Yes all that, good writing, and fascinating characters. James Garfield was a president for whom I knew very little and now he becomes a man I admire and for the sake of our nation, I wish he had lived to implement his desire to equate people of all color, to educate and improve the economy of the south so the divisions could end and to get rid of the spoils system.
But he was not destined to accomplish these deeds. He was the fourth president to die in office, two by illness and two by assassination. Just 16 years after Lincoln he became the second to die from a gunshot from a delusional assassin. Beside him during the agonizing death bed travails as well as at the train station where the shot was fired was Robert Lincoln - Abrahams son and a member of the cabinet. In a cruel sequence - fate would also put Lincoln with McKinley when he was assassinated.
Garfield came from a very poor background in Ohio. He, like Lincoln, rose from the backwoods cabin to self educate and become a man of intellect and compassion. His life path was never directed towards the presidency. He was a college man, thrust in to politics on the basis of his speaking ability and the fact that he always told the truth and was a very pleasant man in all ways.
At the convention where he was nominated his nomination speech for another man drew everyone's attention to the speaker, just as Barrack Obama would do in another century. It is a lesson for those who do not see value in the conventions.
The GOP convention was divided by the Stalwarts, lead by Senator Conkling of New York who favored the spoils system and wanted to nominate U. S. Grant for a third time and those who were in favor of change. It was bitter and after two days of vicious contention the party turned with hope to a man who did not want to be nominated - James Garfield.
This caused a series of things to happen - the nomination of Chester Arthur as vice president to mollify Conkling, even though Arthur had never been elected to anything and the delusional idea that Guiteau - the assassin would expect to be appointed an ambassador under the spoils system. There was no basis for Guiteau to get any appointment, but then there is no real basis for his message from god that had him commit the assassination.
The entire episode plays out in an informative slow motion and culminates in Garfield's death, not from the bullet, but from the ill-advised treatment of Dr. Bliss who rejected all recent discoveries in the field of medicine and caused the infection that would be the actual killer. Alexander Graham Bell also plays an interesting roll in this. He was driven to find a way for the bullet to be located instead of the Bliss method of sticking probes and fingers in to the president. He created a machine that would aid many, but it did not work on Garfield because Bliss insisted that Bell only look where he, Bliss, thought it would be. Bliss wanted the glory of treating the President and kept everyone else away or controlled. As a result we have the idiom - "ignorance is bliss."
Guiteau expected Arthur to free him and reward him for giving Arthur the presidency and eventually went to the gallows content that he had done the lord's work.
Millard also wrote the River of Doubt about T. R.'s near fatal expedition. She is a marvelous story teller and historian.
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