The Highest Calling, page 15
DR: Where did he get a gun?
CM: He had a family friend that he went to and asked, because he has no money. He’s moving from boardinghouse to boardinghouse, when rent is due. He never pays his bill. He sometimes works as a bill collector, and he just keeps whatever he manages to collect. He has no money, and he’s becoming more and more obsessed, more and more desperate and deranged. He goes to this family friend, he gets some money, and he buys a gun. He’s never shot a gun, and he goes to the banks of the Potomac to practice.
DR: Did he actually pay for the gun with money or did he say, “I will pay you when I get some money”?
CM: He paid with money that he had borrowed from this family friend.
DR: He has a gun. He decides he’s going to kill Garfield. It’s announced publicly that Garfield is going to be taking a train ride somewhere?
CM: That’s right. Lucretia, his wife, had been very sick. She nearly died. She had gone to New Jersey to recuperate. He’s going to go meet her, and then they’re going to go to a reunion at Williams.
DR: One of the train stations in Washington was where the Mall and the National Archives are now. Guiteau goes there to wait for Garfield to show up?
CM: That’s right. It was the Baltimore and Potomac train station and it was just a disaster. The tracks ran along the Mall, and trains would regularly skip the tracks and kill people on the Mall. In fact, Theodore Roosevelt in the end razes the train station. But it’s there at this time in 1881. Garfield goes with his secretary of state in a carriage, and he steps inside the station where Guiteau is waiting.
DR: Guiteau sees him. Does he shoot him once or twice?
CM: He shoots him and hits him in the arm, and then he shoots him a second time in the back.
DR: Do people rush to Garfield’s defense? Do they try to get the assassin?
CM: It’s just chaos, as you might imagine. People are screaming. Garfield has fallen. They grab Guiteau right away. They capture him immediately.
DR: Also present at the time of the shooting is Robert Todd Lincoln?
CM: That’s right. Lincoln’s son was there. He was Garfield’s secretary of the interior, and he was going to be traveling with him. I always say that if you were a president around that time, you would send Robert Todd Lincoln to China or somewhere far away, 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 20 years later.
DR: Garfield is shot. Is there a doctor right there who says, “I can take care of you”?
CM: Robert Todd Lincoln sends for one of the doctors who had been at his father’s deathbed, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss. His first name was Doctor. His parents had named him Doctor. He was sort of a controversial character. He had sold something called cundurango, which was supposed to cure cancer and syphilis and anything that ailed you. He had gotten in trouble for taking bribes. He had been in prison for a brief amount of time. But Robert Todd Lincoln knew him and trusted him, and he calls for him and Bliss comes to the train station.
Several doctors descend on Garfield. He is on the floor of this train station—you can’t imagine a more germ-infested environment—with these two bullet holes in him. They immediately start probing the wound with unsterilized, unwashed hands and instruments on the floor of the train station. They finally get a horsehair-and-hay mattress and take him upstairs, but continue probing for the bullet.
DR: Do they finally take him to a hospital?
CM: No. At that time, the last place you’d want to go would be a hospital, for they were not sanitary. They ended up taking him back to the White House.
DR: He goes back to the White House. Garfield has his own personal doctors, I assume. Did they rush to help or what happens?
CM: They do. Garfield has his own doctor and Lucretia has a doctor too, a woman, which is very rare at that time. Susan Edson. They used to call her Mrs. Dr. Susan Edson. They didn’t know what to do with a female doctor. She is there as well. But Bliss immediately takes over and he pushes everybody out. He says, “This is my patient.” He saw in this horrible national tragedy an opportunity for personal fame and power.
DR: By now the bleeding has presumably stopped, but how seriously is Garfield injured? The shot in the arm is not a fatal shot. The shot that goes into his back, how bad was that?
CM: It’s this incredible stroke of luck, actually. The bullet 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 behind his pancreas. The problem is they won’t stop probing the wound for the bullet. Today he would have spent, at most, a night in the hospital.
DR: The bullet goes in through the right side initially and then it winds up on the left side?
CM: Correct.
DR: How do they probe? They put a finger in and just kind of look for the bullet?
CM: They do. They put fingers in. They also have these instruments, these long metal sticks that they use. No anesthesia, no painkillers for him, nothing.
DR: They can’t find the bullet?
CM: They can’t find it.
DR: They can’t find the bullet, but how is Garfield kept alive? Is he in a lot of pain? What happens?
CM: He’s in extraordinary amounts of pain. Bliss decides that he should give his gunshot victim rich foods and alcohol, and continue to probe for the bullet. He refuses to use what to him is this brand-new, untested, and unsafe method of sterilization.
Joseph Lister, who had been a renowned surgeon in England, had discovered antisepsis 16 years earlier. He had come to the United States. He had gone around the world, explaining the importance of it and warning doctors that if they didn’t sterilize their hands and instruments, they were risking killing their patients.
