The Nun

The darkest chapter in The Conjuring universe

“The Nun might be the scariest Conjuring yet.” ~Max Evry, Comingsoon.net

When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together, they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the demonic nun who first terrorized audiences in The Conjuring 2. Soon the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.

The Last House on the Left

If someone hurt someone you love, how far would you go to get revenge?

From the people who brought you A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes.

Renowned horror director Wes Craven returns to the scene of one of the most notorious thrillers of all time in this darkly disturbing reimaging of The Last House on the Left.

After kidnapping two teen girls, a sadistic killer and his gang unknowingly find shelter from a storm at the home of one of the victim’s parents — two ordinary people who will go to increasingly gruesome extremes to get revenge.

Loaded with shocking twists guaranteed to leave you on edge, it’s the ominous film critics call, “One of the best horror remakes ever made.” (Scott Weinberg, Fearnet.com)

The Strangers

Unrated with more pulse pounding terror!

Explore your worst fears imaginable with this shocking suspense thriller inspired by disturbing true events.

After a 4 a.m. knock at the door and a haunting voice, Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt’s (Scott Speedman) remote getaway becomes a psychological night of terror as three masked strangers invade. Now they must go far beyond what they thought themselves capable of if they hope to survive!

Distorted

Lauren and Russell Curran decide to move away from the bustle of the city and into the peaceful oasis of the Pinnacle, a coveted luxury condo that boasts ultramodern design and state-of-the-art features and security systems.

When Lauren starts to suspect that the building has a dark side, she seeks help from Vernon, an investigative journalist who has an interest in cyberconspiracy. Together, they come to believe that the Pinnacle may be brainwashing the unsuspecting residents.

#ChristinaRicci #BrendanFletcher #VicellousShannon #JohnCusack

JUMANJI

“An adventure ride for the Entire Family”~Jim Ferguson, PREVUE CHANNEL

When young Alan Parrish discovers a mysterious board game, he doesn’t realize its unimaginable powers, until he is magically transported before the eyes of his friend, Sarah, into the untamed jungles of JUMANJI!

26 years later, Alan (Robin Williams) reunites with Sarah (Bonnie Hunt), and together with Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce), tries to outwit the game’s powerful forces!

Happy Birthday: July 3, 2020

Brooklyn Queen, 15

Tom Cruise, 58

Corinne Joy, 13

Jason Genao, 34

Andrea Barber, 44

Mia McKenna-Bruce, 23

Party Next Door, 27

Elle King, 31

Matty Mullins, 32

Olivia Munn, 40

Thomas Gibson, 58

Sebastian Vettel, 33

Nathalia Ramos, 38

LaToya J. Jackson, 31

Cole Carrigan, 22

Patrick Wilson, 47

Julian Assange, 49

Sandra Lee, 54

Arlene Foster, 50

Zach Abels, 28

Mike Ryan, 32

Rosie Rivera, 39

Yeardley Smith, 56

Steph Jones, 37

Sara Waisglass, 22

Kendji Girac, 24

Crystal Dunn, 28

Butrint Imeri, 24

U.S. President #25: William McKinley (Part II)

1896 Electoral vote results

The 1896 presidential election is often seen as a realigning election, in which McKinley’s view of a stronger central government building American industry through protective tariffs and a dollar based on gold triumphed. The voting patterns established then displaced the near-deadlock the major parties had seen since the Civil War; the Republican dominance begun then would continue until 1932, another realigning election with the ascent of Franklin Roosevelt. Phillips argues that, with the possible exception of Iowa Senator Allison, McKinley was the only Republican who could have defeated Bryan—he theorized that eastern candidates such as Morton or Reed would have done badly against the Illinois-born Bryan in the crucial Midwest. According to the biographer, though Bryan was popular among rural voters, “McKinley appealed to a very different industrialized, urbanized America.”

Presidency (1897–1901)

Inauguration and appointments

McKinley was sworn in as president on March 4, 1897, as his wife and mother looked on. The new President gave a lengthy inaugural address; he urged tariff reform, and stated that the currency issue would have to await tariff legislation. He warned against foreign interventions, “We want no wars of conquest. We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression.”

McKinley’s most controversial Cabinet appointment was that of John Sherman as Secretary of State. Sherman had an outstanding reputation but old age was fast reducing his abilities. McKinley needed to have Hanna appointed to the Senate so Senator Sherman was moved up. Sherman’s mental faculties were decaying even in 1896; this was widely spoken of in political circles, but McKinley did not believe the rumors. Nevertheless, McKinley sent his cousin, William McKinley Osborne, to have dinner with the 73-year-old senator; he reported back that Sherman seemed as lucid as ever. McKinley wrote once the appointment was announced, “the stories regarding Senator Sherman’s ‘mental decay’ are without foundation … When I saw him last I was convinced both of his perfect health, physically and mentally, and that the prospects of life were remarkably good.”

Maine Representative Nelson Dingley Jr. was McKinley’s choice for Secretary of the Treasury; he declined it, preferring to remain as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Charles Dawes, who had been Hanna’s lieutenant in Chicago during the campaign, was considered for the Treasury post but by some accounts Dawes considered himself too young. Dawes eventually became Comptroller of the Currency; he recorded in his published diary that he had strongly urged McKinley to appoint as secretary the successful candidate, Lyman J. Gage, president of the First National Bank of Chicago and a Gold Democrat. The Navy Department was offered to former Massachusetts Congressman John Davis Long, an old friend from the House, on January 30, 1897. Although McKinley was initially inclined to allow Long to choose his own assistant, there was considerable pressure on the President-elect to appoint Theodore Roosevelt, head of the New York City Police Commission and a published naval historian. McKinley was reluctant, stating to one Roosevelt booster, “I want peace and I am told that your friend Theodore is always getting into rows with everybody.” Nevertheless, he made the appointment.

In addition to Sherman, McKinley made one other ill-advised Cabinet appointment, that of Secretary of War, which fell to Russell A. Alger, former general and Michigan governor. Competent enough in peacetime, Alger proved inadequate once the conflict with Spain began. With the War Department plagued by scandal, Alger resigned at McKinley’s request in mid-1899. Vice President Hobart, as was customary at the time, was not invited to Cabinet meetings. However, he proved a valuable adviser both for McKinley and for his Cabinet members. The wealthy Vice President leased a residence close to the White House; the two families visited each other without formality, and the Vice President’s wife, Jennie Tuttle Hobart, sometimes substituted as Executive Mansion hostess when Ida McKinley was unwell. For most of McKinley’s administration, George B. Cortelyou served as his personal secretary. Cortelyou, who served in three Cabinet positions under Theodore Roosevelt, became a combination press secretary and chief of staff to McKinley.

Cabinet

Cuba crisis and war with Spain

For decades, rebels in Cuba had waged an intermittent campaign for freedom from Spanish colonial rule. By 1895, the conflict had expanded to a war for Cuban independence. As war engulfed the island, Spanish reprisals against the rebels grew ever harsher. American public opinion favored the rebels, and McKinley shared in their outrage against Spanish policies. However while public opinion called for war to liberate Cuba, McKinley favored a peaceful approach, hoping that through negotiation, Spain might be convinced to grant Cuba independence, or at least to allow the Cubans some measure of autonomy. The United States and Spain began negotiations on the subject in 1897, but it became clear that Spain would never concede Cuban independence, while the rebels (and their American supporters) would never settle for anything less.

In January 1898, Spain promised some concessions to the rebels, but when American consul Fitzhugh Lee reported riots in Havana, McKinley agreed to send the battleship USS Maine. On February 15, the Maine exploded and sank with 266 men killed. Public attention focused on the crisis and the consensus was that regardless of who set the bomb, Spain had lost control over Cuba. McKinley insisted that a court of inquiry first determine whether the explosion was accidental. Negotiations with Spain continued as the court considered the evidence, but on March 20, the court ruled that the Maine was blown up by an underwater mine. As pressure for war mounted in Congress, McKinley continued to negotiate for Cuban independence. Spain refused McKinley’s proposals, and on April 11, McKinley turned the matter over to Congress. He did not ask for war, but Congress declared war anyway on April 20, with the addition of the Teller Amendment, which disavowed any intention of annexing Cuba. Nick Kapur says that McKinley’s actions were based on his values of arbitrationism, pacifism, humanitarianism, and manly self-restraint, and not on external pressures.

The expansion of the telegraph and the development of the telephone gave McKinley a greater control over the day-to-day management of the war than previous presidents had enjoyed, and he used the new technologies to direct the army’s and navy’s movements as far as he was able. McKinley found Alger inadequate as Secretary of War, and did not get along with the Army’s commanding general, Nelson A. Miles. Bypassing them, he looked for strategic advice first from Miles’s predecessor, General John Schofield, and later from Adjutant General Henry Clarke Corbin. The war led to a change in McKinley’s cabinet, as the President accepted Sherman’s resignation as Secretary of State; Day agreed to serve as Secretary until the war’s end.

Within a fortnight, the navy had its first victory when the Asiatic Squadron, led by Commodore George Dewey, destroyed the Spanish navy at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Dewey’s overwhelming victory expanded the scope of the war from one centered in the Caribbean to one that would determine the fate of all of Spain’s Pacific colonies. The next month, he increased the number of troops sent to the Philippines and granted the force’s commander, Major General Wesley Merritt, the power to set up legal systems and raise taxes—necessities for a long occupation. By the time the troops arrived in the Philippines at the end of June 1898, McKinley had decided that Spain would be required to surrender the archipelago to the United States. He professed to be open to all views on the subject; however, he believed that as the war progressed, the public would come to demand retention of the islands as a prize of war.

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean theater, a large force of regulars and volunteers gathered near Tampa, Florida, for an invasion of Cuba. The army faced difficulties in supplying the rapidly expanding force even before they departed for Cuba, but by June, Corbin had made progress in resolving the problems. After lengthy delays, the army, led by Major General William Rufus Shafter, sailed from Florida on June 20, landing near Santiago de Cuba two days later. Following a skirmish at Las Guasimas on June 24, Shafter’s army engaged the Spanish forces on July 2 in the Battle of San Juan Hill. In an intense day-long battle, the American force was victorious, although both sides suffered heavy casualties. The next day, the Spanish Caribbean squadron, which had been sheltering in Santiago’s harbor, broke for the open sea but was intercepted and destroyed by Rear Admiral William T. Sampson’s North Atlantic Squadron in the largest naval battle of the war. Shafter laid siege to the city of Santiago, which surrendered on July 17, placing Cuba under effective American control. McKinley and Miles also ordered an invasion of Puerto Rico, which met little resistance when it landed in July. The distance from Spain and the destruction of the Spanish navy made resupply impossible, and the Spanish government began to look for a way to end the war.

Peace and territorial gain

Signing of the Treaty of Paris

McKinley’s cabinet agreed with him that Spain must leave Cuba and Puerto Rico, but they disagreed on the Philippines, with some wishing to annex the entire archipelago and some wishing only to retain a naval base in the area. Although public sentiment seemed to favor annexation of the Philippines, several prominent political leaders—including Democrats Bryan, and Cleveland, and the newly formed American Anti-Imperialist League—made their opposition known.

Annexation of the Republic of Hawaii in 1898

McKinley proposed to open negotiations with Spain on the basis of Cuban liberation and Puerto Rican annexation, with the final status of the Philippines subject to further discussion. He stood firmly in that demand even as the military situation on Cuba began to deteriorate when the American army was struck with yellow fever. Spain ultimately agreed to a ceasefire on those terms on August 12, and treaty negotiations began in Paris in September 1898. The talks continued until December 18, when the Treaty of Paris was signed. The United States acquired Puerto Rico and the Philippines as well as the island of Guam, and Spain relinquished its claims to Cuba; in exchange, the United States agreed to pay Spain $20 million (equivalent to $614.64 million in 2019). McKinley had difficulty convincing the Senate to approve the treaty by the requisite two-thirds vote, but his lobbying, and that of Vice President Hobart, eventually saw success, as the Senate voted in favor on February 6, 1899, 57 to 27.

During the war, McKinley also pursued the annexation of the Republic of Hawaii. The new republic, dominated by business interests, had overthrown the Queen in 1893 when she rejected a limited role for herself. There was strong American support for annexation, and the need for Pacific bases in wartime became clear after the Battle of Manila. McKinley came to office as a supporter of annexation, and lobbied Congress to act, warning that to do nothing would invite a royalist counter-revolution or a Japanese takeover. Foreseeing difficulty in getting two-thirds of the Senate to approve a treaty of annexation, McKinley instead supported the effort of Democratic Representative Francis G. Newlands of Nevada to accomplish the result by joint resolution of both houses of Congress. The resulting Newlands Resolution passed both houses by wide margins, and McKinley signed it into law on July 8, 1898. McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan notes, “McKinley was the guiding spirit behind the annexation of Hawaii, showing … a firmness in pursuing it”; the President told Cortelyou, “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.”

Expanding influence overseas

Even before peace negotiations began with Spain, McKinley asked Congress to set up a commission to examine trade opportunities in Asia and espoused an “Open Door Policy”, in which all nations would freely trade with China and none would seek to violate that nation’s territorial integrity.

painting of U.S. Army soldiers defending a fort in Peking while a zhengyangmen in the background burns

American missionaries were threatened with death when the Boxer Rebellion menaced foreigners in China. Americans and other westerners in Peking were besieged and, in cooperation with other western powers, McKinley ordered 5000 troops to the city in June 1900 in the China Relief Expedition. The westerners were rescued the next month, but several Congressional Democrats objected to McKinley dispatching troops without consulting the legislature. McKinley’s actions set a precedent that led to most of his successors exerting similar independent control over the military. After the rebellion ended, the United States reaffirmed its commitment to the Open Door policy, which became the basis of American policy toward China.

Closer to home, McKinley and Hay engaged in negotiations with Britain over the possible construction of a canal across Central America. The Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, which the two nations signed in 1850, prohibited either from establishing exclusive control over a canal there. The war had exposed the difficulty of maintaining a two-ocean navy without a connection closer than Cape Horn. Now, with American business and military interests even more involved in Asia, a canal seemed more essential than ever, and McKinley pressed for a renegotiation of the treaty. Hay and the British ambassador, Julian Pauncefote, agreed that the United States could control a future canal, provided that it was open to all shipping and not fortified. McKinley was satisfied with the terms, but the Senate rejected them, demanding that the United States be allowed to fortify the canal. Hay was embarrassed by the rebuff and offered his resignation, but McKinley refused it and ordered him to continue negotiations to achieve the Senate’s demands. He was successful, and a new treaty was drafted and approved, but not before McKinley’s assassination in 1901.

Tariffs and bimetallism

McKinley had built his reputation in Congress on high tariffs, promising protection for American business and well-paid American factory workers. With the Republicans in control of Congress, Ways and Means chairman Dingley introduced the Dingley Act which would raise rates on wool, sugar, and luxury goods. McKinley supported it and it became law.

American negotiators soon concluded a reciprocity treaty with France, and the two nations approached Britain to gauge British enthusiasm for bimetallism. The Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and his government showed some interest in the idea and told the American envoy, Edward O. Wolcott, that he would be amenable to reopening the mints in India to silver coinage if the Viceroy’s Executive Council there agreed. News of a possible departure from the gold standard stirred up immediate opposition from its partisans, and misgivings by the Indian administration led Britain to reject the proposal. With the international effort a failure, McKinley turned away from silver coinage and embraced the gold standard. Even without the agreement, agitation for free silver eased as prosperity began to return to the United States and gold from recent strikes in the Yukon and Australia increased the monetary supply even without silver coinage. In the absence of international agreement, McKinley favored legislation to formally affirm the gold standard, but was initially deterred by the silver strength in the Senate. By 1900, with another campaign ahead and good economic conditions, McKinley urged Congress to pass such a law, and was able to sign the Gold Standard Act on March 14, 1900, using a gold pen to do so.

Civil rights

In the wake of McKinley’s election in 1896, African Americans were hopeful of progress towards equality. McKinley had spoken out against lynching while governor, and most African Americans who could vote supported him in 1896. McKinley’s priority, however, was in ending sectionalism, and they were disappointed by his policies and appointments. Although McKinley made some appointments of African Americans to low-level government posts, and received some praise for that, the appointments were less than they had received under previous Republican administrations. Blanche K. Bruce, an African American who during Reconstruction had served as senator from Mississippi, received the post of register at the Treasury Department; this post was traditionally given to an African American by Republican presidents. McKinley appointed several black postmasters; however, when Democrats protested the appointment of Justin W. Lyons as postmaster of Augusta, Georgia, McKinley asked Lyons to withdraw (he was subsequently given the post of Treasury register after Bruce’s death in 1898). The President did appoint George B. Jackson, a former slave, to the post of customs collector in Presidio, Texas. However, African Americans in northern states felt that their contributions to McKinley’s victory were overlooked; few were appointed to office.

The administration’s response to racial violence was minimal, causing him to lose black support. When black postmasters at Hogansville, Georgia in 1897, and at Lake City, South Carolina the following year, were assaulted, McKinley issued no statement of condemnation. Although black leaders criticized McKinley for inaction, supporters responded by saying there was little the president could do to intervene. Critics replied by saying that he could at least publicly condemn such events, as Harrison had done.

According to historian Clarance A. Bacote, “Before the Spanish–American War, the Negroes, in spite of some mistakes, regarded McKinley as the best friend they ever had.” Under pressure from black leaders, McKinley required the War Department to commission black officers above the rank of lieutenant. McKinley toured the South in late 1898, promoting sectional reconciliation. He visited Tuskegee Institute and black educator Booker T. Washington. He also visited Confederate memorials. In his tour of the South, McKinley did not mention the racial tensions or violence. Although the President received a rapturous reception from Southern whites, many African Americans, excluded from official welcoming committees, felt alienated by the President’s words and actions. Gould concluded regarding race, “McKinley lacked the vision to transcend the biases of his day and to point toward a better future for all Americans”.

1900 election

Republicans were generally successful in state and local elections around the country in 1899, and McKinley was optimistic about his chances at re-election in 1900. McKinley’s popularity in his first term assured him of renomination for a second. The only question about the Republican ticket concerned the vice presidential nomination; McKinley needed a new running mate as Hobart had died in late 1899. McKinley initially favored Elihu Root, who had succeeded Alger as Secretary of War, but McKinley decided that Root was doing too good a job at the War Department to move him. He considered other prominent candidates, including Allison and Cornelius N. Bliss, but none were as popular as the Republican party’s rising star, Theodore Roosevelt. After a stint as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt had resigned and raised a cavalry regiment; they fought bravely in Cuba, and Roosevelt returned home covered in glory. Elected governor of New York on a reform platform in 1898, Roosevelt had his eye on the presidency. Many supporters recommended him to McKinley for the second spot on the ticket, and Roosevelt believed it would be an excellent stepping stone to the presidency in 1904. McKinley remained uncommitted in public, but Hanna was firmly opposed to the New York governor. The Ohio senator considered the New Yorker overly impulsive; his stance was undermined by the efforts of political boss and New York Senator Thomas C. Platt, who, disliking Roosevelt’s reform agenda, sought to sideline the governor by making him vice president.

