Destiny of the Republic

Millard begins this chapter with an overview of the bigger picture of Garfield’s assassination attempt and what it meant to the nation. She argues that it was the first time since the Civil War that Americans felt like one people, part of one country. People in rural areas felt a connection to the president based on his Ohio upbringing; immigrants could see in his life that hard work and education could overcome poverty; and freed slaves knew that he had championed their place in society as equal members. Even Southerners felt that he was not a punitive man seeking retribution for the war but rather one seeking unity through education. They all waited that July for news of Garfield’s health, hopeful but not overconfident.

The author then shifts to Charles Guiteau, waiting in his cell in the DC jail. She writes that he waited “cheerfully”: he was anticipating fame and fortune for his act, he was well fed (gaining ten pounds that summer), and he was convinced that Chester Arthur would free him upon becoming president (213). He also enjoyed the attention he got from the many reporters who came to interview him. As he saw himself to be an important person, he demanded attention and did not like to be interrupted. He was concerned with his appearance as well and how he was presented in the media, requesting, for instance, that a photographer take a flattering picture of him. He also announced that he was seeking a wife and would like to be president someday.

The chapter ends with an overview of Alexander Graham Bell’s work at his Volta Laboratory, where Bell attempts to fashion the induction balance he had devised to discover the location of the bullet in the president’s body. Working long hours, he tried using different sizes and shapes for the wire coils, as well as increasing their number from two to four. One coil was attached to a telephone receiver so Bell could better hear the buzzing. He and Tainter also experimented with various materials to test how well the device worked, burying bullets in both a bag of wet bran and a cut of meat from the butcher. It worked to a point, but had the most trouble identifying lead, which Garfield’s bullet was made of, because of lead’s poor conduction properties. He got it to work to a depth of about two inches but guessed that the president’s bullet was likely buried deeper than that. He continued working to improve the range. 

This chapter begins by describing how Garfield’s condition steadily improved in the three weeks after the shooting. He also maintained his high spirits, though he complained of loneliness with the near isolation Dr. Bliss had imposed. Bliss reasoned that talking put too much pressure on his diaphragm, which moved the area where Bliss thought the bullet was located. Both Garfield’s doctors and his friends and family felt that he was on the road to recovery, so much so that Lucretia told a friend on July 21 that she thought he was “out of danger” (225).

However, the very next day, the president took a turn for the worse. When his bandages were being changed, a large amount of pus and a small bone fragment escaped from his wound. Bliss, like many doctors of the time, thought that the formation of pus was actually favorable, so that did not worry him. But the next morning, Garfield’s temperature rose to 104 degrees and he was vomiting more than usual. Bliss called for the surgeons he had consulted earlier, and Dr. Agnew made an incision in the president’s back to insert a drainage tube. Two days later, he made another opening and removed more bone and other fragments. Although they did use a light solution of carbolic acid around the wound as an antiseptic, they did not sterilize the instruments or their fingers that they inserted into the wound to probe. What an autopsy would later show, but the doctor’s did not then know, was that large pockets of pus had begun to form throughout Garfield’s body, including one below his liver, which was four by six inches.

The same day that Garfield’s conditioned worsened, Bliss sent a veteran of the Civil War to Bell’s laboratory so a live test of the induction balance could be made. Lieutenant Simpson had for years carried a bullet in his body. When Bell attempted to locate it, he thought he heard a faint noise but nothing he considered definitive. He concluded that the device still needed to be improved, especially regarding its detection range. By July 26, however, Bliss felt that they needed to try it, and asked Bell to come that day in the late afternoon. Just the day before, a colleague of Bell’s had suggested an improvement that involved using a condenser to enhance the sound the device made. Bell hastily added one and tested it out, verifying the improvement.

