#22/#24 Grover Cleveland Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Grover Cleveland
1. Grover had a pretty interesting lineage. His great-great grandfather, Aaron Cleveland, was a great friend of Benjamin Franklin and even died in Ben’s house! Aaron Cleveland’s son, another Aaron, “introduced the first bill in American history calling for the abolition of slavery” (p. 7). Even the city of Cleveland was named after Moses Cleveland, another of Grover’s relatives. “Named Cleaveland, in salute to Moses’ efforts, the little village, which had become a thriving town by the time Grover was born, finally dropped the ‘a’ in 1832, when, it was reported, the local newspaper had need to shorten its masthead” (p. 7). I just love historical facts like that!
2. In the race for governor of New York, Cleveland won by the largest margin of anyone yet. “On November 7, 1882, Grove Cleveland was elected by a majority of 192,000 votes, the largest margin ever registered in a contested election for the highest office in the state” (p. 28).
3. Preservation of lands was slowly becoming a national issue and while Cleveland was governor, he duly set aside lands at Niagra to safeguard the beauty there. “The legislature, with Cleveland’s hearty approval, set aside lands in the vicinity of Niagra Falls deemed necessary to preserving the scenery” (p. 41).
4. Before he became president of the United States, Grover Cleveland had never set foot in Washington DC.
5. If anyone has seen the movie National Treasure, then I have to include this for them. Although the Resolute desk was presented to Hayes, I only read about it in this biography and so will give the information here. “Cleveland could not but have been told the history of the elegant gift: Franklin’s ship, HMS Resolute, had been found crushed by the ice by an American ship captain. Rebuilt and returned to England, it was put back into service. When it was finally decommissioned and dismantled, some of its oak timbers were fashioned into this unique present delivered to President Hayes. Known in the White House today as the ‘Resolute desk,’ it served many presidents in the family quarters of the White House. President Kennedy moved it into the Oval Office where he and successors continued to enjoy its use” (p. 73).
6. Cleveland hated the media. “Cleveland remains the only president who refused to attend the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, the insider association of Washington journalists founded in 1885, at which the president and the press attired in white tie and tails ‘singe but do not burn’ each other with more or less good-natured sallies” (p. 76).
7. When Grover Cleveland married, it was the first ever wedding of a president in the White House. “Being uncomfortable with social niceties, as we have seen, he relied on the advice of his married sister, Mary for the details of what would be the first wedding of a president ever held in the White House” (p. 79).
8. Grover’s oldest daughter, Ruth, would eventually give her name to a popular candy bar. “Ruth was destined not to reach the age of thirteen, dying of diphtheria in 1904. She lives in the national memory as Baby Ruth, the name that newspapers bestowed on her and that in 1921, the Curtiss Company decided to assign to a candy bar, still popular today” (p. 100).
9. As mentioned earlier, Cleveland was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.
10. I've concluded that George Pullman was an asshole! George Pullman was the guy “whose sleeping car revolutionized overnight rail travel” (p. 118) but he’s also the guy who made all his workers live in a village built by the Pullman Company. “The rents Pullman charged were excessive, running about 25 percent higher than in neighboring towns. He sold at ten centers per thousand gallons of water that he brought from Chicago at four cents. He forced his tenants to buy their food and other necessities from company stores, where prices far exceeded those of regular outlets. The simmering cauldron of protest boiled over when in 1894 the company cut wages an average of 25 percent, without a comparable cut in rent or in the cost of necessities. Pullman refused to listen to complaints and dismissed from their jobs those who persisted in the outcry. He then closed the plant” (p. 118). Hence my earlier statement: George Pullman is an asshole.
11. In 1886, Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty.
12. Cleveland acquired Pearl Harbor. “In 1887 the United States acquired from the Hawaiian monarchy the right to establish a coaling and repair station at Pearl Harbor, the majestic landlocked bay on the south coast of the island of Oahu” (p. 120).

