CHAPTER TWELVE

Dark Horse

THE SUN ROSE in a cloudless sky and an easterly breeze rippled the banners bobbing toward Michigan Avenue. Most of the men carrying the signs wore colorful badges, some with portraits of Grant, others of Blaine, and a few featuring the rugged face of John Sherman, stamped in black on green satin.

“Here’s your Blaine lemonade!”

The vendor hawking large glasses of water with floating slices of soggy lemon—“ice cold,” he claimed, and only a dime—found few takers among the singing, cheering throngs that were spilling out of Adams and Monroe Streets. Many were distracted by the newspapermen waiting outside the ticket office, grumbling and cursing in a long line that snaked toward the swamp where P. T. Barnum’s circus had pitched its tents. Chicagoans had been enjoying the exploits of Emma Lake, “Queen of the Side Saddle,” and marveling at “The Leopard Boy” since Sunday. Now the eyes of the nation were focused on the city’s Interstate Exposition Building, ready to be riveted by a production with far greater import: the 1880 Republican National Convention.

President Hayes’s decision not to seek a second term opened the door to a slew of Republicans eager to succeed him. When the delegates and newspapermen converged on Chicago at the beginning of June, Grant was viewed as the strong favorite. Conkling’s old enemy James G. Blaine, now a US senator from Maine, was the leading “anti-Grant” candidate. Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman of Ohio, a former congressman and senator, and Senator George Edmunds of Vermont also had significant support.

Conkling was the leader of the Grant forces and the undisputed star of the convention. He didn’t have to share the spotlight with Grant or any of the other declared candidates because they weren’t there; at the time, it was considered unseemly to compete in person for the nomination. Whenever Conkling appeared in a hotel lobby or on the street, men and women stopped to point and stare at the lordly senator from the Empire State. More than a few remarked that Conkling in the flesh was even more impressive than the newspapers had described him. In trying to rally support for Grant, Conkling had softened his usual imperiousness. He mingled freely with the crowds in the lobbies of the Grand Pacific Hotel and the Palmer House, shaking hands and bantering with delegates and admirers.

The official proceedings began at noon on Wednesday, June 2, 1880. Striding arm-in-arm, Conkling and Arthur led the large New York delegation to the Exposition Building, where half a dozen flags flew from the corner towers and central dome. The doors and gateways of the glass-and-metal colossus, some reserved for delegates, others designated for alternates or telegraph operators, were guarded by stern policemen wearing special red-and-gold badges. Inside, more American flags draped the front of the long galleries and hung from the braces supporting the arched roof. A huge portrait of Washington was suspended over the delegates. Lincoln’s likeness was stretched across the rear of the auditorium, flanked by the concluding words of the Gettysburg Address: “And that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

For several days, the delegates debated committees, credentials, and rules. On one occasion, the squabbling ceased as soon as Conkling entered the hall. As the Lordly Roscoe passed down the aisle, the crowd erupted in cheers. He remained stone-faced, but his cheeks colored as the waves of applause washed over him. He bowed to a few friends and sat down, but a few more minutes passed before it was quiet enough for normal business to resume. Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Prince Leopold, who happened to be traveling through Chicago, watched some of the proceedings from a place of honor on the platform. The prince wore a gray summer suit, carried a cane and a fan, and had “a chin less suggestive of weakness than that of some other members of the family.” He must have wondered about this American senator who carried himself, and was treated, like royalty.

On Thursday night at the Grand Pacific Hotel, Conkling gave a speech expressing confidence in Grant’s eventual triumph. The voting had not begun, but Conkling assured his audience that Grant had three hundred delegates who would stand by him, no matter what, from the first ballot until the last. That was far less than the 379 needed to secure the nomination, but Conkling said the necessary converts would rush to Grant once they realized that no other candidate could possibly muster a majority.

On Saturday, Conkling arrived in the hall shortly after 11 a.m. wearing a light blue tie and clutching a soft felt hat. He offered words of encouragement to his hard-pressed troops and bowed, with knit brows and compressed lips, as his brigade commanders gave him the latest news. It was sweltering, and he fanned himself vigorously. The delegates spent the day voting on more rules and resolutions before breaking for dinner. They returned just after 7 p.m., ready to hear the nomination speeches.

The clerk called the roll of the states. The first state to speak up was Michigan. James Frederick Joy, a railroad magnate and former member of the Michigan House who had been a close confidant of Lincoln’s, nominated Blaine. Next, a delegate from Minnesota rose to nominate William Windom, the state’s senior US senator. Neither speech electrified the delegates.

“New York!” the clerk shouted.

