Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,47

Garfield’s astonishment, it was filled with the love that she had always felt but had never been able to express. “Never before did I see such depths of suffering and such entire devotion of heart as was displayed in her private journal which she allowed me to read,” he wrote that night. “For months, when I was away in the midst of my toils, her heart was constantly pouring out its tribute of love.”

Although Garfield now believed that Lucretia loved him, when they finally married in 1858, they both knew that he was not yet in love with her. “I am not certain I feel just as I ought toward her,” he had admitted in his diary. “I have the most entire confidence in her purity of heart, conscientiousness and trustfulness and truly love her qualities of mind and heart. But there is no delirium of passion nor overwhelming power of feeling that draws me to her irresistibly.” Lucretia was painfully aware that Garfield’s feelings toward her had not deepened over the years, and she was tormented by the thought that he was marrying her because he felt he had to. The summer before their wedding, she wrote miserably to him, “There are hours when my heart almost breaks with the cruel thought that our marriage is based upon the cold stern word duty.”

If their courtship was difficult, the first years of their marriage were nearly unbearable. Between the Civil War and Garfield’s congressional duties in Washington, they spent only five months together during the first five years. The constant separation made it almost impossible for Lucretia to overcome her natural reserve, although she tried in earnest. “Before when you were away my heart missed you,” she wrote after they had been married for four years. “Now my whole self mourns with it and longs and pines for your presence, my lips for your kisses, my cheek for the warm pressure of yours. In short, I understand what you meant when you used to say, ‘I want to be touched!’ ”

Finally able to express herself in a letter, Lucretia still struggled to show physical affection, and Garfield’s frustration deepened until he confessed that he had grave doubts about their marriage. “It seemed a little hard to have you tell me … that you had for several months felt that it was probably a great mistake that we ever tried married life,” Lucretia wrote to James while he was in Columbus, working in the state senate, and she was home, expecting their first child. “I am glad you are coming home so soon, but you must come with a light face, or the shadow of those hours of terrible suffering, which are so surely and steadily coming upon me, will steal over me with its chill of death.”

Not even Trot, whose birth in 1860 brought James and Lucretia joy, and whose death, just three years later, knit them in a shared grief, could help them overcome their differences. The divide that had always separated them continued to widen until, in 1864, Garfield nearly destroyed any hope they had ever had of happiness together. In the spring of that year, he had an affair with a young widow named Lucia Gilbert Calhoun. He had met her in New York, where she was a reporter for the New York Tribune, and they had fallen in love, the kind of love he had for so long yearned to feel for Lucretia.

A month after meeting Lucia, James went home to Ohio and confessed the affair. Although angry and heartbroken, Lucretia forgave him, demanding only that he end the relationship immediately. Garfield agreed. He was certain he was walking away from his one chance at real love, but he was deeply ashamed of his infidelity. “I believe after all I had rather be respected than loved if I can’t be both,” he wrote sadly. He thanked Lucretia for her “brave words of good sense,” adding, “I hope when you … balance up the whole of my wayward self, you will still find, after the many proper and heavy deductions are made, a small balance left on which you can base some respect and affection.”

Garfield feared that, in the wake of his confession, Lucretia would lose all faith in him. Instead, his own feelings began to change. As he watched her bravely endure the pain and heartbreak that he had caused, Garfield suddenly saw Lucretia in a new light. She was not cold and unreachable but strong,