Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,127
bold and vigorous administration.” Quoted in Peskin, Garfield, 239.
51 “What legislation is necessary”: Peskin, Garfield, 234.
52 “who have been so reluctantly compelled”: Ibid., 253.
53 As head of the Appropriations Committee: Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, 796.
54 Garfield even defended: Ibid., 826–27.
55 “law of life”: Garfield, Diary, December 31, 1880, 4:499–500.
56 “I suppose I am morbidly sensitive”: Peskin, Garfield, 301.
57 “first, I should make no pledge”: Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, 140–41.
58 “if the Senatorship is thus”: Peskin, Garfield, 340.
59 After a landslide victory: Ibid., 447.
60 “I have so long and so often”: Garfield, Diary, February 5, 1879.
61 “wait for the future”: Rockwell, “From Mentor to Elberon.”
Chapter 3: “A Beam in Darkness”
1 “Don’t fail to write me”: Garfield to Lucretia Garfield, May 29, 1880, in Shaw, Crete and James, 369.
2 “The first half of my term”: Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes, 402–3.
3 Hayes’s abdication: Clancy, The Presidential Election of 1880, 82.
4 The Half-Breeds had two top candidates: Presidential nominees would be chosen at their party’s national conventions until the mid-twentieth century.
5 Although the Republican Party: Andrew Johnson was a Democrat and a southerner, but to prove that they embraced all men loyal to the Union, and to ensure Abraham Lincoln’s election, the Republicans had made him one of their own by choosing him to be Lincoln’s vice president. He became president after Lincoln was assassinated.
9 “Fresh crowds arriving”: Garfield, Diary, May 31, 1880, 4:424.
10 The Interstate Industrial Exposition Building: Encyclopedia of Chicago, “Places of Assembly,” www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/333.html. The Interstate Industrial Exposition Building was razed twelve years later to make room for Chicago’s Art Institute.
11 “the cool air of the lake”: “The President-Makers,” New York Times, June 5, 1880.
12 Although the hall could accommodate: “The Convention and Its Work,” New York Times, June 3, 1880; “The Story of the Ballots,” New York Times, June 8, 1880; photograph of convention floor, published in several sources.
13 “Blaine! Blaine!”: Quoted in Peskin, Garfield, 465.
14 “asked me to allow his brother”: Garfield to Lucretia Garfield, June 2, 1880, in Shaw, Crete and James, 373.
15 “It is evident”: Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes, 403.
16 “It is impossible”: Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, 50–51.
17 “too fond of talking”: Peskin, Garfield, 293.
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,