Destiny of the Republic (7 page)

Not only did the applause that followed Garfield’s speech rival Conkling’s in intensity, it lasted even longer. The convention chairman, George Hoar, who secretly believed that Garfield should be the nominee, sat motionless and silent on the stage, his gavel within easy reach, as the cheers continued unabated. “The chair,” wrote one reporter, “did not seem to feel called upon to make any effort to check [the applause], and so, much additional time was wasted, until finally a storm of hisses reduced the unruly to comparative quiet.”

By the time the final nominating speeches were given, it was nearly midnight, and the Stalwarts, nervous now that their victory could be stolen from them, pressured Hoar to allow the balloting to begin, even though the following day was a Sunday. “Never,” he responded indignantly. “This is a Sabbath-keeping nation, and I cannot preside over this convention one minute after 12 o’clock.”

This particular Sunday, however, was a day of rest for no man in the Republican Party, least of all Garfield. While Conkling and his men battled Blaine and Sherman supporters in fierce, behind-the-scenes negotiations, and frightened delegates were coaxed, flattered, bribed, and threatened, Garfield spent the day desperately trying to tamp down a growing movement to make him the nominee. Over the course of the day, three different delegations from three different parts of the country came to him, asking him to allow his name to be put into contention. Finally, a concerned friend spoke to Garfield in confidence. “General,” he said, “they are talking about nominating you.” Garfield, feeling his duty to Sherman pressing heavily on him, replied, “My God, Senator, I know it, I know it! and they will ruin me.” To his would-be supporters he said simply, “I am going to vote for [Sherman] and I will be loyal to him. My name must not be used.”

The balloting began at ten on Monday morning. After the vitriol they had witnessed the preceding week, no one in the convention hall believed that their candidate, or any candidate, would receive on the first ballot the 379 votes necessary to win. Neither did they imagine, however, that they were at the beginning of a grueling process that would stagger on for two days, requiring far and away the most ballots ever taken in a Republican convention.

Grant, as had been expected, came closest to the winning number after the first ballot, receiving 304 votes to Blaine’s 284 and Sherman’s 93. Three other, lesser known, candidates together received 74 votes. Little changed on the second ballot, but on the third, two new names suddenly appeared—a single vote for Benjamin Harrison, a senator from Indiana who would become president of the United States nine years later, and another for James A. Garfield.

As the balloting continued, the solitary delegate from Pennsylvania who had cast his vote for Garfield refused to withdraw it, even though his candidate did not give him the slightest encouragement, or even acknowledgment. He shifted his vote to another candidate for five ballots—the fourteenth through the eighteenth—while the Grant and Blaine men fought tooth and claw over every delegate, but then rededicated himself to Garfield on the nineteenth ballot, and never wavered again.

While tensions rose to an excruciating level inside the convention hall, outside, crowds watched the proceedings with equal intensity. Hundreds of men and women, largely Grant and Blaine supporters, but also those who had no interest beyond mere curiosity, gathered in Printing House Square, where Chicago’s biggest newspapers had promised to post the balloting results as they received them. “By high noon, the time when the first returns were expected,” a reporter wrote, “the whole of the square, including the space about the Franklin statue, was filled with an eager throng, who awaited the appearances of the vote with ill-concealed impatience. The sun shown out hotly, and the buzz increased each minute.”

A reporter from the
Boston Globe
, who had been forced to “elbow [his] way through the throng” to enter the convention hall, watched the balloting with growing astonishment. As the results of the nineteenth ballot were announced, he listened with the feverish interest of a man at a racetrack, his last dollar on a horse hurtling toward a receding finish line. “Grant holds his own and gains one,” he wrote, as fast as he could. “Blaine has dropped down to 279, the lowest figure he has struck yet. Sherman gained a bit, and scores 96…. The twentieth ballot follows rapidly. It runs much the same as the others. Blaine loses three votes in Indiana, and the remark seems sound that Blaine is breaking up. Grant gains a notch in Tennessee, which is important, and the vacillating North Carolina delegate happens to swing on to Grant’s aid this time, making a gain of two. The call is over, and still there is no result.” The voting continued for twelve hours, with twenty-eight ballots, but when the convention hall finally emptied at nearly ten that night, the party was no closer to a nominee than it had been that morning.

