Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,42
them. When President Hayes had traveled to Philadelphia five years earlier for the opening ceremony of the Centennial Exhibition, he had bought a ticket and boarded the train like everyone else.
The general consensus in the United States, moreover, was that if the president did happen to be at a slightly greater risk than the average citizen, there was simply nothing to be done about it. “We cannot protect our Presidents with body guards,” an editorial in the New York Times read. “There is no protection with which we can surround them that will ward off danger or disarm it more effectively than our present refusal to recognize its existence.” Garfield, unwilling to forfeit any more of his liberty than he had already lost to political enemies and office seekers, could not have agreed more. “Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning,” he wrote, “and it is best not to worry about either.”
Beyond a doorman and the occasional presence of an aging police officer who had worked in the White House for nearly two decades, the only buffer between the president and the public was Garfield’s twenty-three-year-old private secretary, Joseph Stanley Brown. Brown had met Garfield two years earlier, when he was doing secretarial work for the legendary explorer John Wesley Powell. Powell was anxious to get funding from Congress for his survey of the American West and was counting on Garfield’s help. Garfield was deeply interested in Powell’s work, but his secretary had been ill for quite some time, and he was buried under stacks of correspondence. Powell’s solution was to lend him his own secretary.
The next morning, on his way to work, Brown stopped by Garfield’s house in Washington, D.C. When Garfield was told that a young man was waiting for him, he crossed the hall and, entering the room, said in his characteristically cheerful and booming voice, “Good morning, what can I do for you?” His casual smile quickly turned to a look of surprise as Brown, then just twenty-one, replied boldly, “It is not what you can do for me, General Garfield. It is what I can do for you.”
Over the following weeks, as Garfield came to know Brown, one of the things he liked best about the young man was that he relied on his own intelligence and ingenuity. Like Garfield, Brown had come from humble origins but had risen through hard work and disciplined study. “Aspirations for the reflected glory of a long lineage of illustrious progenitors—the solace of ignoble minds,” he would later write, “furnishes no part of the ‘motif’ of my ancestral inquiries.” Brown’s grandfather Nathaniel Stanley had come to the United States from England in 1819 in order to avoid debtor’s prison, changing his name to Brown upon arrival in Baltimore. In America, Nathaniel’s son became a carpenter, and his grandson, Joseph, was expected to do the same. Although Joseph dutifully learned carpentry during the day, he studied Latin at night. When he was twelve, he also began to teach himself shorthand, recording the speeches of every public speaker he met, most of whom were ministers. He won his first job with Powell by offering to work for free.
Soon after Brown began working for Garfield, Powell won his funding from Congress, but lost his secretary to Garfield, who had come to rely on him. Brown, who was not much older than Garfield’s oldest sons, quickly became part of the family. He traveled to Mentor, joined family dinners and croquet tournaments, listened as Garfield tried out his speeches, and even gave him advice on relating to his teenagers. “The gracious, affectionate home life of the Garfield family was a revelation to one whose own home life was rather severe and austere,” Brown would later recall. “It was like having two homes.”
Garfield made it clear to Brown from the beginning that he not only liked him, but genuinely needed his help. When Garfield had returned to Washington for a few days after his nomination, Brown decided not to call on him, worried that his boss would think he was just another person asking for a favor. He realized how wrong he had been when he ran into Garfield on the street. “Where have you been,” Garfield asked him. “I need all my friends now.” Exhausted and worried, Garfield was in earnest, but he roared with laughter when Brown, who knew that he had had hardly a moment to himself since his nomination, replied, “General, I do not think you could