Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [0]
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey
Copyright © 2011 by Candice Millard
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Jacket design by John Fontana
Jacket photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Millard, Candice.
Destiny of the republic : a tale of madness, medicine, and the murder of a president / Candice Millard.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Garfield, James A. (James Abram), 1831–1881—Assassination. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. 3. Guiteau, Charles Julius, 1841–1882. 4. Presidents—Medical care—United States—History—
19th century. 5. Medicine—United States—History—19th century. 6. Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847–1922. 7. Medical instruments and apparatus—United States—History—19th century. 8. United States—Politics and government—1881–1885. 9. Political culture—United States—History—19th century. 10. Power (Social sciences)—United States—History—19th century. I. Title.
E687.9.M55 2011
973.8′4092—dc22 2011001549
eISBN: 978-0-385-53500-7
v3.1
For my parents,
Lawrence and Constance Millard,
on their fiftieth wedding anniversary
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue Chosen
PART ONE
PROMISE
Chapter 1 The Scientific Spirit
Chapter 2 Providence
Chapter 3 “A Beam in Darkness”
Chapter 4 God’s Minute Man
Chapter 5 Bleak Mountain
PART TWO
WAR
Chapter 6 Hand and Soul
Chapter 7 Real Brutuses and Bolingbrokes
Chapter 8 Brains, Flesh, and Blood
Chapter 9 Casus Belli
Chapter 10 The Dark Dreams of Presidents
Chapter 11 “A Desperate Deed”
PART THREE
FEAR
Chapter 12 “Thank God It Is All Over”
Chapter 13 “It’s True”
Chapter 14 All Evil Consequences
Chapter 15 Blood-Guilty
PART FOUR
TORTURED FOR THE REPUBLIC
Chapter 16 Neither Death nor Life
Chapter 17 One Nation
Chapter 18 “Keep Heart”
Chapter 19 On a Mountaintop, Alone
Chapter 20 Terror, Hope, and Despair
Chapter 21 After All
Chapter 22 All the Angels of the Universe
Epilogue Forever and Forever More
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Illustrations
• PROLOGUE •
CHOSEN
Crossing the Long Island Sound in dense fog just before midnight on the night of June 11, 1880, the passengers and crew of the steamship Stonington found themselves wrapped in impenetrable blackness. They could feel the swell of the sea below them, and they could hear the low-slung ship plowing through the water, its enormous wooden paddle wheels churning, its engine drumming. At steady intervals, the blast of the foghorn reverberated through the darkness, but no ship returned its call. They seemed to be utterly alone.
Although most of the passengers had long since retired to private cabins or the bright warmth of the saloon, one man stood quietly on the deck, peering into the fog that obscured everything beyond his own pale hands. At five feet seven inches tall, with narrow shoulders, a small, sharp face, and a threadbare jacket, Charles Guiteau was an unremarkable figure. He had failed at everything he had tried, and he had tried nearly everything, from law to ministry to even a free-love commune. He had been thrown in jail. His wife had left him. His father believed him insane, and his family had tried to have him institutionalized. In his own mind, however, Guiteau was a man of great distinction and promise, and he predicted a glorious future for himself.
Just three days earlier, immediately following the Republican Party’s tumultuous presidential convention in faraway Chicago, Guiteau had decided to pack his few belongings and leave Boston, his sights set on the party’s campaign headquarters in New York. In a surprise nomination, James Garfield, an eloquent