Conkling paused, allowing the excitement to mount, before he unfolded his athletic frame and strode to the reporters’ platform in the middle of the hall. He climbed atop the center table, bowed in each direction, and saluted a friend in the gallery. When the crowd’s roar subsided, the convention chairman invited Conkling to take the main stage. The senator said he preferred to remain where he was. Then for a few moments he stood stock-still, with his head and shoulders thrown back and his left thumb hooked in a waistcoat pocket. His gray eyes were flashing, and his Hyperion curl was perfectly arranged on his forehead. The multitude waited, silent and breathless. Finally Conkling’s baritone reverberated around the hall:

When asked what state he hails from,

Our sole reply shall be,

He comes from Appomattox

And its famous apple tree!

The recitation of these well-known lines, a Union soldier-poet’s paean to General Grant, ignited an explosion of cheers and applause. For 10 minutes Conkling waited, perfectly poised, until the last echoes died out. Grant, he went on, was the only candidate who could “carry New York against any opponent, and can carry not only the North, but several states of the South.” But Grant’s claim went beyond electoral politics, Conkling emphasized. “Never defeated—in peace or in war—his name is the most illustrious borne by living man,” the senator declared. “His services attest his greatness and the country—nay, the world—knows them by heart.”

What about the scandals that marred Grant’s previous administration? These were nothing more than “assaults upon him [that] have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart.” Conkling took a gulp from a glass of water and sucked a lemon to restore his voice. “Calumny’s ammunition has all been exploded. The powder has all been burned once, its force is spent, and the name of ‘Grant’ will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the republic when those who have tried to tarnish that name have moldered in forgotten graves.” Conkling blew right through the five-minute barrier set for nomination speeches. “Time! Time!” Blaine’s supporters shouted from the galleries. But Conkling silenced them with the palm of his ivory hand.

The speech was a triumph. After it was over, one spectator asked Conkling how he had managed to make himself heard over the clamor. “By speaking very deliberately, and carefully pronouncing the vowels,” he replied.

The clerk continued the roll call of the states. When he called, “Ohio!” a muscular, bearded man with a prominent forehead and a Roman nose stood up. Congressman James A. Garfield had come to the convention to nominate fellow Ohioan John Sherman, but he had not written a speech, and was nervous about addressing such a large crowd. Like Conkling, Garfield decided to forgo the main platform and instead mounted the wooden reporters’ table. He cautioned the delegates not to get carried away by the emotional power of Conkling’s address. “As I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in tempest,” he said. “I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured.” Garfield pointed to Sherman’s long experience in public life, and his stainless reputation in an era of scandal. “For 25 years he has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed.”

The crowd applauded Garfield’s speech, but some Sherman partisans groused that Garfield had neglected to mention Sherman’s name until the final sentence. A few accused him of promoting himself, not Sherman. “The sickly manner in which Garfield presented your name has disgusted your friends here,” a close confidant wrote to Sherman, who had remained in Washington. “He has been of no service to you… he was extremely lukewarm in your support. He is a Garfield man.” Garfield, worried that he would be branded as disloyal, recoiled at the charges. He was in Chicago to boost Sherman, he insisted, not himself.

The next day, a stiff gale from the north and sheets of rain swept through Chicago, whipping the flags and bunting to tatters. Because it was Sunday, the convention remained in recess. The pious Massachusetts delegates attended church, but many of the New Yorkers spent the day playing poker in one of the hotels, joined by a few delegates from the South and West. Corks popped and the halls were redolent of tobacco. Some delegates, exhausted by the previous four days, awoke late to find the barbershops already closed, and wandered through the hallways with frowsy beards and unoiled hair. In the conservatory of the Palmer House, the roses arranged around a painting of Grant were beginning to wilt. That night, Conkling and Grant backers visited the Southern delegations to “stiffen the spinal column” of those who might be wavering in their support of the former president.

On Monday morning, the band played selections from Offenbach’s “Orpheus in Hell”—can-can music—as the delegates filled the hall, eager to begin the balloting. Garfield’s entrance prompted polite applause, but when Conkling walked down the aisle, ladies fluttered their handkerchiefs and the Grant men stamped their feet. The convention chairman, Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, banged his gavel and a Chicago clergyman led the delegates in prayer, though only the Massachusetts men bowed their heads. Finally, it was time to vote. The results on the first ballot illuminated the delegates’ challenge: Grant came in first with 304 votes, followed by Blaine (284) and Sherman (93). Edmunds (34), former diplomat Elihu Washburne of Illinois (30), and Windom (10) trailed far behind the three leaders. Grant was 75 votes short of a majority, and he performed surprisingly poorly in three key states. Despite Conkling’s oratorical efforts, only 51 of the 70 New Yorkers voted for Grant on the first ballot. The former president got only 24 of Illinois’s 42 delegates, and only 32 of Pennsylvania’s 58 delegates. When the results were shared with Grant, who was home in Galena, Illinois, he remained silent, serenely smoking his cigar. His wife Julia, fearing a deadlock, urged her husband to make a surprise appearance in Chicago, but he demurred, saying it would be bad manners.

