Conkling’s most open detractor was James Blaine, with whom he had had a famous fight on the floor of Congress fourteen years earlier, and to whom he had not spoken since. In front of the entire House of Representatives, Blaine had attacked Conkling as no man had ever dared to do, ridiculing “his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut.” Clutching a newspaper article that compared Conkling to a respected, recently deceased congressman, Blaine, brimming with sarcasm, spat, “The resemblance is great. It is striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to marble, dunghill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roaring lion.”
Conkling, with cold fury, had vowed that he would “never overlook” Blaine’s attack, and he had since done everything in his power to deny Blaine the one thing he wanted most in this world: the presidency. Even Garfield, who admired Blaine and considered him a friend, believed that the senator had become “warped” by his all-consuming quest for the White House, willing to sacrifice any cause, even his own honor, in the pursuit of this one, overriding ambition. Four years earlier, at the last national convention, Conkling and Blaine had both been candidates for the presidential nomination. When it became clear that he could not win, Conkling had made sure his votes went to Hayes, not because he liked Hayes but because he hated Blaine. Conkling was now determined to win the nomination for Grant. He was fighting for his own benefit as much as Grant’s, but he would have done it for the pure pleasure of watching Blaine lose.
That night in the convention hall, all eyes were on Conkling, as he expected them to be. Every morning, he had entered to wild cheers. Each time he had risen to speak, he had been “cool, calm, and after his usual fashion, confident and self-possessed,” breaking into his “characteristic sneer” only when he could no longer suppress it. Sitting in an aisle seat at the front of the New York delegation, he now looked, in the words of one reporter, “serene as the June sun that shone in at the windows.” He slowly ran his fingers through his thick hair, which, but for the ever-present spit curl, was swept dramatically up from his head in carefully styled waves. Occasionally, he glanced around coolly or leaned over, almost imperceptibly, to consult with Edwin Stoughton, the minister to Russia, to his right, or Chester Arthur, who sat directly behind him.
From his seat, Conkling watched the proceedings with growing delight. The session was called to order at 7:15 p.m. with the sharp rap of a gavel, the head of which was fashioned from the doorsill of Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois home and the handle made of cane from George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. Soon after, James Joy, a little known delegate from Michigan, walked reluctantly to the podium to give Blaine’s nominating speech. Blaine’s heart must have sunk, and Conkling’s sung, as Joy mournfully began: “I shall never cease to regret the circumstances under which the duty is imposed on me to make the nomination of a candidate in the Convention.” Complaining that he had been out of the country for months and, since arriving in Chicago, had been very busy on the convention floor, he vowed to bring Blaine before the convention in “as brief a manner as possible.” After an extremely modest, stumbling assessment of his candidate’s qualities, Joy quickly concluded by nominating for president “that eminent statesman, James S. Blaine,” prompting howls of frustration from Blaine’s supporters, who screamed that his middle initial was “G! You fool, G!”
After Joy had scurried back to his seat in profound relief and another man had nominated William Windom of Minnesota, Conkling at last had the floor. Hardly waiting for New York to be called, he sprang from his seat and strode down the aisle—shoulders back, chest out, face already arch with victory. Leaping onto one of the tables where reporters sat, astonished and delighted, Conkling “folded his arms across his swelling breast, laid his head back with a kingly frown upon his cleanly washed face, and settling his left foot with a slight stamp of his right,” said, in a slow, clear, supremely confident voice, “When asked whence comes our candidate we say from Appomattox.”
As the crowd roared its approval, Conkling went on, never deigning to qualify or explain, never hesitating to ridicule the competition or to use the most extravagant praise for his candidate. “New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated—in peace or in war—his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.… Show me a better man. Name one, and I am answered.” When his attacks on the other candidates evoked shouts of outrage, he pulled a lemon from his pocket and, striking a regal pose, calmly sucked it until the hall had quieted enough for him to continue his blazing theatrical speech. When he had finished, Grant’s supporters abandoned themselves to sheer hysteria.
It was in the midst of this mania that Garfield was called upon to give his nominating speech for John Sherman. He rose slowly and walked to the stage, the hall still reverberating with screams of “Grant! Grant! Grant!” Earnest and modest, Garfield was Conkling’s opposite in every respect, and he had no intention, or desire, to compete with the flamboyant senator.
Those in the hall who knew Garfield, however, did not underestimate him for a minute, least of all Conkling. Earlier in the week, Conkling had tried to have expelled from the convention three delegates from West Virginia who had defied him. Garfield had spoken in their defense, forcing Conkling to withdraw his motion and winning widespread admiration for his courage and eloquence. After this very public defeat, Conkling had kept his silence, but handed Garfield a biting note: “New York requests that Ohio’s real candidate … come forward.”
Although Garfield had entered the hall that night with essentially nothing to say, Conkling’s nominating speech for Grant had inspired even him—if not in the way Conkling had intended. “Conkling’s speech,” he would write home that night, “gave me the idea of carrying the mind of the convention in a different direction.” Stepping onto the same reporters’ table that Conkling had just left, its white cloth still creased by Conkling’s expensive shoes, Garfield looked calmly into the sea of flushed faces before him and began to speak in a measured voice.
