Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
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18 “We have but faith”: “Garfield’s Eulogy of Lincoln,” New York Times, July 13, 1881.
19 “I have arisen at 7 this morning”: Garfield to Lucretia Garfield, June 2, 1880, in Shaw, Crete and James, 373.
20 Ten years earlier: Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes, 324.
21 Since then, Conkling had personally made: Doenecke, The Presidencies of James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur, 12.
22 He had helped to draft: Five years earlier, when Blanche Kelso Bruce, a former slave, was sworn in to the Senate after having been elected in Mississippi, Conkling escorted him up the Senate’s aisle when the senior senator from Bruce’s state refused to perform that traditional duty.
23 “thoroughly rotten man”: Quoted in Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes, 412.
24 He offended fellow senators: Ackerman, Dark Horse, 317n.
25 “some ill-bred neighbor”: Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, 44.
26 “his haughty disdain”: Chidsey, The Gentleman from New York, 91.
27 Even Garfield, who admired Blaine: After watching Blaine unashamedly try to prevent the publication of an article on black suffrage that Garfield had written because it would outshine Blaine’s own work, Garfield noted with astonishment, “It is apparent to me that Blaine cares more about the glory … than having the cause of negro enfranchisement defended.” Peskin, Garfield, 435.
28 “cool, calm, and after his usual fashion”: “The Struggle at Chicago,” New York Times, June 4, 1880.
29 “serene as the June sun”: “The Convention and Its Work,” New York Times, June 3, 1880.
30 “I shall never cease to regret”: “The Evening Session,” New York Times, June 6, 1880; Peskin, Garfield, 467.
31 “folded his arms across”: “The Evening Session,” New York Times, June 6, 1880; Peskin, Garfield, 467.
32 “New York is for Ulysses S. Grant”: “The Evening Session,” New York Times, June 6, 1880.
33 “New York requests that Ohio’s real candidate”: Ackerman, Dark Horse, 84.
34 “Conkling’s speech”: Garfield to Lucretia Garfield, June 6, 1880, in Shaw, Crete and James, 376.
35 “I have witnessed the extraordinary”: “Nomination of John Sherman,” James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress; Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 393–95.
36 “And now, gentlemen of the Convention”: “Nomination of John Sherman,” James A. Garfield Papers, Library of Congress.
37 “I presume I feel very much as you feel”: Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, 604.
38 The convention chairman: Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 395.
39 “The chair,” wrote one reporter: “The Evening Session,” New York Times, June 6, 1880.
40 “Never”: “Two Remarks of Garfield’s,” New York Times, July 10, 1881.
41 “General,” he said, “they are talking”: Peskin, Garfield, 472.
42 The balloting began at ten: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 9, 1880.
43 Grant, as had been expected: “The Twenty-Eight Ballots,” New York Times, June 8, 1880.
44 “By high noon”: “The Excitement in this City,” New York Times, June 8, 1880.
45 “elbow [his] way through”: “Fight it Out!” Boston Globe, June 8, 1880.
46 On the thirty-fourth ballot: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 9, 1880.
47 “Mr. President”: Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 397.
48 “No, no, gentlemen”: “Gen. Garfield’s Nomination,” New York Times, June 15, 1880.
49 “No candidate has a majority”: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 9, 1880.
50 “If this convention nominates me”: Peskin, Garfield, 476.
51 “And then,” a reporter wrote with awe, “then the stampede came”: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 9, 1880.
52 “Whenever the vote of Ohio”: Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet, 775.
53 “Cast my vote for Sherman!”: Peskin, Garfield, 476.
54 “Shall the nomination”: “Roscoe Conkling, Political Boss,” New York Times, April 14, 1935.
55 “The delegates and others on the floor”: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 9, 1880.
56 “Only once,” a reporter recalled, “did he express”: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 9, 1880; “U.S.G.’s Waterloo,” Boston Globe, June 9, 1880.
57 “As Garfield entered the carriage”: “Gen. Garfield’s Nomination,” New York Times, June 15, 1880.
58 “grave and thoughtful expression”: Ibid.