Henry Graff, the author, tried to remain unbiased on the subject of Grover Cleveland but I got the impression that Cleveland was not a helpful candidate for biography. Cleveland’s personality seemed to be extremely grim and straightforward, which, as you’ll agree, is hardly book worthy. However, you do have to hand it to old Grover. He had principles and he stood by them his entire life and throughout his two terms as president. Even thought the Republicans had been in office 24 straight years, he handled the change of party with decision and a commitment to his democratic ideals. He didn’t allow the party bosses and his position to change his opinions on what he saw was right and what was wrong. If you are annoyed and disillusioned with the politicians of today then please read about Grover Cleveland. You won’t be disappointed.

Graff does take the opportunity to mildly criticize Cleveland for his demeanor and his speechmaking ability. It was fortunate for Cleveland that people, during this time, primarily voted their party. The average voter knew very little about the candidates and certainly did not care whether they made good speeches or not. Cleveland won, for the most part, on the fact that the Democrats did a great job of getting people to the polls to vote the Democratic ticket.

I also found it interesting that Graff takes the time to discuss racism. Not the racism that we are familiar with today but the quotidian racism of everyday life in America in the late nineteenth century. Graff makes the assertion that racism, back then, was very common and quite normal. It’s hard for us to sometimes to understand the intolerance of our forebears but that was simply standard operating procedure at the time. Everyone was racist in some fashion (see my William Henry Harrison blog). And it really had nothing to do with slavery, per se, but was prevalent in all forms of society. For instance, during Cleveland’s presidencies, he had to deal with racism against the American Indians, against the Chinese, and against Catholics. Isn’t this the way of life?

#22/#24 Grover Cleveland (1837-1907)

For the longest time, I sat with an empty page in front of me, totally unable to start Grover Cleveland’s blog. Ugh. What in God’s name do you talk about when it comes to Grover Cleveland!?! This mental block lasted nearly an hour as I consoled myself at kicking ass on Bejewled 2 until then it hit me—why do I need some witty introduction to Grover Cleveland’s non-consecutive presidencies? Why can’t I simply present him, TV-announcer style, and then shove him out for everyone to judge for themselves?

After reading Grover Cleveland: American Presidents Series by Henry F. Graff (New York: Times Books, 2000), I can now say, as the drum rolls, “Here is the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. Give it up, folks, for Grover Cleveland!” And I merely sit back as the applause simply rolls over me.

Steven Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837 in Caldwell, NJ to a pastor. He was the 5th of 9 children in the family and had a pretty unremarkable upbringing. As a child, Grover attended the Fayetteville Academy in NY and at the age of 14, moved to Clinton, NY. In 1853, his father died. For some reason, Grover found himself supporting his mother and sisters and so was never able to take the time to go to college.

He did need to make a living though so he moved to Buffalo, where he stayed with a relative, and began studying law at Millard Fillmore’s old firm. In 1859, he was admitted to the bar. “Cleveland had come to be the chief support of his mother and sisters—and his contributions to their upkeep were becoming substantial” (p. 15). When the Civil War began, Cleveland, still supporting his family, could not simply leave to fight so he purchased a substitute to go to war in his stead.

In 1863, his career began to take off when he became the assistant district attorney for Erie County and then in 1869, he set up his own law firm: Laning, Cleveland, & Folsom. In 1870, he became sheriff for Erie County. “Still, by all accounts, his term in the sheriff’s office served him well: he had been able to save a good portion of his salary; he had consolidated his connections with almost every segment of officialdom; and his diligence had made a strong impression on people throughout his constituency. He was a public personage, appreciated and respected” (p. 16).

