Destiny of the Republic - By Candice Millard Page 0,80
tragedy that had befallen the nation. “This crime is as logically and legitimately the result of doctrines of Conkling and his followers as the murder of Lincoln was the result of the teachings of Secessionists,” the Cleveland Herald charged. “It was not the hand of this miserable office-seeker that armed the deadly blow at the life of Garfield, but the embodied spirit of selfishness, of love of rule, of all that is implied by ‘the machine’ and the ‘one man power,’ in a word, of Conklingism and its teachings.”
Criticized for going too far and calling Conkling a murderer, the New York Tribune denied that it had ever used the word. That said, it wrote, “when a child, in its mad rage, kicks over a table, upsets a lamp, sets the house on fire, and burns people to death, nobody supposes that the child intended murder. Mr. Conkling has been acting like a child in a fit of passion.”
So rapidly did the rumors spread that it became dangerous simply to be known as a Stalwart, especially in Conkling’s own state. “Men go around with clenched teeth and white lips,” one newspaper reported. “If any Stalwart in New York should be seen rejoicing he would be immediately lynched.” In a New York prison, two inmates fought so savagely over the possibility of Arthur assuming the presidency that one man killed the other, bludgeoning him to death with an ax.
It did not take Conkling long to understand that neither he nor Arthur was safe from the nation’s fury. The lynching parties being formed, he realized, were not for Guiteau alone. “While there is no intimation that Conkling is blood-guilty in this calamity,” a reporter in Albany, where Conkling was seeking reelection, wrote, “the country will hold him in a degree blamable.”
Even the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where Conkling had for years wielded his political power with the confidence of a king in his palace, no longer promised any refuge. After he had escaped to his rooms on the day of the shooting, Conkling rarely left them. Armed police detectives suddenly appeared, pacing the corridor outside his door. It was clear to everyone present, one reporter wrote, “that the ex-Senator had asked for protection.”
Downstairs in the lobby, the hotel’s proprietors received an anonymous note. Scrawled on a card, the handwritten message, which had been signed “The Committee,” read, “Gens: We will hang Conkling and Co. at nine p.m. sharpe.”
PART FOUR
TORTURED FOR
THE REPUBLIC
• CHAPTER 16 •
NEITHER DEATH NOR LIFE
I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost, that the characters
of men are moulded and inspired by what their fathers have done.
JAMES A. GARFIELD
Just two weeks after the attempt on the president’s life, Alexander Graham Bell was back in Washington. Although his wife, Mabel, was nearing the advanced stages of her pregnancy and he worried over her, admonishing her not to use the stairs more than necessary and to rest as often as possible, he had not hesitated to leave her. He had promised that they would spend the hottest part of the summer in Maine, but that trip, like everything else in his life, would now have to wait.
A few days earlier, he had contacted Dr. D. Willard Bliss to offer his help in locating the bullet inside the president. Although Bliss was not in the habit of consulting with inventors, Bell had two factors in his favor—his fame and Bliss’s fear. As he watched Garfield’s temperature ominously rise, Bliss had quietly agreed to meet with the young scientist.
As his train pulled into the station, Bell knew that the president’s private secretary, Joseph Stanley Brown, would be waiting for him. Brown quickly spotted Bell and his assistant Tainter in the rush of people pouring from the train and led them to a carriage that was waiting to take them directly to the White House. As they left the station, Bell could see that the hysteria he had witnessed on the day of the shooting had passed. Left in its wake was a palpable feeling of tension and nervousness. The usually noisy, chaotic city was somber and strangely quiet, as if every man were holding his breath. The only pockets of bustling activity were around telegraph stations and newspaper offices, where Bliss’s bulletins were posted on enormous wooden billboards. “Everywhere people go about with lengthened faces, anxiously inquiring as to the latest reported condition of the president and sadly speculating at the probable outcome of this terrible affair,” one newspaper reported.