a deathwatch, and everything, from day-to-day activities to special events, had been postponed, or, in many cases, canceled altogether. Even the Fourth of July celebrations had been called off, for the first time in the city’s history. That morning, the only outward recognition of Independence Day in the nation’s capital had been the raising of the flag on the White House grounds, and even that had been nothing more than a quiet message to a terrified people that their president still lived. “Men looked eagerly to the flag-pole this morning,” a reporter had written that day, “fearing to see the ensign at half mast, and breathed a sigh of relief when they found it floated from the top of the pole.”
When the carriage reached the White House, it became clear that the nation had changed not just suddenly, but fundamentally and irretrievably. Where once an old policeman and a young secretary had been the only barriers between a president and his people, there now stood armed sentinels, flanking the White House as if it were the palace of a king. A reporter mournfully described the sun rising on the capital and looking “down upon the Executive Mansion of a free country guarded by soldiers.” As frightening and un-American as this sight seemed, it did not keep people away. On the contrary, hundreds of people were sprawled out on the lawns just outside the White House gates, many with picnic baskets and blankets, some who had clearly been sleeping there for days, anxious for news.
Bell’s carriage was quickly ushered through the gates, but his meeting with Bliss was brief. The two men discussed the basic theory behind the induction balance and then made arrangements for the doctor to visit the Volta Laboratory to see the invention for himself. Before leaving, Bell turned to Brown and handed him a small gift he had carried on his lap from Boston—a basket of grapes that Mabel had sent for Lucretia. Attached was a note that read, “To Mrs. Garfield, a slight token of sympathy from Mr. & Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell.” Brown assured Bell that the first lady would receive the gift. Then he handed Bell something in return, something that he had given to only a very few people—a card that gave the bearer access to the White House at any time, day or night.
As Bell climbed back into the carriage, eager to return to his laboratory and begin work, Garfield lay in his isolated room on the south side of the White House, where he had been confined to his bed for nearly two weeks, unable to walk or even sit up. Although his temperature had fallen slightly, he was still sweating profusely, his arms and legs were cold, and pus was freely flowing through the drainage tube that his surgeons had inserted that day. On Bliss’s orders, he had been given rum, wine, and an injection of morphine, which he had received at least once a day, every day, since the shooting.
Although Garfield rarely mentioned it, his doctors knew that he was in excruciating pain. He suffered from what Bliss described as “severe lancinating,” or stabbing, pains in his “scrotum, feet and ankles.” Garfield admitted that the pain felt like “tiger’s claws” on his legs, but tried to reassure those around him. “They don’t usually stay long,” he told his friend Rockwell after waking from a fitful sleep one night. “Don’t be alarmed.”
More difficult for Garfield to deny than the pain was the violent vomiting that often seized him. On the morning of the Fourth of July, as plans for celebrations were being hastily canceled, the president vomited every twenty minutes for two hours. Since then, the vomiting and nausea had slowed, but continued to come in unpredictable waves.
Garfield had for years suffered from severe stomach ailments. He had endured chronic dysentery during the Civil War and later battled dyspepsia so extreme that at one point he was confined to bed for nearly two weeks. Finally, a doctor told him that he would have to have a section of his intestines removed. Garfield had avoided such drastic measures, but he carefully controlled his diet, even carrying with him to Congress a lunch that his doctors had prescribed—a sandwich of raw beef on stale bread.
Under Bliss’s care, however, the president’s diet changed dramatically and, for the victim of a gunshot wound, inexplicably. He received a wide variety of rich foods, from bacon and lamb chops to steak and potatoes. Boynton, Garfield’s cousin