Now things began happening more quickly for old Grover. In January 1882, he became Mayor of Buffalo. This job eventually catapulted him only 11 months later into the Governorship of New York. “Now Grover Cleveland was in the spotlight. He had captured the governorship for the largest state in the country after having served only a year as the mayor. He was far enough past the constitutionally required age of thirty-five to give confidence that he was not a tyro, and yet young enough to appeal to the new generation looking forward to managing the America of the Gilded Age” (p. 34). Cleveland would be known as the “Veto Governor.” He was unsmiling, formal, and a workaholic. But things got done under Cleveland’s stern eye.
It seemed like only a matter of time before he was sighted as the next major Democratic leader. There had not been a Democratic president since Buchanan and people were ready for a change. In 1884, Cleveland won the Democratic nomination for president. “Cleveland was the symbol of high-mindedness and devoted care in local governance. Wherever people were weary of hoping to have government for the people but finding instead government for the politicians, they thought immediately of the broad-shouldered governor of New York as their champion” (p. 46-7). He squared off against James G Blaine as the Republican national candidate.

The campaigns of both candidates did not amount to much. Neither side very differed from the other and so each party looked for dirt on their opponents to distinguish each other. Blaine had been caught up with some party corruption years ago but the surprising thing was that a scandal erupted around Cleveland. A newspaper broke the story that Cleveland, a bachelor, had impregnated a lady, then had her child taken from her and put in an orphanage. Cleveland’s response to the Democratic PR people? “Tell the truth.” The truth, it appeared, was that a friend of Cleveland’s was really the father of the child but since that gentleman (Folsom from the law firm) was married with children of his own, Cleveland had taken it upon himself to care for the woman and child.

This scandal did not actually hurt Cleveland because he soon became the 22nd President of the United States. At 300 lbs, Cleveland moved into the White House with his sister, Rose, as hostess. John Phillip Sousa and his band played at the Inaugural Ball. Cleveland immediately became interested in building up the navy and reforming the Department of the Interior. In a surprise twist, Cleveland became engaged to Francis Folsom, daughter of his old law partner, who was also twenty years his junior. They were married on June 2, 1886 with only 31 guests in attendance.

“Beneath his starched exterior there had always been a sympathetic heart, and people became aware of his gentler qualities. He have them expression not in his formal speeches, which were invariably dry and dull, as we have seen, but in the well-turned letters that he composed. Still, his frequent outburst of temper, his brusque treatment of deficient subordinates, and what was sometimes plain grossness were also in notable evidence. These traits bespoke an unalterable gracelessness that people took as a small price to pay for the honestly in government that he brought with him” (p. 82). Whether it was due to these faults, rather than his virtues, or not, Cleveland, winning the Democratic nomination yet again, failed to win the support of the public.

In 1888, he lost to Benjamin Harrison and so he and Francis moved to New York City. Back in New York, Cleveland resumed his practice of law and also set about giving periodic speeches. In this way, he stayed in the public consciousness and in 1892, was re-nominated as the Democratic national candidate for president. He won again, this time against Benjamin Harrison, his old foe, and the Populist Party candidate, Weaver. He was now the 24th President of the United States.

The Panic of 1893 hit the country almost immediately upon Cleveland’s second inaugural yet; it was a golden opportunity for Cleveland to show what he was made of. And he did a great job! He had the Secretary for the Treasury make a “gold deal” with JP Morgan and then sold governmental bonds to make money during the Panic. It was a brilliant maneuver. Unfortunately, the rest of Cleveland’s second term seemed to stall out, especially when he withdrew the treaty of annexation of Hawaii. No one was happy about that.

During this time, Cleveland was diagnosed with cancer of the mouth. After what happened to Garfield, Cleveland and his associates were terrified of what the public would think about this situation. So they decided to hold the surgery in private. “In private” meant that Cleveland would be operated on on a yacht while his bed was lashed tightly to the mast. He was fitted with an artificial jaw while everyone else remained in the dark until 1917 when the doctor wrote an article on it.

In 1896, Cleveland lost the Democratic nomination to William Jennings Bryant and he passed out of United States politics. Upon a recommendation of a friend, Cleveland and his wife moved to Princeton, NJ where he could be seen taking long walks around the campus. He became the “Sage of Princeton” and was even named a trustee of the college. He spent his time writing articles for magazines and even wrote Presidential Problems, a book about his time in office. He helped reorganize the Equitable Life Assurance Society but he had increasing difficulties with his heart and kidneys. He also had gout. In 1906, Cleveland moved his family to New Hampshire but a year later on June 24, 1907, he died of a heart attack.