When the Republican convention began in Philadelphia that June, no vice presidential candidate had overwhelming support, but Roosevelt had the broadest range of support from around the country. McKinley affirmed that the choice belonged to the convention, not to him. On June 21, McKinley was unanimously renominated and, with Hanna’s reluctant acquiescence, Roosevelt was nominated for vice president on the first ballot. The Democratic convention convened the next month in Kansas City and nominated William Jennings Bryan, setting up a rematch of the 1896 contest.

The candidates were the same, but the issues of the campaign had shifted: free silver was still a question that animated many voters, but the Republicans focused on victory in war and prosperity at home as issues they believed favored their party. Democrats knew the war had been popular, even if the imperialism issue was less sure, so they focused on the issue of trusts and corporate power, painting McKinley as the servant of capital and big business. As in 1896, Bryan embarked on a speaking tour around the country while McKinley stayed at home, this time making only one speech, to accept his nomination. Roosevelt emerged as the campaign’s primary speaker and Hanna helped the cause working to settle a coal miners strike in Pennsylvania. Bryan’s campaigning failed to excite the voters as it had in 1896, and McKinley never doubted that he would be re-elected. On November 6, 1900, he was proven correct, winning the largest victory for any Republican since 1872. Bryan carried only four states outside the solid South, and McKinley even won Bryan’s home state of Nebraska.

Second term

Soon after his second inauguration on March 4, 1901, William and Ida McKinley undertook a six-week tour of the nation. Traveling mostly by rail, the McKinleys were to travel through the South to the Southwest, and then up the Pacific coast and east again, to conclude with a visit on June 13, 1901, to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. However, the First Lady fell ill in California, causing her husband to limit his public events and cancel a series of speeches he had planned to give urging trade reciprocity. He also postponed the visit to the fair until September, planning a month in Washington and two in Canton before the Buffalo visit.

Assassination

Although McKinley enjoyed meeting the public, Cortelyou was concerned with his security due to recent assassinations by anarchists in Europe, such as the assassination of King Umberto I of Italy the previous year, and twice tried to remove a public reception from the President’s rescheduled visit to the Exposition. McKinley refused, and Cortelyou arranged for additional security for the trip. On September 5, the President delivered his address at the fairgrounds, before a crowd of some 50,000 people. In his final speech, McKinley urged reciprocity treaties with other nations to assure American manufacturers access to foreign markets. He intended the speech as a keynote to his plans for a second term.

One man in the crowd, Leon Czolgosz, hoped to assassinate McKinley. He had managed to get close to the presidential podium, but did not fire, uncertain of hitting his target. Czolgosz, after hearing a speech by anarchist Emma Goldman in Cleveland, had decided to do something he believed would advance the cause. After his failure to get close enough on September 5, Czolgosz waited the next day at the Temple of Music on the Exposition grounds, where the President was to meet the public. Czolgosz concealed his gun in a handkerchief, and, when he reached the head of the line, shot McKinley twice in the abdomen.

McKinley urged his aides to break the news gently to Ida, and to call off the mob that had set on Czolgosz—a request that may have saved his assassin’s life. McKinley was taken to the Exposition aid station, where the doctor was unable to locate the second bullet. Although a primitive X-ray machine was being exhibited on the Exposition grounds, it was not used. McKinley was taken to the Milburn House.

In the days after the shooting McKinley appeared to improve. Doctors issued increasingly optimistic bulletins. Members of the Cabinet, who had rushed to Buffalo on hearing the news, dispersed; Vice President Roosevelt departed on a camping trip to the Adirondacks. Leech wrote:

It is difficult to interpret the optimism with which the President’s physicians looked for his recovery. There was obviously the most serious danger that his wounds would become septic. In that case, he would almost certainly die, since drugs to control infection did not exist … [Prominent New York City physician] Dr. McBurney was by far the worst offender in showering sanguine assurances on the correspondents. As the only big-city surgeon on the case, he was eagerly questioned and quoted, and his rosy prognostications largely contributed to the delusion of the American public.

On the morning of September 13, McKinley’s condition deteriorated. Specialists were summoned; although at first some doctors hoped that McKinley might survive with a weakened heart, by afternoon they knew the case was hopeless. Unknown to the doctors, the gangrene that would kill him was growing on the walls of his stomach, slowly poisoning his blood. McKinley drifted in and out of consciousness all day; when awake he was the model patient. By evening, McKinley too knew he was dying, “It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer.” Relatives and friends gathered around the death bed. The First Lady sobbed over him, “I want to go, too. I want to go, too.” Her husband replied, “We are all going, we are all going. God’s will be done, not ours” and with final strength put an arm around her. He may also have sung part of his favorite hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee”, although other accounts have her singing it softly to him.

At 2:15 a.m. on September 14, President McKinley died. Theodore Roosevelt had rushed back to Buffalo and took the oath of office as president. Czolgosz, put on trial for murder nine days after McKinley’s death, was found guilty, sentenced to death on September 26, and executed by electric chair on October 29, 1901.

Funeral, memorials, and legacy

Funeral and resting place

According to Gould, “The nation experienced a wave of genuine grief at the news of McKinley’s passing.” The stock market, faced with sudden uncertainty, suffered a steep decline—almost unnoticed in the mourning. The nation focused its attention on the casket that made its way by train, first to Washington, where it first lay in the East Room of the Executive Mansion, and then in state in the Capitol, and then was taken to Canton. A hundred thousand people passed by the open casket in the Capitol Rotunda, many having waited hours in the rain; in Canton, an equal number did the same at the Stark County Courthouse on September 18. The following day, a funeral service was held at the First Methodist Church; the casket was then sealed and taken to the McKinley house, where relatives paid their final respects. It was then transported to the receiving vault at West Lawn Cemetery in Canton, to await the construction of the memorial to McKinley already being planned.

There was a widespread expectation that Ida McKinley would not long survive her husband; one family friend stated, as William McKinley lay dying, that they should be prepared for a double funeral. This did not occur; the former first lady accompanied her husband on the funeral train. Leech noted “the circuitous journey was a cruel ordeal for the woman who huddled in a compartment of the funeral train, praying that the Lord would take her with her Dearest Love”. She was thought too weak to attend the services in Washington or Canton, although she listened at the door to the service for her husband in her house on North Market Street. She remained in Canton for the remainder of her life, setting up a shrine in her house, and often visiting the receiving vault, until her death at age 59 on May 26, 1907. She died only months before the completion of the large marble monument to her husband in Canton, which was dedicated by President Roosevelt on September 30, 1907. William and Ida McKinley are interred there with their daughters, atop a hillside overlooking the city of Canton.

Other memorials

In addition to the Canton site there are many memorials to McKinley. There is the William McKinley Monument in front of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio and a monument at his birthplace in Niles; 20 Ohio schools bear his name. There are several schools in the United States named McKinley School. Nearly a million dollars was pledged by contributors or allocated from public funds for the construction of McKinley memorials in the year after his death. Phillips suggests the significant number of major memorials to McKinley in Ohio reflected the expectation among Ohioans in the years after McKinley’s death that he would be ranked among the great presidents.

Statues to him may be found in more than a dozen states; his name has been bestowed on streets, civic organizations, and libraries. In 1896, a gold prospector gave McKinley’s name to Denali, the tallest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet (6,190 m). The Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain back to Denali in 1975, which is what it was called by locals. The Department of the Interior followed suit in August 2015 as a part of a visit to Alaska by President Barack Obama. Similarly, Denali National Park was known as Mount McKinley National Park until December 2, 1980, when it was changed by legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter.

Legacy and historical image

McKinley’s biographer, H. Wayne Morgan remarks that McKinley died the most beloved president in history. However, the young, enthusiastic Roosevelt quickly captured public attention after his predecessor’s death. The new president made little effort to secure the trade reciprocity McKinley had intended to negotiate with other nations. Controversy and public interest surrounded Roosevelt throughout the seven and a half years of his presidency as memories of McKinley faded; by 1920, according to Gould, McKinley’s administration was deemed no more than “a mediocre prelude to the vigor and energy of Theodore Roosevelt’s”. Beginning in the 1950s, McKinley received more favorable evaluations; nevertheless, in surveys ranking American presidents, he has generally been placed near the middle, often trailing contemporaries such as Hayes and Cleveland. Morgan suggests that this relatively low ranking is due to a perception among historians that while many decisions during McKinley’s presidency profoundly affected the nation’s future, he more followed public opinion than led it, and that McKinley’s standing has suffered from altered public expectations of the presidency.

There has been broad agreement among historians that McKinley’s election was at the time of a transition between two political eras, dubbed the Third and Fourth Party Systems. Kenneth F. Warren emphasizes the national commitment to a pro-business, industrial, and modernizing program, represented by McKinley. Historian Daniel P. Klinghard argued that McKinley’s personal control of the 1896 campaign gave him the opportunity to reshape the presidency—rather than simply follow the party platform—by representing himself as the voice of the people. Republican Karl Rove exalted McKinley as the model for a sweeping political realignment behind George W. Bush in the 2000s—a realignment that did not happen. Some political scientists, such as David Mayhew, questioned whether the 1896 election truly represented a realignment, thereby placing in issue whether McKinley deserves credit for it. Historian Michael J. Korzi argued in 2005 that while it is tempting to see McKinley as the key figure in the transition from congressional domination of government to the modern, powerful president, this change was an incremental process through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Phillips writes that McKinley’s low rating is undeserved, and that he should be ranked just after the great presidents such as Washington and Lincoln. He pointed to McKinley’s success at building an electoral coalition that kept the Republicans mostly in power for a generation. Phillips believes that part of McKinley’s legacy is the men he included in his administration, who dominated the Republican Party for a quarter century after his death. These officials included Cortelyou, who served in three Cabinet positions under Roosevelt, and Dawes, who became vice president under Coolidge. Other McKinley appointees who later became major figures include Day, whom Roosevelt elevated to the Supreme Court where he remained nearly twenty years, and William Howard Taft, whom McKinley had made Governor-General of the Philippines and who succeeded Roosevelt as president. After the assassination, the present United States Secret Service came into existence, when the Congress deemed it necessary, that presidential protection be part of its duties.

A controversial aspect of McKinley’s presidency is territorial expansion and the question of imperialism—with the exception of the Philippines, granted independence in 1946, the United States retains the territories taken under McKinley. The territorial expansion of 1898 is often seen by historians as the beginning of American empire. Morgan sees that historical discussion as a subset of the debate over the rise of America as a world power; he expects the debate over McKinley’s actions to continue indefinitely without resolution, and notes that however one judges McKinley’s actions in American expansion, one of his motivations was to change the lives of Filipinos and Cubans for the better.

Morgan alludes to the rise of interest in McKinley as part of the debate over the more assertive American foreign policy of recent decades:

McKinley was a major actor in some of the most important events in American history. His decisions shaped future policies and public attitudes. He usually rises in the estimation of scholars who study his life in detail. Even those who disagree with his policies and decisions see him as an active, responsible, informed participant in charge of decision making. His dignified demeanor and subtle operations keep him somewhat remote from public perception. But he is once again at the center of events, where he started.

Notes

Vice President Hobart died in office. As this was prior to the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967, a vacancy in the office of Vice President was not filled until the next ensuing election and inauguration.

In 1896, some of McKinley’s comrades lobbied for him to be belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery that day; Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles was inclined to grant McKinley the award, but when the then-President-elect heard about the effort, he declined it. See Armstrong, pp. 38–41; Phillips, p. 21.

Until the ratification of the 20th Amendment in 1933, the Constitution prescribed that Congress begin its regular sessions in early December. See US Senate, Sessions of Congress.

Before the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913, senators were elected by state legislatures.

U.S. President #25: William McKinley (Part I)

William McKinley (born William McKinley Jr.; January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States from 1897, until his assassination in 1901. During his presidency, McKinley led the nation to victory in the Spanish–American War, raised protective tariffs to promote American industry and kept the nation on the gold standard in a rejection of free silver (effectively, expansionary monetary policy).

McKinley was the last president to have served in the American Civil War and the only one to have started the war as an enlisted soldier, beginning as a private in the Union Army and ending as a brevet major. After the war, he settled in Canton, Ohio, where he practiced law and married Ida Saxton. In 1876, he was elected to Congress, where he became the Republican Party’s expert on the protective tariff, which he promised would bring prosperity. His 1890 McKinley Tariff was highly controversial, which together with a Democratic redistricting aimed at gerrymandering him out of office led to his defeat in the Democratic landslide of 1890. He was elected governor of Ohio in 1891 and 1893, steering a moderate course between capital and labor interests. With the aid of his close adviser Mark Hanna, he secured the Republican nomination for president in 1896 amid a deep economic depression. He defeated his Democratic rival William Jennings Bryan after a front porch campaign in which he advocated “sound money” (the gold standard unless altered by international agreement) and promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity.

Rapid economic growth marked McKinley’s presidency. He promoted the 1897 Dingley Tariff to protect manufacturers and factory workers from foreign competition and in 1900 secured the passage of the Gold Standard Act. McKinley hoped to persuade Spain to grant independence to rebellious Cuba without conflict, but when negotiation failed he led the nation into the Spanish-American War of 1898. The United States victory was quick and decisive. As part of the peace settlement, Spain turned over to the United States its main overseas colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines while Cuba was promised independence, but at that time remained under the control of the United States Army. The United States annexed the independent Republic of Hawaii in 1898 and it became a United States territory.

Historians regard McKinley’s 1896 victory as a realigning election in which the political stalemate of the post-Civil War era gave way to the Republican-dominated Fourth Party System, which began with the Progressive Era. McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election in a campaign focused on imperialism, protectionism and free silver. His legacy was suddenly cut short when he was shot on September 6, 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a second-generation Polish-American with anarchist leanings. McKinley died eight days later and was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. As an innovator of American interventionism and pro-business sentiment, McKinley’s presidency is generally considered above average, though his highly positive public perception was soon overshadowed by Roosevelt.

Early life and family

William McKinley Jr. was born in 1843 in Niles, Ohio, the seventh of nine children of William McKinley Sr. and Nancy (née Allison) McKinley. The McKinleys were of English and Scots-Irish descent and had settled in western Pennsylvania in the 18th century, tracing back to a David McKinley who was born in Dervock, County Antrim, in present-day Northern Ireland. There, the elder McKinley was born in Pine Township, Mercer County.

The family moved to Ohio when the senior McKinley was a boy, settling in New Lisbon (now Lisbon). He met Nancy Allison there and married her later. The Allison family was of mostly English descent and among Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers. The family trade on both sides was iron-making, and McKinley senior operated foundries throughout Ohio, in New Lisbon, Niles, Poland, and finally Canton. The McKinley household was, like many from Ohio’s Western Reserve, steeped in Whiggish and abolitionist sentiment, the latter based on the family’s staunch Methodist beliefs. William followed in the Methodist tradition, becoming active in the local Methodist church at the age of sixteen. He was a lifelong pious Methodist.

In 1852, the family moved from Niles to Poland, Ohio so that their children could attend the better schools there. Graduating from Poland Seminary in 1859, he enrolled the following year at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was an honorary member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He remained at Allegheny for only one year, returning home in 1860 after becoming ill and depressed. He also spent time at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio as a board member. Although his health recovered, family finances declined and McKinley was unable to return to Allegheny, first working as a postal clerk and later taking a job teaching at a school near Poland, Ohio.

Civil War

Western Virginia and Antietam

Rutherford B. Hayes was McKinley’s mentor during and after the Civil War.

When the Southern states seceded from the Union and the American Civil War began, thousands of men in Ohio volunteered for service. Among them were McKinley and his cousin William McKinley Osbourne, who enlisted as privates in the newly formed Poland Guards in June 1861. The men left for Columbus where they were consolidated with other small units to form the 23rd Ohio Infantry. The men were unhappy to learn that, unlike Ohio’s earlier volunteer regiments, they would not be permitted to elect their officers; they would be designated by Ohio’s governor, William Dennison. Dennison appointed Colonel William Rosecrans as the commander of the regiment, and the men began training on the outskirts of Columbus. McKinley quickly took to the soldier’s life and wrote a series of letters to his hometown newspaper extolling the army and the Union cause. Delays in issuance of uniforms and weapons again brought the men into conflict with their officers, but Major Rutherford B. Hayes convinced them to accept what the government had issued them; his style in dealing with the men impressed McKinley, beginning an association and friendship that would last until Hayes’s death in 1893.

After a month of training, McKinley and the 23rd Ohio, now led by Colonel Eliakim P. Scammon, set out for western Virginia (today part of West Virginia) in July 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division. McKinley initially thought Scammon was a martinet, but when the regiment finally saw battle, he came to appreciate the value of their relentless drilling. Their first contact with the enemy came in September when they drove back Confederate troops at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia. Three days after the battle, McKinley was assigned to duty in the brigade quartermaster office, where he worked both to supply his regiment, and as a clerk. In November, the regiment established winter quarters near Fayetteville (today in West Virginia). McKinley spent the winter substituting for a commissary sergeant who was ill, and in April 1862 he was promoted to that rank. The regiment resumed its advance that spring with Hayes in command (Scammon by then led the brigade) and fought several minor engagements against the rebel forces.

That September, McKinley’s regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope’s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Delayed in passing through Washington, D.C., the 23rd Ohio did not arrive in time for the battle but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it advanced into Maryland. The 23rd was the first regiment to encounter the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14. After severe losses, Union forces drove back the Confederates and continued to Sharpsburg, Maryland, where they engaged Lee’s army at the Battle of Antietam, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The 23rd was also in the thick of the fighting at Antietam, and McKinley himself came under heavy fire when bringing rations to the men on the line. McKinley’s regiment again suffered many casualties, but the Army of the Potomac was victorious and the Confederates retreated into Virginia. The regiment was then detached from the Army of the Potomac and returned by train to western Virginia.

Shenandoah Valley and promotion

While the regiment went into winter quarters near Charleston, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), McKinley was ordered back to Ohio with some other sergeants to recruit fresh troops. When they arrived in Columbus, Governor David Tod surprised McKinley with a commission as second lieutenant in recognition of his service at Antietam. McKinley and his comrades saw little action until July 1863, when the division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island. Early in 1864, the Army command structure in West Virginia was reorganized, and the division was assigned to George Crook’s Army of West Virginia. They soon resumed the offensive, marching into southwestern Virginia to destroy salt and lead mines used by the enemy. On May 9, the army engaged Confederate troops at Cloyd’s Mountain, where the men charged the enemy entrenchments and drove the rebels from the field. McKinley later said the combat there was “as desperate as any witnessed during the war”. Following the rout, the Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies and skirmished with the enemy again successfully.

