Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [57]
It was not until early May, as Lucretia lay near death, that Conkling finally overreached. Fearing that public sympathy for her would derail his campaign against Garfield, Conkling decided that it was time to call in some favors. He had long before solicited the support of James Gordon Bennett, the founder, editor, and publisher of the New York Herald. As Bennett was then out of the country, his managing editor, Thomas Connery, would have to do. Conkling sent word to Connery that he wished to meet with him in Washington. Connery realized that he was about to step into a snake pit, but he had little choice but to do as Conkling asked.
When Connery arrived at Conkling’s house on the corner of Fourteenth and F Streets, he was received not by the senator but by the vice president of the United States. Although Chester Arthur was now part of Garfield’s administration, his allegiance to Conkling was stronger, and more obvious, than it had ever been. He continued to share a home with him, frequently joined him on long fishing trips, and did not hesitate to criticize Garfield at every opportunity. “Garfield has not been square, nor honorable, nor truthful with Conkling,” Arthur told a reporter. “It’s a hard thing to say of a president of the United States, but it is, unfortunately, only the truth.” After Robertson’s appointment, Arthur had even signed a petition of protest against the president.
Connery, unsure why he was there and extremely ill at ease, quickly asked Arthur what Conkling wanted. The vice president, he would later recall, “smiled and looked at me as if doubting the innocence of my question.” Soon after, Conkling arrived and launched into a “lengthy and impassioned harangue” against Garfield, at the end of which he asked Connery to pledge the support of the Herald in his war against the president. Connery agreed, although he knew there was not much he could do to save Conkling from himself.
While Conkling and Arthur carefully plotted their next move, Garfield, well aware that he was under attack, gave his enemies little thought. Lucretia had slowly begun to recover, and he was overwhelmed with gratitude. On May 15, he finally allowed himself to believe that “God will be merciful to us and let her stay.” Her fever had fallen to just over 100 degrees, and Garfield’s “hope almost reached triumph.” Over breakfast that morning, the normally happy, boisterous family laughed for the first time since Lucretia had fallen ill. “The little ones have been very brave but very still,” Garfield wrote. “The house has been very still.”
The Capitol, on the other hand, had been roiling. The day after Lucretia began to rally, Conkling made a last, desperate attempt to regain the upper hand from a president who had dared to defy him. The idea came to him from Senator Tom Platt, a Stalwart who had, months earlier, promised to confirm any appointment Garfield made in exchange for help in winning a Senate seat. Now, expected to vote for Robertson, Platt feared Conkling’s wrath. The only honorable response to Garfield’s outrageous nomination, he told Conkling, was to “rebuke the President by immediately turning in our resignations.” The New York legislature would quickly reinstate them, and they would return to the Senate triumphant.
It was a bold, dramatic move, and Conkling, who valued showmanship nearly as much as he did power, seized on it. On the morning of May 16, after the chaplain finished the morning prayer, Arthur, who had entered the Senate chamber late and visibly nervous, handed the clerk a note. Few people in the hall even noticed the exchange, and those who did assumed it was an ordinary, uninteresting communication. As the clerk began to read, however, those who were only half listening, idly sifting through their mail, suddenly sat straight up in their seats,