History with David Rubenstein

(theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein.

I'm gonna be in conversation today with Candice Millard who is a distinguished writer of history books.

And we're gonna talk today about Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine an d the Murder of a President.

We are coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium at the New York Historical Society.

So, uh, Candice, thank you very much for coming today.

MILLARD: Thank you for having me.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so let's talk about the subject of your book, uh, James Garfield.

MILLARD: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, he was only President for a few months, so not that distinguished and long a record, but a very interesting story about how he became President and then what happened in this couple months that he was President.

So let's go back to the beginning.

Who was James Garfield, where was he from?

MILLARD: James Garfield was from Ohio.

He was our last President born in a log cabin.

Um, he was incredibly poor, his father died when he was just two years old.

He didn't have shoes until he was four.

Um, but his mother and his older brother realized that he was special, that he was absolutely brilliant.

And they saved and saved, and they saved $17 to be able to say, send him to college.

He went to, um, what's now known as Hiram University in Ohio.

But, um, to pay, help pay, he still needed to help pay for his tuition, he was a janitor and a carpenter his first year, um, to help pay his tuition.

But then by his second year, he was so brilliant, so when he's still a sophomore in college, still a student, they made him a professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages.

(laughing) By the time he was 26, he was a university President.

He was an incredible classicist, he knew the entire Aeneid by heart in Latin.

And while he was in Congress, he wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem.

If you know any other Congressman who can do that I would love to know, uh.

(laughs).

RUBENSTEIN: He he also graduated from Williams College?

MILLARD: He did right.

So he went to Williams after, after, uh, Hiram.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so he's a very distinguished person, he's a university President.

So how did he get into politics?

Did he always wanna be in politics or how did he get into that area?

MILLARD: He was, um, incredibly charismatic and talented speaker and that became clear very early on.

And so, and he was a very, very strong abolitionist.

And, um, so he, he really wanted to fight in the Civil War and he did.

And, um, obviously fought for the Union and was a real hero in that war.

And he was really encouraged to go into politics.

And, um, and he, he never, um, campaigned for himself.

He said, "You know, if people want me, then these, these are, these are my values, these are my interests and.." RUBENSTEIN: Sort of like today, right?

MILLARD: Yeah, exactly.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um... MILLARD: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: In the Civil War, he rose up to be a General... MILLARD: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Really because he was so good at, at what he was doing.

So how did he... MILLARD: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Learn military tactics and how did he become so accomplished as a military leader?

MILLARD: So it was reading.

That was his, that really defined his life, studying, he was a scholar.

And so he studied, um, military tactics and, um, and military strategy.

And, um, yeah, and he was very good at it.

But then Lincoln asked him to come back and take...

He had, he had won a seat in Congress and he asked him to come back and, and take that seat and serve because he needed him.

RUBENSTEIN: But he, he originally was elected to the state legislature?

MILLARD: Mm-hmm, that's right.

RUBENSTEIN: And he served for a number of years there?

MILLARD: That's right, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so he's in Congress and how does he rise up?

Is he the chairman of any committees that do anything important?

MILLARD: One of the things he cared a lot about was hard money.

That was important to him.

Also education, he helped develop the Department of Education because, obviously, that had been his own salvation.

Um, and he was instrumental in bringing about Black suffrage.

RUBENSTEIN: To set the context.

After Lincoln is assassinated, Andrew Johnson becomes President, uh, impeached, not convicted, uh, doesn't run for reelection.

Um, General Grant runs two terms and is elected for eight years.

He doesn't run then for a third term.

And then the next President is elected is Rutherford B. Hayes.

MILLARD: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: Rutherford B. Hayes doesn't, uh, run for reelection 'cause he promised to run for only one term.

And he decided to honor his promise.

So this is in 1880... MILLARD: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And there's several people who want to be the nominee of the Republican Party.

Who are those people?

MILLARD: Ulysses S. Grant is hoping for a... RUBENSTEIN: He's coming back.

MILLARD: A third term.

That's right.

He's hoping and everyone assumes that he's going to, to win.

Um, and John Sherman, from Ohio, is also hoping.

He's William Tecumseh Sherman's brother, he's Secretary of the Treasury, um, and he hopes that he will get the nomination.

And he is only worried, he's worried about Grant, but he's also worried about Garfield.

Because Garfield, um, is not running, um, but everybody is fascinated with Garfield and they want him to run, and there's been a lot of murmurings.

And so Sherman thinks, "Okay, the best way to make him not be a threat to me is to ask him to give my nominating address at the convention."

RUBENSTEIN: So the convention is held where?

MILLARD: In Chicago.

