfield had a serious bullet wound in his back. However, he did not die immediately. In fact, he lived for an additional agonizing 80 days. During that time, his weight went from 210 down to 130 pounds.
Just a couple of years previously, Joseph Lister, famous for advocating antiseptic practices, had visited the US and promoted his techniques. Although accepted in Europe, in America doctors treated his ideas with scorn. Invisible germs in the air? That’s nonsense! Sterilize a wound? What a waste of time!
Dr Doctor Willard Bliss (yes, he’s a doctor and yes, Doctor was his first name!) assumed imperious control over Garfield’s recovery. No fan of Lister, he repeatedly dug his fingers into Garfield’s open wound in a futile search to find the bullet. Here Bell makes his entrance with a mechanical device to detect metal. Dr Bliss was so convinced that he knew where the bullet was that he didn’t even let Bell check one entire side of Garfield’s body. Yep, you guessed it. It was on that side. Since in those days, only the poor went to the hospital and then only to die, Garfield was treated at the White House. At the time, the White House was a pestilent house overrun with rats and sewage. Although Garfield was dehydrated, he was continually given alcohol to drink. It reached a point where he could no longer keep any food down. Dr Bliss’ brilliant response was to administer bouillon and whiskey rectally.
Ironically enough, the autopsy showed that the bullet, when finally found, was fully encased by protective cells. If the doctors had done nothing, in all likelihood Garfield would have survived. Many Civil War veterans carried bullets in their bodies. Garfield would have just been another.
In fact, at Guiteau’s trial, he tried to make that very point. The jury (and America for that matter) were not interested. After the prosecutors took two months to put on their case, it took the jury one hour to convict. In case there was any doubt regarding his sanity, on the scaffold, immediately before his hanging, Guiteau recited a poem in a childlike falsetto. The words included “I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad”.
From such a small, now long forgotten part of US history, Millard managed to tell a compelling story.
dorkenstein 