The delegates cast 18 more ballots before taking a recess for dinner, and when they returned they cast 10 more. The numbers hardly budged: on the 28th and final ballot of the night, Grant got 307 votes, Blaine got 279, and Sherman got 91.

The delegates reconvened at 10 a.m. Tuesday morning to try again. On the 29th through 33rd ballots, the vote totals of the three leaders waxed and waned, but Grant placed first each time without topping 309 delegates. The Republicans were deadlocked.

Then, on the 34th ballot, 16 of the 20 Wisconsin delegates switched their votes to a man who hadn’t received more than two votes on any previous ballot: James A. Garfield. Garfield shot out of his seat. “I challenge the correctness of the announcement,” he protested. “No man has a right, without the consent of the person voted for, to announce that person’s name, and vote for him, in this convention. Such consent I have not given.” But Hoar rejected Garfield’s plea. “The gentleman from Ohio is not stating a question of order. He will resume his seat. No person having received a majority of the votes cast, another ballot will be taken.” It was the first crack in the ice.

On the next ballot, 27 of the 30 Indiana delegates—most had been Blaine and Sherman supporters—moved into Garfield’s column. Four Maryland delegates and one delegate each from Mississippi and North Carolina followed, giving Garfield a total of 50 votes. Grant’s supporters remained solidly behind him—he received 313 votes—but his opponents’ followers were uniting behind Garfield. Anchored to his seat, Conkling watched the convention slipping away.

On the 36th ballot, the Garfield wave swelled with each state called. By the time the clerk reached Wisconsin, Garfield had 361 votes. Wisconsin’s 20 delegates held the nomination in their hands. The crowd rose to its feet but Conkling remained seated with his back to the aisle, cupping his hand to his ear so he could hear Wisconsin’s tally. “Eighteen votes for James A. Garfield and two votes for Ulysses S. Grant,” a Wisconsin delegate announced, seemingly giving Garfield exactly 379 votes—but then he wavered.

“Is it in order to correct the vote of Wisconsin?” the delegate asked Hoar.

“You can correct a numerical error, but cannot change a vote,” the chairman replied.

“It is a numerical error,” the delegate said. “The vote should stand 20 for James A. Garfield.”

A tornado of cheering and singing swept through the hall. Hats were tossed into the air “like popping corn,” and delegates rushed up the aisles with their state banners to cluster around the nominee. Men tied their handkerchiefs to their canes and waved them aloft as artillery boomed outside. Garfield’s friends swarmed around him, shaking his hand so vigorously it appeared his shoulder might be yanked from its socket. The band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” then “Yankee Doodle.” When the musicians played the “Battle Cry of Freedom,” 15,000 voices joined in the chorus:

Freedom forever, hurrah, boys! Hurrah!

Down with the traitors, up with the stars;

And we’ll rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

Conkling swallowed his bitterness—or seemed to. When the celebration died down, he was the first to stand up and propose that Garfield’s nomination be made unanimous. “I trust the zeal, the fervor and now the unanimity seen in this great assemblage will be transplanted to the field of the final conflict, and that all of us who have borne a part against each other will be found with equal zeal bearing the banner—with equal zeal carrying the lance of the Republican Party into the ranks of the enemy,” he said. After the delegates approved Conkling’s motion, Hoar banged his gavel and announced a recess until 5 p.m., at which time the convention would choose Garfield’s running mate.

Republican leaders knew hot anger smoldered behind Conkling’s magnanimous façade. The reform-minded “Half-Breeds” had put their candidate at the top of the ticket. But it would be a hollow victory if the man from Mentor, Ohio, never made it to the White House. Without New York, the most populous state in the Union, Garfield had little hope of winning the election. And without Conkling and his Stalwart faction of the party—on the final ballot, 50 of 70 New Yorkers had voted for Grant—Garfield had little chance of winning New York. Clearly, the Republicans had to placate the Lordly Roscoe.

