Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

 

Published by Doubleday on September 20, 2011

James Garfield is most often remembered, if at all, as the president who was assassinated shortly after taking office.  Destiny of the Republic brings the dead president back to life.  This is not, however, a biography of Garfield.  Rather, it is a stirring account of American life and politics during the time of the Garfield presidency, not long after the conclusion of the Civil War, and of a presidential murder.  Garfield’s early years are sketched out in cursory fashion, his (sometimes troubled) relationship with and eventual devotion to his wife Lucretia is covered in only a few pages, and the death of his youngest child receives little more than a mention.  Rather than focusing on Garfield’s personal life, Candice Millard devotes her attention to political divisions within the Republican Party (particularly Garfield’s battles with New York Senator Roscoe Conkling and the vice president he controlled), as well as Garfield’s frustration with the obligations of the office that he had little desire to hold.

The president’s assassin is given nearly as much attention as the president.  There are times when the book has the feel of a thriller, as the ominous Charles Guiteau weaves in and out of the text, inching himself closer to the president.  Millard depicts Guiteau as a con man with delusions of grandeur whose madness was characterized by a growing belief that his plan to assassinate Garfield was divinely inspired.

The assassination occurs at the book’s midway point.  Millard then treats us to a different kind of political battle, a medical drama about doctors who vie for the opportunity to treat the president and who, ironically, become responsible for his death.  Arrogant in their refusal to believe in the existence of germs, American doctors rejected evidence that antiseptic surgical conditions increase a patient’s chance of survival.  The dirty finger and unwashed probes inserted into Garfield’s wound in search of a bullet sealed the president’s fate, infecting an injury that Garfield would likely have survived if left untreated.  The book concludes with an account of Garfield’s autopsy and Guiteau’s trial.

Destiny of the Republic succeeds on two levels.  First, it is informative.  Millard fills the text with interesting facts culled from a variety of primary and secondary source materials, including frequent quotations from contemporaneous news stories and Garfield’s diary, to set the scene for Garfield’s presidency.  We learn enough about the man to understand that he would have made an admirable president.  It’s interesting to note that Garfield, despite his love of farming, was a scholar, a professor of literature and ancient languages, well versed in mathematics and keenly interested in science, the sort of man who, if running for office today, would likely be branded an “elitist.”  Garfield’s speeches condemning slavery and the unequal treatment of black Americans are eloquent and moving; the book is worth reading for those passages alone. 

Second, the book is entertaining.  Millard’s prose is lively.  She captures personalities as if she were writing a novel.  She seasons the narrative with humor and creates tension as the events leading to Garfield’s encounter with Guiteau unfold.  Despite its attention to detail, the narrative moves at a brisk pace.

My sole complaint concerns the attention that Millard gives to Alexander Graham Bell.  Granted that Bell’s life intersected with Garfield’s more than once, and that Bell worked diligently to invent a device that would pinpoint the location of the bullet lodged in Garfield’s body, the full chapter and parts of several others devoted to Bell’s life seem out of place, as if Millard felt the need to pad her relatively short book with filler.  I would have preferred a more thorough discussion of the political aftermath of the shooting.  Millard tells us of its unifying effect on a nation that emerged from the Civil War still deeply divided, but provides few facts to support that proposition.  A more extensive look at the impact of the assassination on the country would have been more germane than the pages devoted to Bell’s life before and after his invention of the telephone.

That criticism aside, Destiny of the Republic is perfect for readers (like me) who want to know about a key moment in American history without being subjected to mind-numbing detail or leaden prose.  Millard’s book is enlightening and enjoyable.  Garfield is a dead president I’m happy to have met. 

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