McKinley and his regiment moved to the Shenandoah Valley as the armies broke from winter quarters to resume hostilities. Crook’s corps was attached to Major General David Hunter’s Army of the Shenandoah and soon back in contact with Confederate forces, capturing Lexington, Virginia, on June 11. They continued south toward Lynchburg, tearing up railroad track as they advanced. Hunter believed the troops at Lynchburg were too powerful, however, and the brigade returned to West Virginia. Before the army could make another attempt, Confederate General Jubal Early’s raid into Maryland forced their recall to the north. Early’s army surprised them at Kernstown on July 24, where McKinley came under heavy fire and the army was defeated. Retreating into Maryland, the army was reorganized again: Major General Philip Sheridan replaced Hunter, and McKinley, who had been promoted to captain after the battle, was transferred to General Crook’s staff. By August, Early was retreating south in the valley, with Sheridan’s army in pursuit. They fended off a Confederate assault at Berryville, where McKinley had a horse shot out from under him, and advanced to Opequon Creek, where they broke the enemy lines and pursued them farther south. They followed up the victory with another at Fisher’s Hill on September 22 and were engaged once more at Cedar Creek on October 19. After initially falling back from the Confederate advance, McKinley helped to rally the troops and turn the tide of the battle.

After Cedar Creek, the army stayed in the vicinity through election day, when McKinley cast his first presidential ballot, for the incumbent Republican, Abraham Lincoln. The next day, they moved north up the valley into winter quarters near Kernstown. In February 1865, Crook was captured by Confederate raiders. Crook’s capture added to the confusion as the army was reorganized for the spring campaign, and McKinley found himself serving on the staffs of four different generals over the next fifteen days—Crook, John D. Stevenson, Samuel S. Carroll, and Winfield S. Hancock. Finally assigned to Carroll’s staff again, McKinley acted as the general’s first and only adjutant. Lee and his army surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant a few days later, effectively ending the war. McKinley found time to join a Freemason lodge (later renamed after him) in Winchester, Virginia before he and Carroll were transferred to Hancock’s First Veterans Corps in Washington. Just before the war’s end, McKinley received his final promotion, a brevet commission as major. In July, the Veterans Corps was mustered out of service, and McKinley and Carroll were relieved of their duties. Carroll and Hancock encouraged McKinley to apply for a place in the peacetime army, but he declined and returned to Ohio the following month.

McKinley, along with Samuel M. Taylor and James C. Howe, co-authored and published a twelve-volume work, Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1866, published in 1886.

Legal career and marriage

After the war ended in 1865, McKinley decided on a career in the law and began studying in the office of an attorney in Poland, Ohio. The following year, he continued his studies by attending Albany Law School in New York. After studying there for less than a year, McKinley returned home and was admitted to the bar in Warren, Ohio, in March 1867. That same year, he moved to Canton, the county seat of Stark County, and set up a small office. He soon formed a partnership with George W. Belden, an experienced lawyer and former judge. His practice was successful enough for him to buy a block of buildings on Main Street in Canton, which provided him with a small but consistent rental income for decades to come. When his Army friend Rutherford B. Hayes was nominated for governor in 1867, McKinley made speeches on his behalf in Stark County, his first foray into politics. The county was closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, but Hayes carried it that year in his statewide victory. In 1869, McKinley ran for the office of prosecuting attorney of Stark County, an office usually then held by Democrats, and was unexpectedly elected. When McKinley ran for re-election in 1871, the Democrats nominated William A. Lynch, a prominent local lawyer, and McKinley was defeated by 143 votes.

As McKinley’s professional career progressed, so too did his social life blossom as he wooed Ida Saxton, the daughter of a prominent Canton family. They were married on January 25, 1871, in the newly built First Presbyterian Church of Canton, although Ida soon joined her husband’s Methodist church. Their first child, Katherine, was born on Christmas Day 1871. A second daughter, Ida, followed in 1873 and died the same year. McKinley’s wife descended into a deep depression at her baby’s death and her health, never robust, grew worse. Two years later, Katherine died of typhoid fever. Ida never recovered from her daughters’ deaths, and the McKinleys had no more children. Ida McKinley developed epilepsy around the same time and thereafter disliked when her husband left her side. He remained a devoted husband and tended to his wife’s medical and emotional needs for the rest of his life.

Ida McKinley insisted that William continue his increasingly successful career in law and politics. He attended the state Republican convention that nominated Hayes for a third term as governor in 1875, and campaigned again for his old friend in the election that fall. The next year, McKinley undertook a high-profile case defending a group of striking coal miners arrested for rioting after a clash with strikebreakers. Lynch, McKinley’s opponent in the 1871 election, and his partner, William R. Day, were the opposing counsel, and the mine owners included Mark Hanna, a Cleveland businessman. Taking the case pro bono, he was successful in getting all but one of the miners acquitted. The case raised McKinley’s standing among laborers, a crucial part of the Stark County electorate, and also introduced him to Hanna, who would become his strongest backer in years to come.

McKinley’s good standing with labor became useful that year as he campaigned for the Republican nomination for Ohio’s 17th congressional district. Delegates to the county conventions thought he could attract blue-collar voters, and in August 1876, McKinley was nominated. By that time, Hayes had been nominated for president, and McKinley campaigned for him while running his own congressional campaign. Both were successful. McKinley, campaigning mostly on his support for a protective tariff, defeated the Democratic nominee, Levi L. Lamborn, by 3,300 votes, while Hayes won a hotly disputed election to reach the presidency. McKinley’s victory came at a personal cost: his income as a congressman would be half of what he earned as a lawyer.

Rising politician (1877–1895)

Spokesman for protection

Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral … Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, “Buy where you can buy the cheapest” … Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: “Buy where you can pay the easiest.” And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.–William McKinley, speech made October 4, 1892, Boston, Massachusetts

McKinley first took his congressional seat in October 1877, when President Hayes summoned Congress into special session. With the Republicans in the minority, McKinley was given unimportant committee assignments, which he undertook conscientiously. McKinley’s friendship with Hayes did McKinley little good on Capitol Hill; the President was not well-regarded by many leaders there. The young congressman broke with Hayes on the question of the currency, but it did not affect their friendship. The United States had effectively been placed on the gold standard by the Coinage Act of 1873; when silver prices dropped significantly, many sought to make silver again a legal tender, equally with gold. Such a course would be inflationary, but advocates argued that the economic benefits of the increased money supply would be worth the inflation; opponents warned that “free silver” would not bring the promised benefits and would harm the United States in international trade. McKinley voted for the Bland–Allison Act of 1878, which mandated large government purchases of silver for striking into money, and also joined the large majorities in each house that overrode Hayes’ veto of the legislation. In so doing, McKinley voted against the position of the House Republican leader, his fellow Ohioan and friend, James Garfield.

Representative McKinley

From his first term in Congress, McKinley was a strong advocate of protective tariffs. The primary purposes of such imposts was not to raise revenue, but to allow American manufacturing to develop by giving it a price advantage in the domestic market over foreign competitors. McKinley biographer Margaret Leech noted that Canton had become prosperous as a center for the manufacture of farm equipment because of protection, and that this may have helped form his political views. McKinley introduced and supported bills that raised protective tariffs, and opposed those that lowered them or imposed tariffs simply to raise revenue. Garfield’s election as president in 1880 created a vacancy on the House Ways and Means Committee; McKinley was selected to fill it, placing him on the most powerful committee after only two terms.

McKinley increasingly became a significant figure in national politics. In 1880, he served a brief term as Ohio’s representative on the Republican National Committee. In 1884, he was elected a delegate to that year’s Republican convention, where he served as chair of the Committee on Resolutions and won plaudits for his handling of the convention when called upon to preside. By 1886, McKinley, Senator John Sherman, and Governor Joseph B. Foraker were considered the leaders of the Republican party in Ohio. Sherman, who had helped to found the Republican Party, ran three times for the Republican nomination for president in the 1880s, each time failing, while Foraker began a meteoric rise in Ohio politics early in the decade. Hanna, once he entered public affairs as a political manager and generous contributor, supported Sherman’s ambitions, as well as those of Foraker. The latter relationship broke off at the 1888 Republican National Convention, where McKinley, Foraker, and Hanna were all delegates supporting Sherman. Convinced Sherman could not win, Foraker threw his support to the unsuccessful Republican 1884 presidential nominee, Maine Senator James G. Blaine. When Blaine stated he was not a candidate, Foraker returned to Sherman, but the nomination went to former Indiana senator Benjamin Harrison, who was elected president. In the bitterness that followed the convention, Hanna abandoned Foraker, and for the rest of McKinley’s life, the Ohio Republican Party was divided into two factions, one aligned with McKinley, Sherman, and Hanna and the other with Foraker. Hanna came to admire McKinley and became a friend and close adviser to him. Although Hanna remained active in business and in promoting other Republicans, in the years after 1888, he spent an increasing amount of time boosting McKinley’s political career.

In 1889, with the Republicans in the majority, McKinley sought election as Speaker of the House. He failed to gain the post, which went to Thomas B. Reed of Maine; however, Speaker Reed appointed McKinley chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The Ohioan guided the McKinley Tariff of 1890 through Congress; although McKinley’s work was altered through the influence of special interests in the Senate, it imposed a number of protective tariffs on foreign goods.

Gerrymandering and defeat for re-election

Recognizing McKinley’s potential, the Democrats, whenever they controlled the Ohio legislature, sought to gerrymander or redistrict him out of office. In 1878, McKinley faced election in a redrawn 17th district; he won anyway, causing Hayes to exult, “Oh, the good luck of McKinley! He was gerrymandered out and then beat the gerrymander! We enjoyed it as much as he did.” After the 1882 election, McKinley was unseated on an election contest by a near party-line House vote. Out of office, he was briefly depressed by the setback, but soon vowed to run again. The Democrats again redistricted Stark County for the 1884 election; McKinley was returned to Congress anyway.

Judge magazine cover from September 1890, showing McKinley (left) having helped dispatch Speaker Reed’s opponent in early-voting Maine, hurrying off with the victor to McKinley’s “gerrymandered”

Ohio district

For 1890, the Democrats gerrymandered McKinley one final time, placing Stark County in the same district as one of the strongest pro-Democrat counties, Holmes, populated by solidly Democratic Pennsylvania Dutch. The new boundaries seemed good, based on past results, for a Democratic majority of 2000 to 3000. The Republicans could not reverse the gerrymander as legislative elections would not be held until 1891, but they could throw all their energies into the district, as the McKinley Tariff was a main theme of the Democratic campaign nationwide, and there was considerable attention paid to McKinley’s race. The Republican Party sent its leading orators to Canton, including Blaine (then Secretary of State), Speaker Reed and President Harrison. The Democrats countered with their best spokesmen on tariff issues. McKinley tirelessly stumped his new district, reaching out to its 40,000 voters to explain that his tariff:

was framed for the people … as a defense to their industries, as a protection to the labor of their hands, as a safeguard to the happy homes of American workingmen, and as a security to their education, their wages, and their investments … It will bring to this country a prosperity unparalleled in our own history and unrivaled in the history of the world.”

Democrats ran a strong candidate in former lieutenant governor John G. Warwick. To drive their point home, they hired young partisans to pretend to be peddlers, who went door to door offering 25-cent tinware to housewives for 50 cents, explaining the rise in prices was due to the McKinley Tariff. In the end, McKinley lost by 300 votes, but the Republicans won a statewide majority and claimed a moral victory.

Governor of Ohio (1892–1896)

Even before McKinley completed his term in Congress, he met with a delegation of Ohioans urging him to run for governor. Governor James E. Campbell, a Democrat, who had defeated Foraker in 1889, was to seek re-election in 1891. The Ohio Republican party remained divided, but McKinley quietly arranged for Foraker to nominate him at the 1891 state Republican convention, which chose McKinley by acclamation. The former congressman spent much of the second half of 1891 campaigning against Campbell, beginning in his birthplace of Niles. Hanna, however, was little seen in the campaign; he spent much of his time raising funds for the election of legislators pledged to vote for Sherman in the 1892 senatorial election. McKinley won the 1891 election by some 20,000 votes; the following January, Sherman, with considerable assistance from Hanna, turned back a challenge by Foraker to win the legislature’s vote for another term in the Senate.

Even after his final run for president in 1884, James G. Blaine was still seen as a possible candidate for the Republican nomination. In this 1890 Puck cartoon, he is startling Reed and McKinley (right) as they make their plans for 1892.

Ohio’s governor had relatively little power—for example, he could recommend legislation, but not veto it—but with Ohio a key swing state, its governor was a major figure in national politics. Although McKinley believed that the health of the nation depended on that of business, he was evenhanded in dealing with labor. He procured legislation that set up an arbitration board to settle work disputes and obtained passage of a law that fined employers who fired workers for belonging to a union.

President Harrison had proven unpopular; there were divisions even within the Republican party as the year 1892 began and Harrison began his re-election drive. Although no declared Republican candidate opposed Harrison, many Republicans were ready to dump the President from the ticket if an alternative emerged. Among the possible candidates spoken of were McKinley, Reed, and the aging Blaine. Fearing that the Ohio governor would emerge as a candidate, Harrison’s managers arranged for McKinley to be permanent chairman of the convention in Minneapolis, requiring him to play a public, neutral role. Hanna established an unofficial McKinley headquarters near the convention hall, though no active effort was made to convert delegates to McKinley’s cause. McKinley objected to delegate votes being cast for him; nevertheless he finished third, behind the renominated Harrison, and behind Blaine, who had sent word he did not want to be considered. Although McKinley campaigned loyally for the Republican ticket, Harrison was defeated by former President Cleveland in the November election. In the wake of Cleveland’s victory, McKinley was seen by some as the likely Republican candidate in 1896.

Soon after Cleveland’s return to office, hard times struck the nation with the Panic of 1893. A businessman in Youngstown, Robert Walker, had lent money to McKinley in their younger days; in gratitude, McKinley had often guaranteed Walker’s borrowings for his business. The governor had never kept track of what he was signing; he believed Walker a sound businessman. In fact, Walker had deceived McKinley, telling him that new notes were actually renewals of matured ones. Walker was ruined by the recession; McKinley was called upon for repayment in February 1893. The total owed was over $100,000 (equivalent to $2.8 million in 2019) and a despairing McKinley initially proposed to resign as governor and earn the money as an attorney. Instead, McKinley’s wealthy supporters, including Hanna and Chicago publisher H. H. Kohlsaat, became trustees of a fund from which the notes would be paid. Both William and Ida McKinley placed their property in the hands of the fund’s trustees (who included Hanna and Kohlsaat), and the supporters raised and contributed a substantial sum of money. All of the couple’s property was returned to them by the end of 1893, and when McKinley, who had promised eventual repayment, asked for the list of contributors, it was refused him. Many people who had suffered in the hard times sympathized with McKinley, whose popularity grew. He was easily re-elected in November 1893, receiving the largest percentage of the vote of any Ohio governor since the Civil War.

McKinley campaigned widely for Republicans in the 1894 midterm congressional elections; many party candidates in districts where he spoke were successful. His political efforts in Ohio were rewarded with the election in November 1895 of a Republican successor as governor, Asa Bushnell, and a Republican legislature that elected Foraker to the Senate. McKinley supported Foraker for Senate and Bushnell (who was of Foraker’s faction) for governor; in return, the new senator-elect agreed to back McKinley’s presidential ambitions. With party peace in Ohio assured, McKinley turned to the national arena.

Election of 1896

Obtaining the nomination

It is unclear when William McKinley began to seriously prepare a run for president. As Phillips notes, “no documents, no diaries, no confidential letters to Mark Hanna (or anyone else) contain his secret hopes or veiled stratagems.” From the beginning, McKinley’s preparations had the participation of Hanna, whose biographer William T. Horner noted, “what is certainly true is that in 1888 the two men began to develop a close working relationship that helped put McKinley in the White House.” Sherman did not run for president again after 1888, and so Hanna could support McKinley’s ambitions for that office wholeheartedly.

Backed by Hanna’s money and organizational skills, McKinley quietly built support for a presidential bid through 1895 and early 1896. When other contenders such as Speaker Reed and Iowa Senator William B. Allison sent agents outside their states to organize Republicans in support of their candidacies, they found that Hanna’s agents had preceded them. According to historian Stanley Jones in his study of the 1896 election,

Another feature common to the Reed and Allison campaigns was their failure to make headway against the tide which was running toward McKinley. In fact, both campaigns from the moment they were launched were in retreat. The calm confidence with which each candidate claimed the support of his own section [of the country] soon gave way to … bitter accusations that Hanna by winning support for McKinley in their sections had violated the rules of the game.

Hanna, on McKinley’s behalf, met with the eastern Republican political bosses, such as Senators Thomas Platt of New York and Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who were willing to guarantee McKinley’s nomination in exchange for promises regarding patronage and offices. McKinley, however, was determined to obtain the nomination without making deals, and Hanna accepted that decision. Many of their early efforts were focused on the South; Hanna obtained a vacation home in southern Georgia where McKinley visited and met with Republican politicians from the region. McKinley needed 453½ delegate votes to gain the nomination; he gained nearly half that number from the South and border states. Platt lamented in his memoirs, “[Hanna] had the South practically solid before some of us awakened.”

The bosses still hoped to deny McKinley a first-ballot majority at the convention by boosting support for local favorite son candidates such as Quay, New York Governor (and former vice president) Levi P. Morton, and Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom. Delegate-rich Illinois proved a crucial battleground, as McKinley supporters, such as Chicago businessman (and future vice president) Charles G. Dawes, sought to elect delegates pledged to vote for McKinley at the national convention in St. Louis. Cullom proved unable to stand against McKinley despite the support of local Republican machines; at the state convention at the end of April, McKinley completed a near-sweep of Illinois’ delegates. Former president Harrison had been deemed a possible contender if he entered the race; when Harrison made it known he would not seek a third nomination, the McKinley organization took control of Indiana with a speed Harrison privately found unseemly. Morton operatives who journeyed to Indiana sent word back that they had found the state alive for McKinley. Wyoming Senator Francis Warren wrote, “The politicians are making a hard fight against him, but if the masses could speak, McKinley is the choice of at least 75% of the entire [body of] Republican voters in the Union”.

By the time the national convention began in St. Louis on June 16, 1896, McKinley had an ample majority of delegates. The former governor, who remained in Canton, followed events at the convention closely by telephone, and was able to hear part of Foraker’s speech nominating him over the line. When Ohio was reached in the roll call of states, its votes gave McKinley the nomination, which he celebrated by hugging his wife and mother as his friends fled the house, anticipating the first of many crowds that gathered at the Republican candidate’s home. Thousands of partisans came from Canton and surrounding towns that evening to hear McKinley speak from his front porch. The convention nominated Republican National Committee vice chairman Garret Hobart of New Jersey for vice president, a choice actually made, by most accounts, by Hanna. Hobart, a wealthy lawyer, businessman, and former state legislator, was not widely known, but as Hanna biographer Herbert Croly pointed out, “if he did little to strengthen the ticket he did nothing to weaken it”.