#21 Chester Arthur Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Chester Arthur
1. His nickname was Gentleman Boss.
2. Arthur has a statue in New York City. “Today, the only trace of Arthur’s presence in the neighborhood is a statue of him, standing quietly on a pedestal at the northeast corner of Madison Square Park at Twenty-sixth Street” (p. 35).
3. Before he ran on the Republican ticket in 1881 as vice president, Arthur had never been elected to any other office.
4. Arthur decided to further renovate the White House and so he called on Louis Tiffany to do the job. “Tiffany was not yet famous for his lamps, but in 1881 he obtained a patent for a new technique to decorate stained glass. In the Cross Hall of the White House, he installed a large stained-glass screen, which inspired one magazine to rhapsodize that the only dark things left in the White House were the oil portraits of former presidents. The Blue Room itself was painted, not surprisingly, a light sky blue, and the ceiling was decorated with painted stars. Tiffany and his workers also painstakingly applied wallpaper inlaid with pieces of sparkling glass...The Red Room became more strikingly red; Arthur’s office gained a more open fireplace and yellow tones; and golf leaf appeared promiscuously throughout the public rooms. The executive mansion also acquired its first elevator” (p. 77-78).
5. In the summer of 1882, electricity was brought to New York City. “Thomas Edison and his company were hard at work on a power station that would by summer’s end provide New York City with its first supply of electricity and electric lights” (p. 90).
6. The first known celebration of Labor Day occurred in 1882. “And in early September, as the season was winding down, a parade estimated at twenty thousand to thirty thousand people marched through Manhattan to honor the workingman, beginning a tradition soon known as Labor Day” (p. 90-91).
7. The very first US Open in tennis was held in 1881. “The [Newport] casino was the center of the social scene, where drinks and cigars were consumed on cool porches in between leisurely and competitive games of the newest English import, lawn tennis. The first US National Championship (the precursor to the US Open) were held on its courts in 1881” (p. 91).
8. Arthur helped inaugurate the Brooklyn Bridge. “He was met by wildly enthusiastic crowds—not because he was president, however, but because he had come to celebrate the opening of what was then the greatest technical wonder of the United States: the Brooklyn Bridge…On May 24, 1883, amid fireworks, cannons, military parades, confetti, and the cacophony of brass bands, Arthur and the mayors of New York and Brooklyn inaugurated the span linking the two large cities” (p. 123).
9. Here is some political trivia for you. In the 1884 election, some liberal Republicans splintered from the party and were known as “Mugwumps.” “The splinter group was called, by some clever cynic, ‘Mugwumps,’ which was an Algonquin word that technically meant ‘chieftain’ but implied a foolish self-importance. The Mugwumps were precursors to the Progressives of the early 1900s” (p. 130).

Poor Chester A. Arthur just doesn’t have much of a chance. He seems like a pretty happy dude working behind the scenes so it’s just funny that he ends up becoming president of the United States of America. Karabell does a good job of trying to make Arthur come alive for the reader but I can tell he doesn’t have much to work with here. Arthur liked good food, was pretty easy going for the most part, and tried to steer a decent course with what he was given.

The problem is that Arthur quite literally blends in with all the other presidents during this time period. One reason I think this happens is due to the fact that after Grant all the presidents look the same. If you look back in my blog—at Garfield, at Arthur—and ahead at Cleveland, you will notice that they are all heavily-bearded, chubby individuals. Plus it was unfortunate that Arthur was president during a time, otherwise known as the Gilded Age, when executive power was at its lowest ebb. The reason for this was twofold. First of all, thanks to our old pal Andrew Johnson, Congress had become the big dog in the national firmament. During Johnson’s presidency if you recall, Congress hated him so much that they passed several bills that strictly limited the power of the president, including the Tenure of Office Act. All the presidents thereafter had to work within the limited confines of the executive office as proscribed by the legislature. “The White House had shed much of the power it had acquired during the Civil War, and Congress had asserted its traditional preeminence with the impeachment and near conviction of Andrew Johnson for the unpardonable sin of thinking that he could remove members of his cabinet without the say-so of the Senate” (p. 3).