59 When the carriage pulled: “The Story of the Balloting,” New York Times, June 8, 1880.
60 “pale as death”: “Gen. Garfield’s Wife Notified,” New York Times, June 13, 1880.
Chapter 4: God’s Minute Man
1 From an early age: United States v. Guiteau, 348, 354, 419.
2 “My mother was dead”: Ibid., p. 547
3 Charles’s own fanaticism grew: Carden, Oneida, xiii.
4 Like most of Noyes’s followers: Ibid., 43.
5 “unhealthy and pernicious”: Ibid., 49–54.
6 “up to the very moment”: Ibid., 49–50.
7 “You prayed God”: Guiteau to J. H. Noyes, no date, Library of the New York City Bar.
8 “I ask no one to respect me”: Guiteau to “Mr. Burt,” no date, Library of the New York City Bar.
9 “God’s minute man”: Guiteau to George Campbell, June 21, 1865, Library of the New York City Bar.
10 “in the employ of Jesus Christ”: Guiteau to “The Community,” no date, Library of the New York City Bar.
11 “Chas. J. Guiteau of England”: Clark, The Murder of James A. Garfield, 4–5.
12 “the Community women”: Noyes, “Guiteau v. Oneida Community,” 3.
13 In fact, so thorough: Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, 19.
14 “practically a Shaker”: United States v. Guiteau, 549.
15 “egotism and conceit”: Ibid., 297; Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, 19–20.
16 “destined to accomplish”: Guiteau v. Oneida Community, 3.
17 “God and my own conscience”: Guiteau to “The Community,” no date.
18 “warm friend of the Bible”: Guiteau to “The Community,” April 10, 1865.
19 “labored there for weeks and months”: United States v. Guiteau, 297.
20 “lost [his] eternal salvation”: Ibid., 556.
21 “asked him three questions”: Ibid., 299.
22 “The style and plea of his conduct”: Beard, “The Case of Guiteau—A Psychological Study,” 32.
23 “talked about theology”: United States v. Guiteau, 392.
24 Much more than the work itself: Clark, The Murder of James A. Garfield, 12–13.
25 “I asked Mr. John H. Adams”: United States v. Guiteau, 560.
26 “have been in the habit”: Ibid., 566.
27 “failure all the way through”: Ibid., 567.
28 After arriving in a town: Ibid., 573.
29 On most nights: Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, 33.
30 “You may say that this is dead beating”: United States v. Guiteau, 570.
31 “I had no trouble”: Ibid., 569.
32 “you can arrest a man for a board-bill”: Ibid., 568.
33 “I was never so much tortured”: Ibid., 558–59.
34 “If Mr. Scoville would let me”: Guiteau to Frances Scoville, December 11, 1864.
35 Much larger sums of money: United States v. Guiteau, 562; Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, 30.
36 Searching for another target: “Scoville, Guiteau and Oneida Community,” 4, Library of the New York City Bar; Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, 24.
37 “moody [and] self-conceited”: United States v. Guiteau, 1048–49.
38 “If you intend to
pay”: Guiteau to John Humphrey Noyes, February 19, 1868.
39 “I infer from your silence”: Guiteau to John Humphrey Noyes, March 2, 1868. Hostility against the Oneida Community grew until Noyes and his followers stopped their practice of complex marriage in 1879. A few years later, Noyes and a small group moved to Canada, where Noyes died in 1886.
40 “I have no ill will toward him”: Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau, 26, 30, 31.
41 “cut up a little wood for us”: United States v. Guiteau, 469.
42 “explosions of emotional feeling”: Ibid., 352.
43 “I had no doubt then”: Ibid., 476–77.
44 For the next five years: Ibid., 583.
45 Believing, as did most of the country: Ibid., 584.
46 “I remember distinctly”: Hayes and Hayes, A Complete History of the Life and Trial of Charles Julius Guiteau, Assassin of President Garfield (hereafter, A Complete History), 452.
Chapter 5: Bleak Mountain
1 The house, which the reporters: Garfield, Diary, August 22, 1880, 4:445.
2 “regular town”: Balch, Life of President Garfield, 314–15.