General election campaign

Before the 1896 convention, McKinley tried to avoid coming down on one side or the other of the currency question. William Allen Rogers’s cartoon from Harper’s Weekly, June 1896, showing McKinley riding the rail of the currency question.

Before the Republican convention, McKinley had been a “straddle bug” on the currency question, favoring moderate positions on silver such as accomplishing bimetallism by international agreement. In the final days before the convention, McKinley decided, after hearing from politicians and businessmen, that the platform should endorse the gold standard, though it should allow for bimetallism through in coordination with other nations. Adoption of the platform caused some western delegates, led by Colorado Senator Henry M. Teller, to walk out of the convention. However, compared with the Democrats, Republican divisions on the issue were small, especially as McKinley promised future concessions to silver advocates.

The bad economic times had continued, and strengthened the hand of forces for free silver. The issue bitterly divided the Democratic Party; President Cleveland firmly supported the gold standard, but an increasing number of rural Democrats wanted silver, especially in the South and West. The silverites took control of the 1896 Democratic National Convention and chose William Jennings Bryan for president; he had electrified the delegates with his Cross of Gold speech. Bryan’s financial radicalism shocked bankers—they thought his inflationary program would bankrupt the railroads and ruin the economy. Hanna approached them for support for his strategy to win the election, and they gave $3.5 million for speakers and over 200 million pamphlets advocating the Republican position on the money and tariff questions.

Bryan’s campaign had at most an estimated $500,000. With his eloquence and youthful energy his major assets in the race, Bryan decided on a whistle-stop political tour by train on an unprecedented scale. Hanna urged McKinley to match Bryan’s tour with one of his own; the candidate declined on the grounds that the Democrat was a better stump speaker: “I might just as well set up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete with some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan. I have to think when I speak.” Instead of going to the people, McKinley would remain at home in Canton and allow the people to come to him; according to historian R. Hal Williams in his book on the 1896 election, “it was, as it turned out, a brilliant strategy. McKinley’s ‘Front Porch Campaign’ became a legend in American political history.”

McKinley made himself available to the public every day except Sunday, receiving delegations from the front porch of his home. The railroads subsidized the visitors with low excursion rates—the pro-silver Cleveland Plain Dealer disgustedly stated that going to Canton had been made “cheaper than staying at home”. Delegations marched through the streets from the railroad station to McKinley’s home on North Market Street. Once there, they crowded close to the front porch—from which they surreptitiously whittled souvenirs—as their spokesman addressed McKinley. The candidate then responded, speaking on campaign issues in a speech molded to suit the interest of the delegation. The speeches were carefully scripted to avoid extemporaneous remarks; even the spokesman’s remarks were approved by McKinley or a representative. This was done as the candidate feared an offhand comment by another that might rebound on him, as had happened to Blaine in 1884.

Most Democratic newspapers refused to support Bryan, the major exception being the New York Journal, controlled by William Randolph Hearst, whose fortune was based on silver mines. In biased reporting and through the sharp cartoons of Homer Davenport, Hanna was viciously characterized as a plutocrat, trampling on labor. McKinley was drawn as a child, easily controlled by big business. Even today, these depictions still color the images of Hanna and McKinley: one as a heartless businessman, the other as a creature of Hanna and others of his ilk.

The Democrats had pamphlets too, though not as many. Jones analyzed how voters responded to the education campaigns of the two parties:

For the people it was a campaign of study and analysis, of exhortation and conviction—a campaign of search for economic and political truth. Pamphlets tumbled from the presses, to be read, reread, studied, debated, to become guides to economic thought and political action. They were printed and distributed by the million … but the people hankered for more. Favorite pamphlets became dog-eared, grimy, fell apart as their owners laboriously restudied their arguments and quoted from them in public and private debate.

McKinley always thought of himself as a tariff man and expected that the monetary issues would fade away in a month. He was mistaken—silver and gold dominated the campaign.

The battleground proved to be the Midwest—the South and most of the West were conceded to Bryan—and the Democrat spent much of his time in those crucial states. The Northeast was considered most likely safe for McKinley after the early-voting states of Maine and Vermont supported him in September. By then, it was clear that public support for silver had receded, and McKinley began to emphasize the tariff issue. By the end of September, the Republicans had discontinued printing material on the silver issue, and were entirely concentrating on the tariff question. On November 3, 1896, the voters had their say. McKinley won the entire Northeast and Midwest; he won 51% of the vote and an ample majority in the Electoral College. Bryan had concentrated entirely on the silver issue, and had not appealed to urban workers. Voters in cities supported McKinley; the only city outside the South of more than 100,000 population carried by Bryan was Denver, Colorado.

Baby News: A Friz Romance

Synopsis

Liz and Franco are expanding their family when she learns she is expecting. But Franco also learns from Kim Nero that she gave birth to his son. Will this news ruin Franco and Liz’s happiness? How will Liz take the news that Kim had Franco’s baby?

Cast

Franco Baldwin: Roger Howarth

Elizabeth Webber-Baldwin: Rebecca Herbst

Dr. Kim Nero: Tamara Braun

Cameron Webber-Baldwin: David Lipton

Jake Morgan-Baldwin: Hudson West

Ayden Spencer-Baldwin: Jason David

Chapter 1

Liz woke to the aroma of her favorite breakfast being cooked downstairs. But she just wanted to hurl as she ran to the the bathroom.

“What is wrong with me?” Liz said as she looked into the bathroom mirror after vomiting. Then it hit her…was she pregnant?

She decided to get a checkup when she went into work at General Hospital. Epiphany would certainly run a test. Liz could always count on Epiphany to keep things on the down low.

So after getting dressed, Liz went downstairs and greeted her Franco and her three boys, Cameron, Jake, and Ayden. How would they take the news if she was indeed pregnant?

“Hey, mom, I made you your favorites.” Ayden said excitedly.

“How sweet it was to make me breakfast, Ayden.” Liz said as she tried not to show her nausea in front of her youngest son. “But mommy’s not feeling well this morning.”

“Are you alright, Liz?” Franco asked her with concern.

“I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m going to have some tests done as soon as I go into work.” Liz told Franco, not wanting to tell him or her boys until she new the truth.

“Alright. If something was wrong, you’d tell us? Right?” Franco asked again.

“Of course. The four of you will be the first to know.” Liz promised.

As the five of them sat down to breakfast, Liz attempting to eat what she could, before they all headed out for their day at work or school.

Chapter 2

Franco went to his studio at General Hospital where he was art counselor for the children at General Hospital, Liz went to find Epiphany to have the tests done.

“Epiphany, I’ve been looking for you.” Liz said.

“Is everything alright, Liz?” Epiphany asked. “You look a little peaked?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing, but I think I might be pregnant and was wondering if you could run some tests?” Liz asked her.

“Sure. Let’s go get those tests done.” Epiphany said as she and Liz walked to an examination room.

“Okay, Liz, I’ll get these to the lab and hopefully I can get a rush on them so you can know the results.” Epiphany told Liz.

“Thanks, Epiphany.” Liz said. “I knew you’d be discreet.”

Meanwhile, Franco was working in his GH studio when he got an unexpected call from Dr. Kim Nero, who had left Port Charles several months earlier.

“Kim?” Franco said after he picked up his cell. “Why are you calling?”

“Can you meet me somewhere private?” Kim asked Franco.

Franco remembered what Liz had told him about his time with Kim while he thought he was Kim’s ex, Drew Cain.

“What could you possibly want from me?” Franco asked bewildered.

“We need to talk.” Kim said as she glanced down at her son.

RIP Michael Landon: A Memorial to Michael Landon

Michael Landon (born Eugene Maurice Orowitz; October 31, 1936 – July 1, 1991) was an American actor, writer, director, and producer. He is known for his roles as Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza (1959–1973), Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie (1974–1983), and Jonathan Smith in Highway to Heaven (1984–1989). Landon appeared on the cover of TV Guide 22 times, second only to Lucille Ball.

Early life

Landon was born Eugene Maurice Orowitz on October 31, 1936 in Forest Hills, a neighborhood of Queens, New York. His parents were Peggy (née O’Neill; a dancer and comedian) and Eli Maurice Orowitz. His father was Jewish, and his mother was Roman Catholic. Eugene was the Orowitz family’s second child; their daughter, Evelyn, was born three years earlier, in 1933. In 1941, when Landon was four years old, he and his family moved to the Philadelphia suburb of Collingswood, New Jersey. He attended and celebrated his Bar Mitzvah at Temple Beth Shalom. His family recalls that Landon “went through a lot of hassle studying for the big event, which included bicycling to a nearby town every day in order to learn how to read Hebrew and recite prayers.”

During his childhood, Landon was constantly worrying about his mother attempting suicide. On a family beach vacation his mother tried to drown herself, but Michael rescued her. Shortly after the attempt, his mother acted as if nothing happened and a few minutes later, Michael vomited. He said that it was the worst experience of his life. Stress overload from the suicide attempts of his mother caused Landon to battle the childhood problem of bedwetting, which was documented in the unauthorized biography Michael Landon: His Triumph and Tragedy. His mother put his wet sheets on display outside his window for all to see. He ran home every day and tried to remove them before his classmates could see.

Landon attended Collingswood High School and was an excellent javelin thrower, with his 193 ft 4 in (58.93 m) toss in 1954 being the longest throw by a high schooler in the United States that year. This earned him an athletic scholarship to the University of Southern California, but he subsequently tore his shoulder ligaments, putting an end to his days as a college athlete and as a student. Landon considered show-business and served as an attendant at a service gas station opposite the studios of Warner Bros. He was eventually noticed by Bob Raison, a local agent. Following advice, Landon changed his surname, selecting a new one from a phone book.

Career

Early work

Landon’s first starring appearance was on the television series Telephone Time, in the episode “The Mystery of Casper Hauser” (1956) as the title character. Other parts came: movie roles in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Maracaibo (1958), High School Confidential (1958), the notorious God’s Little Acre (1958), and The Legend of Tom Dooley (1959), as well as many roles on television, such as Crossroads (three episodes), The Restless Gun (pilot episode aired on Schlitz Playhouse of Stars), Sheriff of Cochise (in “Human Bomb”), U.S. Marshal (as Don Sayers in “The Champ”), Crusader, Frontier Doctor, The Rifleman (in “End of a Young Gun”, 1958), The Adventures of Jim Bowie, Johnny Staccato, Wire Service, General Electric Theater, The Court of Last Resort, State Trooper (two episodes), Tales of Wells Fargo (Three episodes), The Texan (in the 1958 episode “The Hemp Tree”), The Tall Man, Tombstone Territory (in the episodes “The Man From Brewster” (credited as Tom Landon), with John Carradine and “Rose of the Rio Bravo”, with Kathleen Nolan), Trackdown (two 1958 episodes), and Wanted: Dead or Alive, starring Steve McQueen (in episodes “The Martin Poster”, 1958, and “The Legend”, 1959). Landon also appeared in at least 2 episodes of Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater including “Gift from a Gunman” in 1957 and “Living is a Lonely Thing” in 1959.

Landon can be seen in an uncredited speaking role as a cavalry trooper in a 1956 episode of the ABC/Warner Bros. television series Cheyenne, an episode titled “Decision.” Two years later, Landon returned to that same series in “The White Warrior”. He was then cast as White Hawk a.k.a. Alan Horn, a young white man who, like Cheyenne Bodie, was raised by Indians after the slaughter of his parents. White Hawk rises to the occasion to help Cheyenne as he heads a wagon train to California amid the threat of the Apaches.

45 rpm record singles

In 1957, Candlelight Records released a Michael Landon single “Gimme a Little Kiss (Will “Ya” Huh)”/ “Be Patient With Me” during the height of his notoriety for his role in the film I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Some copies show the artist credited as the “Teenage Werewolf” rather than as Michael Landon. In 1962, both the A- and B-side of the record were re-released on the Fono-Graf label that included a picture sleeve of Landon’s then-current role on Bonanza as Little Joe Cartwright. In 1964, RCA Victor Records released another Landon single, “Linda Is Lonesome”/”Without You”. All of Landon’s singles have since been issued on compact disc by Bear Family Records as part of a Bonanza various artists compilation.

Bonanza

In 1959, at the age of 22, Landon began his first starring TV role as Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza, one of the first TV series to be broadcast in color. Also starring on the show were Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, and Dan Blocker. During Bonanza’s sixth season (1964–1965), the show topped the Nielsen ratings and remained number one for three years.

Receiving more fan mail than any other cast member, Landon negotiated with executive producer David Dortort and NBC to write and direct some episodes. In 1962, Landon wrote his first script. In 1968, Landon directed his first episode. In 1993, TV Guide listed Little Joe’s September 1972 two-hour wedding episode (“Forever”) as one of TV’s most memorable specials. Landon’s script recalled Little Joe’s brother, Hoss, who was initially the story’s groom, before Dan Blocker’s death. During the final season, the ratings declined, and NBC canceled Bonanza in November 1972. The last episode aired on January 16, 1973.

Along with Lorne Greene and Victor Sen Yung, Landon appeared in all 14 seasons of the series. Landon was loyal to many of his Bonanza associates including producer Kent McCray, director William F. Claxton, and composer David Rose, who remained with him throughout Bonanza as well as Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven.

Little House on the Prairie

The year after Bonanza was canceled, Landon went on to star as Charles Ingalls in the pilot of what became another very successful television series, Little House on the Prairie, again for NBC. The show was taken from a 1935 book written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose character in the show was played by nine-year-old actress Melissa Gilbert. In addition to Gilbert, two other unknown actresses also starred on the show: Melissa Sue Anderson, who appeared as Mary Ingalls, the oldest daughter in the Ingalls family, and Karen Grassle as Charles’ wife, Caroline. Landon served as executive producer, writer, and director of Little House. The show, a success in its first season, became Landon’s second-longest running series.

The show was nominated for several Emmy and Golden Globe awards. After eight seasons, Little House was retooled by NBC in 1982 as Little House: A New Beginning, which focused on the Wilder family and the Walnut Grove community. Though Landon remained the show’s executive producer, director and writer, A New Beginning did not feature Charles and Caroline Ingalls. A New Beginning was actually the final chapter of Little House, as the series ended in 1983. The following year, three made-for-television movies aired.

Melissa Gilbert said of her on- and off-screen chemistry with Landon, “He was very much like a ‘second father’ to me. My own father passed away when I was 11, so, without really officially announcing it, Michael really stepped in.” When not working on the Little House set, Gilbert spent most of the weekends visiting Landon’s real-life family. She once said, “The house was huge. We ran like banshees through that house, and Mike would hide behind doorways and jump out and scare us.” In a 2015 interview, Gilbert said of Landon, “He gave me so much advice…the overall idea that he pounded into me, from a little girl, into my brain was that nothing’s more important than ‘Home & Family’; no success, no career, no achievements, no accomplishments, nothing’s more important than loving the people you love and contributing to a community. Though we were working, really, really hard, we were ‘Not Saving The World’, one episode of television at a time, we’re just entertaining people and there are more important things to do…. and have fun; no matter what.”

Highway to Heaven

After producing both “Little House” and later the Father Murphy TV series, Landon starred in another successful program. In Highway to Heaven, he played a probationary angel (who named himself Jonathan Smith) whose job was to help people in order to earn his wings. His co-star on the show was Victor French (who had previously co-starred on Landon’s Little House on the Prairie) as ex-cop Mark Gordon. On Highway, Landon served as executive producer, writer, and director. Highway to Heaven was the only show throughout his long career in television that he owned outright.

By 1985, prior to hiring his son, Michael Landon Jr., as a member of his camera crew, he also brought real-life cancer patients and disabled people to the set. His decision to work with disabled people led him to hire a couple of adults with disabilities to write episodes for Highway to Heaven. By season four, Highway dropped out of the Nielsen top 30, and in June 1988, NBC announced that the series would return for an abbreviated fifth season, which would be its last. Its final episodes were filmed in the fall of 1988. One aired in September, two in December, one in March 1989, and the remainder aired on Fridays from June to August. Co-star French would not live to see Highway’s series finale make it to air; he died of advanced lung cancer on June 15, 1989, the disease which was only diagnosed two months before. Landon invited his youngest daughter, Jennifer Landon, to take part in the final episode.

Other projects

In 1973, Landon was an episode director and writer for the short-lived NBC romantic anthology series Love Story. In 1982, he co-produced an NBC “true story” television movie, Love Is Forever, starring himself and Laura Gemser (who was credited as Moira Chen), about Australian photojournalist John Everingham’s successful attempt to scuba dive under the Mekong to rescue his lover from communist-ruled Laos in 1977. The real Everingham was cast as an extra in the film.

Sam’s Son was a 1984 coming-of-age feature film written and directed by Landon and loosely based on his early life. The film stars Timothy Patrick Murphy, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Hallie Todd, and James Karen. Karen previously worked for Landon in the made-for-television film Little House: The Last Farewell.

After the cancellation of Highway to Heaven and before his move to CBS, Landon wrote and directed the teleplay Where Pigeons Go to Die. Based on a novel of the same name, the film starred Art Carney and was nominated for two Emmy awards.

Up through the run of Highway to Heaven, all of Landon’s television programs were broadcast on NBC, a relationship of which lasted thirty consecutive years with the network. After the cancellation of Highway and due to a fallout with those within NBC’s upper management, he moved to CBS and in 1991 starred in a two-hour pilot called Us. Us was meant to be another series for Landon but, with his diagnosis on April 5 of pancreatic cancer, the show never aired beyond the pilot.

Landon also appeared as a celebrity panelist on the premiere week of Match Game on CBS.

Personal life

Landon was married three times, and father to nine children.

Dodie Levy-Fraser (married 1956; divorced 1962)

Mark Fraser Landon, born 1948 (adopted; Dodie’s biological son), died 2009

Josh Fraser Landon, born 1960 (adopted as infant)

Marjorie Lynn Noe (married 1963; divorced 1982)

Cheryl Lynn Landon (born Cheryl Ann Pontrelli in 1953), Lynn’s daughter from her first marriage; she was nine when her mother and Landon married.

Leslie Ann Landon, born 1962.

Michael Landon Jr., born 1964.

Shawna Leigh Landon, born 1971.

Christopher Beau Landon, born 1975.

Cindy Clerico (married 1983), a makeup artist on Little House on the Prairie

Jennifer Rachel Landon, born 1983.

Sean Matthew Landon, born 1986.

In February 1959, Landon’s father succumbed to a heart attack. In 1973, his eldest daughter, Cheryl, was involved in a serious car collision just outside Tucson, Arizona, while a student at the University of Arizona. Cheryl Landon was the sole survivor out of four involved in the collision. She was hospitalized with serious injuries and remained in a coma for days. Landon’s mother, Peggy, died in March 1981.

Landon admitted to being a chain smoker and heavy drinker.