RUBENSTEIN: Chicago.

1880.

And so on the first ballot, what happens?

Grant almost gets a nomination?

MILLARD: So what happens first is they give these nominating addresses and there's this man named Roscoe Conkling, um, who is very, very famous, very powerful.

He's a senior Senator, um, from New York.

And he wants Grant to win because he's sort of gonna be the man behind the power, right, and he's gonna be running things.

And so he's a very, um, sort of flamboyant guy.

So he has a great spit curl and he would wear these sort of, um, you know, fancy coats, and he would dr, write with lavender ink.

So he gets up and he gives this really stirring speech and the whole crowd is going crazy.

It's 15,000 people.

And Garfield has to go up next to give the nominating speech for Sherman and, um, he's obviously a very different person.

You know, he's, he's quiet, he's wise.

And he stands up and he starts speaking and most of it is extemporaneous what he's saying because he took ideas from the other speeches.

And every one is just sort of mesmerized or fascinated.

And at one point, he says, "Gentleman I ask you, what do we want?"

And someone in the crowd shouts, "We want Garfield."

MILLARD: And so everybody starts going crazy, and he's trying to get them to settle down and listen to him.

And so he finishes his speech, and he sits down, and... Oh, James Blaine was also running from Maine, the magnetic man from Maine.

And so these, um, these ballots are coming in and John Sherman is, is, uh, somewhere else sort of nervously it's coming in by telegraph, the results.

Um, but then at one point, someone stands up and says, um, "You know, we give our vote to Garfield."

And Garfield stands up and he says, "I, you know, I'm not a candidate.

I refuse it."

But they don't have anybody who's won it, so they, they do another round.

And then there are a few more votes for Garfield, and a few more.

And other people start, they change their vote and they send it to Garfield and more, and more, and more and he's trying to stop it, but he can't, and it becomes this flood of votes.

And he suddenly wa, he wasn't even a candidate, didn't want to be a candidate.

He finds himself the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

RUBENSTEIN: So was that the 36 ballots or something?

MILLARD: 36 ballots, the most ballots, right.

RUBENSTEIN: 36 ballot.

He hon, he honestly didn't want to be the... the nominee, which is unlike sometimes today people say they don't wanna be the candidate but they really do.

All right, so he's the nominee.

And who was his opponent in the election?

MILLARD: It's a man named Winfield Scott Hancock.

RUBENSTEIN: Who was a military person?

MILLARD: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So what did the election results show?

MILLARD: It was very, very close.

They didn't find out until sort of the wee hours of the morning but Garfield ends up winning.

And it's interesting his reaction to it.

He said he felt this overwhelming sense of sorrow because he understood all that he was going to lose, and he understood all the, the pressure, um, that he would now be under.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, in those days, uh, the inauguration is in March?

MILLARD: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: So he's got a fair bit of time between November and March and he puts together his cabinet and so forth.

And, um, he puts together a distinguished cabinet or not that distinguished a cabinet?

MILLARD: It's a pretty distinguished cabinet and the only problem is Roscoe Conkling, who I was talking about earlier.

Roscoe Conkling is just furious that, that Grant didn't win and he's apoplectic at the thought that he can't control Garfield.

And so he thinks, "Okay, what I need to do is start picking off, um, Garfield's nominees."

So Garfield would announce that he's gonna nominate somebody to his cabinet.

Conkling would make them come to his apartment, which was nicknamed the morgue, and threaten them, scared them, and then they would tell Garfield oh, uh, "Actually I'm, I'm, I'm not interested."

Um, and also they, um... Garfield had had his, his Vice President forced on him.

So, um, there was a division in the Republican Party, the stalwarts and the half-breeds.

And the stalwarts were all for, um, uh, you know, controlling the government and the half-breeds were for reform.

And, um, so, uh, Conkling had this man named Chester Arthur who was really kind of his puppet, right?

So Arthur was one of these guys he, um, he liked a, a good life, right?

He liked to show up for work sort of around noon, he liked fine wine, he liked, um, nice dinner parties.

He moved his birthdate back a year so he'd appear more youthful.

And the only job he had ever had was as the collector of the New York Customs House, which, uh, which Conkling had given him through Grant.

So they say, "Okay, we need Conkling's, um, power to help us get Garfield elected..." RUBENSTEIN: I see.

MILLARD: So we're gonna give, you have to take Chester Arthur, he has to be your Vice President."

RUBENSTEIN: And so Garfield comes to Washington.

By the way, is he married, does he have children?

MILLARD: Garfield is married.

Yes, he has children.

He's lost a couple to, to illness, sadly.

But yeah, he's married to Lucretia.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so let's go to, uh, what happens, uh, at the assassination attempt.