Moments after the convention adjourned, William Dennison, a former Ohio governor, waded through the New York delegation until he reached Conkling. Dennison asked the senator to select a New Yorker to be the vice-presidential candidate, pledging Ohio’s support for whomever he chose. But Conkling, still seething, declined to offer up a name. Steve French and Clint Wheeler, two machine politicians from New York City, overheard the conversation and rushed to their friend Arthur to gauge his interest in the prize. Just months after being battered by the loss of his wife and his Custom House perch, Arthur was inclined to accept this shot at redemption—but first he wanted to consult with the boss.

Arthur found Conkling in a room adjoining the main platform of the convention hall. The space had been set aside for newspapermen, but as the balloting dragged on, delegates had retreated there for private discussions. Conkling wasn’t consulting with anybody. Instead, he was marching up and down the long aisle between the press tables, muttering and gesticulating with a dark expression on his face. The two men met in the middle of the room.

“I have been hunting everywhere for you, Senator,” Arthur said.

“Well, sir.”

Taken aback by Conkling’s harsh tone, Arthur’s face grew flushed. He cleared his throat and paused for several uncomfortable beats before continuing. “The Ohio men have offered me the vice presidency,” he said.

“Well, sir, you should drop it as you would a red hot shoe from the forge!” Conkling snarled. There was a flash of resentment in Arthur’s eyes. “I sought you to consult, not—”

“What is there to consult about? This trickster of Mentor will be defeated before the country.”

“There is something else to be said.”

“What, sir, you think of accepting?” Conkling shouted.

Arthur hesitated before answering in a determined tone. “The office of the vice president is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining. A barren nomination would be a great honor. In a calmer moment you will look at this differently.”

“If you wish for my favor and my respect you will contemptuously decline it.”

Arthur looked Conkling in the eye. “Senator Conkling, I shall accept the nomination and I shall carry with me the majority of the delegation.”

Conkling glared and then stormed out of the room. Arthur, his face shadowed by regret, watched him leave.

When the delegates reconvened that evening to conclude their business, Conkling was nowhere to be found. It fell to Stewart Woodford, the US district attorney for the Southern District of New York, to nominate Arthur for the second-highest office in the land. “In behalf of a large number of the New York delegation, I desire to present the name of one of our most distinguished citizens, upon whose private character there is no stain of reproach, and who, I am sure, will add strength to the ticket in the state of New York; and that is the name of my valued friend, a true man, a true gentleman, Chester A. Arthur of New York.” Arthur won on the first ballot with 468 of the 661 votes cast, far ahead of his nearest competitor. At 7:25 p.m., Hoar banged his gavel and the bedraggled delegates filed out of the hall, their work finally done.

Arthur joined Garfield in a large parlor at the Grand Pacific Hotel, where the candidates formally accepted their nominations and shook hands for two hours, a frenzy of gripping and squeezing that swelled Arthur’s right hand and tore the skin off his fingers. The space between his third and fourth fingers was so inflamed he had to have a ring he had worn for years filed off to relieve his agony.

Some in the parlor were perplexed, and a bit uneasy, when they saw that Arthur still had a Grant badge pinned to his lapel. Publicly, Republicans expressed support for their ticket, but privately many of them doubted the wisdom of including Arthur on it. “The nomination of Arthur is a ridiculous burlesque, and I am afraid was inspired by a desire to defeat the ticket,” Sherman wrote to a friend. “He never held an office except the one he was removed from. His nomination attaches to the ticket all the odium of machine politics, and will greatly endanger the success of Garfield. I cannot but wonder why a convention, even in the heat and hurry of closing scenes, could make such a blunder.”

The Nation consoled its reform-minded readers with a reminder that “there is no place in which [Arthur’s] powers of mischief will be so small as in the Vice Presidency, and it will remove him during a great part of the year from his own field of activity.

“It is true General Garfield, if elected, may die during his term of office, but this is too unlikely a contingency to be worth making extraordinary provision for.”

Dust motes and cigar smoke swirled in soft rays of sunlight under the arched glass ceiling of the Grand Central Depot. All of New York City’s leading Republicans were clustered on the platform swapping convention stories and campaign predictions. The first shouts rang out at 7 p.m. “Here he comes!” “Here’s the train!” Suddenly there was a series of explosions in quick succession—“track torpedoes,” small charges placed on the track to herald the arrival of a New Yorker who had suddenly become a national figure. When the train pulled in, the passengers in the forward cars gazed out the windows in wonderment, not realizing who was traveling with them. The crowd, now numbering roughly 1,500, rushed toward the back of the train. Chester Arthur stepped out of the last car carrying his linen duster, an umbrella, a cane, and a satchel. Arthur grinned at the sight of his friends and associates, but a look of dismay crossed his face when he realized his belongings would prevent him from grasping the many hands reaching for him. Then somebody grabbed the items, and he plunged into the thicket with tears in his eyes. “Three cheers for General Arthur! Three cheers for the next Vice President! Welcome back, General!” Arthur removed his hat. “My friends, I am glad to be home and with you again, and am surprised and gratified at the warmth of this reception, but I am pleased—” A cheer cut him off and then he had to contend with fresh battalions rushing up to shake his hand. After five minutes, police officers escorted him outside to a waiting carriage that whisked him home.