Secondly, money was king. I know that sounds simplistic but it’s true—this age was the highlight of big money. Probably at no point in American history is the gap between the classes as wide as it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Robber barons were not only extravagantly wealthy but they owned the bulk of the country’s resources. Basically this meant that 1% of the population owned about 95% of the wealth. “While the captains of industry—Rockefeller, Morgan, Frick, Gould, Vanderbilt, Villard, Stanford, Carnegie—carved out empires of wealth in the process of industrializing America, the federal government receded from the center of national attention that it had briefly occupied in the 1860s” (p. 4). Let’s face it—the American public was much more curious about the lives of the rich and famous than it was over its own head of state.

So, due to circumstances beyond his control, poor Arthur is overlooked not only by our historical standpoints but also by the American citizens of his own time. Sad.

# 21 Chester A. Arthur (1829-1886)

“Arthur is one of the forgotten presidents. Mention him to the proverbial man-on-the-street, and blankness is a likely response. ‘You’re writing a biography of who?’ was the most common refrain when this particular author mentioned that he was writing about this particular president. Even among those who consider themselves well educated, Chester Arthur remains a cipher, one of those late-nineteenth-century inhabitants of the White House whose echo has been muffled by the more memorial individuals and whose footprint—and in the case of the rotund gourmand Arthur a rather large footprint—has been trampled on and all but erased” (Karabell, p. 2).

Like the good gentleman mentions above, I had no clue about Arthur either even though I certainly place myself in the ‘well-educated’ category. Of course I had seen bits and pieces of Arthur as he made his way through the Hayes and Garfield administrations respectively but that’s really it. He was another vice president who took over the highest office in the land with the death of the incumbent but I’m not sure he did anything special to mark his time in the White House. To find out more, I read Chester A. Arthur: American Presidents Series by Zachary Karabell (New York: Times Books, 2004).

Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1829 in North Fairfield, Vermont to a Baptist minister. As a minister, Mr. Arthur Senior moved around a great deal but finally settled down in Schenectady, New York. At the age of fifteen, Chester went off to Union College where he became an ardent abolitionist but stayed a pretty mediocre student. After graduating in 1848, he taught for several years and then changed professions to become a law clerk.

Because of his abolitionist leanings, Arthur was excited about the turmoil currently rocking the state of Kansas and so in 1856, he and a friend moved out there to help out. Unfortunately, Kansas was so lawless and violent that Arthur almost immediately moved back to New York and into the arms of the Republican Party. He then met Ellen Lewis Herndon, who was from Virginia and an ardent Confederate, and October 1859 they were married in Manhattan.

During the war, Arthur was appointed chief engineer and quartermaster of the state of New York with the rank of brigadier general. “Arthur was responsible for the feeding, housing, and supplying of several hundred thousand troops, and he proved to be an able manager of the complicated task” (p. 15). In 1862, however, he lost this job when elections put the Democrats in office so he returned to his profession as a lawyer.

Arthur, increasingly, found himself pulled into the Stalwart side of the Republican Party and became a good minion of the leader, Roscoe Conkling. With the help of these new friends, Arthur, in 1871, was given the most important plum in the New York patronage system: the Collector of NY Customs. The reason that this job was so posh was due to the fact that millions of dollars came through the port of New York and Arthur, as the head collector, would earn a portion of that. Although Arthur’s work ethic was never very stringent—he would arrive late and leave early—he stepped on no toes and was friends with just about everybody. In fact, in 1875, he had been appointed to an unprecedented second term. That is, until President Hayes decided to crack down on corruption while using the Collector of NY Customs position as the scapegoat. “Secretary of the Treasury Sherman launched an investigation of corrupt practices at the major customhouses in the United States and appointed John Jay, the grandson of the first chief justice of the United States, to head a commission specifically targeting New York. And with that, Chester Arthur, who had kept a relatively low profile in spite of his lofty position, suddenly became the center of a national crisis” (p. 28).