There is an effort by a, a man who thinks that he's owed a job.

Can you explain who this is and why he thinks he's owed a job by Garfield and Garfield didn't really wanna give him the job?

MILLARD: So Charles Guiteau was Garfield's opposite sort of in every way.

He, um, he had had a difficult, um, childhood and he had sort of thrown himself into every opportunity he could but would fail at every opportunity.

So he was a failed lawyer, he was a failed journalist, he had even joined a free love commune and he had failed even there.

(laughing) The women had nicknamed him "Charles Get Out."

Um, but he believed that he was meant for greatness.

And, um, one night, um, just before the Presidential election, he's on a steamship on Long Island Sound, and he's on the deck, he's sort of thinking about what great things he's gonna do in his life.

And the steamship crashes into another steamship and dozens of people die.

And, and Guiteau is saved but he believes that it's not just sort of accidental that he's saved, but that God has chosen him for a great purpose.

And so he, when Garfield gets the nomination, he thinks, personally I'm gonna make sure that Garfield is elected President.

And then to thank me, he's gonna make me the Ambassador to France.

RUBENSTEIN: Mm-hmm, okay.

(laughing) So, um, so what does he do for Garfield?

Does he make speeches for him or at least one speech?

MILLARD: Well, so he wrote a speech that, um, was originally called, um, Grant versus Hancock 'cause he thought Grant was gonna... And then he just crossed out Grant and wrote Garfield versus Hancock.

And he, begged them, and begged them to let him give a speech.

And he sort of goes on stage and kind of mumbles through a little bit and then runs off.

Um, but then when Garfield is elected, he was like, "You're welcome Garfield."

And now Ambassador, uh, to France.

RUBENSTEIN: So he approaches the person who's Secretary of State... MILLARD: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: And says, "I made this speech that, uh, elected Garfield so you should make me Ambassador to France?"

MILLARD: That's right.

RUBENSTEIN: And what did the Secretary of State say?

MILLARD: "No and, um, absolutely not."

And, um, he keeps going to the Secretary of State's office, he keeps going to the White House.

And you have to remember this is the height of the spoil system, and he thinks, "Well, I'm, I asked first, so I'm first in line."

So he thinks, "If I just don't give up, if I just keep going every day, basically is gonna wear them down."

And he has his, you know, he's clutching his speech that he wrote, um, to prove that he made Garfield President.

RUBENSTEIN: But did he ever meet with Garfield himself?

MILLARD: He did.

And so one day, um, Guiteau just walks into the President's office while Garfield is in there.

RUBENSTEIN: I mean, he just walks in and doesn't... MILLARD: He just walks in and he hands him his speech and, um, and Garfield, you know, says, "Okay, thank you.

I'll, you know, I'll consider it."

But then he starts to, to stalk the President.

Finally, the Secretary of State tells him, you know, "Look, you need to stop, this is not gonna happen."

And he goes home and he's living in a boarding house, and he, um, has what he believes is a divine inspiration that God wants him to kill the President.

He says, "It's nothing personal, it's just what God wants to happen."

And so he tries to decide how he's gonna kill the President.

So he sits outside the White House on a bench for days waiting for him to come out.

He follows him to church where he thinks about, um, killing him.

Um, one night he is sitting across from the White House and Garfield walks out... And, and Garfield, again, has no protection at all.

He walks down the street to his Secretary of State's house and, and then the two men walk through the streets of Washington.

And Guiteau is following them the entire way holding a loaded gun.

RUBENSTEIN: And where'd he get a gun?

MILLARD: He had a family friend he knew that he went and asked because he has no money too.

He's, he's moving from boarding house to boarding house, just moving when the rent is due.

RUBENSTEIN: He never pays his bills, right?

MILLARD: He never pays his bill.

He sometimes works as a bill collector and he just keeps whatever he manages to collect.

So yeah, he has no money, um, and he's becoming sort of more and more obsessed.

And he, yeah, he goes to this family friend, he gets some money, and he buys a gun.

And he's never shot a gun and he sort of goes to the banks of the Potomac and is practicing.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so then it's announced publicly that Garfield is gonna be taking a train ride somewhere.

Is that right?

MILLARD: That's right.

Lucretia had been very, very sick.

She nearly died, his wife.

And so she had gone to New Jersey, um, to recuperate and he's gonna go meet her, and then they're gonna go to a reunion at Williams.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so that a, a one of the train stations in Washington area's now where the mall is and actually where the National Archives is right now, uh, between 7th and 9th street on Pennsylvania Avenue, um, that is where the train station was.

MILLARD: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: So he goes there to wait for Garfield to show up.

