to the Republican Party of New York, and to show unwavering loyalty to Conkling. So powerful had Conkling become that he had cavalierly turned down Grant’s offer to nominate him to the U.S. Supreme Court six years earlier.
Like Garfield, Conkling had been an outspoken abolitionist and was a powerful defender of rights for freed slaves. He had helped to draft the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave African Americans citizenship and equal rights under the Constitution, and he argued vehemently for taking a hard line toward the defeated South. To no cause, however, had Conkling committed himself more passionately than the spoils system, the source of his personal power. When Rutherford B. Hayes, as part of his sweeping efforts at reform, had removed Conkling’s man, Chester Arthur, from his position as the collector of the New York Customs House, Conkling had attacked Hayes with a vengeance, ensuring that he was thwarted at every turn for the rest of his presidency. Finally, defeated and exhausted, Hayes had bitterly complained that Conkling was a “thoroughly rotten man.”
Hayes was not alone in his assessment of Conkling’s character. As is true of most men who wield their power like a weapon, Conkling was widely feared, slavishly obeyed, and secretly despised. He offended fellow senators with impunity, ignoring their red-faced splutters even when they threatened to challenge him to a duel.
Conkling was also exceedingly vain. He had broad shoulders and a waspishly thin waist, a physique that he kept in trim by pummeling a punching bag hanging from the ceiling of his office. He wore canary-yellow waistcoats, twisted his thick, wavy blond hair into a spit curl in the center of his high forehead, used lavender ink, and recoiled at the slightest touch. When he had worked as a litigator, he had often worried that he would lose a case after flying into a rage when “some ill-bred neighbor” put a foot on his chair.
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