“Much like Conkling, Arthur was seen as part of a corrupt system rather corrupt himself. He had taken advantage of moiety kickbacks, true, but he had stayed within the system” (p. 29). A battle royale began between Hayes on the one side, asking for Arthur’s resignation, and Conkling on the other, stoutly defending his friend and the system of patronage. In 1878, Hayes had his way though and Arthur was removed from office. “Rather than ruining Arthur’s career, Hayes vendetta catapulted him to national attention. He became the darling not only of the Stalwarts but of a motley assortment of the administration’s opponents” (p. 33).

Arthur again went back to his law business and also became the Chairman of the New York Republican Party, another high profile and very powerful position. “But it’s likely that in spite of the furor over his removal as collector, these years were among the happiest in his life. He was wealthy; he was happily married; he was engaged in work he cared about on behalf of the party he loved; and he enjoyed the ironclad support of one of the most powerful politicians in the country” (p. 34). Although he worked hard for the Republican Party as the election of 1880 began to loom nearer, he was devastated in early 1880 when his wife died of pneumonia.

At the Republican National Convention, he was nominated as the vice presidential candidate, alongside James Garfield, and thereafter worked steadily on behalf of their ticket. “Arthur was a brilliant fundraiser and a persuasive manager, and he was a central factor in the eventual victory” (p. 47). New York voted Republican and James Garfield and Chester Arthur were sent to Washington DC. Arthur was sworn in as vice president on March 4, 1881 with an Inaugural Ball held later at the Smithsonian Institute.

It did not take long though for the honeymoon to end between president and the vice president and a general dislike descended on the relationship. It was with some relief that Arthur was able to remove to New York after Congress ended. He was still there on July 2, 1881 when James Garfield was shot at a Washington train station. Arthur immediately made his way back to the capital but was unable to see or speak with the president due to the fear that Arthur had something to do with the assassination attempt. Garfield wasted away a few months later and on September 9, 1881 at 2:15 am Arthur was sworn in as the 21st President of the United States.

“He [Arthur] was respected and respectable. Save for his miscue in the spring of 1881 he had earned a reputation for integrity in a system known for corruption. But that didn’t make him presidential, yet there he was, the president of the United States” (p. 68). After several months, Arthur was finally able to move into the White House with his sister, Mary, as hostess. It was time for Arthur to pick up the pieces of government and nobody thought that he had potential to do a good job. It thus surprised nearly everyone when he made fairly good selections for his cabinet positions and with governmental patronage.

Because of the fact that Garfield was shot by a frustrated office seeker (insane or not), Congress pushed through the first civil service reform called the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. “Its best in 1883 left much to be desired, but the Pendleton Act, for all its flaws, forever altered the complexion of the US government. It put the old spoils system on a path to obsolescence and it was a necessary prelude to the government-led reforms of the Progressive era and beyond” (p. 111).

Arthur also had to deal with several other issues during his presidency. For instance, immigration was becoming a heated issue with the influx of Chinese people taking over jobs on the west coast. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress which forced Arthur to diplomatically handle the situation with China. He also dealt with national funding issues, including where the US government stood on governmental control and funding of harbors and rivers. There was also tariff reform (the Mongrel Tarriff) and the very important re-growth of the Navy. It was during this time that Congress declared the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional which was directly to blame for segregation in the South.

Arthur, for all the good he did in office, was not re-nominated. He had estranged the Stalwart side of the party and thus he had very little backing going into the 1884 Republican National Convention. When Grover Cleveland became president, Arthur moved back to New York City and took up the reigns of his law business once again. He was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, which was a kidney disease that caused him much pain and impeded his gourmand lifestyle. He died on November 18, 1886 from a ruptured artery in the brain. “In everything he did, Chester Alan Arthur was a gentleman, and that is rare and precious. It reminds us that adversaries can be treated with respect, that democracy can survive differences, and that leadership isn’t just great words and deeds. Arthur managed to be a decent man and decent president in an era when decency was in short supply” (p. 143).