When he and Tainter got to the White House, they set up the machine in preparation. Bell heard a “strange sputtering sound” when the device was supposed to be silent, and he could not locate its source (233). Testing it with a bullet from his pocket, he found that it still worked properly but was afraid the added sound would interfere with the clarity needed to be precise. The president was ready, however, so Bell had to get to work. After explaining the device to Garfield, he held the telephone receiver to his ear while Bliss, who insisted on manipulating the device, held the handle with the coils and moved it over the president’s midsection. Convinced the bullet was lodged somewhere in Garfield’s right side, Bliss only passed the coils over that side of his back and his abdomen before Garfield grew tired and they ended the experiment. Bliss said they would try again another time, but Bell felt humiliated. Worse still, he discovered the next day that he had set up the condenser wrong, which was the cause of the sputtering noise he’d heard. 

In this chapter, Millard returns to New York at the beginning to update what Conkling and Arthur were doing during this time. Despite his best efforts to call in all his political debts, Conkling failed to regain his Senate seat when the New York state legislature voted on July 22 to select someone else. The next day, he prepared to travel home to Utica, where his family lived. Although he had vowed to leave politics, he still believed he had some influence left over Chester Arthur, the man who would likely become the next president.

For his part, Arthur had kept a low profile while Garfield was convalescing. Although he was vilified in the press and by the public for what most assumed was his conspiring with Conkling to seize power at the first chance, Arthur was actually quite devastated by the recent turn of events. On more than one occasion, those close to him found him in tears. Following the shooting, he had immediately gone to Washington to try to see Garfield. Although Bliss prevented him from doing so, he did meet with the president’s wife to express his condolences. After staying quietly in the capital for a few days, he then returned to New York to avoid the appearance of hovering too close, ready to assume power. This would turn out to be the early stages of a personal transformation for Arthur, as he began to turn away from Conkling and listen instead to an unusual source. A woman named Julia Sand, confined to bed from illness, began writing him letters that might be described as miniature pep talks. She spoke of the low expectations the people had in him and exhorted him to rise to the occasion and prove them wrong. She would write to him many more times in the years ahead, always “urging him to be a better man than he had once believed he could be” (241).

In the meantime, Garfield’s condition was worsening, a fact that Dr. Bliss was doing his best to conceal. Bliss had assumed even more control of his care, such as taking the president’s vital signs himself; the other doctors signed off on this without double-checking for themselves. Bliss’s reputation rested on his most important patient, and he was determined to succeed, contacting Bell to return with his induction balance to try again to locate the bullet. In the days since the last attempt, Bell had made some improvements that increased the device’s range, now allowing him to detect metal more than five inches away.

On the first day of August, Bell returned to the White House with his assistant, Tainter. This time, Bliss allowed him to handle the instrument, but he still insisted that Bell search only the right side of the president’s body, where the doctor had predicted the bullet to be. As he got underway, Bell heard “a faint pulsating sound” (246). Because it was exactly the area Bliss suspected and because the sound was faint and different from usual, he feared that he may be anticipating the noise rather than actually hearing it. He had both Tainter, who knew what to listen for, and the president’s wife, with her untrained ear, listen, and both agreed they heard something. Although Bell was not fully satisfied, Bliss declared the test successful in confirming his theory. Bell returned to his laboratory, still trying to think of anything that could have altered the results. The next day, he went back to the White House to inquire more, and learned that Garfield’s bed had two mattresses: he rested on one made of horsehair, and beneath that was another made of coiled springs, a newer kind of mattress uncommon at the time. He asked to have the same kind of mattress sent to his lab so he could test it, but before he got too far, word came from Boston that his pregnant wife had become ill and he left immediately by train.

The president continued to worsen the first week in August. The pockets of pus created by infection spread to his arms, back, and face. Bliss either did not realize he had septicemia or refused to admit it. The danger of infection was clear when the doctor himself got a finger infection after he accidentally cut it with a blade while working on Garfield, but he claimed not to be worried about the increasing pus in the president’s body. He was, however, worried about Garfield’s weight loss from being unable to keep much food down. Garfield had lost eighty pounds and looked like a shell of his former self. Fearing that the president would starve from lack of nutrition, the doctor began feeding him rectally, injecting a solution of liquefied food every four hours at one point. It is clear in hindsight that in addition to being malnourished, Garfield was dehydrated during this time. From the reports of what fluids he received, Millard notes that it would not have been enough to replace what he lost through vomiting and profuse sweating.