DR: Dr. Lister and Listerine.
CM: That’s right. But Bliss doesn’t want any part of that.
DR: Let’s talk about another person who shows up. Alexander Graham Bell, better known for inventing the telephone, has an idea.
CM: Bell is only 34 years old at this point. He had invented the telephone just five years earlier, and it had made him famous, and it gained him a little bit of money. He has all these ideas, all these things he wants to work on. But when he finds out that Garfield has been shot, he drops everything he’s working on, and he works night and day to develop something called the induction balance. This is before the invention of the medical X-ray. Basically it’s the first metal detector. It’s a metal detector connected to a telephone receiver.
DR: His idea is, “I can come over and put the metal detector on the body of Garfield and figure out where the bullet is, because I’ll detect where the metal is.” Is that right?
CM: That’s right.
DR: Is the machine ready to go, or does he have to perfect it before he takes it?
CM: He’s perfecting it. He’s very much aware the world is watching while he’s trying to perfect it. He’s testing it. He’s getting big chunks of meat and shooting into them and then trying to make sure he can find the bullets in the meat. He goes to a home for Civil War veterans and tries it out on them, and it absolutely works. He tells the White House, “I’m ready.” They have him come over, but two things happen.
One, they have Garfield on something that’s very rare at that time, which was a mattress with metal springs in it, which obviously is going to interfere with the metal detector. But also Bliss had publicly stated that the bullet was on the right side of the president’s body, and he doesn’t want anything to show that he’s wrong. So he will only let Bell test the right side.
DR: It’s very hot in Washington at the time. How do they air-condition the situation so Garfield is not sweating to death?
CM: A lot of people proposed ideas. People are writing to them from everywhere, wanting to donate things. They’re worried. Finally the Navy hooks up the very first air-conditioning system in the White House to cool it—because it’s July in Washington, D.C.—to try to alleviate some of his suffering.
DR: What about his diet? What is he able to eat in this environment?
CM: He’s able to eat very little. He was this big, handsome guy. He’s 49 years old, and he loses 50 pounds. He has enemas, which is why he can’t keep anything down.
DR: Graham Bell comes and he’s told he can only look at the president’s right side. What happens?
CM: He thinks it doesn’t work and he’s very discouraged. Bliss just has him go. At first everyone thinks Garfield’s going to die. Then he survives. Months are going by, and he seems to be getting better. Then he takes a terrible turn, because he’s just riddled with infection. And at some point Garfield says, “I know I’m going to die.”
DR: No other doctor comes in or is allowed to do anything. What does Mrs. Garfield say? Is she relying on this Dr. Bliss?
CM: She is. I think like many people, even today, when somebody you love is sick, you’re terrified and you’re trusting the people who are in charge. She put her trust in him.
DR: Garfield’s in bed. Who’s running the country? Chester Arthur or Mrs. Garfield or who?
CM: Everyone expects Chester Arthur to just jump on this. People are coming from Ohio to try to prevent him from taking over the presidency. But he surprises everyone and stays in New York. He refuses even to go to Washington. He doesn’t want it to look like he’s waiting in the wings for Garfield to die. He’s grief-stricken by what’s happened to Garfield, and he cuts ties with Conkling and refuses to go to Washington. So he’s not running anything. It’s Garfield’s poor 23-year-old personal secretary who’s trying to keep things going while Garfield’s so sick.
DR: Do members of Congress go to visit him and say, “What do you want us to do? We want some direction”?
CM: Bliss won’t let anybody see him. He’s completely isolated him in the White House. Occasionally he’ll let his wife come, but no one else is allowed to see the president.
DR: What is the press saying?
CM: They’re writing a million articles. That was really central to my research about it. Bliss is issuing bulletins that they put up on giant boards in New York and other places, and news is going out by telegraph, so there are many, many articles. People didn’t really understand. At first they thought he was going to die. Then Garfield seems to be getting better, and now he’s getting worse. People are starting to ask questions about Bliss, but it’s too late at that point.
DR: Does Alexander Graham Bell get a chance to come back with his machine and look a second time?
CM: He doesn’t, no.
DR: He’s not invited back? The machine will actually work, but it wasn’t allowed to be used on the correct side.
CM: It does work. And then they use it in the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War.
DR: How many months are we now talking about? Garfield has been in this bed for a month or two months?
CM: He’s shot on July 2nd and he lives until mid-September—September 19th.
DR: He wants to go to see the water. How do they arrange for him to go to see the ocean, and why does he want to go?
CM: Even though he grew up in Ohio, he had worked on the Erie Canal, and he loved the water, he loved the ocean. He says, “I know I’m going to die. I want to see the ocean.” There’s a wealthy man, who’s actually British, who has a home in New Jersey, and he offers his home. So they take a train car and they gut it. They take all the chairs out, and they put in a false ceiling to help keep it cool. They try to cushion it for Garfield, and they put his bed in it.
