Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,39

rascal,” he said with a smile. “How are you?” Garfield realized that, in a political context, the ease with which he forgave was regarded as a weakness, but he did not even try to change. “I am a poor hater,” he shrugged.

What Conkling did not understand, however, was that while Garfield was a poor hater, he was a very good fighter. As president, he wrote in his diary, he was “determined not to be classified the friend of one faction only,” and he vowed to “go as far as I can to keep the peace.” That said, he had never before walked away from a fight, and he was not about to do so now. He had fought everyone from hardened canal men to unruly students to Confederate soldiers, and he knew that, whether he liked it or not, he now had another battle on his hands.

“Of course I deprecate war,” he wrote, “but if it is brought to my door the bringer will find me at home.”

• CHAPTER 8 •

BRAINS, FLESH, AND BLOOD

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests

of men about men I greatly dislike.

JAMES A. GARFIELD

From an open window in his office in the White House, Garfield could smell the honeysuckle in full bloom on the southern portico, and he could see the broad stretch of the south lawn, dotted with diamond-, circle-, and star-patterned flower beds. In the distance was a lake, a glittering glimpse of the Potomac River, and the Washington Monument. Inside his office, which was on the second floor, just steps from his bedroom, a life-size portrait of George Washington hung on the north wall. “The eyes of Washington,” wrote a reporter who visited the new president, “look out upon the unfinished monument, and there is marked sadness in their expression.” Since Garfield’s inauguration, however, a derrick now sat on the flat top of the truncated monument—the promise of progress.

The White House itself was also about to receive some much-needed and long-awaited attention. Soon after she moved in, Garfield’s wife, Lucretia, “sat down to a good rattling talk over the dilapidated condition of this old White House” with two journalists, one of whom was Joseph Harper, a founding brother of Harper’s Magazine. With their help, she convinced Congress to appropriate $30,000 for renovation and restoration, funds it had withheld for four years from President Hayes. As the structure had slowly disintegrated around them, Hayes and his wife had used rugs to cover holes in the Brussels carpeting and steered visitors away from rooms with curtains that were stained and torn.

With a family to raise in a dangerously neglected house, Lucretia was eager to get started, but she refused to paint a wall or replace a curtain before she did her research. Garfield accompanied her on her trip to the Library of Congress so that he could see his old friend Ainsworth Rand Spofford. Spofford, who had been the Librarian of Congress since 1864, knew Garfield well, ranking him among the most diligent researchers he had ever met and marveling at how, in the midst of a hectic work schedule, Garfield managed to keep “abreast of current literature, allowing no good book to escape him.” Whenever Spofford received a box of books from New York or Europe, he would send word to Garfield so he could have the first look. Garfield enjoyed this proximity to knowledge so much that, when in Ohio one summer, he confided to a friend, “Every day I miss Spofford and our great Library of Congress.”

As much as Garfield loved books, however, he spent the great majority of his time between congressional sessions not reading but playing. He and Lucretia had five living children: Harry, Jim, Mary—who was known as Mollie—Irvin, and Abe, who was named for his grandfather, Abram. While home in Mentor, Garfield had always made the most of his time with them, swimming, playing croquet, working on the farm, correcting their Homer recitations from memory, or simply reading to them by lantern light after dinner. With his daughter and four sons gathered at his feet, he read for hours without rest, eager to introduce them to his favorite works, from Shakespeare’s plays to The Arabian Nights to Audubon’s detailed descriptions of the woodchuck, the brown pelican, and the ferruginous thrush. His summers and holidays at home, however, always seemed too short, and he regretted deeply the time he was away from his family. “It is a pity,” he wrote, “that I have so little time