Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Destiny of the Republic chronicles the life, times, and assassination of James A. Garfield, 20^th President of the United States. In many ways, Garfield is a man who never wanted to be president, did not seek the nomination, did not actually campaign once nominated, and was ultimately president for only 200 days (nearly half of which he spent languishing in a sick room). This is also the story of the barbarism of nineteenth century medicine, on the eve of the transformation of the operating room from a stinking, vile place to a sterilized one and the story of a political era so ripe with corruption that Rutherford B. Hayes stated that, should the Republicans nominate him for a second term as President, he would refuse the honor outright.

I liked James Garfield. I found him to be a fascinating, smart, highly likable man; I was sorry to see him assassinated, all the more since he never sought the presidency and was a very reluctant candidate, at best. Garfield became the president of what is now Hiram College at age 26, then served as a Union general before spending over a decade in Congress.That it was the decisions of his doctors, rather than his assassin’s bullet, that ultimately killed him made me all the sorrier.

In addition to liking Garfield, I very much liked this book. In many ways it reminded me of The Devil in the White City: there is murder and mayhem, but also the undercurrent of ideas, inventions, and glimpses of the future. The parallels between Guiteau and Prendergast are unmistakable, as are those between the centennial fair in Philadelphia (where Alexander Graham Bell first demonstrated the telephone) and the World's Fair in Chicago. Millard does a fine job tracing the interwoven stories of Garfield, Guiteau, and Bell, bringing to life figures about whom I previously knew very little. At times the book is prescient, as on page 184 when Millard describes the transition from an open access White House to one guarded by armed men writing, "the nation had changed not just suddenly, but fundamentally and irretrievable." (The statement harkened me back to my first time in an airport post-9/11.) At other times the book is nearly laugh-out-loud funny, particularly the courtroom scenes during Guiteau's trial. Clearly, if ever a man were insane, Guiteau were that man.

Sheepishly, I have to admit to feeling a jolt of nerdish excitement at the mention of New York City's 1888 blizzard (thank you, Isaac's Storm), and - also nerdishly - took pleasure in adding to my bank of random trivia that Garfield's was the first presidential library created (thanks to his adoring wife and tireless personal secretary) and that Robert Todd Lincoln is the only individual to have been present or in the immediate vicinity of three presidential assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, in 1865, 1881, and 1901).