 |
Politics and murder
By William
Anthony
Henry Kissinger once claimed that the
viciousness of academic politics derives from the small stakes
involved. The way in which personality conflicts overshadow
substantive questions among the protagonists may be a better
explanation. American politics in the decades after 1865 illustrates
this dynamic on a grander stage than academe. Competition for power
among the Republican party bosses highlighted personal resentments
that drove conflicts beyond the bounds of prudent self-interest.
In "Dark Horse," the story of James
Garfield's surprise election in 1880 and assassination, Kenneth
Ackerman combines the elements of a political thriller with a vein
of classic tragedy to show how political quarrels set the context
for murder.
After the upheavals of the
1860s, the public yearned for stability. America had a high level of
political engagement and broad voter participation. Politics focused
mainly on control over patronage appointments and public offices and
vast expenditures made possible by economic growth raised the
stakes. The Republican party dominated national politics following
the Civil War, and rivalry between Republican factions highlighted
the role of patronage as an end in itself while muting the
principled differences in competition between parties.
Along with a variety of scandals during
Ulysses Grant's administration, later proposals for civil service
reform lay behind the bitter quarrels between the Stalwarts and the
Half-Breeds, the two most prominent rival factions of the party.
Mr. Ackerman's story begins with an
argument in 1866 between James G. Blaine and Roscoe Conkling. It
started over a minor point of contention when Conkling attacked the
record of a general whose office he proposed to abolish and Blaine
impulsively rose to the man's defense. Neither man would concede an
inch. What Conkling saw as an attempt to cut him down personally
infuriated him.
Mr. Ackerman notes that
no party leader stepped forward to mend fences, leaving contempt to
fester between two rising stars of the Republican party. Blaine,
dubbed the "magnetic man" from Maine, became Speaker of the House of
Representatives.
A close associate of
Grant, Conkling dominated the Republican machine in New York State
from his post in the Senate and later quarreled with President
Benjamin Harrison over control of appointments at the Federal
Customs house in New York. When Harrison declined to seek a second
term in 1880, Conkling managed Grant's efforts to secure nomination
for a third term.
Garfield entered the
story with the 1880 Republican convention in Chicago where he helped
manage the campaign of his fellow Ohioan John Sherman. Although he
enjoyed politics, he disliked the antagonisms and controversies that
emerged from party strife.
Garfield's
measured tone struck a different chord than other party leaders.
Talk of an outside "dark horse" candidate had circulated, but when
his name arose Garfield insisted that his only purpose was to elect
Sherman. Speculation grew as the convention became deadlocked and
none of the candidates proved willing to give their support to a
rival.
Garfield clashed publicly with
Conkling over his effort to punish West Virginia delegates who had
opposed a measure requiring every delegate to pledge support to the
eventual nominee. His measured speech rebuking Conkling's move won
support from the convention, and pressure grew for him to accept the
nomination as an alternative.
On the
33rd ballot, Garfield won the nomination. He offered the vice
presidency to Conkling's lieutenant in the New York party machine,
Chester A. Arthur, in an effort to mend differences. Conkling
bitterly resented Garfield's role in blocking Grant's nomination,
but Arthur ignored his advice to reject the vice presidential
nomination.
Holding the Republicans
together against the Democratic nominee, Winfield Hancock, required
negotiations, and Garfield brokered a compromise with Conkling that
ensured support from Grant and his friends. Conkling demanded full
control over patronage in New York, including the Federal customs
house which collected 75 percent of federal customs receipts.
Garfield offered Conkling's associate Levi Morton a top post, either
Treasury, Navy, or a major foreign mission, while keeping specifics
vague.
This satisfied Conkling's
Stalwarts, bringing Grant into the campaign on Garfield's behalf.
Garfield won narrowly that November. Had New York supported Hancock,
the Democrats would have edged ahead, and that fact heightened
Conkling's claim after the election.
Settling on appointments during the long
period between Garfield's election and his inauguration in March
1881 revived the old conflict from the Chicago convention. No
president could accept Conkling's terms unequivocally without
appearing to be his pawn. Garfield sought to strike a balance within
his administration, and appointed Blaine as secretary of state to
counter the Stalwarts while insisting that Morton accept a post
other than Treasury. Conkling, who was not appeased by a meeting at
Garfield's Ohio Farm, led opposition to appointments in the Senate.
