Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard [86]
During the campaign, there had been some discussion about the fact that, were Garfield elected, Arthur would be next in line to the presidency, but the possibility of something happening to Garfield had seemed so remote as to be hardly worth considering. He was in the prime of his life, the picture of health and strength, and would be president during a time of peace. Arthur would be constrained by the limits of his office, where he could do little harm. “There is no place in which the powers of mischief will be so small as in the Vice Presidency,” E. L. Godkin, the famously acerbic editor of the Nation, had then written. “It is true General Garfield … may die during his term of office, but this is too unlikely a contingency to be worth making extraordinary provisions for.”
Now the unthinkable had happened, and Arthur could become president at any moment. The very idea caused hearts to sink and shoulders to shudder. After giving his readers a cursory review of Arthur’s political career, Godkin now wrote with disgust, “It is out of this mess of filth that Mr. Arthur will go to the Presidential chair in case of the President’s death.”
The unavoidable comparison to Garfield, moreover, did not help Arthur’s case. Garfield was “a statesman and a thorough-bred gentleman … a man whose mind was filled with great ideas for the good of all,” a man at the Fifth Avenue Hotel told a reporter. “Gen. Arthur appears as a politician of the most ordinary character, a man whose sole thought is of political patronage, and a man who has for his bosom friends and intimate companions those with whom no gentleman should associate.”
It was Arthur’s friends, and, in particular, his close ties to Conkling, that worried Americans even more than his own questionable character. “Republicans and Democrats alike are profoundly disturbed at the probable accession to the Presidency of Vice-President Arthur, with the consequence that Conkling shall be the President de facto,” one newspaper reported. In his diary, former president Hayes, whose one term in the White House had been made miserable by Conkling, choked with rage at the thought of his nemesis in such proximity to power. “Arthur for President!” he scrawled in horror in his diary. “Conkling the power behind the throne, superior to the throne!”
Conkling’s attacks on the president, which had continued to make headlines as he fought for reelection to the Senate, now seemed not just petty and vicious, but darkly suspicious. Rumors linking the former senator and the vice president to Guiteau quickly spread. “There is a theory, which has many adherents,” a reporter noted, “that the attempted assassination was not the work of a lunatic, but the result of a plot much deeper and darker than has been suspected.”
Given the country’s tense political situation, this theory may have sprung up without any encouragement at all, but those looking for a conspiracy had been given all the evidence they needed in the words of Guiteau himself. It was already widely known that, as he was being hurried away from the train station, the would-be assassin had shouted, “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be president!” Although Guiteau insisted he had acted alone, and both Conkling and Arthur quickly denied any relationship with him, in the minds of the American people the connection had been made.
The rumors and accusations, moreover, were not whispered between friends but shouted from every street corner. Newspapers openly accused Conkling and Arthur of being directly to blame for the tragedy that had befallen the nation. “This crime is as logically and legitimately the result of doctrines of Conkling and his followers as the murder of Lincoln was the result of the teachings of Secessionists,” the Cleveland Herald charged. “It was not the hand of this miserable office-seeker that armed the deadly blow at the life of Garfield, but the embodied spirit of selfishness, of love of rule, of all that is implied by ‘the machine