“I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep solicitude,” he said. “Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and witnessed the demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured.”
As the crowd, which just moments before had been whipped into an almost helpless frenzy by Conkling, grew quiet, Garfield continued. Counseling the steady hand of reason, asking for reflection rather than fervor, he said, “Gentlemen of the Convention,… when your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find below the storm and passion that calm level of public opinion from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to be measured, and by which final action will be determined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed for the next four years … but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love and home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, the reverence for the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their hearts—there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom of our work to-night.”
His voice echoing in the now silent hall, Garfield asked a simple question. “And now, gentlemen of the Convention,” he said, “what do we want?” From the midst of the crowd came an unexpected and, for Garfield, unwelcome answer. “We want Garfield!”
Although caught off guard by this interruption, and the rush of cheers that followed it, Garfield quickly regained control of his audience. “Bear with me a moment,” he said firmly. “Hear me for my caus
e, and for a moment be silent that you may hear.” After a short pause, he picked up the thread of his narrative and went on, detailing the triumphs of the Republican Party and sending out a clear and unwavering message to the South: “This is our only revenge—that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution … the immortal principles of truth and justice: that all men, white or black, shall be free, and shall stand equal before the law.”
By the time Garfield finally began to talk about Sherman, he was speaking to an utterly tamed and transfixed audience. Every man and woman in the hall listened to him intently until his final words, and then, as he said, “I nominate John Sherman, of Ohio,” the crowd burst into the kind of ovation that, until that moment, only Conkling had received. When a reporter leaned over to Conkling to ask him how he felt after Garfield’s speech, with its stirring analogy of the storm-tossed sea, Conkling answered snidely, “I presume I feel very much as you feel—seasick!”
Not only did the applause that followed Garfield’s speech rival Conkling’s in intensity, it lasted even longer. The convention chairman, George Hoar, who secretly believed that Garfield should be the nominee, sat motionless and silent on the stage, his gavel within easy reach, as the cheers continued unabated. “The chair,” wrote one reporter, “did not seem to feel called upon to make any effort to check [the applause], and so, much additional time was wasted, until finally a storm of hisses reduced the unruly to comparative quiet.”
By the time the final nominating speeches were given, it was nearly midnight, and the Stalwarts, nervous now that their victory could be stolen from them, pressured Hoar to allow the balloting to begin, even though the following day was a Sunday. “Never,” he responded indignantly. “This is a Sabbath-keeping nation, and I cannot preside over this convention one minute after 12 o’clock.”
This particular Sunday, however, was a day of rest for no man in the Republican Party, least of all Garfield. While Conkling and his men battled Blaine and Sherman supporters in fierce, behind-the-scenes negotiations, and frightened delegates were coaxed, flattered, bribed, and threatened, Garfield spent the day desperately trying to tamp down a growing movement to make him the nominee. Over the course of the day, three different delegations from three different parts of the country came to him, asking him to allow his name to be put into contention. Finally, a concerned friend spoke to Garfield in confidence. “General,” he said, “they are talking about nominating you.” Garfield, feeling his duty to Sherman pressing heavily on him, replied, “My God, Senator, I know it, I know it! and they will ruin me.” To his would-be supporters he said simply, “I am going to vote for [Sherman] and I will be loyal to him. My name must not be used.”
The balloting began at ten on Monday morning. After the vitriol they had witnessed the preceding week, no one in the convention hall believed that their candidate, or any candidate, would receive on the first ballot the 379 votes necessary to win. Neither did they imagine, however, that they were at the beginning of a grueling process that would stagger on for two days, requiring far and away the most ballots ever taken in a Republican convention.
Grant, as had been expected, came closest to the winning number after the first ballot, receiving 304 votes to Blaine’s 284 and Sherman’s 93. Three other, lesser known, candidates together received 74 votes. Little changed on the second ballot, but on the third, two new names suddenly appeared—a single vote for Benjamin Harrison, a senator from Indiana who would become president of the United States nine years later, and another for James A. Garfield.
As the balloting continued, the solitary delegate from Pennsylvania who had cast his vote for Garfield refused to withdraw it, even though his candidate did not give him the slightest encouragement, or even acknowledgment. He shifted his vote to another candidate for five ballots—the fourteenth through the eighteenth—while the Grant and Blaine men fought tooth and claw over every delegate, but then rededicated himself to Garfield on the nineteenth ballot, and never wavered again.
While tensions rose to an excruciating level inside the convention hall, outside, crowds watched the proceedings with equal intensity. Hundreds of men and women, largely Grant and Blaine supporters, but also those who had no interest beyond mere curiosity, gathered in Printing House Square, where Chicago’s biggest newspapers had promised to post the balloting results as they received them. “By high noon, the time when the first returns were expected,” a reporter wrote, “the whole of the square, including the space about the Franklin statue, was filled with an eager throng, who awaited the appearances of the vote with ill-concealed impatience. The sun shown out hotly, and the buzz increased each minute.”