Illness and death

On April 2, 1991, Landon began to suffer from a severe headache while he was on a skiing vacation in Utah. On April 5, 1991, he learned that he had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer known as exocrine adenocarcinoma, which had begun to impact the tissues and blood vessels around the pancreas. The cancer was inoperable and terminal. On May 9, 1991, he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to speak about the cancer and condemn the tabloid press for its sensational headlines and inaccurate stories, including the claim that he and his wife were trying to have another child. During his appearance, Landon pledged to fight the disease and asked his fans to pray for him. On May 21, 1991, he underwent successful surgery for a near-fatal blood clot in his left leg. In June 1991, he appeared on the cover of Life Magazine after granting the periodical an exclusive private interview about his life, his family, and his struggle to live. On July 1, 1991, at age 54, Landon died in Malibu, California. Landon was interred in a private family mausoleum at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, in Culver City, California. Landon’s headstone reads, “He seized life with joy. He gave to life generously. He leaves a legacy of love and laughter.” The remains of his son, Mark, were also interred there upon his death in May 2009.

Legacy

A community building at Malibu’s Bluffs Park was named “The Michael Landon Center” following the actor’s death. Landon’s son, Michael Jr., produced a memorial special called Michael Landon: Memories with Laughter and Love, featuring the actor’s family, friends and co-stars: Bonanza co-star David Canary said that one word that described Landon was “fearless” in his dealings with network brass. Melissa Gilbert, who played his daughter on Little House said that the actor made her feel “incredibly safe” and that he was “paternal”. Often cited on the special was Landon’s bizarre sense of humor, which included having toads leap from his mouth and dressing as a superhero to visit a pizza parlor.

In 1991, during Landon’s final Tonight Show appearance, Johnny Carson related how the actor took him back to a restaurant the two had dined at previously. Carson had been led to believe he accidentally ran over the owner’s cat in the parking lot during their first visit. When sitting down to eat the second time, Carson discovered that Landon had helped create a fake menu of dinner items featuring cat metaphors.

A made-for-TV movie, Michael Landon, the Father I Knew, co-written and directed by his son Michael Jr., aired on CBS in May 1999. John Schneider starred in the title role as Michael Landon, with Cheryl Ladd as Lynn Noe and Joel Berti as Michael Landon Jr. The biopic detailed, from Michael Jr’s point of view, the personal emotional trauma he endured during his parents’ divorce and his father’s premature death. The movie spanned a timeline from the 1960s through the early 1990s.

A plaque and small playground referred to as the “Little Treehouse on the Prairie” was erected in Knights Park, a central park in Landon’s hometown of Collingswood. In 2011, the plaque was removed from the park by the borough and was later given to a local newspaper by an unnamed person. According to the Collingswood, NJ website, the plaque was removed during a fall cleanup with plans to return it to a safer location. The plaque was reinstated next to a bench in a safer location the following summer.

Happy Birthday: July 1, 2020

Jack Avery, 21

Brynn Rumfallo, 17

Princess Diana (1961-1997)

Tate McRae, 17

Raini Rodriguez, 27

Meredith Mickelson, 21

FaZe Sway, 17

Storm Reid, 17

Missy Elliott, 49

TaeYong, 25

Chosen Jacobs, 19

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 29

Pamela Anderson, 53

Plies, 44

Amy Cimorelli, 25

Byron Langley, 27

Chloe Bailey, 22

Liv Tyler, 43

Agnez Mo, 34

Sebastian Danzig, 28

Young B, 29

Debbie Harry, 75

Hilarie Burton, 38

Kolton Stewart, 21

Daniel Ricciardo, 31

Ahn Jae-hyun, 33

Hollie Steel, 22

Adam Bartashesky, 28

Olivia de Havilland, 104

Dan Ackroyd, 68

U.S. President #23: Benjamin Harrison (Part II)

Native American policy

During Harrison’s administration, the Lakota Sioux, previously confined to reservations in South Dakota, grew restive under the influence of Wovoka, a medicine man, who encouraged them to participate in a spiritual movement called the Ghost Dance. Many in Washington did not understand the predominantly religious nature of the Ghost Dance, and thought it was a militant movement being used to rally Native Americans against the government. On December 29, 1890, troops from the Seventh Cavalry clashed with the Sioux at Wounded Knee. The result was a massacre of at least 146 Sioux, including many women and children; the dead Sioux were buried in a mass grave. In reaction Harrison directed Major General Nelson A. Miles to investigate and ordered 3500 federal troops to South Dakota; the uprising was brought to an end. Wounded Knee is considered the last major American Indian battle in the 19th century. Harrison’s general policy on American Indians was to encourage assimilation into white society and, despite the massacre, he believed the policy to have been generally successful. This policy, known as the allotment system and embodied in the Dawes Act, was favored by liberal reformers at the time, but eventually proved detrimental to American Indians as they sold most of their land at low prices to white speculators.

Technology and naval modernization

During Harrison’s time in office, the United States was continuing to experience advances in science and technology. Harrison was the earliest president whose voice is known to be preserved. That About this sound thirty-six-second recording was originally made on a wax phonograph cylinder in 1889 by Gianni Bettini. Harrison also had electricity installed in the White House for the first time by Edison General Electric Company, but he and his wife would not touch the light switches for fear of electrocution and would often go to sleep with the lights on.

Over the course of his administration, Harrison marshaled the country’s technology to clothe the nation with a credible naval power. When he took office there were only two commissioned warships in the Navy. In his inaugural address he said, “construction of a sufficient number of warships and their necessary armaments should progress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfection.” Harrison’s Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy spearheaded the rapid construction of vessels, and within a year congressional approval was obtained for building of the warships Indiana, Texas, Oregon, and Columbia. By 1898, with the help of the Carnegie Corporation, no less than ten modern warships, including steel hulls and greater displacements and armaments, had transformed the United States into a legitimate naval power. Seven of these had begun during the Harrison term.

Foreign policy

Harrison and Secretary of State Blaine were often not the most cordial of friends, but harmonized in an aggressive foreign policy and commercial reciprocity with other nations. Blaine’s persistent medical problems warranted more of a hands-on effort by Harrison in the conduct of foreign policy. In San Francisco, while on tour of the United States in 1891, Harrison proclaimed that the United States was in a “new epoch” of trade and that the expanding navy would protect oceanic shipping and increase American influence and prestige abroad. The First International Conference of American States met in Washington in 1889; Harrison set an aggressive agenda including customs and currency integration and named a bipartisan delegation to the conference, led by John B. Henderson and Andrew Carnegie. The conference failed to achieve any diplomatic breakthrough, due in large part to an atmosphere of suspicion fostered by the Argentinian delegation. It did succeed in establishing an information center that became the Pan American Union. In response to the diplomatic bust, Harrison and Blaine pivoted diplomatically and initiated a crusade for tariff reciprocity with Latin American nations; the Harrison administration concluded eight reciprocity treaties among these countries. On another front, Harrison sent Frederick Douglass as ambassador to Haiti, but failed in his attempts to establish a naval base there.

In 1889, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the German Empire were locked in a dispute over control of the Samoan Islands. Historian George H. Ryden’s research indicates Harrison played a key role in determining the status of this Pacific outpost by taking a firm stand on every aspect of Samoa conference negotiations; this included selection of the local ruler, refusal to allow an indemnity for Germany, as well as the establishment of a three power protectorate, a first for the U.S.. These arrangements facilitated the future dominant power of the U.S. in the Pacific; Secretary of State Blaine was absent due to complication of lumbago.

European embargo of U.S. pork

Throughout the 1880s various European countries had imposed a ban on importation of United States pork out of an unconfirmed concern of trichinosis; at issue was over one billion pounds of pork products with a value of $80 million annually (equivalent to $2.3 billion in 2019). Harrison engaged Whitelaw Reid, minister to France, and William Walter Phelps, minister to Germany, to restore these exports for the country without delay. Harrison also successfully asked the congress to enact the Meat Inspection Act to eliminate the accusations of product compromise. The president also partnered with Agriculture Secretary Rusk to threaten Germany with retaliation – by initiating an embargo in the U.S. against Germany’s highly demanded beet sugar. By September 1891 Germany relented, and was soon followed by Denmark, France and Austria-Hungary.

Crises in Aleutian Islands and Chile

The first international crisis Harrison faced arose from disputed fishing rights on the Alaskan coast. Canada claimed fishing and sealing rights around many of the Aleutian Islands, in violation of U.S. law. As a result, the United States Navy seized several Canadian ships. In 1891, the administration began negotiations with the British that would eventually lead to a compromise over fishing rights after international arbitration, with the British government paying compensation in 1898.

In 1891, a diplomatic crisis emerged in Chile, otherwise known as the Baltimore Crisis. The American minister to Chile, Patrick Egan, granted asylum to Chileans who were seeking refuge during the 1891 Chilean Civil War. Egan, previously a militant Irish immigrant to the U.S., was motivated by a personal desire to thwart Great Britain’s influence in Chile; his action increased tensions between Chile and the United States, which began in the early 1880s when Secretary Blaine had alienated the Chileans in the War of the Pacific.

Attack on sailors from USS Baltimore spawned the 1891 Chilean crisis.

The crisis began in earnest when sailors from USS Baltimore took shore leave in Valparaiso and a fight ensued, resulting in the deaths of two American sailors and the arrest of three dozen others. Baltimore’s captain, Winfield Schley, based on the nature of the sailors’ wounds, insisted the sailors had been bayonet-attacked by Chilean police without provocation. With Blaine incapacitated, Harrison drafted a demand for reparations. The Chilean Minister of Foreign Affairs Manuel Matta replied that Harrison’s message was “erroneous or deliberately incorrect,” and said that the Chilean government was treating the affair the same as any other criminal matter.

Tensions increased to the brink of war – Harrison threatened to break off diplomatic relations unless the United States received a suitable apology, and said the situation required, “grave and patriotic consideration”. The president also remarked, “If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who in foreign ports display the flag or wear the colors.” The Navy was also placed on a high level of preparedness. A recuperated Blaine made brief conciliatory overtures to the Chilean government which had no support in the administration; he then reversed course, joined the chorus for unconditional concessions and apology by the Chileans, who ultimately obliged, and war was averted. Theodore Roosevelt later applauded Harrison for his use of the “big stick” in the matter.

Annexation of Hawaii

In the last days of his administration, Harrison dealt with the issue of Hawaiian annexation. Following a coup d’état against Queen Liliuokalani, the new government of Hawaii led by Sanford Dole petitioned for annexation by the United States. Harrison was interested in expanding American influence in Hawaii and in establishing a naval base at Pearl Harbor but had not previously expressed an opinion on annexing the islands. The United States consul in Hawaii, John L. Stevens, recognized the new government on February 1, 1893, and forwarded their proposals to Washington. With just one month left before leaving office, the administration signed a treaty on February 14 and submitted it to the Senate the next day with Harrison’s recommendation. The Senate failed to act, and President Cleveland withdrew the treaty shortly after taking office.

Cabinet

Judicial appointments

Harrison appointed four justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. The first was David Josiah Brewer, a judge on the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Brewer, the nephew of Justice Field, had previously been considered for a cabinet position. Shortly after Brewer’s nomination, Justice Matthews died, creating another vacancy. Harrison had considered Henry Billings Brown, a Michigan judge and admiralty law expert, for the first vacancy and now nominated him for the second. For the third vacancy, which arose in 1892, Harrison nominated George Shiras. Shiras’s appointment was somewhat controversial because his age—sixty—was older than usual for a newly appointed Justice. Shiras also drew the opposition of Senator Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania because they were in different factions of the Pennsylvania Republican party, but his nomination was nonetheless approved. Finally, at the end of his term, Harrison nominated Howell Edmunds Jackson to replace Justice Lamar, who died in January 1893. Harrison knew the incoming Senate would be controlled by Democrats, so he selected Jackson, a respected Tennessee Democrat with whom he was friendly to ensure his nominee would not be rejected. Jackson’s nomination was indeed successful, but he died after only two years on the Court.

In addition to his Supreme Court appointments, Harrison appointed ten judges to the courts of appeals, two judges to the circuit courts, and 26 judges to the district courts.

States admitted to the Union

Six new states were admitted to the Union while Harrison was in office:

North Dakota – November 2, 1889

South Dakota – November 2, 1889

Montana – November 8, 1889

Washington – November 11, 1889

Idaho – July 3, 1890

Wyoming – July 10, 1890

More states were admitted during Harrison’s presidency than any other.

Vacations and travel

Harrison attended a grand, three-day centennial celebration of George Washington’s inauguration in New York City on April 30, 1889, and made the following remarks “We have come into the serious but always inspiring presence of Washington. He was the incarnation of duty and he teaches us today this great lesson: that those who would associate their names with events that shall outlive a century can only do so by high consecration to duty. Self-seeking has no public observance or anniversary.”

The Harrisons made many trips out of the capital, which included speeches at most stops – including Philadelphia, New England, Indianapolis and Chicago. The President typically made his best impression speaking before large audiences, as opposed to more intimate settings. The most notable of his presidential trips, theretofore unequaled, was a five-week tour of the west in the spring of 1891, aboard a lavishly outfitted train. Harrison enjoyed a number of short trips out of the capital—usually for hunting—to nearby Virginia or Maryland.

During the hot Washington summers, the Harrisons took refuge in Deer Park, Maryland and Cape May Point, New Jersey. In 1890, John Wanamaker joined with other Philadelphia devotees of the Harrisons and made a gift to them of a summer cottage at Cape May. Harrison, though appreciative, was uncomfortable with the appearance of impropriety; a month later, he paid Wanamaker $10,000 (equivalent to $284,556 in 2019) as reimbursement to the donors. Nevertheless, Harrison’s opponents made the gift the subject of national ridicule, and Mrs. Harrison and the president were vigorously criticized.

Reelection campaign in 1892

The treasury surplus had evaporated and the nation’s economic health was worsening – precursors to the eventual Panic of 1893. Congressional elections in 1890 had gone against the Republicans; and although Harrison had cooperated with Congressional Republicans on legislation, several party leaders withdrew their support for him because of his adamant refusal to give party members the nod in the course of his executive appointments. Specifically, Thomas C. Platt, Matthew S. Quay, Thomas B. Reed and James Clarkson quietly organized the Grievance Committee, the ambition of which was to initiate a dump-Harrison offensive. They solicited the support of Blaine, without effect however, and Harrison in reaction resolved to run for re-election – seemingly forced to choose one of two options – “become a candidate or forever wear the name of a political coward”.

It was clear that Harrison would not be re-nominated unanimously. Many of Harrison’s detractors persisted in pushing for an incapacitated Blaine, though he announced that he was not a candidate in February 1892. Some party leaders still hoped to draft Blaine into running, and speculation increased when he resigned at the 11th hour as Secretary of State in June. At the convention in Minneapolis, Harrison prevailed on the first ballot, but encountered significant opposition.

The Democrats renominated former President Cleveland, making the 1892 election a rematch of the one four years earlier. The tariff revisions of the past four years had made imported goods so expensive that now many voters shifted to the reform position. Many westerners, traditionally Republican voters, defected to the new Populist Party candidate, James Weaver, who promised free silver, generous veterans’ pensions, and an eight-hour work day. The effects of the suppression of the Homestead Strike rebounded against the Republicans as well, although the federal government did not take action.

Harrison’s wife Caroline began a critical struggle with tuberculosis earlier in 1892, and two weeks before the election, on October 25, it took her life. Their daughter Mary Harrison McKee assumed the role of First Lady after her mother’s death. Mrs. Harrison’s terminal illness and the fact that both candidates had served in the White House called for a low key campaign, and resulted in neither of the candidates actively campaigning personally.

Cleveland ultimately won the election by 277 electoral votes to Harrison’s 145, and also won the popular vote by 5,556,918 to 5,176,108; this was the most decisive presidential election in 20 years. It gave Harrison the distinction of being the only president whose predecessor and successor were the same man.

Post-presidency and death

After he left office, Harrison visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in June 1893. After the Expo, Harrison returned to his home in Indianapolis. Harrison had been elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States in 1882, and was elected as commander (president) of the Ohio Commandery on May 3, 1893. For a few months in 1894, Harrison lived in San Francisco, California, where he gave law lectures at Stanford University. In 1896, some of Harrison’s friends in the Republican party tried to convince him to seek the presidency again, but he declined. He traveled around the nation making appearances and speeches in support of William McKinley’s candidacy for president.

From July 1895 to March 1901 Harrison served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University, where Harrison Hall, a dormitory, was named in his honor. He wrote a series of articles about the federal government and the presidency which were republished in 1897 as a book titled This Country of Ours. In 1896, Harrison at age 62 remarried, to Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, the widowed 37-year-old niece and former secretary of his deceased wife. Harrison’s two adult children, Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary (Mamie) McKee, 38, disapproved of the marriage and did not attend the wedding. Benjamin and Mary had one child together, Elizabeth (February 21, 1897 – December 26, 1955).

In 1898, Harrison served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in their British Guiana boundary dispute with the United Kingdom. An international trial was agreed upon; he filed an 800-page brief and traveled to Paris where he spent more than 25 hours in court on Venezuela’s behalf. Although he lost the case, his legal arguments won him international renown. In 1899 Harrison attended the First Peace Conference at The Hague.

Harrison was an active Presbyterian and served as an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis and on a special committee on creed revision in the national Presbyterian General Assembly. However, he died before he could cast his vote at the meeting.

Harrison developed what was thought to be influenza (then referred to as grippe) in February 1901. He was treated with steam vapor inhalation and oxygen, but his condition worsened. He died from pneumonia at his home in Indianapolis on March 13, 1901, at the age of 67. Harrison’s remains are interred in Indianapolis’s Crown Hill Cemetery, next to the remains of his first wife, Caroline. After her death in 1948, Mary Dimmick Harrison, his second wife, was buried beside him.

Historical reputation and memorials

Historian Charles Calhoun gives Harrison major credit for innovative legislation in antitrust, monetary policy and tariffs. Historians have often given Secretary of State Blaine credit for foreign-policy initiatives. However, Calhoun argues that Harrison was even more responsible for the success of trade negotiations, the buildup of the steel Navy, overseas expansion, and emphasis on the American role in dominating the hemisphere through the Monroe Doctrine. The major weakness which Calhoun sees was that the public and indeed the grassroots Republican Party was not fully prepared for this onslaught of major activity. The Democrats scored a sweeping landslide in 1890 by attacking the flagship legislation, especially the McKinley tariff, because it would raise the cost of living of the average American family. McKinley himself was defeated for reelection.

According to historian R. Hal Williams, Harrison had a “widespread reputation for personal and official integrity”. Closely scrutinized by Democrats, Harrison’s reputation was largely intact when he left the White House. Having an advantage few 19th-century presidents had, Harrison’s own party, the Republicans, controlled Congress, while his administration actively advanced a Republican program of a higher tariff, moderate control of corporations, protecting African American voting rights, a generous Civil War pension, and compromising over the controversial silver issue. Historians have not raised “serious questions about Harrison’s own integrity or the integrity of his administration”.