3 For the past three years: Garfield, Diary, 4:85, 88, 410.
4 To the house itself: National Park Service, “James A. Garfield National Historic Site,” www.nps.gov/jaga/index.htm.
5 “You can go nowhere”: Leech and Brown, The Garfield Orbit, 183.
6 “I long for time”: Garfield, Diary, September 24, 1879, 4:298–99.
7 “take the stump”: Peskin, Garfield, 482.
8 Happily left to his own devices: Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James A. Garfield, 921.
9 “Result 475 bushels”: Garfield, Diary, July 31, 1880, 4:432.
10 While Garfield worried: Three independent parties had presidential candidates that year: the Greenback-Labor Party, which, as well as supporting the continuation of paper money, argued fiercely for workers’ rights; the Prohibitionists, who wanted a president who would follow in the footsteps of Hayes and ban alcohol in the White House, if not throughout the nation; and the Anti-Masons, which, as their name implied, opposed Freemasons, who they feared were trying to take over the country. Clancy, The Presidential Election of 1880, 157–66.
11 “Hancock the Superb”: “The Democratic Trojan Horse,” New York Times, July 31, 1880.
12 “rebel party”: Peskin, Garfield, 277.
13 In fact, Garfield had turned down the stock: The Transactions of the Credit Mobilier Company, and an Examination of that Portion of the Testimony Taken by the Committee of Investigation and Reported to the House of Representatives at the Last Session of the Forty-Second Congress which Relates to Mr. Garfield. Washington, 1873.
14 “There is nothing in my relation”: Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James A. Garfield, 530.
15 In the end, the effort to renew: Leech and Brown, The Garfield Orbit, 218.
16 “Individuals or companys”: Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James A. Garfield, 1039–41.
17 In New York, Garfield campaign clubs: New York Times, October 2, 1880; September 25, 1880; October 18, 1880.
18 “support Gen. Garfield for President”: New York Times, September 27, 1880.
19 In Washington, D.C., a former slave: New York Times, July 4, 1880.
20 “Now we’ll use a Freemen’s right”: Book of Election Songs, Song 21, microfilm at the Library of Congress, Garfield Papers.
21 “It could not have been larger”: New York Times, October 26, 1880.
22 “James A. Garfield must be our President”: Ibid.
23 “front porch talks”: Leech and Brown, The Garfield Orbit, 212.
24 “As the singers poured out”: Stanley-Brown, “My Friend Garfield.”
25 A few weeks later: Garfield, Diary, November 2, 1880, 4:480.
26 “coolest man in the room”: “At General Garfield’s Home,” New York Times, November 3, 1880.
27 “the news of 3 a.m.”: Garfield, Diary, November 3, 1880, 4:481.
28 “There is a tone of sadness”: Garfield, November 8, 1880, quoted in Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James A. Garfield, 1048.
Chapter 6: Hand and Soul
1 As Garfield tried to accept: Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, 111.
2 “I did not realize”: “Bell’s ‘Electric Toy,’ ” New York Times, January 2, 1905.
3 By the summer of 1877: Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, 88.
4 That same year, President Hayes: Gray, Reluctant Genius, 180–81.
5 “A Professor Bell explained”: Mackenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, 193.
6 “the voice already carries”: Quoted in Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, 86.
7 “Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me”: Quoted in Mackenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, 160.
8 After Morse developed: Casson, The History of the Telephone; Lubrano, The Telegraph, 140–41.
9 “It can speak, but it won’t!”: Quoted in MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, 215–16.