A reporter from the Boston Globe, who had been forced to “elbow [his] way through the throng” to enter the convention hall, watched the balloting with growing astonishment. As the results of the nineteenth ballot were announced, he listened with the feverish interest of a man at a racetrack, his last dollar on a horse hurtling toward a receding finish line. “Grant holds his own and gains one,” he wrote, as fast as he could. “Blaine has dropped down to 279, the lowest figure he has struck yet. Sherman gained a bit, and scores 96…. The twentieth ballot follows rapidly. It runs much the same as the others. Blaine loses three votes in Indiana, and the remark seems sound that Blaine is breaking up. Grant gains a notch in Tennessee, which is important, and the vacillating North Carolina delegate happens to swing on to Grant’s aid this time, making a gain of two. The call is over, and still there is no result.” The voting continued for twelve hours, with twenty-eight ballots, but when the convention hall finally emptied at nearly ten that night, the party was no closer to a nominee than it had been that morning.
The next day, as the delegates made their weary way back to the hall, few of them held out any hope for a quick conclusion. They could not have helped but be dismally reminded of the Democratic convention of 1860, which took not only fifty-nine ballots but two conventions in two different cities before it had a nominee—a nominee who would go on to lose to the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. When the first ballot of the day, the twenty-ninth, showed little change from the day before, their fears were only confirmed. The thirtieth through thirty-third were equally stagnant, and the hall was filled with a thick feeling of desperation.
On the thirty-fourth ballot, however, an extraordinary thing happened. As the votes were being taken, the delegates from Wisconsin made a shocking reversal. Their eighteen votes, which on the preceding ballot had been distributed between Grant, Blaine, Sherman, and Elihu Washburne, who had served briefly as Grant’s secretary of state, were now divided between just two men—Grant and Garfield. More extraordinary still, Grant received only two of those votes. Suddenly, the single vote from Pennsylvania that Garfield had chosen simply to ignore had grown to seventeen, which was a serious bid for the nomination and a situation of genuine concern for Garfield.
Stunned, Garfield leaped to his feet to protest the vote. “Mr. President,” he began. Hoar, who was privately delighted by this unexpected turn of events, reluctantly acknowledged Garfield. “For what purpose does the gentleman rise?” he sighed. “I rise to a question of order,” Garfield replied. “I challenge the correctness of the announcement. The announcement contains votes for me. No man has a right, without the consent of the person voted for, to announce that person’s name, and vote for him, in this convention. Such consent I have not given …” Cutting Garfield off midsentence, Hoar responded stiffly, “The gentleman from Ohio is not stating a question of order. He will resume his seat.”
Hoar quickly ordered another ballot to be taken, leaving Garfield no choice but to do as he was told and sit back down. As each state was called, nothing more changed until Indiana stood to give its thirty votes. Two for Blaine, its chairman announced, one for Grant, and twenty-seven for Garfield. Before Garfield could even absorb this news, Maryland had given him four more votes, and Minnesota and North Carolina one each. With Pennsylvania and Wisconsin holding steady at sevente
en, Garfield suddenly had fifty votes—still far less than Grant or Blaine, but uncomfortably close to Sherman. At this point, several men rushed to Garfield, begging him to speak, but he quickly waved them away. “No, no, gentlemen,” he said sternly. “This is no theatrical performance.”
When Hoar called for the thirty-sixth ballot and the convention clerk cried out, “No candidate has a majority,” a hush fell upon the great hall. “Instinctively, it was known, perhaps felt would be a better word,” a journalist wrote, “that something conclusive was about to be done.” The Ohio delegation was suddenly surrounded by the chairmen of other delegations, demanding to know if they were going to shift their allegiance to Garfield. Garfield, horrified, insisted that they remain loyal to Sherman. “If this convention nominates me,” he said, “it should be done without a vote from Ohio.”
The votes for Garfield, however, continued to mount. Eleven from Connecticut, one from Georgia, seven from Illinois. “And then,” a reporter wrote with awe, “then the stampede came.” Iowa stood and declared all twenty-two of its votes for James A. Garfield. Kansas then gave him six, Kentucky three, and Louisiana eight. The tension in the hall continued to grow until Maine, before a shell-shocked crowd, utterly abandoned Blaine, its native son. “Slowly came the call of the State of Maine,” the reporter wrote, “and [Senator] Eugene Hale, white of face but in a clear, sharp, penetrating voice replied, ‘Maine casts her fourteen votes for James A. Garfield.’ ”
Blaine was finished, and Sherman, who had been waiting miserably in his office in the Treasury Department, desperately studying every ballot as it came across his telegraph, finally admitted that he was as well. Sitting down at his desk, he wrote a telegram to be sent to the Ohio delegation on the convention floor. “Whenever the vote of Ohio will be likely to ensure the nomination for Garfield,” it read, “I appeal to every delegate to vote for him. Let Ohio be solid. Make the same appeal in my name to North Carolina, and every delegate who has voted for me.”
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President Page 5