James Garfield’s Presidency Part 3: The Opening Months

Part of a series.

In December 1880, Blaine warned Garfield, “You are to have a second term, or to be overthrown by the Grant crowd.” With this, Blaine began his active campaign to undermine the Stalwarts. The reasons were personal and practical. He hated Conkling and wanted to be the main man in Garfield’s administration. He also wanted to protect Garfield, for whom his friendship was deepening. To achieve his goals he advised that the cabinet posts of Treasury, Post Office, and Interior, the departments with the most patronage, must be held by friends and allies. For State, the most prestigious post, often seen as the president’s unofficial adviser, Blaine wanted himself.

Blaine thought the “Grant Section” contained “all the desperate bad men of the party, bent on boot and booty” and added “They must have their throats cut with a feather.” Blaine did not want an open war with Conkling, but he was delusional. Conkling loved a political brawl, and Blaine was asking for it. Grant meanwhile advised Garfield, “I do not like the man [Blaine], have no confidence in his friendship nor in his reliability.” Grant openly wanted one of his men in the Treasury.

Pleas for patronage wearied Garfield as he tried to compromise between two men who hated each other. He toyed with putting Conkling in the State Department, but Blaine retorted, “His appointment would act like strychnine upon your Administration—first bring contortions, and then be followed by death.” Over time, Blaine’s influence noticeably increased and the Stalwarts became despondent. Garfield could have hardly missed the snub when Grant did not attend his inauguration. Grant confessed to Logan that while he wanted to see Garfield, he wished to stay clear of Schurz and John Sherman. Grant’s own friendship with William Tecumseh Sherman had strained since 1869, so Grant’s distaste for the “Ohio icicle” was at its peak. His old comrade for one supported his brother in the nomination fight, one of the few times William Tecumseh Sherman made any political pronouncements. Only later would Grant and Sherman reconcile, particularly in defending their war records from men such as Don Carlos Buell.

Grant was disappointed and let his friends know it, but he made no overt moves against Garfield. He even visited Garfield on March 10, to ensure Adam Badeau stayed as consul-general in London. The meeting was apparently pleasant, but Garfield lied to Grant. Badeau was moved to Copenhagen, a far less prestigious post. Michael Cramer, the current minister there and Grant’s brother-in-law, was moved to Switzerland. The only Stalwart to gain a major patronage post was Tom James, nominated as Postmaster General. For Collector of the Port of New York, Garfield appointed William Robertson, who in 1872 was one of the Republicans who supported Horace Greely, Grant’s opponent. Grant rightfully took it as a personal insult.

Also coming between Grant and Garfield were war issues. Lewis “Lew” Wallace commanded a division under Grant at Fort Donelson and Shiloh. He felt mistreated by Grant, and despite pleas for Grant to set the record straight, his old commander mostly refused. Wallace backed Grant in 1868 but received no rewards. He backed Hayes in 1876 and was rewarded by Garfield as minister to the Ottoman Empire, in part so it might inspire him to write another story in the mold of Ben-Hur. Also, Garfield spent the war with the Army of the Ohio, and commanded one of the brigades at Shiloh. The debate, over whether Grant needed Don Carlos Buell’s 20,000 men, infantile as it often was, created jealousies between Grant’s Army of the Tennessee and Buell’s Army of the Ohio. When the latter was renamed the Army of the Cumberland, it was headed by William Rosecrans, a man Grant utterly despised. Garfield, at least until the fall of 1863, was Rosecrans’s friend and adviser, and while Rosecrans campaigned hard against Garfield in 1880, the new president still had an affinity for his old commander and openly lamented their falling out. In Grant’s eyes almost anyone with kind words for Rosecrans, save maybe Phillip Sheridan, was suspect and Grant wrongfully still saw Garfield as something of a Rosecrans crony. Indeed, some thought Garfield’s nomination win was “Rosecrans’s revenge.”

Grant had Badeau see Garfield, even advising that Badeau be given another post of importance, such as Italy. Garfield would not budge. Grant, while on the way to Mexico, wrote an angry letter to Garfield, calling the appointments an “undeserved slight” and added “I do claim that I ought not to be humiliated by seeing my personal friends punished for no other offense than their friendship and support.” To ensure the letter was received, Grant had Senator John Percival Jones of Nevada bring it directly to Garfield. To Badeau he wrote, “Garfield has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angle-worm.” For his part, Garfield thought Grant’s letter was “unconsciously insolent.”

Meanwhile, Conkling and his New York senate colleague, Tom Platt, tried to block Robertson. By now, many Stalwarts were tired. It was obvious Garfield wielded more power and Conkling was wearing thin. In desperation, Platt conceived of a scheme whereby both men would resign, thereby not supporting Robertson. The Democrats would then have a majority and reject Robertson. Meanwhile, Conkling and Platt would work over the New York machine to be sent back to the senate months later. Garfield called it a “very weak attempt at the heroic” and correctly predicted “it will be received with guffaws of laughter.” He was right. The pair were mocked from coast to coast, and their dwindling allies were appalled.

One man was not laughing. Charles Guiteau spent weeks trying to get the consulship to Paris or Vienna. For a man with few connections who delivered only a few speeches, it was an impossible order. Gitteau was so annoying, even the genial Blaine snapped at him. That said, he got along well enough with Arthur and Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison was well-disposed towards him. Storrs was an old acquaintance, although not very powerful. Logan, though, thought him deranged and stayed clear. Whatever small chance Guiteau had of getting something was tossed away in a letter to Garfield where he asserted that Blaine was trying to run the State Department “in the interest of the Blaine element in ’84” and added that he was with the Stalwarts, mentioning Arthur, Logan, Harrison, and Oliver P. Morton. If Garfield was not about to help Badeau, he was certainly not going to help a pest with few connections.

The night Conkling and Platt resigned, Guiteau could not sleep. He thought his friends had been betrayed, and he felt personally betrayed by Blaine. Mulling it over an, “idea flashed through my brain.” He decided if Garfield “was out of the way everything would go better.” With Arthur in charge, the Stalwarts would be ascendant. The idea obsessed him as “the only way to unite the two factions of the republican party and save the Republic from going into the hands of the rebels and democrats.” Guiteau believed it was a message from God, buttressed by two recent near-death experiences. He now had a purpose and asserted, “I acted under an inspiration of the Diety.” Like so many of his day, he looked back to the Civil War. Guiteau had not served, but its shadow loomed over his life. He surmised, “Had Jefferson Davis and a dozen or two of his co-traitors been shot dead in January 1861, no doubt our late rebellion would never have been.” Like John Brown before him, Guiteau, armed with faith, hoped his act of violence would set the world right. What Guiteau missed is that secession and civil war happened not because of Davis but in spite of him. But misjudgment was Guiteau’s most consistent trait.