During dinner, eight-year-old Nell presented her father with a bouquet of flowers to congratulate him. The little girl’s kiss caused all the emotions of the past week to spill out of Arthur. “There is nothing worth having now,” he sobbed. He had climbed higher than he ever thought possible, but he had reached the summit alone. His happiness was tempered by regret—and guilt—over the fact that his wife, who had suffered the most from his strivings, had not lived to see this triumph.

After dinner, Arthur entertained a group of his political chums who had come to congratulate him. As the boys rehashed the Chicago drama in a haze of cigar smoke on Lexington Avenue, a Connecticut-bound steamship was groping through a soupy fog in Long Island Sound. The Narragansett was traveling from Manhattan to Stonington, where most of its three hundred passengers planned to transfer to trains bound for Boston and Providence. Those who had booked berths or staterooms had retired to them. The rest of the passengers settled in for a less restful sleep on the sofas and easy chairs scattered around the richly furnished saloon. Only the splashing of the paddle wheels, the groaning of the engine, and the occasional, piercing cry of the ship’s fog whistle disturbed the stillness of the tar-black night.

Suddenly, just before midnight, the ship lurched violently and there was a sickening crash. The lights went out, and plumes of scalding steam shot through the cabin. Terrified passengers screamed as the ship’s officers began shouting orders and calling for aid. The Stonington, a Manhattan-bound ship from the same line, had crushed through the port side of the Narragansett, just forward of the wheelhouse. The Stonington destroyed three of the Narragansett’s staterooms on impact, and when it backed out, it left its bowsprit and three feet of its stem in its sister ship.

On the Narragansett, panic reigned. Partially dressed men, women, and children rushed shrieking out of their staterooms. Many ended up in the darkened saloon, where they shoved and elbowed each other in a mad scramble to reach the deck. Passengers could feel the Narragansett settling lower in the water. They fought over life preservers, and competed for chairs, mattresses, and anything else that might keep them afloat. In the chaos, husbands were separated from wives, and parents from their children.

The crisis quickly worsened. The bow of the Stonington had penetrated the boiler of the Narragansett, scattering burning coals on the oiled woodwork of the second steamer. The coals ignited a fire, and the passengers’ terror spread with the rioting flames. Some people rushed for the lifeboats, and without officers to oversee the escape they cut the boats adrift and “piled into them like sheep.” The first vessel to reach the water quickly swamped.

Stonington passengers massed on deck in their life preservers, expecting their vessel to sink, too. They watched, horrified, as flames devoured the Narragansett and men, women, and children fled the searing heat by plunging into the sound, clutching chairs, mattresses, planks, and whatever else they could lay their hands on. One mother jumped into the water with an infant, only to have it wrenched from her grasp and sucked into the blackness. People flailing in the waves cried out for divine help. Many who ended up in the lifeboats were men who had forgone chivalry in favor of self-preservation. Passengers in half-empty lifeboats plucked women out of the water by their hair, while those in overcrowded boats beat them back with wooden oars. One Narragansett passenger who survived the disaster described the hellish scene to a reporter. “I drifted alongside of a mattress. There was a man clinging to it, and the mattress was borne slowly in toward the burning boat,” she said. “The flames made the man wild, and as we got nearer he let go his hold and was sucked in by the current, shrieking, right into the blazing fire and smoke. It was horrible. I thought my face would roast with the heat, it was so intense.” Dozens of people burned or drowned to death.

A scrawny 38-year-old man with a closely cropped beard was among the Stonington passengers who witnessed the destruction of the Narragansett. “I saw and heard the wailing of the poor people who were in her, but we were utterly powerless to do anything. Our boat was badly damaged, and for two or three hours we had our life preservers on. We thought we were going down, too,” he later remembered. An itinerant preacher, he beseeched God to spare him—and his prayer was answered. The Stonington had sustained only minor damage. It did not sink, and everybody on board survived.

Many of the passengers on the Stonington must have thanked God for their safety, but the preacher believed God had spared him for a special purpose. Before long, that purpose became plain to him. When he fulfilled it, he changed the course of American history.