In fact, it was becoming clear to most everyone, from White House staff to visitors, that the president was dying. Secretary of State James Blaine even began reaching out to Vice President Arthur about taking on some of the president’s duties, even temporarily, but Arthur would not hear of it. There was no precedent for this and nothing in the Constitution about how to handle such a case, so everyone was on new ground. Even Garfield himself seemed to realize the gravity of his case. He wanted to go home to Ohio, but it was too far; as an alternative, he wished to go to the seaside, as the ocean had held a fascination for him since childhood;“[t]he sight of it brings rest and peace,” he once wrote in his diary (255). The two people who refused to consider the possibility of the president dying were his wife and his private secretary.

Millard moves the narration to Boston, where Alexander Graham Bell continued to work on the induction balance after he arrived to be with his wife. Within a week, his wife went into labor and prematurely gave birth to a boy who lived for only three hours. Bell felt guilty about this for the rest of his life, believing that, because of his work that had drawn him away to Washington, he was responsible for not properly taking care of his wife. Tainter, back in the capital, was ready to try again, but Dr. Bliss would not allow it, saying the president was too weak. Bell continued to work on perfecting the device, to at least be able to help others, but he would not again have a chance to save the president.

The first week in September, Garfield announced that he was to be taken to the sea and he would not be dissuaded by Bliss. He had made up his mind; Bliss, he said, could come or not, but he was going. A special train was prepared overnight for his departure the next morning. Care was taken to ensure that his car was as comfortable as possible, with ice packed in it for cooling and gauze and curtains hung to try to keep out dust. Early the next morning, his closest friends carried him from the White House on a stretcher, as the staff lined up for a mournful good-bye.

As the train traveled north, to Elberon, New Jersey, where Lucretia had stayed earlier that summer, crowds of citizens stood by the tracks to pay their respects. A cottage had been offered for the president’s use, and tracks had been laid the night before to take the train right to its door. However, the cottage was on a hill that the engine was unable to surmount. When the train stopped, “out of the crowd of people who had waited all day in the tremendous heat for Garfield’s arrival, two hundred men ran forward to help,” hauling it the final distance (262).

The bed was arranged to give the president a view of the sea, and he even sat in a chair by the window at times. His mood was the same it had been throughout his convalescence and his mind was clear, but his body was deteriorating. On September 19, about two weeks after he arrived, he was resting at night with a friend sitting watch. At 10:00 p.m., he began gasping for air and clutched his chest. Bliss was called for, as were Lucretia and other loved ones who had made the trip with him. As they looked on, Garfield passed away at 10:35 p.m.

Late in the afternoon of September 20, an autopsy on Garfield’s body was led by an Army Medical Museum doctor named Lamb, with a local doctor and six of the president’s original doctors assisting. The results showed that the bullet had traveled left, breaking two ribs and a vertebra before coming to rest behind the pancreas. His vital organs appeared intact, but there was evidence of “profound septic poisoning” in numerous places (268). The immediate cause of death turned out to be a ruptured splenic artery.

In New York, Chester Arthur learned of the president’s death from a messenger late on the night of September 19, and was sworn in as 21st president by a state judge at 2:15 a.m. on September 20. His early indications, including his inaugural address two days later, were that instead of marking a change, his presidency would be a continuation of Garfield’s.

Garfield’s body was returned to Washington on the same train that had taken him to New Jersey and lay in state for two days in the rotunda of the Capitol Building. Tens of thousands of people lined up to pay their respects as the nation mourned. Less than two months later, in mid-November, Charles Guiteau was put on trial for the murder of President Garfield. The American people were nearly unanimous in their desire to see Guiteau put to death. The fear was that he would be found not guilty by reason of insanity. As Millard explains, this defense had been established about forty years earlier in England, when a man named Daniel M’Naghten attempted to kill the prime minister. It had been used successfully since then in America as well. When it came time for a plea, Guiteau indeed declared himself not guilty due to temporary insanity.

