Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,78

no effort to conceal his support. On the contrary, so intimately had he been involved in Conkling’s reelection bid that he was jeered in the press for “lobbying like any political henchman.” Harper’s Weekly had run a front-page cartoon of Arthur wearing an apron while he shined Conkling’s shoes.

Even in the moment when he learned that the president had been shot, Arthur was with Conkling. The two men had just stepped off an overnight steamer from Albany to Manhattan, where they had planned to take a brief break from their lobbying, when Arthur was handed a telegram. As he scanned the message, a reporter waiting anxiously on the dock for his reaction watched as his face blanched with shock.

The thought of Garfield dying terrified Arthur. The vice presidency was a prominent but undemanding job that had suited him well. Now, however, with the president near death, Arthur’s position had been suddenly elevated to one of far greater importance than he, or anyone else, had ever believed possible.

Clutching the telegram in his hand, Arthur reacted instinctively, turning, as he always had, to Conkling for direction. Far from frightened by this sudden turn of events, Conkling tucked Arthur even more tightly under his wing. Flagging down a taxi, he quickly steered Arthur into the carriage and climbed in next to him. Rather than seeing the vice president to the train station so that Arthur might take the first express into Washington, or even taking him home, Conkling ordered the driver to take them directly to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and not spare the whip.

As soon as they arrived at the hotel, however, Conkling could tell that even this bastion of Republican stalwartism had already changed. Across the street, the sidewalk was choked with people struggling to see the front windows of a telegraph office that had posted the most recent bulletins about the president’s condition. As Conkling and Arthur entered the hotel and walked through its ornate, marbled lobby, they were greeted not by warm, collegial smiles but by faces fixed in fear and anger. The library, sitting rooms, and bar were overflowing with more than a hundred anxious men, all fighting for a position near a small telegraph office and a beleaguered stock indicator, both of which produced bulletins at excruciatingly long intervals.

A reporter who had spent the morning at the hotel, interviewing powerful political men and listening in on their heated conversations, noticed that the general thinking had already begun to shift. The idea had taken root that something other than insanity may have been behind the president’s shooting. “More than one excited man declared his belief,” the reporter wrote, “that the murder was a political one.” If politics was involved, even tangentially, it followed that only one man could be to blame. “This is the result of placating bosses,” a man standing in the hotel bar growled. “If Conkling had not been placated at Chicago, President Garfield would not now be lying on his deathbed.”

So suffocatingly crowded was the main lobby that it took Arthur and Conkling ten minutes just to reach the reception desk. By the time Conkling had his hands on the hotel register, he and Arthur were encircled by reporters shouting questions. Quickly signing his name, Conkling, his jaw set and teeth clenched, dropped the pen and strode toward the stairs, a knot of reporters at his heels.

Conkling no doubt assumed that Arthur would be right behind him, but, for the first time since he had taken office, the vice president did not follow his mentor. Making a visible effort to calm himself, Arthur turned to the reporters gathered around him and, his voice shaking, asked what news they had of the president. After hearing the most recent bulletin, Arthur expressed his “great grief and sympathy,” and then hurried up the stairs toward Conkling’s suite.

As the vice president hunkered down in New York, and Garfield fought for his life in Washington, the nation began to realize that, at any moment, its fate might be suddenly thrust into the hands of Chester Arthur. Across the country, among men and women of both parties, the prospect of Arthur in the White House elicited reactions of horror. Even a prominent Republican groaned, “Chet Arthur? President of the United States? Good God!”

Arthur had never been seen as anything more than Conkling’s puppet, with no mind or ambition of his own. A large man with a long, fleshy face, carefully groomed sideburns that swept to his chin, and a heavy mustache