These bitter conflicts cast a pall over Garfield's inauguration and
early months in office.
Into this scene
emerged the deranged office seeker Charles Guiteau who cast himself
as the Stalwart's avenging angel. Guiteau wrote pamphlets supporting
Garfield's election and resented that he was not rewarded with a
distinguished job afterwards. His role was minor, however, and he
was a deeply unstable man with a vivid fantasy life.
When factional rivalry broke out,
Guiteau shifted from supplicant to stalker and convinced himself
that Garfield was a traitor. He believed that after killing
Garfield, Stalwarts would seize the government and drive out their
opponents. On July 2, he shot Garfield at Union Station in
Washington.
Garfield lingered for weeks
as doctors tried to remove the bullets and cure the infections that
followed. Suffering made him a martyr, while his opponents faced the
full consequences of Guiteau's action even though the man had acted
alone. Conkling and other Stalwarts lived in fear of reprisals for
the shooting.
The event itself shocked
the public. Lincoln's assassination was seen as a unique event
produced by the Civil War. Garfield's murder had no such context to
explain it. The drama of his passing magnified the horror, and along
with the spate of political assassinations in later-19th century
Europe, it brought a new sense of danger to the Victorian age of
equipoise. The optimistic assumptions of 19th-century society and
the sense of America as a kind of arcadia were casualties of
Guiteau's madness.
Guiteau killed the
Stalwarts along with his target, and Blaine never won the
presidency. The amiable Chester Arthur succeeded Garfield and broke
completely with Conkling by instituting civil service reforms that
broke with his past as a machine politician. Poachers make effective
gamekeepers, but Arthur's move dashed his hopes for re-election and
he died in 1885. Conkling's career swiftly declined, and his last
political effort was to undermine Blaine's campaign against the
reforming Democratic governor of New York, Grover Cleveland. The
feud had run its course by 1884, but not before contributing to
Garfield's death and a split within the Republican party.
Mr. Ackerman casts the story effectively
as a morality play in which bitter personal resentments provide the
tragic flaw that dooms the protagonists. That Garfield himself was
free of such sentiments only highlights their impact. Characters in
the drama had opportunities at each stage to choose a different
path, yet they pressed their conflicts regardless of the
consequences. Unfortunately, Mr. Ackerman steps on his own narrative
with misplaced details and asides that distract from the main story.
The result lacks the depth and analytic rigor of academic
scholarship and the vividness of popular history at its best.
Mr. Ackerman has an eye for politics
that few historians share, but his writing strikes a dissonant note
that echoes through the book. While an interesting and provocative
look at Gilded Age politics, "Dark Horse" leaves the reader with a
vague sense of something missing. What does the story mean? Mr.
Ackerman never answers the question despite rehearsing the case in
great detail.
Jim Fisk was said to have
remarked after a scandal during the Grant administration that
nothing was lost save honor. Vanity and ambition left no room for
concern about anything beyond self for politicians like Conkling.
Only the shock of Garfield's murder compelled others to acknowledge
their responsibilities, and therein lies the answer to questions Mr.
Ackerman's story raises.
William Anthony Hay is a research
fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia,
Pa.
• How electricity came to be: its innovators and
their sparks
• Reviving civic associations that are not trivial,
obsessed
• When pacifist ideals were
tested
• How the great powers flew over
Korea
• Considering how two pairs of artists weathered
marriage
• What Ike's son learned
• Drafting history of America's Second Revolution:
Civil Rights
• Living with writers so as to be
one?
• Italo Calvino's autobiographical notes collected
to good effect
• A frustrating look at death
penalty
• Modern religious pilgrims
• What prince and soccer star have in common, plus
British Methodism
• Why God is not superfluous word in a Darwinian
universe
• Winfield
• Indicting sexism and colonialism in West Africa,
unconvincingly
• How Magyars scourged, then founded a nation over
1,000 years
• What was 'right' for Hillary
• How American novelists after Civil War tackled
the matter of manners
•
Scouring novels for facts
• Seeing Genesis as felicitous
whole
• Erich Maria Remarque, his love of cars, sleek
women and his pacifism
• When the Suez Canal was born, hoping to unite two
civilizations
• Missing hard truth about Vichy, but ably
cataloguing its mean history
• Cowboy, impresario and a Holy
geologist
• John Winthrop
|
