Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

I grew up in Mentor, Ohio just down the street from Lawnfield, James Garfield’s home.

We took countless field trips to Lawnfield growing up but I don’t have any lasting memories of those visits. In fact, I knew next to nothing about America’s 20th president upon opening this book other than he’d been assassinated. It’s a shame really because I learned that not only was Garfield an impressive and immensely well-liked man but that his death could have been avoided if the medical professionals around him had been less set in their ways.

But Candice Millard’s remarkable book, one of the very best I’ve read on this journey, is not simply the story of a president. It also weaves a remarkable narrative around his killer Charles Guiteau, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and Garfield’s political rivals Roscoe Conklin and VP Chester A. Arthur.

Garfield grew up poor in rural Northeastern Ohio, the youngest of five children. He eventually attended Hiram College, paying his way as the school janitor. The experience ignited a lifelong love of learning in Garfield, who would go on to enroll at Williams College in Massachusetts, graduating with honors.

After fighting in the Civil War, he would serve in Congress before becoming the surprise nominee of the Republican party in the 1880 election. Millard succeeds here where so many others have failed. She actually makes a nominating convention feel riveting. I can’t tell you how many other books I’ve read in this series that have gotten bogged down in the minutiae of this ballot and that ballot and the maneuverings of this delegate and that aspirant. Somehow, Millard makes it all seem effortlessly engrossing.

It is in this context that the reader is introduced to Roscoe Conklin, a man whom I’d previously encountered in Chernow’s Grant. Conklin was the leader of the Stalwart faction of the Republican party, opposing civil service reform. Conklin supported a third term for Grant in the 1880 election and when the nomination instead went to the reform candidate, Garfield, Conklin immediately set out to undermine his candidacy in a series of underhanded actions.

Amid this political maelstrom, Millard whisks us away to the Centennial Exhibition back in 1876 and the inventive mind of Alexander Graham Bell. Initially, it’s not clear what role Bell would play in this story but we subsequently see how his development of the metal detector gave hope of finding the fatal bullet lodged in Garfield’s body.

Bell’s role in this book is probably not needed, but it does add another element of suspense as the inventor works tirelessly to perfect the device to help rescue Garfield from his eventual fate.

Millard also triumphs in painting a somewhat sympathetic portrait of Garfield’s assassin, Charles Guiteau, a man suffering from an assortment of psychological issues. Guiteau fits the bill of so many other notorious killers throughout history: lonely, socially awkward, narcissistic, and suffering from delusions of grandeur. A modern diagnosis would probably have deemed him a narcissistic schizophrenic.

Like nearly all of his predecessors, Garfield was incessantly harangued by job seekers due to the spoils system - where federal jobs were expected to be doled out to friends, hangers-on, political allies, family members, and the like. One of these aspiring applicants was Guiteau, who thought himself eminently qualified to serve as the U.S. consul to France even though he spoke no French whatsoever nor had any experience in foreign diplomacy.

Consistently thwarted in his desire for public office by Garfield’s Secretary of State, Guiteau finally works up the idea to kill Garfield, thinking this would somehow ingratiate him to the president’s political rivals, namely Chester Arthur. Such was Guiteau’s twisted mental state, he also believed he’d be feted as a hero around the nation after the killing.

Guiteau spends weeks stalking the president before finally shooting him in the back at the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in Washington DC. Garfield’s wound should not have been fatal, but here began a series of calamitous decisions by several medical experts, namely Dr. Willard Bliss, the same man who cared for Lincoln after he too was shot.

Bliss made mistake after mistake in caring for Garfield, some due to ignorance, others due to hubris, and a stubborn refusal to heed the advice of others. From probing Garfield’s wound with his bare fingers to feeding him a diet rich in fatty foods like bacon and lamb chops and copious amounts of alcohol despite the fact that Garfield was vomiting daily, Bliss did far more harm than good.

Millard goes so far as to state that if simply left alone Garfield would have likely survived the ordeal as the bullet inside him was encased in the fatty tissue around his pancreas causing no further harm. What ultimately killed Garfield was not the bullet wound itself, but his medical care.

Millard paints a damning portrait of the medical profession in 1880s America:

Not only did many American doctors not believe in germs, they took pride in the particular brand of filth that defined their profession. They spoke fondly of the “good old surgical stink” that pervaded their hospitals and operating rooms, and they resisted making too many concessions even to basic hygiene. Many surgeons walked directly from the street to the operating room without bothering to change their clothes. Those who did shrug on a laboratory coat, however, were an even greater danger to their patients. They looped strands of silk sutures through their buttonholes for easy access during surgery, and they refused to change or even wash their coats. They believed that the thicker the layers of dried blood and pus, black and crumbling as they bent over their patients, the greater the tribute to their years of experience…They preferred, moreover, to rely on their own methods of treatment, which not infrequently involved applying a hot poultice of cow manure to an open wound.

But we can’t chalk up the poor medical care simply to the times Garfield lived in, for there were many others around the world who looked on in horror at the mistakes being made daily by Bliss.

A young surgeon in New York would later write that he and his colleagues had watched with helpless horror the progress of Garfield’s medical care. The president’s life might have been spared, he wrote with disgust, “had the physician in charge abstained from probing Garfield’s wound while he lay on a filthy mattress spread on the floor of a railroad station.”

As Garfield lay suffering for months in Bliss’ care, Roscoe Conklin and Chester Arthur faced the wrath of an American public who blamed Conklin for the killing (he wasn’t in any way involved) and considered Arthur an utterly worthless presidential successor. Arthur himself felt the same. The shooting of Garfield utterly shattered Arthur, who suddenly found himself staring down a presidency he knew he was unqualified for.

But here the story takes yet another turn as a young woman, Julia Sand, begins writing letters to Arthur encouraging him to use the tragedy as a turning point in his life. Arthur, inspired by Sand’s letters, abandons Conklin, embraces civil service reform, and goes on to execute an honest and hardworking presidency of his own.

To say I was wrapped up in Millard’s telling of this story would be an understatement. It is a gripping tale, brilliantly told. Millard is a masterful writer and I am eagerly anticipating reading her work on Teddy Roosevelt’s exploration of the Amazon.