Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,28

knew that his name would always be linked with the scandal. “There is nothing in my relation to the case for which [the] tenderest conscience or the most scrupulous honor can blame me,” he wrote to a friend at the time. But “it is not enough for one to know that his heart and motives are pure, if he is not sure but that good men … who do not know him, will set him down among the list of men of doubtful morality.”

In the end, the effort to renew public interest in the scandal failed, but it was not for lack of trying. In an impressive, nationwide campaign to remind voters of Crédit Mobilier, and to exploit any lingering questions about Garfield’s role in it, Democrats covered every available surface in every major city with the numbers 329—the amount of money Garfield had been accused of earning in stock dividends. The numbers were on sidewalks, buildings, streets, and barns. Somehow, they even made their way into the homes and offices of members of the incumbent Republican administration. When the secretary of war sat down to breakfast one morning, 329 was scrawled on his napkin. The secretary of the treasury found the numbers on a piece of mail addressed to him, the secretary of agriculture on a beet someone had placed on his desk, and the secretary of state on his hat and, incredibly, the headboard of his bed.

When dredging up an old scandal proved ineffective, zealous Democrats invented a new one. At the height of the campaign, the editor of a New York newspaper found on his desk a letter supposedly written by Garfield professing his support for Chinese immigration. “Individuals or companys [sic] have the right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest,” the letter, which was written on congressional stationery, read. The issue of Chinese immigration was then highly inflammatory, guaranteed to inflame racist sentiment, incite the anger of American labor forces, and threaten the future of any presidential candidate who argued for it. The signature on the letter, however, did not remotely resemble Garfield’s, and after some investigation, the plot behind the forgery was revealed. After the election, a man from Maryland would confess his role in the plot in a New York courtroom, and be sentenced to the Tombs.

Throughout the campaign, despite an onslaught of attacks and accusations, and Garfield’s silence in the face of them, his supporters steadily grew. In New York, Garfield campaign clubs sprang up among completely disparate groups, from 52 students at the University of the City of New-York, to 150 German immigrants in Manhattan, to 50 young ladies from Jefferson County, who “raised a pole 50 feet high, and swung out a handsome streamer.” The New York Times reported that a judge who had been a lifelong Democrat announced his intention of switching party allegiance so that he could “support Gen. Garfield for President, as the best and fittest thing for an honest and patriotic citizen to do.” In Washington, D.C., a former slave named John Moss lost his job at the Library of Congress when he pummeled a fellow worker who had torn to pieces a lithograph of Garfield that Moss had sitting on his desk.

Freed slaves were arguably Garfield’s most ardent supporters. One of the best-known, and most enthusiastically sung, election songs of the contest was “The Battle Cry of Freemen.” Americans could hear the final stanza ringing through the convention halls and city streets, sung with joy and determination:

Now we’ll use a Freemen’s right, as thinking freemen should.

Shouting the battle cry of Garfield.

And we’ll place our ballots where they’ll do the toiling millions good.

Shouting the battle cry for Garfield.

Hurrah! Boys for Garfield.

On October 25, a political meeting of “colored citizens” at the Cooper Institute in New York filled an entire hall to overflowing. “It could not have been larger,” a reporter said of the gathering, “for every inch of space in the large hall was crowded. The seats were filled almost as soon as the doors were opened, and in a very few minutes all the standing room was taken.” Even more remarkable than the size of the crowd was its complete racial integration, just fifteen years after the end of the Civil War. “Black men and white,” a newspaper reported, “were in almost equal proportion throughout the hall and on the platform.”

The keynote speaker that night, and the cause of all the excitement, was Frederick Douglass. After climbing to the platform, the august former