The next day, as the delegates made their weary way back to the hall, few of them held out any hope for a quick conclusion. They could not have helped but be dismally reminded of the Democratic convention of 1860, which took not only fifty-nine ballots but two conventions in two different cities before it had a nominee—a nominee who would go on to lose to the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. When the first ballot of the day, the twenty-ninth, showed little change from the day before, their fears were only confirmed. The thirtieth through thirty-third were equally stagnant, and the hall was filled with a thick feeling of desperation.

On the thirty-fourth ballot, however, an extraordinary thing happened. As the votes were being taken, the delegates from Wisconsin made a shocking reversal. Their eighteen votes, which on the preceding ballot had been distributed between Grant, Blaine, Sherman, and Elihu Washburne, who had served briefly as Grant’s secretary of state, were now divided between just two men—Grant and Garfield. More extraordinary still, Grant received only two of those votes. Suddenly, the single vote from Pennsylvania that Garfield had chosen simply to ignore had grown to seventeen, which was a serious bid for the nomination and a situation of genuine concern for Garfield.

Stunned, Garfield leaped to his feet to protest the vote. “Mr. President,” he began. Hoar, who was privately delighted by this unexpected turn of events, reluctantly acknowledged Garfield. “For what purpose does the gentleman rise?” he sighed. “I rise to a question of order,” Garfield replied. “I challenge the correctness of the announcement. The announcement contains votes for me. 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 …” Cutting Garfield off midsentence, Hoar responded stiffly, “The gentleman from Ohio is not stating a question of order. He will resume his seat.”

Hoar quickly ordered another ballot to be taken, leaving Garfield no choice but to do as he was told and sit back down. As each state was called, nothing more changed until Indiana stood to give its thirty votes. Two for Blaine, its chairman announced, one for Grant, and twenty-seven for Garfield. Before Garfield could even absorb this news, Maryland had given him four more votes, and Minnesota and North Carolina one each. With Pennsylvania and Wisconsin holding steady at seventeen, Garfield suddenly had fifty votes—still far less than Grant or Blaine, but uncomfortably close to Sherman. At this point, several men rushed to Garfield, begging him to speak, but he quickly waved them away. “No, no, gentlemen,” he said sternly. “This is no theatrical performance.”

When Hoar called for the thirty-sixth ballot and the convention clerk cried out, “No candidate has a majority,” a hush fell upon the great hall. “Instinctively, it was known, perhaps felt would be a better word,” a journalist wrote, “that something conclusive was about to be done.” The Ohio delegation was suddenly surrounded by the chairmen of other delegations, demanding to know if they were going to shift their allegiance to Garfield. Garfield, horrified, insisted that they remain loyal to Sherman. “If this convention nominates me,” he said, “it should be done without a vote from Ohio.”

The votes for Garfield, however, continued to mount. Eleven from Connecticut, one from Georgia, seven from Illinois. “And then,” a reporter wrote with awe, “then the stampede came.” Iowa stood and declared all twenty-two of its votes for James A. Garfield. Kansas then gave him six, Kentucky three, and Louisiana eight. The tension in the hall continued to grow until Maine, before a shell-shocked crowd, utterly abandoned Blaine, its native son. “Slowly came the call of the State of Maine,” the reporter wrote, “and [Senator] Eugene Hale, white of face but in a clear, sharp, penetrating voice replied, ‘Maine casts her fourteen votes for James A. Garfield.’ ”

Blaine was finished, and Sherman, who had been waiting miserably in his office in the Treasury Department, desperately studying every ballot as it came across his telegraph, finally admitted that he was as well. Sitting down at his desk, he wrote a telegram to be sent to the Ohio delegation on the convention floor. “Whenever the vote of Ohio will be likely to ensure the nomination for Garfield,” it read, “I appeal to every delegate to vote for him. Let Ohio be solid. Make the same appeal in my name to North Carolina, and every delegate who has voted for me.”

