Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [56]
Blaine forgot Guiteau as soon as he turned his back on him. The war that Conkling had been waging against Garfield’s administration had taken a sudden and unexpected turn, and the secretary of state could smell blood. Before Lucretia had fallen ill, Garfield, still trying to find common ground with the Stalwarts, had appointed five of Conkling’s men to New York posts. He believed, however, that Grant had made a fatal mistake in surrendering New York to Conkling, and he was not about to put himself in the same position. The day after his appointments of Conkling’s men, he announced another appointment. This one was only a single recommendation, but it was for the post that Conkling prized above all others, the one he had bestowed upon Chester Arthur—the collectorship of the New York Customs House.
Shocked and enraged, Conkling spluttered that the nomination was “perfidy without peril.” Not only had Garfield not consulted him, but the man he had chosen, Judge William Robertson, was high on Conkling’s long list of enemies. At the Republican convention, Robertson had been the first delegate to abandon Grant, thus, Conkling believed, causing the hemorrhaging of votes that had ultimately resulted in Grant’s defeat. Robertson had, Conkling raged, “treacherously betray[ed] a sacred trust,” and he demanded that Garfield withdraw the nomination.
By nominating Robertson, Garfield knew, he had given Conkling his “casus belli,” his justification for war, but the president was prepared for battle, and confident of victory. “Let who will, fight me,” Garfield wrote in his diary after making the nomination. This battle was about more than Robertson or even Conkling. It was about the power of the presidency. “I owe something to the dignity of my office,” he wrote. This post was critical to the nation’s financial strength, and he was not about to let someone else fill it. “Shall the principal port of entry in which more than 90% of all our customs duties are collected be under the direct control of the Administration or under the local control of a factional Senator,” he asked. “I think I win in this contest.”
The American people agreed. Garfield’s refusal to back down was widely hailed as a courageous and necessary stand against a dangerous man. Even Conkling’s own state turned against him. Of the more than one hundred newspapers in the state of New York, fewer than twenty supported their senior senator, the rest lining up behind the president. Garfield, the New York Herald argued, “has recognized Republicans as members of a great party and not of mean factions. He has chosen men for office because of their fitness and ability, and not because they have stuck to the political fortunes of loved leaders.” Conkling, in stark contrast, “would be Caesar or nothing.” He “makes the mistake of supposing that he, and not Gen. Garfield, was elected President,” the newspaper chided. “He declares war, and the President accepts the situation.”
Conkling, however, was much more experienced at political warfare than Garfield. Every time he had gone into battle, no matter how bruising, he had emerged even stronger than before. He seemed unaffected even by highly public humiliations, shrugging off scandals that would have ruined another man. Just two years earlier, he had been caught in a brazen affair with Kate Chase Sprague, the wife of William Sprague, a U.S. senator and former governor of Rhode Island, and daughter of Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the