He was represented at the trial by his brother-in-law, George Scoville, who was a patent lawyer and one of the few willing to take the case. The trial lasted over two months and hinged on the issue of insanity, with thirty-six different experts giving their opinion. Throughout the proceedings, Guiteau engaged in endless outbursts in the courtroom, to the extent that his own lawyer asked that he be silenced. The judge wanted to avoid anything that might work in favor of an appeal, however, so he did little more than remonstrate Guiteau after such outbursts. On January 26, 1882, after less than an hour of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

Despite the Supreme Court denying his request for appeal, Guiteau and his family members continued to work for at least a stay of execution. Guiteau himself wrote several letters to Arthur, reminding the new president that he had been responsible for Arthur’s rise to power. His sister wrote to Lucretia Garfield, asking her forgiveness and seeking to prove the insanity of her brother. She even traveled to Washington in an attempt to see the former first lady in person, but was refused. In the end, no stay was given, and Guiteau’s execution was scheduled for June 30, 1882.

Millard ends the chapter by describing the scene of Guiteau’s death by hanging on the jail grounds. He was accompanied from his cell by the warden, John Crocker, and a minister named Hicks. They walked to the courtyard, where 250 people (selected from 20,000 who had requested tickets) waited to witness the execution. After the minister spoke, Guiteau read from the Bible and then read a poem he had written for the occasion. A hood was placed on his head, followed by the noose around his neck. Then Guiteau dropped the paper on which his poem was written, a pre-arranged signal for the hanging to commence. 

The Epilogue is where Millard ties up the loose ends of the story, reflects on its ramifications, and summarizes the future of the main characters. She begins with the concern of some at the time that Garfield would eventually be forgotten. One result, however, was the reform of the civil service system that most thought to be the cause of his death. The man to lead this, ironically, would be the new president, Chester Arthur. As someone who owed his entire political life to the spoils system, he made a wholesale change once he became president. In 1883, the Pendleton Civil Service Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by Arthur, forever changing the way civil servants obtained positions in government: by merit, rather than political patronage.

At the same time, Arthur spurned his former patron, Roscoe Conkling, denying him the chance to become secretary of state when James Blaine resigned. Early in his presidency, Arthur was able to visit the source of his newfound strength, Julia Sand, whose letters had exhorted him to become worthy of the office he now held. In late summer 1882, he visited her home in Manhattan where she lived with her brother, staying for about an hour. Arthur served only one term, as the Republican Party turned to Blaine for its candidate in 1884. Arthur died only a couple of years later.

Millard turns next to the fate of Dr. Bliss. He was roundly criticized, at home and abroad, for his methods in caring for President Garfield. One New York surgeon declared that none of Garfield’s initial wounds were fatal in themselves, playing off a familiar line of poetry in lamenting that “ignorance is Bliss” (293). Bliss, however, defended his care and even submitted a bill of $25,000 to Congress for the lost business in his private practice and his own deteriorating health. Lawmakers offered him about a quarter of that, which he rejected as an insult. He died seven years later, his reputation much diminished.

Garfield’s family initially returned to their home in Mentor, Ohio, after Garfield’s funeral. Lucretia was shattered, but carried on both for her children’s sake and for the memory of her husband. She had an extension built on the house, dedicating one room as the library for Garfield’s papers and letters, and set to work with Joseph Stanley Brown organizing them. Each of her sons went on to prominent careers, and her daughter, Mollie, ended up marrying Brown.

Finally, Alexander Graham Bell and Joseph Lister each continued their eminent careers throughout their long lives. Bell made more improvements to his induction balance, which was widely used in the late 19th century and even during World War I, after the X-ray machine had become available. He also drew on the suffering he felt from the death of his son, born prematurely when Bell was engaged in helping Garfield, to invent a machine that, in effect, breathed for babies in similar circumstances. He called it the “vacuum jacket,” a precursor to the iron lung used in the 20th century. Lister had all kinds of awards and accolades bestowed upon him as someone whose medical advances would save countless lives. “Nowhere, however, was his contribution to science,” Millard concludes, “and to the welfare of all humankind, appreciated more than in the United States, a country that had once dismissed his theory at tremendous cost” (300).