Is that right?

MILLARD: That's right.

It was the Baltimore and Potomac train station and, uh, Garfield goes, um, with his Secretary of State in the carriage and he steps inside and Guiteau is waiting.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so Guiteau sees him and does he shoot him once or twice?

MILLARD: He shoots him, first of all, he shoots him and he hits him in the arm, and then he shoots him a second time, uh, in the back.

RUBENSTEIN: In the back?

Okay, and immediately do people rush to Garfield's defense or do they try to, um, get the assassin?

MILLARD: It's just chaos as you might imagine.

It's, you know, people are screaming, um, Garfield has fallen and, um, and but, but yeah, they, they grab Guiteau right away.

They capture him immediately.

RUBENSTEIN: And there, uh, also present at the time of the shooting is Robert Todd Lincoln?

MILLARD: That's right.

So right, so Lincoln's son, um, was there.

He was, um, Garfield's Secretary of the Interior.

And, I would always say if, if you were a President around that time, you would send Robert Todd Lincoln to China or somewhere.

Because he was with his father when he died, he was with Garfield when Garfield was shot, and then he ended up being with McKinley when McKinley was shot... As well 20 years later.

RUBENSTEIN: And is there a doctor right then in there who says, "I can take care of you?"

MILLARD: So Robert Todd Lincoln sends for one of the doctors who had been at his father's deathbed and it's a man named Dr.

Doctor Willard Bliss.

His first name was Doctor, his parents had named him Doctor.

And, um, and he was sort of a controversial character.

So, he had gotten in trouble for taking bribes, he had been in prison for a brief, um, amount of time.

But, but, but Todd, Robert Todd Lincoln knew him and trusted him, and he calls him and he comes to the train station.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, he comes there and he says, "Okay, I'm in charge now.

Everybody else go away, I'll take care of this"?

MILLARD: Right so several doctors descend on Garfield.

And so, again, Garfield is on the floor of this train station, which you can't imagine, you know, a more germ infested environment with, um, these two bullet holes in him.

And they immediately start probing the wound with not only unsterilized, but unwashed hands and instruments there on the floor of the train station.

They finally get a horsehair and hay mattress and take him upstairs, um, but continue probing, uh, for the, for the bullet.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, so he goes back to the White House.

By now the bleeding presumably stopped but, uh, how serious is Garfield injured?

The, the ar, the shot in the arm is not a fatal shot, but the shot that goes into his back, how bad was that?

MILLARD: Well, today he would've spent, at most, a night in the hospital.

So the, it's this incredible stroke of luck actually, so the, the bullet, as you say, goes through his back but it doesn't hit any vital organs and it doesn't hit his spinal cord.

It goes in on the right, and then to the left, and it's buried sort of behind his pancreas.

The problem is they won't stop probing the wound for the bullet.

RUBENSTEIN: So how do they probe?

They put a finger in and just kinda look for the bullet?

MILLARD: They do.

They put fingers in, they also have these, um, instruments.

It's, it's, it's this long metal stick that they use and, um, you know, no anesthesia, no painkillers for him, nothing.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so they can't find the bullet, but how is Garfield kept alive?

Is he, um, in a lot of pain?

How do they give him painkillers?

What happens?

MILLARD: There's no painkillers and he's in extraordinary amounts of pain.

And, um, Bliss decides that he should give his, um, gunshot victim rich foods, and alcohol, and continue to, to probe for the bullet.

And, he refuses to use this sort of what to him is this brand new and, and untested and, and, um, unsafe method of sterilization.

And um, so Joseph Lister who had been, um, you know, renowned surgeon in England had discovered antisepsis 16 years earlier.

He had come to the United States, he had gone really around the world, um, explaining the importance of it and warning doctors that if they didn't sterilize their hands and instruments, they were, uh, really risking killing their patients.

Um, but Bliss doesn't want any, any part of that.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so let's talk about another person who shows up.

Alexander Graham Bell, better known for inventing the telephone... MILLARD: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, he has an idea.

What is his idea?

MILLARD: So, um, Bell is only 34 years old at this point, he had invented the telephone just five years earlier, and it had sort of, it had made him famous, and it gained him a little bit of money.

And he has all these ideas, all these things he wants to work on.

But when he finds out that, that Garfield has been shot, he drops everything he's working on and he works night and day... Because this is before the, uh, the invention of the medical X-ray, but he has this idea, and he developed something called the induction balance.

Which was basically the first, it is, is it's the first metal detector.

But it's basically a metal detector connected to a telephone receiver.

He goes to, um, a home for Civil War veterans and tries it out on them and it works, it absolutely works.