When the telegram was received, Garfield frantically shouted, “Cast my vote for Sherman!” But it was too late. He could not stop what was happening. The last state was called, and Garfield was left with 399 votes, 20 more than were needed to win. Having never agreed to become even a candidate—on the contrary, having vigorously resisted it—he was suddenly the nominee.

All that was left was to make it official. Hoar, standing before the breathless crowd, shouted, “Shall the nomination of James A. Garfield be made unanimous?” and none other than Roscoe Conkling slowly stood. In a hoarse whisper almost unrecognizable as the voice that had so brazenly nominated Grant just three days before, he said, “James A. Garfield of Ohio, having received a majority of all the votes, I arise to move that he be unanimously presented as the nominee of this convention.”

As soon as the nomination was seconded, the hall exploded in a cheer so deafening the very air seemed to tremble. “The delegates and others on the floor of the Convention hall seemed to lose all control of themselves,” a reporter wrote. “Many of them cheered like madmen. Others stood upon their seats and waved their hats high above them.… ‘Hurrah for Garfield’ was cried by a thousand throats.” The band began to play “The Battle-Cry of Freedom,” and the delegates joined in singing as they grabbed their state banners and joyfully marched them through the hall. Faintly, through the tall windows, they could hear the battery of guns on the shore of Lake Michigan that announced the news to the crowds waiting in suspense outside.

The Ohio delegation was immediately engulfed by a sea of grinning men, eager to shake the candidate’s hand or pound his back. Garfield, shocked and sickened, turned in desperation to a friend and asked if it would be inappropriate for him to leave. Told in no uncertain terms that he must stay, he did, sitting quietly in his seat, looking at the floor and responding with a simple “Thank you” to the hearty congratulations showered upon him from every direction. “Only once,” a reporter recalled, “did he express anything like emotion, and that was when Frye of Maine came up and said: ‘General, we congratulate you.’ Garfield replied: ‘I am very sorry that this has become necessary.’ ” Across the hall, in the New York delegation, another man sat in stony silence. As the celebration whirled around him, Senator Conkling was “an unmoved spectator of the scene.”

Finally, as the crowd threatened to crush Garfield, his friends decided that it was time for him to make his escape. Simply getting out the door, however, was much more difficult than they had anticipated. As crowded as the hall was, the sidewalk outside was even worse. They managed to find a carriage and step inside, but the throng was not about to let Garfield go that easily. “As Garfield entered the carriage in company with [Ohio] Gov. Foster,” a reporter wrote, “the crowd surged around in a state of intense enthusiasm, and shouted: ‘Take off the horses; we will pull the carriage.’ The driver, who at the time was not aware whom he was carrying, whipped up to get away from the men, who had already commenced to unfasten the harness. He cleared the space several feet, but was overhauled again, and the dazed driver, now thoroughly frightened, applied his whip with renewed energy, and, clear[ed] the crowd.”

Violently bounced along the brick streets by the nervous horses and terrified driver, Garfield sat in silence, a “grave and thoughtful expression” on his face. He would not talk about the nomination, or even respond to the congratulations offered by the men seated next to him. “He has not recovered from his surprise yet,” one man said. When the carriage pulled into the Grand Pacific Hotel, where Garfield and most of the Republicans had been staying, everyone in the carriage could see the new york solid for grant banner still waving from its roof.

Garfield quickly made his way to his room, although he knew that if it had offered no refuge in the past, it certainly would not now. The small room in which, just the night before, he had struggled to sleep as he shared his three-quarter-size bed with a stranger, was already filled with six hundred telegrams and seemingly as many people. As men talked excitedly all around him, Garfield, “pale as death,” sat down in a chair and stared at the wall, absentmindedly holding a
GARFIELD FOR PRESIDENT
badge that someone had thrust into his hands.