The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [76]
During this lull, early in July, news came that President Garfield had been shot, and was lying in a coma from which he was unlikely to recover. “Frightful calamity for America,” wrote Theodore in his diary, adding, “… this means work in the future for those who wish their country well.”57
The assassination of President Garfield was only the latest in a series of political explosions that shook America in the spring and summer of 1881, and whose rumblings followed Theodore across the Atlantic. Fuses had been lit the year before at the Republican National Convention, when the party went into deadlock over the nomination of its presidential candidate. Senator Conkling’s machine-minded “Stalwarts,” who had grown rich on patronage under Grant, and suffered under the righteous Hayes, wanted the general back in the White House. More independent (but equally corrupt) “Half-Breeds” were united in support of James G. Blaine. It had taken twenty-six ballots before James A. Garfield was nominated as an unpopular compromise. Both factions smoldered in resentment through his election and inauguration in March 1881.58 Then the first explosion occurred.
IN AN UNCANNY REPETITION of the events of 1877, Garfield named a reform Republican to the Collectorship of Customs for the Port of New York, just as Hayes before him had named Theodore Senior. Boss Conkling was so enraged by this second Presidential slap in the face that on 16 May he resigned his Senate seat, confident that his lieutenants in the New York State Legislature would reelect him and shame Garfield into withdrawing the appointment. No Senator had ever offered so dramatic a challenge to a President, and Theodore, anxiously devouring French and Italian newspapers, kept abreast of developments as best he could.
For a while it seemed that the Boss might win. But then a madman’s bullet shattered both Garfield’s spine and Conkling’s chances.59 While the President lay dying, Conkling became, by popular consent, the archvillain who had plotted his assassination. This rumor was false. Party leaders in Albany, however, were forced to elect another Senator.
A final stroke of irony, which Theodore had leisure to ponder in his Alpine retreat, was that Garfield’s heir apparent was Vice President Chester A. Arthur—the very man whom Theodore Senior had been groomed to replace in 1877. Boss Conkling might be out of power, but as long as his father’s old rival sat in the White House, Theodore would be reminded of the uninterrupted power of the machine.
MOVING ON THROUGH Austria and Bavaria, the young man had opportunity to exercise his linguistic abilities, translating German into Italian for the benefit of the carriage driver, and both into English for the benefit of Alice.60 They found the summer heat of the Bavarian lowlands stifling, and by mid-July Theodore was climbing mountains again. In a period of ten days he “walked up” Pilatus (leaving an exhausted guide halfway down), the Rigi-Grindelwald, and the Jungfrau, confessing only that he felt “rather tired” after the latter. Then, having refreshed himself with a twenty-one-mile hike from Visp to Zermatt, he focused his eager spectacles on the Matterhorn.61
The notorious fifteen-thousand-foot peak curved into the sky like a giant scimitar, so steeply pointed that snow either slid off it or blew away in Alpine gales. Unconquered until 1865, the Matterhorn possessed for Theodore “a certain sombre interest from the number of people that have lost their lives on it.” This, plus the prestige he would win as one of the few unskilled climbers to ascend it, was enough to tempt him, and the presence of two British mountaineers in his hotel acted