And, uh, so he tells the White House you know, "I'm ready."

And they have him come over, um, but two, two things happen.

One, they have Garfield on what's something that's very rare at that time which was a, um, a mattress with metal springs in it, which most didn't have, um, which, obviously, is gonna interfere with the, uh, metal detector.

But also Bliss had publicly stated that the bullet was on the right side of the President and he doesn't want anything to show that he's wrong.

And so he will only let, um, Bell test the right side of the President.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, uh, Graham Bell comes and he's told he can only look at the right side.

And so what happens?

MILLARD: So, he thinks it's, it doesn't work and he's very discouraged.

And, um, Bliss just, um, has him go.

And, and at first it seemed like Garfield, at first everyone thinks he's gonna die.

And then it seemed like as he survived and this, you know, months are going by and, and he seems to be getting better, um, but then he takes a terrible turn because he's just riddled with infection.

And, um, at some point Garfield says, "Look, I know I'm gonna die."

RUBENSTEIN: So, how many months are we now talking about?

Uh, Garfield has been in this bed, uh, for a month or two months?

MILLARD: So, he's shot July 2nd and he lives until, um, mid-September, the 19th.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so it's very hot in Washington, he wants to go to see the water.

Um, how do they arrange for him to go to see the ocean and why does he wanna go see the ocean?

MILLARD: So, even though he grew up in Ohio, he had worked on the Erie Canal and he loved the water, he loved the ocean.

And he says, "I know I'm gonna die, I want to see the ocean."

And so there's, um, a wealthy man who's actually British who has a home in, um, New Jersey and, um, he, and he says, he offers his home.

And so they, um, they take a train car and they gut it, and they, um, they take all the chairs out, and they put in like a, a false ceiling to help keep it cool.

And they try to cushion it for him and they put his bed in it.

And, um, people in this town where he's going they work night and day to, um, build up the train tracks up this hill to where, um, this house is.

And, um, and when the train gets there though, it can't go the last distance, um, to the house.

And so all these people who have been waiting, they go and they physically lift the train to take it to, to the house.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so finally he gets to the New Jersey shore... MILLARD: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And how long is he able to live while he's there?

MILLARD: He's just, um, alive for just a few more days, he ended up having a splenic, uh... RUBENSTEIN: All right so... MILLARD: Aneurysm of the spleen and heart.

RUBENSTEIN: An autopsy is done, and what does the autopsy show?

MILLARD: The autopsy showed that he was, he had septic shock and septicemia.

RUBENSTEIN: And where was the bullet?

MILLARD: And the bullet was on the left.

RUBENSTEIN: So the doctor was wrong?

MILLARD: The doctor was wrong.

And that, when the autopsy was report is, made public, the American people realize right away that their President didn't have to die, and they understand why he did, and Bliss is publicly disgraced.

RUBENSTEIN: What happened to the assassin?

MILLARD: So Charles Guiteau is, um, put on trial, he had one of the first insanity defenses.

Um, but the country, I mean, I... Now, because Garfield was President for such a short time, um, we forget.

But at the time, it was a, it was a horrible national tragedy and they were determined to see him hanged.

And so they do have this trial, um, but he is found guilty and sentenced to death.

RUBENSTEIN: And does he have any last wishes?

And how long does it take before they sentence him to death?

MILLARD: So it's just a matter of about a month and, um, and he does.

And so he asked, he has an unusual request of his executioner, he asked, he said he's written this, um, poem, uh, called "Going to the Lordy".

And he, and he wants to deliver this poem, um, uh, on the gallows.

And, um, he, uh, he wants... At first he asked to do it in his underwear for some reason.

And they say, you know, "You can't do in your underwear, but you can, you can recite this poem."

And he says, um, "I'm gonna recite the poem and when I'm done, I'm gonna drop it, and then that's when you can hang me."

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so this is the story of how, um, the doctor in charge really didn't do a very good job.

Had he done a better job, presumably they could've found the bullet and maybe... Do people think today they could've saved Garfield?

MILLARD: Absolutely.

Yeah, I don't think there's any question.

I mean, in fact, the man who captured Guiteau after he shot Garfield had a bullet in his head, in his brain from the Civil War and was doing fine.

And this bullet, again, it was behind his pancreas, it wasn't gonna do any more damage.

If they had just left him alone.

I mean, his, his injuries were far less severe than Reagan's when Reagan had been shot.

So if they'd just left him alone, he almost certainly would have survived.

RUBENSTEIN: Wow.

Well look, very interesting book, I enjoyed reading it.

I wanna thank you for a very interesting conversation.

MILLARD: Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

(applause) (music plays through credits)