Following the Panic of 1893, Harrison became more popular in retirement. His legacy among historians is scant, and “general accounts of his period inaccurately treat Harrison as a cipher”. More recently,

historians have recognized the importance of the Harrison administration—and Harrison himself—in the new foreign policy of the late nineteenth century. The administration faced challenges throughout the hemisphere, in the Pacific, and in relations with the European powers, involvements that would be taken for granted in the twenty first century.

Harrison’s presidency belongs properly to the 19th century, but he “clearly pointed the way” to the modern presidency that would emerge under William McKinley. The bi-partisan Sherman Anti-Trust Act signed into law by Harrison remains in effect over 120 years later and was the most important legislation passed by the Fifty-first Congress. Harrison’s support for African American voting rights and education would be the last significant attempts to protect civil rights until the 1930s. Harrison’s tenacity at foreign policy was emulated by politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt.

The 1st Harrison stamp

Issue of 1902

Harrison was memorialized on several postage stamps. The first was a 13-cent stamp issued on November 18, 1902, with the engraved likeness of Harrison modeled after a photo provided by his widow. In all Harrison has been honored on six U.S. Postage stamps, more than most other U.S. Presidents. Harrison also was featured on the five-dollar National Bank Notes from the third charter period, beginning in 1902. In 2012, a dollar coin with his image, part of the Presidential $1 Coin Program, was issued.

In 1908, the people of Indianapolis erected the Benjamin Harrison memorial statue, created by Charles Niehaus and Henry Bacon, in honor of Harrison’s lifetime achievements as military leader, U.S. Senator, and President of the United States.[192] The statue occupies a site on the south edge of University Park, facing the Birch Bayh Federal Building and United States Courthouse across New York Avenue.

In 1951, Harrison’s home was opened to the public as a library and museum. It had been used as a dormitory for a music school from 1937 to 1950. The house was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

Theodore Roosevelt dedicated Fort Benjamin Harrison in the former president’s honor in 1906. It is located in Lawrence, Indiana, a northeastern suburb of Indianapolis. The federal government decommissioned Fort Harrison in 1991 and transferred 1,700 of its 2,500 acres to Indiana’s state government in 1995 to establish Fort Harrison State Park. The site has been redeveloped to include residential neighborhoods and a golf course.

In 1966, Purdue University opened Harrison Hall, an 8 floor, 400 room residence hall. Harrison served as a Purdue University Trustee for the final six years of his life.

Notes

Although he was the eighth Benjamin Harrison in his family, Harrison is known simply as Benjamin Harrison, rather than Benjamin Harrison VIII.

The school was later known as Belmont College. After Belmont closed, the campus was transferred to the Ohio Military Institute, which closed in 1958.

Before the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Senators were elected by state legislatures.

The case was United States v. Jellico Mountain Coal, 46 Fed. 432. June 4, 1891

U.S. President #23: Benjamin Harrison (Part I)

Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 23rd president of the United States from 1889 to 1893. He was a grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, creating the only grandfather–grandson duo to have held the office. He was also a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a founding father who signed the United States Declaration of Independence.

Harrison was born on a farm by the Ohio River and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After moving to Indianapolis, he established himself as a prominent local attorney, Presbyterian church leader, and politician in Indiana. During the American Civil War, he served in the Union Army as a colonel, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in 1865. Harrison unsuccessfully ran for governor of Indiana in 1876. The Indiana General Assembly elected Harrison to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate, where he served from 1881 to 1887.

A Republican, Harrison was elected to the presidency in 1888, defeating the Democratic incumbent, Grover Cleveland. Hallmarks of Harrison’s administration included unprecedented economic legislation, including the McKinley Tariff, which imposed historic protective trade rates, and the Sherman Antitrust Act. Harrison also facilitated the creation of the national forest reserves through an amendment to the Land Revision Act of 1891. During his administration six western states were admitted to the Union. In addition, Harrison substantially strengthened and modernized the U.S. Navy and conducted an active foreign policy, but his proposals to secure federal education funding as well as voting rights enforcement for African Americans were unsuccessful.

Due in large part to surplus revenues from the tariffs, federal spending reached one billion dollars for the first time during his term. The spending issue in part led to the defeat of the Republicans in the 1890 midterm elections. Cleveland defeated Harrison for reelection in 1892, due to the growing unpopularity of high tariffs and high federal spending. Harrison returned to private life and his law practice in Indianapolis. In 1899 he represented the Republic of Venezuela in its British Guiana boundary dispute with the United Kingdom. Harrison traveled to the court of Paris as part of the case and after a brief stay returned to Indianapolis. He died at his home in Indianapolis in 1901 of complications from influenza. Many have praised Harrison’s commitment to African Americans’ voting rights, but scholars and historians generally regard his administration as below average, and rank him in the bottom half among U.S. presidents, though they do not question his commitment to personal and official integrity.

Family and education

Harrison was born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Ohio, the second of Elizabeth Ramsey (Irwin) and John Scott Harrison’s ten children. His paternal ancestors were the Harrison family of Virginia, whose immigrant ancestor, Benjamin Harrison, arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, circa 1630 from England. Harrison was of entirely English ancestry, all of his ancestors having emigrated to America during the early colonial period.

Harrison was a grandson of U.S. President William Henry Harrison and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Virginia planter who signed the Declaration of Independence and succeeded Thomas Nelson, Jr. as governor of Virginia.

Harrison was seven years old when his grandfather was elected U.S. president, but he did not attend the inauguration. His family was distinguished, but his parents were not wealthy. John Scott Harrison, a two-term U.S. congressman from Ohio, spent much of his farm income on his children’s education. Despite the family’s modest resources, Harrison’s boyhood was enjoyable, much of it spent outdoors fishing or hunting.

Arms of Benjamin Harrison

Harrison’s early schooling took place in a log cabin near his home, but his parents later arranged for a tutor to help him with college preparatory studies. Fourteen-year-old Benjamin and his older brother, Irwin, enrolled in Farmer’s College near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1847. He attended the college for two years and while there met his future wife, Caroline “Carrie” Lavinia Scott, a daughter of John Witherspoon Scott, the school’s science professor, who was also a Presbyterian minister.

Harrison transferred to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1850, and graduated in 1852. He joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he used as a network for much of his life. He was also a member of Delta Chi, a law fraternity that permitted dual membership. Classmates included John Alexander Anderson, who became a six-term U.S. congressman, and Whitelaw Reid, Harrison’s vice presidential running mate in 1892. At Miami, Harrison was strongly influenced by history and political economy professor Robert Hamilton Bishop. He also joined a Presbyterian church at college and, like his mother, became a lifelong Presbyterian.

Marriage and early career

After his college graduation in 1852, Harrison studied law with Judge Bellamy Storer of Cincinnati, but before he completed his studies, he returned to Oxford, Ohio, to marry Caroline Scott on October 20, 1853. Caroline’s father, a Presbyterian minister, performed the ceremony. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison (August 12, 1854 – December 13, 1936) and Mary “Mamie” Scott Harrison (April 3, 1858 – October 28, 1930).

Harrison and his wife returned to live at The Point, his father’s farm in southwestern Ohio, while he finished his law studies. Harrison was admitted to the Ohio bar in early 1854, the same year he sold property that he had inherited after the death of an aunt for $800 (equivalent to $22,764 in 2019), and used the funds to move with Caroline to Indianapolis, Indiana. Harrison began practicing law in the office of John H. Ray in 1854 and became a crier for the federal court in Indianapolis, for which he was paid $2.50 per day. He also served as a Commissioner for the U.S. Court of Claims. Harrison became a founding member and first president of both the University Club, a private gentlemen’s club in Indianapolis, and the Phi Delta Theta Alumni Club. Harrison and his wife became members and assumed leadership positions at Indianapolis’s First Presbyterian Church.

Having grown up in a Whig household, Harrison initially favored that party’s politics, but joined the Republican Party shortly after its formation in 1856 and campaigned on behalf of Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. In 1857 Harrison was elected Indianapolis city attorney, a position that paid an annual salary of $400 (equivalent to $10,976 in 2019).

In 1858, Harrison entered into a law partnership with William Wallace to form the law office of Wallace and Harrison. In 1860, he was elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court. Harrison was an active supporter of the Republican Party’s platform and served as Republican State Committee’s secretary. After Wallace, his law partner, was elected county clerk in 1860, Harrison established a new firm with William Fishback, Fishback and Harrison. The new partners worked together until Harrison entered the Union Army after the start of the American Civil War.

Civil War

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for more recruits for the Union Army; Harrison wanted to enlist, but worried about how to support his young family. While visiting Governor Oliver Morton, Harrison found him distressed over the shortage of men answering the latest call. Harrison told the governor, “If I can be of any service, I will go.”

Morton asked Harrison if he could help recruit a regiment, although he would not ask him to serve. Harrison recruited throughout northern Indiana to raise a regiment. Morton offered him the command, but Harrison declined, as he had no military experience. He was initially commissioned as a captain and company commander on July 22, 1862. Morton commissioned Harrison as a colonel on August 7, 1862, and the newly formed 70th Indiana was mustered into federal service on August 12, 1862. Once mustered, the regiment left Indiana to join the Union Army at Louisville, Kentucky.

For much of its first two years, the 70th Indiana performed reconnaissance duty and guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1864, Harrison and his regiment joined William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and moved to the front lines. On January 2, 1864, Harrison was promoted to command the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the XX Corps. He commanded the brigade at the battles of Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta. When Sherman’s main force began its March to the Sea, Harrison’s brigade was transferred to the District of Etowah and participated in the Battle of Nashville.

On January 23, 1865, Lincoln nominated Harrison to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from that date, and the Senate confirmed the nomination on February 14, 1865. He rode in the Grand Review in Washington, D.C. before mustering out on June 8, 1865.

Post-war career

Indiana politics

While serving in the Union Army in October 1864, Harrison was once again elected reporter of the Indiana Supreme Court, although he did not seek the position, and served as the Court’s reporter for four more years. The position was not a politically powerful one, but it provided Harrison with a steady income for his work preparing and publishing court opinions, which he sold to the legal profession. Harrison also resumed his law practice in Indianapolis. He became a skilled orator and known as “one of the state’s leading lawyers”.

In 1869 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Harrison to represent the federal government in a civil suit filed by Lambdin P. Milligan, whose controversial wartime conviction for treason in 1864 led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Ex parte Milligan. The civil case was referred to the U.S. Circuit Court for Indiana at Indianapolis, where it evolved into Milligan v. Hovey. Although the jury found in Milligan’s favor and he had sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, state and federal statutes limited the amount the federal government had to award to Milligan to five dollars plus court costs.

With his increasing reputation, local Republicans urged Harrison to run for Congress. He initially confined his political activities to speaking on behalf of other Republican candidates, a task for which he received high praise from his colleagues. In 1872, Harrison campaigned for the Republican nomination for governor of Indiana. Former governor Oliver Morton favored his opponent, Thomas M. Browne, and Harrison lost his bid for statewide office. He returned to his law practice and, despite the Panic of 1873, was financially successful enough to build a grand new home in Indianapolis in 1874. He continued to make speeches on behalf of Republican candidates and policies.

In 1876, when a scandal forced the original Republican nominee, Godlove Stein Orth, to drop out of the gubernatorial race, Harrison accepted the party’s invitation to take his place on the ticket. Harrison centered his campaign on economic policy and favored deflating the national currency. He was defeated in a plurality by James D. Williams, losing by 5,084 votes out 434,457 cast, but Harrison built on his new prominence in state politics. When the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 reached Indianapolis, he gathered a citizen militia to make a show of support for owners and management, and helped to mediate an agreement between the workers and management and to prevent the strike from widening.

When United States Senator Morton died in 1878, the Republicans nominated Harrison to run for the seat, but the party failed to gain a majority in the state legislature, which at that time elected senators; the Democratic majority elected Daniel W. Voorhees instead. In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Harrison to the Mississippi River Commission, which worked to develop internal improvements on the river. As a delegate to the 1880 Republican National Convention the following year, he was instrumental in breaking a deadlock on candidates, and James A. Garfield won the nomination.

U.S. Senator from Indiana

After Harrison led Indiana’s Republican delegation at the 1880 Republican National Convention, he was considered the state’s presumptive candidate for the U.S. Senate. He gave speeches in favor of Garfield in Indiana and New York, further raising his profile in the party. When the Republicans retook the majority in the state legislature, Harrison’s election to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate was threatened by Judge Walter Q. Gresham, his intraparty rival, but Harrison was ultimately chosen. After Garfield’s election as president in 1880, his administration offered Harrison a cabinet position, but Harrison declined in favor of continuing his service in the U.S. Senate.

Harrison served in the Senate from March 4, 1881, to March 3, 1887, and chaired the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (47th Congress) and the U.S. Senate Committee on Territories (48th and 49th Congresses).

In 1881, the major issue confronting Senator Harrison was the budget surplus. Democrats wanted to reduce the tariff and limit the amount of money the government took in; Republicans instead wanted to spend the money on internal improvements and pensions for Civil War veterans. Harrison took his party’s side and advocated for generous pensions for veterans and their widows. He also unsuccessfully supported aid for the education of Southerners, especially children of the freedmen; he believed that education was necessary to help the black population rise to political and economic equality with whites. Harrison opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which his party supported, because he thought it violated existing treaties with China.

In 1884, Harrison and Gresham competed for influence at the 1884 Republican National Convention; the delegation ended up supporting James G. Blaine, the eventual nominee. In the Senate, Harrison achieved passage of his Dependent Pension Bill, only to see it vetoed by President Grover Cleveland. His efforts to further the admission of new western states were stymied by Democrats, who feared that the new states would elect Republicans to Congress.

In 1885 the Democrats redistricted the Indiana state legislature, which resulted in an increased Democratic majority in 1886, despite an overall Republican majority statewide. In 1887, largely as a result of the Democratic gerrymandering of Indiana’s legislative districts, Harrison was defeated in his bid for reelection. Following a deadlock in the state senate, the state legislature eventually chose Democrat David Turpie as Harrison’s successor in the Senate. Harrison returned to Indianapolis and resumed his law practice, but stayed active in state and national politics.

Election of 1888

Nomination

The initial favorite for the Republican nomination was the previous nominee, James G. Blaine of Maine. After Blaine wrote several letters denying any interest in the nomination, his supporters divided among other candidates, with John Sherman of Ohio as the leader among them. Others, including Chauncey Depew of New York, Russell Alger of Michigan, and Harrison’s old nemesis Walter Q. Gresham, now a federal appellate court judge in Chicago, also sought the delegates’ support at the 1888 Republican National Convention. Blaine did not publicly endorse any of the candidates, but on March 1, 1888, he privately wrote that “the one man remaining who in my judgment can make the best one is Benjamin Harrison.”

Harrison placed fifth on the first ballot, with Sherman in the lead, and the next few ballots showed little change. The Blaine supporters shifted their support among candidates they found acceptable, and when they shifted to Harrison, they found a candidate who could attract the votes of many other delegations. He was nominated as the party’s presidential candidate on the eighth ballot, by a count of 544 to 108 votes. Levi P. Morton of New York was chosen as his running mate.

Election over Cleveland

Harrison’s opponent in the general election was incumbent President Grover Cleveland. Harrison reprised a more traditional front-porch campaign, abandoned by his immediate predecessors; he received visiting delegations to Indianapolis and made over 90 pronouncements from his hometown. The Republicans campaigned heavily in favor of protective tariffs, turning out protectionist voters in the important industrial states of the North. The election focused on the swing states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Harrison’s home state of Indiana. Harrison and Cleveland split the four, with Harrison winning New York and Indiana. Voter turnout was 79.3%, reflecting large interest in the campaign; nearly eleven million votes were cast. Harrison received 90,000 fewer popular votes than Cleveland, but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Allegations were made against Republicans for engaging in irregular ballot practices; an example was described as Blocks of Five. On October 31 the Indiana Sentinel published a letter allegedly by Harrison’s friend and supporter, William Wade Dudley, offering to bribe voters in “blocks of five” to ensure Harrison’s election. Harrison neither defended nor repudiated Dudley, but allowed him to remain on the campaign for the remaining few days. After the election, Harrison never spoke to Dudley again.

Harrison had made no political bargains, but his supporters had made many pledges on his behalf. When Boss Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania, who was rebuffed for a Cabinet position for his political support during the convention, heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know “how close a number of men were compelled to approach…the penitentiary to make him president”. Harrison was known as the Centennial President because his inauguration celebrated the centenary of the first inauguration of George Washington in 1789. In the congressional elections, Republicans increased their membership in the House of Representatives by 19 seats.

Presidency 1889–1893

Inauguration and cabinet

Harrison was sworn into office on Monday, March 4, 1889, by Chief Justice Melville Fuller. His speech was brief—half as long as that of his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, whose speech remains the longest inaugural address of a U.S. President. In his speech, Benjamin Harrison credited the nation’s growth to the influences of education and religion, urged the cotton states and mining territories to attain the industrial proportions of the eastern states and promised a protective tariff. Of commerce, he said, “If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal obligations and duties, they would have less call to complain of the limitations of their rights or of interference with their operations.” Harrison also urged early statehood for the territories and advocated pensions for veterans, a call that met with enthusiastic applause. In foreign affairs, Harrison reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine as a mainstay of foreign policy, while urging modernization of the Navy and a merchant marine force. He gave his commitment to international peace through noninterference in the affairs of foreign governments.

John Philip Sousa’s Marine Corps band played at the Inaugural Ball inside the Pension Building with a large crowd attending. After moving into the White House, Harrison noted, quite prophetically, “There is only a door—one that is never locked—between the president’s office and what are not very accurately called his private apartments. There should be an executive office building, not too far away, but wholly distinct from the dwelling house. For everyone else in the public service, there is an unroofed space between the bedroom and the desk.”

Harrison acted quite independently in selecting his cabinet, much to the Republican bosses’ dismay. He began by delaying the presumed nomination of James G. Blaine as Secretary of State so as to preclude Blaine’s involvement in the formation of the administration, as had occurred in President Garfield’s term. In fact, other than Blaine, the only Republican boss initially nominated was Redfield Proctor, as Secretary of War. Senator Shelby Cullom’s comment symbolizes Harrison’s steadfast aversion to use federal positions for patronage: “I suppose Harrison treated me as well as he did any other Senator; but whenever he did anything for me, it was done so ungraciously that the concession tended to anger rather than please.” Harrison’s selections shared particular alliances, such as their service in the Civil War, Indiana citizenship and membership in the Presbyterian Church. Nevertheless, Harrison had alienated pivotal Republican operatives from New York to Pennsylvania to Iowa with these choices and prematurely compromised his political power and future. His normal schedule provided for two full cabinet meetings per week, as well as separate weekly one-on-one meetings with each cabinet member.

In June 1890, Harrison’s Postmaster General John Wanamaker and several Philadelphia friends purchased a large new cottage at Cape May Point for Harrison’s wife, Caroline. Many believed the cottage gift appeared improper and amounted to a bribe for a cabinet position. Harrison made no comment on the matter for two weeks, then said he had always intended to purchase the cottage once Caroline approved. On July 2, perhaps a little tardily to avoid suspicion, Harrison gave Wanamaker a check for $10,000 (equivalent to $284,556 in 2019) for the cottage.