#20 James Garfield Part 2

“Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; and it is best not to worry about either.” James A Garfield

Really Cool Stuff about James Garfield
1. In college, Garfield was hired as a penmanship teacher in Vermont. What is interesting here is that this position had just been vacated by Chester Arthur. “At the end of his first fall term, the well-liked Garfield, who was always in need of extra income, was invited to spend several weeks teaching penmanship to the schoolchildren in the nearby town of Pownal, Vermont. In a curious coincidence of history, Garfield occupied a position that had been filled the previous year by Chester A. Arthur, his future vice presidential running mate” (p. 8).
2. While in congress, Garfield, through his work with governmental finance, became a major force in national academic achievement. “Garfield helped finance federal scientific expeditions and was a major force behind the creation of the United States Geological Survey. The six-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, regarded as one of the most important works in the history of American medicine, was organized and published due to his insistence that money be made available for the project” (p. 32).
3. Garfield, despite his personal honesty, was involved in several of the major scandals of the day, including the Credit Mobilier scandal, the Salary Grab scandal, and the DeGolyer-McClelland scandal. These would come to haunt him during his presidential campaign.
4. James’ relationship with his wife, Lucretia, was not always stable. “In the 1860s, there had been rumors of Garfield’s persistent philandering…Throughout his life, Garfield maintained intensely close relationships with a number of women. Certainly, the stories concerning Garfield’s early emotional infidelities were true” (p. 43). There is no evidence though that these affairs were physical.
5. The election of 1880 had the closest popular vote in history! “More than nine million individuals went to the polls and Garfield received a plurality of fewer than 2,000 votes—the closest popular vote in all presidential elections in American history” (p. 62).
6. He was the first person to hold offices in the Senate, the House of Representatives and the presidency all at the same time. “It was an exciting time for Garfield—he was simultaneously a member of the House of Representatives, a United States senator-elect, and president-elect of the United States, the only instance this has occurred in history—but there was a sobering realization of how the win would affect him and his family” (p. 62).
7. I think that it’s interesting that Garfield’s Secretary of War was Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln.
8. Garfield’s mother would be the first mother to attend an inauguration of her son. “She [Eliza] would be the first woman in American history to witness her son’s inauguration as president” (p. 69-70).
9. Since he had been shot in July, the summer heat, even in the White House, was almost more than Garfield could bear. Thus, the first air conditioning unit in the United States was invented. “Because the ice did not suffice, a rudimentary air-conditioning unit, the nation’s first, was built in the White House. It was a Rube Goldberg-like contraption, consisting of a series of Turkish towels placed inside a massive cast-iron chamber. The towels were kept wet by a solution of ice, water, and salt sprayed on them from above. Fans circulated air through the cloths and the cold exhaust was directed into Garfield’s room. This proved inadequate and United States Navy engineers jury-rigged even larger fans and second cooling unit. Supplying twenty-three thousand cubic feet of air per hour, at a temperature of 54 degrees, the bedside temperature was maintained steadily at 75 degrees day and night” (p. 111).
10. At one point, Garfield’s wound ejected some foreign materials and Woodward, a surgeon, placed this under a microscope to determine its origin and thus, make history. “Woodward examined the one-quarter-inch-square specimen under a microscope. He confirmed that it was a portion of the president’s cotton shirt, with a few fibers of wool from the coat. In doing this, Woodward conducted the first microscopic-based forensic science examination in the United States” (p. 113).
11. Garfield’s vertebrae are still housed in the National Museum of Health and Medicine. “When Lamb completed his dissection [autopsy], the affected vertebrae were removed and brought back to the Army Medical Museum (Garfield’s twelfth thoracic and first and second lumbar vertebrae currently reside at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.), where they were given to the prosecution for the upcoming trial of Charles Guiteau” (p. 128-29).
12. Even though Garfield’s assassin was mentally insane, Guiteau was also considered a frustrated office seeker who took out his political agenda on Garfield. (Minutes after the president had been shot, Guiteau had claimed “I did it and will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president” p. 2)To keep this from occurring again, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, a groundbreaking effort to reduce patronage, was passed in 1883.