10 Although Bell deeply resented: Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, 75.
11 To add insult to injury: Ibid.; Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 173.
12 In a court of law: Gray, Reluctant Genius, 197. Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 270.
13 With Western Union’s defeat: Mackenzie, Alexander Graham Bell: The Man Who Contracted Space, p. 212.
14 The fighting, however, continued: MacKenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, 214.
15 “Of all the men who didn’t”: Quoted in ibid., 218. Although the legitimacy of Bell’s telephone patent has been scrutinized in hundreds of lawsuits, and over more than a century, the question of whether or not he invented the telephone continues to be raised. Perhaps the most persistent accusation against Bell is that he took the idea of a liquid transmitter from Elisha Gray. (For the most recent of these arguments, see A. Edward Evenson’s The Telephone Patent Controversy of 1876, and Seth Shulman’s The Telephone Gambit.) It should be noted, however, that Bell had been using liquid transmitters in experiments for several years before he filed his patent for the telephone. Moreover, Bell did not use a liquid transmitter either in the model he presented at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, or in the telephone his company sold commercially.
16 “I am sick of the Telephone”: Bell to Mabel Bell, September 9, 1878, Bell Family Papers.
17 “hateful to me at all times”: Quoted in Grosvenor and Wesson, Alexander Graham Bell, 88.
18 “first incentive to invention”: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 26.
19 “Our earthly hopes”: Alexander Melville Bell to Alexander Graham Bell, May 28, 1870, Bell Family Papers.
20 His mother, who had homeschooled: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 20.
21 “I should probably have sought”: Quoted in Gray, Reluctant Genius, 104.
22 “As far as telegraphy is concerned”: Quoted in ibid., 136.
23 “I wish very much”: Eliza Bell to Alexander Graham Bell, March 7, 1880, Bell Family Papers.
24 “I have my periods”: Bell to Mabel Bell, March 1879, Bell Family Papers.
25 When struggling with an invention: Gray, Reluctant Genius, 3.
26 “wee bit fiddler”: New York Times, January 2, 1905.
27 “musical fever”: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 22.
28 Even to Bell’s father: Ibid., 19.
29 “I have serious fears”: Alexander Melville Bell to Alexander Graham Bell, May 19, 1873, Bell Family Papers.
30 “sort of telephonic undercurrent”: Gray, Reluctant Genius, 145.
31 “My mind concentrates itself”: Bell to Mabel Bell, December 12(?), 1885, Bell Family Papers.
32 By 1880, so frustrated: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 283.
33 “I have been almost”: Gardiner Greene Hubbard
to Alexander Graham Bell, July 1880, Bell Family Papers.
34 “However hard and faithfully”: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 284.
35 In February of 1881: Bell to William Forbes, February 2, 1881, Bell Family Papers.
36 Along with the prize: Mackenzie, Alexander Graham Bell, 222.
37 Watson had left: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 282.
38 “These are germs”: Bell to Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Bell, January 18, 1881, Bell Family Papers.
39 “functional derangement of the heart”: Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude, 341.
40 “Edison was completely absorbed”: Tainter, “The Talking Machine and Some Little Known Facts in Connection with Its Early Development,” 12-A.
41 “I trust you will”: Bell to Mabel Bell, September 9, 1878, Bell Family Papers.
Chapter 7: Real Brutuses and Bolingbrokes
1 At 2:30 in the morning: Garfield, Diary, March 3, 1881, 4:552.
2 “no less than a half-dozen”: Almon F. Rockwell, “From Mentor to Elberon,” Century Magazine 23(1882), 431.
3 “the staggerings of my mind”: Ibid., March 1, 1881, 4:551.
4 With very few exceptions: During Washington’s first inauguration, which was held in New York City on April 30, 1789, he established the traditions of kissing the Bible after being sworn in to office and using the phrase “So help me God.” For his second inauguration, he delivered the shortest inaugural address in history, at just 135 words.
5 As transportation improved dramatically: The inauguration did not move to January 20 until 1933, when Congress ratified the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution. Although the Twentieth Amendment was ratified on January 23, Franklin D. Roosevelt was still inaugurated on March 4 of that year. It wasn’t until his second inauguration, in 1937, that the January 20 date was established.
6 By the time a crowd: New York Times, February 1, 1881.
7 Just beyond the Mall: Another three years would pass before the Washington Monument was finally finished, and by then the Army Corps of Engineers would have to use a type of marble different from that in the original construction, leaving the top two-thirds of the monument slightly darker than the bottom third.