Civil service reform and pensions

Civil service reform was a prominent issue following Harrison’s election. Harrison had campaigned as a supporter of the merit system, as opposed to the spoils system. Although some of the civil service had been classified under the Pendleton Act by previous administrations, Harrison spent much of his first months in office deciding on political appointments. Congress was widely divided on the issue and Harrison was reluctant to address the issue in hope of preventing the alienation of either side. The issue became a political football of the time and was immortalized in a cartoon captioned “What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?” Harrison appointed Theodore Roosevelt and Hugh Smith Thompson, both reformers, to the Civil Service Commission, but otherwise did little to further the reform cause.

Political football

Harrison quickly saw the enactment of the Dependent and Disability Pension Act in 1890, a cause he had championed while in Congress. In addition to providing pensions to disabled Civil War veterans (regardless of the cause of their disability), the Act depleted some of the troublesome federal budget surplus. Pension expenditures reached $135 million under Harrison (equivalent to $3.8 billion in 2019), the largest expenditure of its kind to that point in American history, a problem exacerbated by Pension Bureau commissioner James R. Tanner’s expansive interpretation of the pension laws. An investigation into the Pension Bureau by Harrison’s Secretary of Interior John Willock Noble found evidence of lavish and illegal handouts under Tanner. Harrison, who privately believed that appointing Tanner had been a mistake, due to his apparent loose management style and tongue, asked Tanner to resign and replaced him with Green B. Raum. Raum was also accused of accepting loan payments in return for expediting pension cases. Harrison, having accepted a dissenting Congressional Republican investigation report that exonerated Raum, kept him in office for the rest of his administration.

One of the first appointments Harrison was forced to reverse was that of James S. Clarkson as an assistant postmaster. Clarkson, who had expected a full cabinet position, began sabotaging the appointment from the outset, gaining the reputation for “decapitating a fourth class postmaster every three minutes”. Clarkson himself stated, “I am simply on detail from the Republican Committee … I am most anxious to get through this task and leave.” He resigned in September 1890.

Tariff

The tariff levels had been a major political issue since before the Civil War, and they became the most dominant matter of the 1888 election. The high tariff rates had created a surplus of money in the Treasury, which led many Democrats (as well as the growing Populist movement) to call for lowering them. Most Republicans preferred to maintain the rates, spend the surplus on internal improvements and eliminate some internal taxes.

Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich framed the McKinley Tariff that would raise the tariff even higher, including making some rates intentionally prohibitive. At Secretary of State James Blaine’s urging, Harrison attempted to make the tariff more acceptable by urging Congress to add reciprocity provisions, which would allow the president to reduce rates when other countries reduced their rates on American exports. The tariff was removed from imported raw sugar, and sugar growers in the United States were given a two cent per pound subsidy on their production. Even with the reductions and reciprocity, the McKinley Tariff enacted the highest average rate in American history, and the spending associated with it contributed to the reputation of the Billion-Dollar Congress.

Antitrust laws and the currency

Senator John Sherman worked closely with Harrison, writing bills regulating monopolies and monetary policy.

Members of both parties were concerned with the growth of the power of trusts and monopolies, and one of the first acts of the 51st Congress was to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act, sponsored by Senator John Sherman of Ohio. The Act passed by wide margins in both houses, and Harrison signed it into law. The Sherman Act was the first Federal act of its kind, and marked a new use of federal government power. While Harrison approved of the law and its intent, his administration was not particularly vigorous in enforcing it. However, the government successfully concluded a case during Harrison’s time in office (against a Tennessee coal company), and had initiated several other cases against trusts.

One of the most volatile questions of the 1880s was whether the currency should be backed by gold and silver, or by gold alone. The issue cut across party lines, with western Republicans and southern Democrats joining together in the call for the free coinage of silver, and both parties’ representatives in the northeast holding firm for the gold standard. Because silver was worth less than its legal equivalent in gold, taxpayers paid their government bills in silver, while international creditors demanded payment in gold, resulting in a depletion of the nation’s gold supply. Owing to worldwide deflation in the late 19th century, however, a strict gold standard had resulted in reduction of incomes without the equivalent reduction in debts, pushing debtors and the poor to call for silver coinage as an inflationary measure.

The silver coinage issue had not been much discussed in the 1888 campaign and Harrison is said to have favored a bimetallist position. However, his appointment of a silverite Treasury Secretary, William Windom, encouraged the free silver supporters. Harrison attempted to steer a middle course between the two positions, advocating a free coinage of silver, but at its own value, not at a fixed ratio to gold. This failed to facilitate a compromise between the factions. In July 1890, Senator Sherman achieved passage of a bill, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, in both houses. Harrison thought that the bill would end the controversy, and he signed it into law. The effect of the bill, however, was the increased depletion of the nation’s gold supply, a problem that would persist until the second Cleveland administration resolved it.

Civil rights

After regaining the majority in both Houses of Congress, some Republicans, led by Harrison, attempted to pass legislation to protect black Americans’ civil rights. Harrison’s Attorney General, William H. H. Miller, through the Justice Department, ordered the prosecutions for violation of voting rights in the South; however, white juries often failed to convict or indict violators. This prompted Harrison to urge Congress to pass legislation that would “secure all our people a free exercise of the right of suffrage and every other civil right under the Constitution and laws”. Harrison endorsed the proposed Federal Elections Bill written by Representative Henry Cabot Lodge and Senator George Frisbie Hoar in 1890, but the bill was defeated in the Senate. Following the failure to pass the bill, Harrison continued to speak in favor of African American civil rights in addresses to Congress. Most notably, on December 3, 1889, Harrison had gone before Congress and stated:

The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us; they were brought here in chains and held in communities where they are now chiefly bound by a cruel slave code…when and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law? When is that quality of influence which our form of government was intended to secure to the electors to be restored? … in many parts of our country where the colored population is large the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and of many of their civil rights. The wrong does not expend itself upon those whose votes are suppressed. Every constituency in the Union is wronged.

He severely questioned the states’ civil rights records, arguing that if states have the authority over civil rights, then “we have a right to ask whether they are at work upon it.” Harrison also supported a bill proposed by Senator Henry W. Blair, which would have granted federal funding to schools regardless of the students’ races. He also endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) that declared much of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. None of these measures gained congressional approval.

National forests

In March 1891 Congress enacted, and Harrison signed, the Land Revision Act of 1891. This legislation resulted from a bipartisan desire to initiate reclamation of surplus lands that had been, up to that point, granted from the public domain, for potential settlement or use by railroad syndicates. As the law’s drafting was finalized, Section 24 was added at the behest of Harrison by his Secretary of the Interior John Noble, which read as follows:

That the President of the United States may, from time to time, set apart and reserve, in any State or Territory having public land bearing forests, in any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations, and the president shall, by public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and the limits thereof.

Within a month of the enactment of this law Harrison authorized the first forest reserve, to be located on public domain adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming. Other areas were so designated by Harrison, bringing the first forest reservations total to 22 million acres in his term. Harrison was also the first to give a prehistoric Indian Ruin, Casa Grande in Arizona, federal protection.

Happy Birthday: June 30, 2020

Cheryl Ann Tweedy, 27

Mike Tyson, 54

Michael Phelps, 35

Bono$, 25

Fantasia Barrino, 36

Seth Abner, 25

Cody Rhodes, 35

Alicia Fox, 34

Angela Raiola (1960-2016)

William Belli, 38

Niki Mahajan, 60

Elliot Fletcher, 24

Nicole Franzel, 28

Cole Swindell, 37

Lizzy Caplan, 38

Nicole Row, 29

Emily Fernandez, 28

YBS Skola, 26

Keone Madrid, 32

Dale Mills, 37

Sanam Puri, 28

Margaret, 29

Fabio Wibmer, 25

Lena Horne (1917-2010)

U.S. President #22 & #24: Grover Cleveland (Part II)

Marriage and children

Cleveland was age 47 when he entered the White House as a bachelor, and his sister Rose Cleveland joined him, to act as hostess for the first two years of his administration. Unlike the previous bachelor president James Buchanan, Cleveland did not remain a bachelor for long. In 1885 the daughter of Cleveland’s friend Oscar Folsom visited him in Washington. Frances Folsom was a student at Wells College. When she returned to school, President Cleveland received her mother’s permission to correspond with her, and they were soon engaged to be married. On June 2, 1886, Cleveland was age 49 when he married Frances Folsom (age 21) in the Blue Room at the White House. He was the second president to wed while in office, and has been the only president to marry in the White House. This marriage was unusual because Cleveland was the executor of Oscar Folsom’s estate and had supervised Frances’s upbringing after her father’s death; nevertheless, the public took no exception to the match. At 21 years, Frances Folsom Cleveland was the youngest First Lady in history, and the public soon warmed to her warm personality.

The Clevelands had five children: Ruth (1891–1904), Esther (1893–1980), Marion (1895–1977), Richard (1897–1974), and Francis (1903–1995). British philosopher Philippa Foot was their granddaughter.

Cleveland also claimed paternity of an additional child named Oscar Folsom Cleveland with Maria Crofts Halpin.

Administration and Cabinet

Judicial appointments

During his first term, Cleveland successfully nominated two justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. The first, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, was a former Mississippi senator who served in Cleveland’s Cabinet as Interior Secretary. When William Burnham Woods died, Cleveland nominated Lamar to his seat in late 1887. While Lamar had been well liked as a senator, his service under the Confederacy two decades earlier caused many Republicans to vote against him. Lamar’s nomination was confirmed by the narrow margin of 32 to 28.

Chief Justice Morrison Waite died a few months later, and Cleveland nominated Melville Fuller to fill his seat on April 30, 1888. Fuller accepted. He had previously declined Cleveland’s nomination to the Civil Service Commission, preferring his Chicago law practice. The Senate Judiciary Committee spent several months examining the little-known nominee, before the Senate confirmed the nomination 41 to 20.

Cleveland nominated 41 lower federal court judges in addition to his four Supreme Court justices. These included two judges to the United States circuit courts, nine judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 30 judges to the United States district courts. Because Cleveland served terms both before and after Congress eliminated the circuit courts in favor of the Courts of Appeals, he is one of only two presidents to have appointed judges to both bodies. The other, Benjamin Harrison, was in office at the time that the change was made. Thus, all of Cleveland’s appointments to the circuit courts were made in his first term, and all of his appointments to the Courts of Appeals were made in his second.

Election of 1888 and return to private life

Defeated by Harrison

The Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison of Indiana for president and Levi P. Morton of New York for vice president. Cleveland was easily renominated at the Democratic convention in St. Louis.

Following Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks death in 1885, the Democrats chose Allen G. Thurman of Ohio to be Cleveland’s new running mate.

The Republicans gained the upper hand in the campaign, as Cleveland’s campaign was poorly managed by Calvin S. Brice and William H. Barnum, whereas Harrison had engaged more aggressive fundraisers and tacticians in Matt Quay and John Wanamaker.

The Republicans campaigned heavily on the tariff issue, turning out protectionist voters in the important industrial states of the North. Further, the Democrats in New York were divided over the gubernatorial candidacy of David B. Hill, weakening Cleveland’s support in that swing state. A letter from the British ambassador supporting Cleveland caused a scandal which cost Cleveland votes in New York.

As in 1884, the election focused on the swing states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana. But unlike that year, when Cleveland had triumphed in all four, in 1888 he won only two, losing his home state of New York by 14,373 votes. Cleveland won a plurality of the popular vote – 48.6 percent vs. 47.8 percent for Harrison – but Harrison won the Electoral College vote easily, 233–168. The Republicans won Indiana, largely as the result of a fraudulent voting practice known as Blocks of Five. Cleveland continued his duties diligently until the end of the term and began to look forward to return to private life.

Private citizen for four years

As Frances Cleveland left the White House, she told a staff member, “Now, Jerry, I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again.” When asked when she would return, she responded, “We are coming back four years from today.” In the meantime, the Clevelands moved to New York City, where Cleveland took a position with the law firm of Bangs, Stetson, Tracy, and MacVeigh. This affiliation was more of an office-sharing arrangement, though quite compatible. Cleveland’s law practice brought only a moderate income, perhaps because Cleveland spent considerable time at the couple’s vacation home Gray Gables at Buzzard Bay, where fishing became his obsession. While they lived in New York, the Clevelands’ first child, Ruth, was born in 1891.

The Harrison administration worked with Congress to pass the McKinley Tariff, an aggressively protectionist measure, and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which increased money backed by silver these were among policies Cleveland deplored as dangerous to the nation’s financial health. At first he refrained from criticizing his successor, but by 1891 Cleveland felt compelled to speak out, addressing his concerns in an open letter to a meeting of reformers in New York. The “silver letter” thrust Cleveland’s name back into the spotlight just as the 1892 election was approaching.

Election of 1892

Democratic nomination

Cleveland’s enduring reputation as chief executive and his recent pronouncements on the monetary issues made him a leading contender for the Democratic nomination. His leading opponent was David B. Hill, a Senator for New York. Hill united the anti-Cleveland elements of the Democratic party—silverites, protectionists, and Tammany Hall—but was unable to create a coalition large enough to deny Cleveland the nomination. Despite some desperate maneuvering by Hill, Cleveland was nominated on the first ballot at the convention in Chicago. For vice president, the Democrats chose to balance the ticket with Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, a silverite. Although the Cleveland forces preferred Isaac P. Gray of Indiana for vice president, they accepted the convention favorite. As a supporter of greenbacks and Free Silver to inflate the currency and alleviate economic distress in the rural districts, Stevenson balanced the otherwise hard-money, gold-standard ticket headed by Cleveland.

Campaign against Harrison

The Republicans re-nominated President Harrison, making the 1892 election a rematch of the one four years earlier. Unlike the turbulent and controversial elections of 1876, 1884, and 1888, the 1892 election was, according to Cleveland biographer Allan Nevins, “the cleanest, quietest, and most creditable in the memory of the post-war generation,” in part because Harrison’s wife, Caroline, was dying of tuberculosis. Harrison did not personally campaign at all. Following Caroline Harrison’s death on October 25, two weeks before the national election, Cleveland and all of the other candidates stopped campaigning, thus making Election Day a somber and quiet event for the whole country as well as the candidates.

The issue of the tariff had worked to the Republicans’ advantage in 1888. Now, however, the legislative revisions of the past four years had made imported goods so expensive that by 1892 many voters favored tariff reform and were skeptical of big business. Many Westerners, traditionally Republican voters, defected to James Weaver, the candidate of the new Populist Party. Weaver promised Free Silver, generous veterans’ pensions, and an eight-hour work day. The Tammany Hall Democrats adhered to the national ticket, allowing a united Democratic party to carry New York. At the campaign’s end, many Populists and labor supporters endorsed Cleveland after an attempt by the Carnegie Corporation to break the union during the Homestead strike in Pittsburgh and after a similar conflict between big business and labor at the Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. The final result was a victory for Cleveland by wide margins in both the popular and electoral votes, and it was Cleveland’s third consecutive popular vote plurality.

Second presidency (1893–1897)

Economic panic and the silver issue

Shortly after Cleveland’s second term began, the Panic of 1893 struck the stock market, and he soon faced an acute economic depression. The panic was worsened by the acute shortage of gold that resulted from the increased coinage of silver, and Cleveland called Congress into special session to deal with the problem. The debate over the coinage was as heated as ever, and the effects of the panic had driven more moderates to support repealing the coinage provisions of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Even so, the silverites rallied their following at a convention in Chicago, and the House of Representatives debated for fifteen weeks before passing the repeal by a considerable margin. In the Senate, the repeal of silver coinage was equally contentious. Cleveland, forced against his better judgment to lobby the Congress for repeal, convinced enough Democrats – and along with eastern Republicans, they formed a 48–37 majority for repeal. Depletion of the Treasury’s gold reserves continued, at a lesser rate, and subsequent bond issues replenished supplies of gold. At the time the repeal seemed a minor setback to silverites, but it marked the beginning of the end of silver as a basis for American currency.

Tariff reform

Having succeeded in reversing the Harrison administration’s silver policy, Cleveland sought next to reverse the effects of the McKinley Tariff. The Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act was introduced by West Virginian Representative William L. Wilson in December 1893. After lengthy debate, the bill passed the House by a considerable margin. The bill proposed moderate downward revisions in the tariff, especially on raw materials. The shortfall in revenue was to be made up by an income tax of two percent on income above $4,000 (equivalent to $113,822 in 2019).

The bill was next considered in the Senate, where it faced stronger opposition from key Democrats led by Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, who insisted on more protection for their states’ industries than the Wilson bill allowed. The bill passed the Senate with more than 600 amendments attached that nullified most of the reforms. The Sugar Trust in particular lobbied for changes that favored it at the expense of the consumer. Cleveland was outraged with the final bill, and denounced it as a disgraceful product of the control of the Senate by trusts and business interests. Even so, he believed it was an improvement over the McKinley tariff and allowed it to become law without his signature.

Voting rights

In 1892, Cleveland had campaigned against the Lodge Bill, which would have strengthened voting rights protections through the appointing of federal supervisors of congressional elections upon a petition from the citizens of any district. The Enforcement Act of 1871 had provided for a detailed federal overseeing of the electoral process, from registration to the certification of returns. Cleveland succeeded in ushering in the 1894 repeal of this law (ch. 25, 28 Stat. 36). The pendulum thus swung from stronger attempts to protect voting rights to the repealing of voting rights protections; this in turn led to unsuccessful attempts to have the federal courts protect voting rights in Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475 (1903), and Giles v. Teasley, 193 U.S. 146 (1904).

Labor unrest

John T. Morgan, Senator from Alabama, opposed Cleveland on Free Silver, the tariff, and the Hawaii treaty, saying of Cleveland that “I hate the ground that man walks on.”

The Panic of 1893 had damaged labor conditions across the United States, and the victory of anti-silver legislation worsened the mood of western laborers. A group of workingmen led by Jacob S. Coxey began to march east toward Washington, D.C. to protest Cleveland’s policies. This group, known as Coxey’s Army, agitated in favor of a national roads program to give jobs to workingmen, and a weakened currency to help farmers pay their debts. By the time they reached Washington, only a few hundred remained, and when they were arrested the next day for walking on the lawn of the United States Capitol, the group scattered. Even though Coxey’s Army may not have been a threat to the government, it signaled a growing dissatisfaction in the West with Eastern monetary policies.