I hope you guys understand what I meant about being horrified after reading about James Garfield’s appalling end. Honestly, no man alive should have to die like that. And really I didn’t even do it justice—the author, Rutkow, went into very great and graphic detail about the state of the president’s health during the 80 days. That’s right, people, the president took 80 days to die. 80! Let’s not forget that this was during the heat of the Washington summer (which, believe me, is hotter than Florida sometimes) before air-conditioning and energy star homes. There were no IVs or hospital beds, no hand-sanitizing foam or latex gloves. Garfield had to lie in his room for 80 days, completely covered in bed sores, while his body slowly deteriorated from the inside out. And on top of that, he had to lay there patiently allowing all manner of people to stick their unwashed fingers and probes into the bullet wound. Ugh!

I guess it will not be a surprise to anyone when I state that red flags were raised by this treatment on a national level. The medical profession came under heavy abuse after the president died, especially when the assassin, Charles Guiteau, stood in court and told everyone that he didn’t kill the president—the doctors did! It is truly sad that a calamity, such as this one, would be the impetus to bestir the medical profession to join the rest of the twentieth century. “Fueled by the Garfield tragedy, an increasing number of positive articles concerning antisepsis brought about the acceptance of Listerism by the late 1880s” (p. 132). As a frequenter of doctors and hospitals I only have one thing to say to Lister “thank you very much!”

Rutkow does a great job with Garfield’s story. At first I was a little confused to find that I was only halfway through the book when Garfield gets shot, little knowing that our poor president would effectively ‘live’ for another 80 days after that. Rutkow had more than enough ammunition on Bliss and the state of Garfield’s health during those days to probably fill up several more volumes. In fact, within the chapters on Garfield’s convalescence, Rutkow sets aside an entire chapter on medicine in the early 1880s and it is fascinating. Gross, but fascinating.

Rutkow also makes an interesting comparison between the fates of James Garfield and Ronald Reagan. Most of us may remember that in 1981 (exactly one hundred years after Garfield), President Ronald Reagan was shot near the heart. His wound was quite lethal, puncturing a lung before finally resting an inch away from his aorta. “Bleeding internally and short of breath, he was rushed to the George Washington University Hospital, where he collapsed in the emergency room. Resuscitative measures stabilized Reagan’s condition, and, within minutes, he was taken into surgery. By the time the three-hour operation ended and the hemorrhage was controlled and the pulmonary injury treated, more than 50 percent of the president’s blood volume had been replaced by transfusions. In a tribute to scientific medicine and the recuperative powers of the patient, Reagan was on his feet within twenty-four hours of the shooting and, eleven days later, returned to the White House—fully able to conduct the nation’s business” (p. 138). Amazing. Can you believe how far we’ve come??

Of course, we will never, ever know what kind of president Garfield would have made. I wonder if he would have been any good at all. He had an illustrious political career up to that moment but a part of me thinks that he staged the entire thing. I believe that Garfield was intensely ambitious, planning out every detail, including when he would run for certain offices and when his name would be brought forward for consideration. I felt that he cultivated certain individuals strictly in light of their benefit to him and used everyone else on his path to the top. Was this a bad thing? Of course not! I’d like to know which of our politicians don’t take this route. What struck me about Garfield though is that it felt so very obvious that he staged the entire thing.

And it was all for nothing. Garfield spent maybe 4 months in office and then he simply became a sad nonentity in the pantheon of unremarkable presidents. “Ultimately, it was his [Garfield’s] lack of assertiveness and worry over the slightest hint of criticism that interfered with his presidential decision making. ‘I am a poor hater,’ was Garfield’s self-description, and for this reason his is remember more as a political party functionary—and for having been assassinated—than an inspirational American president” (p. 137).