People in this town where he’s going work night and day to build the train tracks up this hill to where this house is. When the train gets there, though, it can’t go the last distance to the house. So all these people who have been waiting go and physically lift the train to take it to the house.
DR: How does Garfield get out of the White House? He’s in a stretcher and they take him downstairs, and take him by horse to the train station?
CM: That’s right. They get him into the train station and then they lift him.
DR: Does his wife go with him?
CM: Yes.
DR: Finally he gets to the New Jersey shore. How long does he live while he’s there?
CM: He’s alive for just a few more days.
DR: He dies and everybody is shocked and saddened by this, I assume?
CM: At this point, they’re not shocked. He ended up having an aneurysm of the spleen and heart.
DR: An autopsy is done, and what does the autopsy show?
CM: The autopsy showed that he had septic shock and septicemia.
DR: And where was the bullet?
CM: The bullet was on the left side.
DR: So the doctor was wrong?
CM: The doctor was wrong. And when the autopsy report is sent out and 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.
DR: But he asked to be paid for his services, right?
CM: He did. He hands Congress a bill for $25,000, which is about half a million dollars in today’s money. They are, as you can imagine, outraged.
DR: Is he paid anything?
CM: They pay him $6,000, just to get rid of him.
DR: Does he lose his medical license?
CM: He doesn’t, but he loses his practice. He’s publicly disgraced. He says he lost his health at the same time. His life is never the same.
DR: What happened to the assassin?
CM: Charles Guiteau is put on trial. He had one of the first insanity defenses. Because Garfield was president for such a short time, we forget. People at that time knew this would be an additional tragedy—that Garfield would be forgotten. But at the time, it was a horrible national tragedy, and the American people were devastated and enraged, and they were determined to see Guiteau hanged. They do have this trial, and he is found guilty and sentenced to death.
DR: Does he represent himself in the trial?
CM: He had a sister who basically raised him and loved him very much. She had known that he was ill and that he needed help. But at that time, you could just leave and nobody could find you. They would try to get him help and then he would leave. Her husband was a lawyer, but he was just a tax attorney. However, he’s the only one in the country willing to represent Guiteau. So he takes it on, but Guiteau keeps shouting things during the trial and belittling him, so it doesn’t go well.
DR: Guiteau is found guilty?
CM: He’s found guilty.
DR: Does he have any last wishes? How long does it take before they sentence him to death?
CM: It’s just a matter of about a month. He makes an unusual request of his executioner. He’s written this poem called “Going to the Lordy,” and he wants to deliver this poem on the gallows. At first he asked to do it in his underwear, for some reason. And they say, “You can’t do in your underwear, but you can recite this poem.” And he says, “I’m going to recite the poem and when I’m done, I’m going to drop it, and that’s when you can hang me.”
DR: Is that what they do?
CM: And that’s what they do.
DR: That occurs how long after Garfield dies?
CM: Not long after.
DR: So this is the story of how the doctor in charge really didn’t do a very good job. Had he done a better job, presumably they could have found the bullet. Do people think today they could have saved Garfield?
CM: Absolutely. I don’t think there’s any question. In fact, the man who captured Guiteau after he shot Garfield had a bullet in his brain from the Civil War and was doing fine. And the bullet that hit Garfield was behind his pancreas; it wasn’t going to do any more damage if they had just left him alone. His injuries were far less severe than Reagan’s when Reagan was shot. If they’d just left him alone, he almost certainly would have survived.
7 A. SCOTT BERG
on Woodrow Wilson
(1856-1924; president from 1913 to 1921)
Many presidents’ reputations improve as scholars review their administrations with time—the emotions and politics of an era having passed—and with access to more documents than were originally available, as with Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman, and possibly Jimmy Carter. The reputation of one president, however, has declined considerably in recent years from the lofty status he once enjoyed. Woodrow Wilson was seen as a godlike figure when entering Paris to negotiate the end of the Great War. He was viewed as the leader who had helped ensure victory in the war. That he failed to get his beloved League of Nations approved by the Senate was seen, at the time, as a political act by the Republicans who had been beaten by Wilson in the two most recent presidential elections (after they had won the four prior elections).
But recently, historians and scholars have learned more about Wilson. The stroke he suffered in 1919 left him so incapacitated that he really could not make informed or intelligent decisions, allowing his wife, Edith, to effectively become president of the United States for 18 months. Neither the public nor other government officials, in Congress or the administration, were told about the seriousness of the stroke (though some members of Congress and cabinet members did see him).
Further, while not hidden from public view during his presidency, Wilson restored the racial segregation of the federal workforce and also essentially allowed the reimposition of Jim Crow laws.
