Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [111]
Each time she stepped into the White House, however, Harriet felt even that small source of strength slip away. It seemed that everyone she encountered, from the cook to cabinet members, had already succumbed to despair. Dr. Edson, who had spent many long nights by Garfield’s side, admitted to Harriet in a private conversation that she no longer held out hope. Robert Todd Lincoln’s “darkness,” she told her family, “is unillumined by one ray of courage.” Even Almon Rockwell, who, since the day of the shooting, had reacted with anger and indignation at the slightest suggestion that Garfield might not survive, looked as though he had already lost his old friend. His “feathers,” Harriet wrote sadly, “I imagined drooped.”
So desperate had the situation become that her husband felt that, as secretary of state, he was obliged to ask Chester Arthur to take over the president’s responsibilities, at least temporarily. “Your father [is] much exercised on the question of disability,” Harriet wrote to her daughter. “Should Arthur be brought to the front, and how?”
The Constitution was of no help. Nothing in it offered any guidance on how to determine when a president was no longer able to perform his duties. Nor was there any precedent. Only three other presidents had died while in office. Lincoln had lived only a few hours after he was shot; Zachary Taylor had succumbed to cholera in just a few days; and William Henry Harrison had survived only one month after contracting pneumonia while giving the longest inaugural address in history on a cold, rainy day. Garfield—much younger, stronger, and with a family to care for—had already lived twice as long as Harrison.
Finally, Blaine sent a cabinet member to New York to discuss the transition with the vice president. Arthur, however, made it clear that he would not even consider taking over the presidency while Garfield still lived. He refused even to return to Washington, concerned that it would appear as if he were preparing for his own inauguration. “Disappoint our fears,” his young invalid friend, Julia Sand, had urged him. “Force the nation to have faith in you. Show from the first that you have none but the purest of aims.”
In the White House, Blaine found it impossibly painful to talk to the president about any of this. Garfield, however, had no illusions about his chances of survival. When asked if he knew that he might not live, he had replied simply, “Oh, yes, I have always been conscious of that.” What worried him now was not his own death, but the suffering it would bring to those he loved most. The last letter he would write was to his mother, in the hope that he could bolster her spirits, if only for a short time. Taking a pen, he began writing in a thin, shaky script that slipped down the page.
Dear Mother,
Don’t be disturbed by conflicting reports about my condition. It is true I am still weak, but I am gaining every day, and need only time and patience to bring me through.
Give my love to all the relatives & friends, & especially to sisters Hetty and Mary.
Your loving son,
James A Garfield
Only to his wife did Garfield admit his weariness. “I wonder,” he told her one night, “if all this fight against death is worth the little pinch of life I will get anyway.” Lucretia knew that what her husband wanted more than anything now was to escape, not just from this dreary, lonely room, but from Washington altogether. He dreamed of returning to his farm in Ohio, seeing his old friends, sitting in the shade of his neighbor’s maple trees, maybe even having a slice of his aunt’s homemade bread.
If he could not go home, he hoped to go to the sea. He had never