Prologue

THE ST. JOHN sliced through the last wisps of haze and steamed south toward the Canal Street pier, where a messenger stood with a telegram clutched in his damp fingers. It was the morning of July 2, 1881, a Saturday, and the ship was running late. In the fog the pilot had steered her cautiously, straining his eyes and ears to avoid a collision with another steamer. Now he was trying to make up for lost time. Picking up speed, the St. John churned past the mammoth ice-harvesting warehouses, and then the sheer cliffs of the Palisades, where an advertisement for Drake’s Plantation Bitters was painted on the rock face in letters 20 feet high.

Finally, the island came into view. On the shore, the great trans-Atlantic steamships, their smokestacks blackened with soot, slumbered under towering wooden sheds. Ferries crisscrossed the Hudson, carrying passengers to and from the railroad depots that connected the great metropolis to points south and west. The bells of the ferries clanged fiercely, challenging the St. John to stay out of their way.

The engine thrumming in the belly of the 418-foot St. John had been salvaged from the steamer New World, which had been converted into a hospital for Union soldiers during the Civil War. Propelled by a pair of paddle wheels, one on each side, the St. John was the largest inland steamship in the world when she was built in 1864. She had since relinquished that title, but she still belonged among the floating palaces that operated the overnight service between Albany and New York City. She had gracefully curved deck lines, and her grand staircase was carved of St. Domingo mahogany, inlaid with white holly. Passengers could walk out of their lushly decorated staterooms onto a gallery overlooking the two-story saloon, which extended from stem to stern. A line of Corinthian columns ran down the saloon’s center, concealing masts that extended through the St. John’s superstructure to its wooden hull. The steamer catered to passengers’ every whim, from tables piled high with all of the delicacies of the season to the company of young women who took up residence on board and never wanted for customers.

On this steamy morning, the St. John carried two New York machine politicians accustomed to such opulence.

The boss of New York’s vaunted Republican machine stood six foot three, with broad shoulders and reddish-blond hair. He wore a manicured beard, and a curl he combed onto the middle of his broad forehead. His polka-dot tie was fastened with a gold pin, and he had tucked a checked handkerchief into the upper pocket of his cutaway coat. He wore English gaiters and pointy shoes, freshly polished, and held a sun umbrella.

His loyal lieutenant was an inch shorter, and a thousand late nights of eating and drinking had swelled him to a hearty 225 pounds. His face was florid and puffy, framed by mutton-chop sideburns trimmed to perfection. Unlike most politicians, who tended to wear dreary long-tailed frock coats and slouch hats, he wore a derby over his wavy hair, and a stylish sack coat. Like the boss, he was fastidious about his clothes—sometimes he had his Prince Albert coats, light trousers, and high hats imported from London, and he bought dozens of vests and pairs of trousers every year. The son of a rigid abolitionist preacher, he had left the discipline and deprivation of his Vermont youth far behind. Now he had a five-story brownstone on Lexington Avenue, a taste for expensive Havana cigars, and, his friends noted, extraordinary powers of digestion.

The two New Yorkers were protagonists in a national debate. Leaders of the “Stalwart” faction of the Republican Party, they were vociferous supporters of the spoils system, under which victorious candidates rewarded their cronies—and perpetuated their power—by handing out government jobs. Once in office, “spoilsmen” like the men on the St. John collected “voluntary” campaign donations from government employees, who knew they would be fired if they declined to contribute.

To Republican reformers, the spoils system was a mortal threat to American democracy. Driven by an almost religious fervor, they had become a powerful political force. At large gatherings held in all the nation’s major cities, they sang songs praising reform and condemning the spoils system as an unadulterated evil. Without reform of the civil service, they argued, it would be impossible to curb the trusts that were beginning to dominate the nation’s economy, since there would be nothing to prevent them from buying influential posts for their allies. “At present there is no organization save that of corruption; no system save that of chaos; no test of integrity save that of partisanship; no test of qualification save that of intrigue,” one leading reformer proclaimed. “We have to deal with a widespread evil, which defrauds the country in the collection of taxes on a scale so gigantic that the commissioners of revenue, collectors, assessors, and Treasury officers—at least those of them who are honest—bow their heads in shame and despair.”

Near the Canal Street pier were barrels and boxes of kitchen offal on the sidewalks and heaps of manure in the streets, all mellowing in the midsummer heat. The gutters were clogged with straw, eggshells, orange peels, potato skins, and cigar stumps. The overall effect, even when combined with the savory smells of cooking that emanated from some of the tenements, was nauseating. Wagons and trucks clustered around the wharf as sweltering stevedores loaded and unloaded the vessels docked there. At about 10:30, the St. John finally came within hailing distance. Standing on the shore, Baggage Master Turner cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed to Steward Burdett on the deck of the St. John. Burdett froze for a moment, stunned. Then he rushed into the saloon to deliver the news to the two machine politicians lounging inside.

At first, they didn’t believe him. “It can’t be true,” sputtered the lieutenant. “This must be some stock speculation.” Then the St. John kissed the pier, and the messenger came on board with his telegram. He handed over his dispatch and stood by silently. As the words sunk in, the lieutenant blanched and collapsed into a chair. The boss took the telegram from his protégé and read the news for himself: President James A. Garfield had been shot and seriously wounded at a railroad station in downtown Washington. If he died, the corrupt politicians on board the St. John would become the most powerful men in the United States.