Pullman Strike

The Pullman Strike had a significantly greater impact than Coxey’s Army. A strike began against the Pullman Company over low wages and twelve-hour workdays, and sympathy strikes, led by American Railway Union leader Eugene V. Debs, soon followed. By June 1894, 125,000 railroad workers were on strike, paralyzing the nation’s commerce. Because the railroads carried the mail, and because several of the affected lines were in federal receivership, Cleveland believed a federal solution was appropriate. Cleveland obtained an injunction in federal court, and when the strikers refused to obey it, he sent federal troops into Chicago and 20 other rail centers. “If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago”, he proclaimed, “that card will be delivered.” Most governors supported Cleveland except Democrat John P. Altgeld of Illinois, who became his bitter foe in 1896. Leading newspapers of both parties applauded Cleveland’s actions, but the use of troops hardened the attitude of organized labor toward his administration.

Just before the 1894 election, Cleveland was warned by Francis Lynde Stetson, an advisor:

“We are on the eve of [a] very dark night, unless a return of commercial prosperity relieves popular discontent with what they believe [is] Democratic incompetence to make laws, and consequently [discontent] with Democratic Administrations anywhere and everywhere.”

The warning was appropriate, for in the Congressional elections, Republicans won their biggest landslide in decades, taking full control of the House, while the Populists lost most of their support. Cleveland’s factional enemies gained control of the Democratic Party in state after state, including full control in Illinois and Michigan, and made major gains in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and other states. Wisconsin and Massachusetts were two of the few states that remained under the control of Cleveland’s allies. The Democratic opposition were close to controlling two-thirds of the vote at the 1896 national convention, which they needed to nominate their own candidate. They failed for lack of unity and a national leader, as Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld had been born in Germany and was ineligible to be nominated for president.

Foreign policy, 1893–1897

“I suppose that right and justice should determine the path to be followed in treating this subject. If national honesty is to be disregarded and a desire for territorial expansion or dissatisfaction with a form of government not our own ought to regulate our conduct, I have entirely misapprehended the mission and character of our government and the behavior which the conscience of the people demands of their public servants.”–Cleveland’s message to Congress on the Hawaiian question, December 18, 1893.

When Cleveland took office he faced the question of Hawaiian annexation. In his first term, he had supported free trade with Hawai’i and accepted an amendment that gave the United States a coaling and naval station in Pearl Harbor. In the intervening four years, Honolulu businessmen of European and American ancestry had denounced Queen Liliuokalani as a tyrant who rejected constitutional government. In early 1893 they overthrew her, set up a republican government under Sanford B. Dole, and sought to join the United States. The Harrison administration had quickly agreed with representatives of the new government on a treaty of annexation and submitted it to the Senate for approval. Five days after taking office on March 9, 1893, Cleveland withdrew the treaty from the Senate and sent former Congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawai’i to investigate the conditions there.

Cleveland agreed with Blount’s report, which found the populace to be opposed to annexation. Liliuokalani initially refused to grant amnesty as a condition of her reinstatement, saying that she would either execute or banish the current government in Honolulu, but Dole’s government refused to yield their position. By December 1893, the matter was still unresolved, and Cleveland referred the issue to Congress. In his message to Congress, Cleveland rejected the idea of annexation and encouraged the Congress to continue the American tradition of non-intervention (see excerpt at right). The Senate, under Democratic control but opposed to Cleveland, commissioned and produced the Morgan Report, which contradicted Blount’s findings and found the overthrow was a completely internal affair. Cleveland dropped all talk of reinstating the Queen, and went on to recognize and maintain diplomatic relations with the new Republic of Hawaii

Closer to home, Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine that not only prohibited new European colonies, but also declared an American national interest in any matter of substance within the hemisphere. When Britain and Venezuela disagreed over the boundary between Venezuela and the colony of British Guiana, Cleveland and Secretary of State Richard Olney protested. British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and the British ambassador to Washington, Julian Pauncefote, misjudged how important successful resolution of the dispute was to the American government, having prolonged the crisis before ultimately accepting the American demand for arbitration. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the matter, and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana. But by standing with a Latin American nation against the encroachment of a colonial power, Cleveland improved relations with the United States’ southern neighbors, and at the same time, the cordial manner in which the negotiations were conducted also made for good relations with Britain.

Military policy, 1893–1897

The second Cleveland administration was as committed to military modernization as the first, and ordered the first ships of a navy capable of offensive action. Construction continued on the Endicott program of coastal fortifications begun under Cleveland’s first administration. The adoption of the Krag–Jørgensen rifle, the US Army’s first bolt-action repeating rifle, was finalized. In 1895–96 Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert, having recently adopted the aggressive naval strategy advocated by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, successfully proposed ordering five battleships (the Kearsarge and Illinois classes) and sixteen torpedo boats. Completion of these ships nearly doubled the Navy’s battleships and created a new torpedo boat force, which previously had only two boats. The battleships and seven of the torpedo boats were not completed until 1899–1901, after the Spanish–American War.

Cancer

In the midst of the fight for repeal of Free Silver coinage in 1893, Cleveland sought the advice of the White House doctor, Dr. O’Reilly, about soreness on the roof of his mouth and a crater-like edge ulcer with a granulated surface on the left side of Cleveland’s hard palate. Clinical samples were sent anonymously to the Army Medical Museum; the diagnosis was an epithelioma, rather than a malignant cancer.

Cleveland decided to have surgery secretly, to avoid further panic that might worsen the financial depression. The surgery occurred on July 1, to give Cleveland time to make a full recovery in time for the upcoming Congressional session. Under the guise of a vacation cruise, Cleveland and his surgeon, Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York. The surgeons operated aboard the Oneida, a yacht owned by Cleveland’s friend E. C. Benedict, as it sailed off Long Island. The surgery was conducted through the President’s mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. The team, sedating Cleveland with nitrous oxide and ether, successfully removed parts of his upper left jaw and hard palate. The size of the tumor and the extent of the operation left Cleveland’s mouth disfigured. During another surgery, Cleveland was fitted with a hard rubber dental prosthesis that corrected his speech and restored his appearance. A cover story about the removal of two bad teeth kept the suspicious press placated. Even when a newspaper story appeared giving details of the actual operation, the participating surgeons discounted the severity of what transpired during Cleveland’s vacation. In 1917, one of the surgeons present on the Oneida, Dr. William W. Keen, wrote an article detailing the operation.

Cleveland enjoyed many years of life after the tumor was removed, and there was some debate as to whether it was actually malignant. Several doctors, including Dr. Keen, stated after Cleveland’s death that the tumor was a carcinoma. Other suggestions included ameloblastoma or a benign salivary mixed tumor (also known as a pleomorphic adenoma). In the 1980s, analysis of the specimen finally confirmed the tumor to be verrucous carcinoma, a low-grade epithelial cancer with a low potential for metastasis.

Administration and cabinet

Judicial appointments

Cleveland’s trouble with the Senate hindered the success of his nominations to the Supreme Court in his second term. In 1893, after the death of Samuel Blatchford, Cleveland nominated William B. Hornblower to the Court. Hornblower, the head of a New York City law firm, was thought to be a qualified appointee, but his campaign against a New York machine politician had made Senator David B. Hill his enemy. Further, Cleveland had not consulted the Senators before naming his appointee, leaving many who were already opposed to Cleveland on other grounds even more aggrieved. The Senate rejected Hornblower’s nomination on January 15, 1894, by a vote of 30 to 24.

Cleveland continued to defy the Senate by next appointing Wheeler Hazard Peckham another New York attorney who had opposed Hill’s machine in that state. Hill used all of his influence to block Peckham’s confirmation, and on February 16, 1894, the Senate rejected the nomination by a vote of 32 to 41. Reformers urged Cleveland to continue the fight against Hill and to nominate Frederic R. Coudert, but Cleveland acquiesced in an inoffensive choice, that of Senator Edward Douglass White of Louisiana, whose nomination was accepted unanimously. Later, in 1896, another vacancy on the Court led Cleveland to consider Hornblower again, but he declined to be nominated. Instead, Cleveland nominated Rufus Wheeler Peckham, the brother of Wheeler Hazard Peckham, and the Senate confirmed the second Peckham easily.

States admitted to the Union

No new states were admitted to the Union during Cleveland’s first term. On February 22, 1889, 10 days before leaving office, the 50th Congress passed the Enabling Act of 1889, authorizing North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington to form state governments and to gain admission to the Union. All four officially became states in November 1889, during the first year of Benjamin Harrison’s administration. During his second term, the 53rd United States Congress passed an Enabling Act that permitted Utah to apply for statehood. Cleveland signed it on July 16, 1894. Utah joined the Union as the 45th state on January 4, 1896.

1896 election and retirement

Cleveland’s agrarian and silverite enemies gained control of the Democratic party in 1896, repudiated his administration and the gold standard, and nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Silver Platform. Cleveland silently supported the Gold Democrats’ third-party ticket that promised to defend the gold standard, limit government and oppose high tariffs, but he declined their nomination for a third term. The party won only 100,000 votes in the general election, and William McKinley, the Republican nominee, triumphed easily over Bryan. Agrarians nominated Bryan again in 1900. In 1904 the conservatives, with Cleveland’s support, regained control of the Democratic Party and nominated Alton B. Parker.

After leaving the White House on March 4, 1897, Cleveland lived in retirement at his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, and was one of the majority of trustees who preferred Dean West’s plans for the Graduate School and undergraduate living over those of Woodrow Wilson, then president of the university. Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), but was financially unable to accept the chairmanship of the commission handling the Coal Strike of 1902. Cleveland still made his views known in political matters. In a 1905 article in The Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland weighed in on the women’s suffrage movement, writing that “sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.”

In 1906, a group of New Jersey Democrats promoted Cleveland as a possible candidate for the United States Senate. The incumbent, John F. Dryden, was not seeking re-election, and some Democrats felt that the former president could attract the votes of some disaffected Republican legislators who might be drawn to Cleveland’s statesmanship and conservatism.

Cleveland’s health had been declining for several years, and in the autumn of 1907 he fell seriously ill. In 1908, he suffered a heart attack and died on June 24 at age 71. His last words were, “I have tried so hard to do right.” He is buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Honors and memorials

In his first term in office, Cleveland sought a summer house to escape the heat and smells of Washington, D.C., near enough the capital. He secretly bought a farmhouse, Oak View (or Oak Hill), in a rural upland part of the District of Columbia, in 1886, and remodeled it into a Queen Anne style summer estate. He sold Oak View upon losing his bid for re-election in 1888. Not long thereafter, suburban residential development reached the area, which came to be known as Oak View, and then Cleveland Heights, and eventually Cleveland Park. The Clevelands are depicted in local murals

Grover Cleveland Hall at Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York is named after Cleveland. Cleveland Hall houses the offices of the college president, vice presidents, and other administrative functions and student services. Cleveland was a member of the first board of directors of the then Buffalo Normal School. Grover Cleveland Middle School in his birthplace, Caldwell, New Jersey, was named for him, as is Grover Cleveland High School in Buffalo, New York, and the town of Cleveland, Mississippi. Mount Cleveland, a volcano in Alaska, is also named after him. In 1895 he became the first U.S. president who was filmed.

The first U.S. postage stamp to honor Cleveland appeared in 1923. This twelve-cent issue accompanied a thirteen-cent stamp in the same definitive series that depicted his old rival Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland’s only two subsequent stamp appearances have been in issues devoted to the full roster of U.S. Presidents, released, respectively, in 1938 and 1986.

Cleveland’s portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill of series 1928 and series 1934. He also appeared on the first few issues of the $20 Federal Reserve Notes from 1914. Since he was both the 22nd and 24th president, he was featured on two separate dollar coins released in 2012 as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.

In 2013, Cleveland was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Explanatory notes

Vice President Hendricks died in office. As this was prior to the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967, a vacancy in the office of Vice President was not filled until the next ensuing election and inauguration.

He was therefore the only person to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents.

John Tyler, who married his second wife Julia Gardiner in 1844, was the first.

U.S. President #22 & #24: Grover Cleveland (Part I)

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was an American politician and lawyer who was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office (1885–1889 and 1893–1897). He won the popular vote for three presidential elections—in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was one of two Democrats (with Woodrow Wilson) to be elected president during the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933.

Born to a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland grew up in upstate New York. In 1881, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo and later, governor of New York. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs; Free Silver; inflation; imperialism; and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism. He fought political corruption, patronage, and bossism. As a reformer, Cleveland had such prestige that the like-minded wing of the Republican Party, called “Mugwumps”, largely bolted the GOP presidential ticket and swung to his support in the 1884 election.

As his second administration began, disaster hit the nation when the Panic of 1893 produced a severe national depression, which Cleveland was unable to reverse. It ruined his Democratic Party, opening the way for a Republican landslide in 1894 and for the agrarian and silverite seizure of the Democratic Party in 1896. The result was a political realignment that ended the Third Party System and launched the Fourth Party System and the Progressive Era.

Cleveland was a formidable policymaker, and he also drew corresponding criticism. His intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions nationwide in addition to the party in Illinois; his support of the gold standard and opposition to Free Silver alienated the agrarian wing of the Democratic Party. Critics complained that Cleveland had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation’s economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term. Even so, his reputation for probity and good character survived the troubles of his second term. Biographer Allan Nevins wrote, “[I]n Grover Cleveland, the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities. He had no endowments that thousands of men do not have. He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not.” By the end of his second term, public perception showed him to be one of the most unpopular U.S. presidents, and he was by then rejected even by most Democrats. Today, Cleveland is considered by most historians to have been a successful leader, generally ranked among the upper-mid tier of American presidents.

Early life

Childhood and family history

Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey, to Ann (née Neal) and Richard Falley Cleveland. Cleveland’s father was a Congregational and Presbyterian minister who was originally from Connecticut. His mother was from Baltimore and was the daughter of a bookseller. On his father’s side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors, the first of the family having emigrated to Massachusetts from Cleveland, England in 1635. His father’s maternal grandfather, Richard Falley Jr., fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and was the son of an immigrant from Guernsey. On his mother’s side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-Irish Protestants and German Quakers from Philadelphia. Cleveland was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city of Cleveland, Ohio, was named.

Cleveland, the fifth of nine children, was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the time. He became known as Grover in his adult life. In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, where Grover spent much of his childhood. Neighbors later described him as “full of fun and inclined to play pranks,” and fond of outdoor sports.

In 1850, Cleveland’s father moved to Clinton, New York, to work as district secretary for the American Home Missionary Society. Despite his father’s dedication to his missionary work, the income was insufficient for the large family. Financial conditions forced him to remove Grover from school into a two-year mercantile apprenticeship in Fayetteville. The experience was valuable and brief, and the living conditions quite austere. Grover returned to Clinton and his schooling at the completion of the apprentice contract. n 1853, when missionary work began to take a toll on his health, Cleveland’s father took an assignment in Holland Patent, New York (near Utica) and the family moved again. Shortly after, he died from a gastric ulcer, with Grover reputedly hearing of his father’s death from a boy selling newspapers.

Education and moving west

Cleveland received his elementary education at the Fayetteville Academy and the Clinton Liberal Academy. After his father died in 1853, he again left school to help support his family. Later that year, Cleveland’s brother William was hired as a teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind in New York City, and William obtained a place for Cleveland as an assistant teacher. He returned home to Holland Patent at the end of 1854, where an elder in his church offered to pay for his college education if he would promise to become a minister. Cleveland declined, and in 1855 he decided to move west. He stopped first in Buffalo, New York, where his uncle, Lewis F. Allen, gave him a clerical job. Allen was an important man in Buffalo, and he introduced his nephew to influential men there, including the partners in the law firm of Rogers, Bowen, and Rogers. Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States, had previously worked for the partnership. Cleveland later took a clerkship with the firm, began to read the law, and was admitted to the New York bar in 1859.

Early career and the Civil War

Cleveland worked for the Rogers firm for three years, then left in 1862 to start his own practice. In January 1863, he was appointed assistant district attorney of Erie County. With the American Civil War raging, Congress passed the Conscription Act of 1863, requiring able-bodied men to serve in the army if called upon, or else to hire a substitute. Cleveland chose the latter course, paying $150 (equivalent to $3,115 in 2019) to George Benninsky, a thirty-two-year-old Polish immigrant, to serve in his place. Benninsky survived the war.

As a lawyer, Cleveland became known for his single-minded concentration and dedication to hard work. In 1866, he successfully defended some participants in the Fenian raid, working on a pro bono basis (free of charge). In 1868, Cleveland attracted professional attention for his winning defense of a libel suit against the editor of Buffalo’s Commercial Advertiser. During this time, Cleveland assumed a lifestyle of simplicity, taking residence in a plain boarding house; Cleveland dedicated his growing income instead to the support of his mother and younger sisters. While his personal quarters were austere, Cleveland enjoyed an active social life and “the easy-going sociability of hotel-lobbies and saloons.” He shunned the circles of higher society of Buffalo in which his uncle’s family traveled.

Political career in New York

Sheriff of Erie County

From his earliest involvement in politics, Cleveland aligned with the Democratic Party. He had a decided aversion to Republicans John Fremont and Abraham Lincoln, and the heads of the Rogers law firm were solid Democrats. In 1865, he ran for District Attorney, losing narrowly to his friend and roommate, Lyman K. Bass, the Republican nominee. ] In 1870, with the help of friend Oscar Folsom, Cleveland secured the Democratic nomination for Sheriff of Erie County, New York. He won the election by a 303-vote margin and took office on January 1, 1871 at age 33. While this new career took him away from the practice of law, it was rewarding in other ways: the fees were said to yield up to $40,000 (equivalent to $853,667 in 2019) over the two-year term.

Cleveland’s service as sheriff was unremarkable; biographer Rexford Tugwell described the time in office as a waste for Cleveland politically. Cleveland was aware of graft in the sheriff’s office during his tenure and chose not to confront it. A notable incident of his term took place on September 6, 1872, when Patrick Morrissey was executed, who had been convicted of murdering his mother. As sheriff, Cleveland was responsible for either personally carrying out the execution or paying a deputy $10 to perform the task. In spite of reservations about the hanging, Cleveland executed Morrissey himself. He hanged another murderer, John Gaffney, on February 14, 1873.

After his term as sheriff ended, Cleveland returned to his law practice, opening a firm with his friends Lyman K. Bass and Wilson S. Bissell. Elected to Congress in 1872, Bass did not spend much time at the firm, but Cleveland and Bissell soon rose to the top of Buffalo’s legal community. Up to that point, Cleveland’s political career had been honorable and unexceptional. As biographer Allan Nevins wrote, “Probably no man in the country, on March 4, 1881, had less thought than this limited, simple, sturdy attorney of Buffalo that four years later he would be standing in Washington and taking the oath as President of the United States.”

It was during this period that Cleveland began courting a widow, Maria Halpin. She later accused him of raping her. He accused her of being an alcoholic and consorting with men. In an attempt to discredit her, he had her institutionalized, and their child taken away and raised by his friends. The institution quickly realized that she did not belong there, and released her. The illegitimate child became a campaign issue for the GOP in his first presidential campaign.

Mayor of Buffalo

In the 1870s, the municipal government in Buffalo had grown increasingly corrupt, with Democratic and Republican political machines cooperating to share the spoils of political office. In 1881 the Republicans nominated a slate of particularly disreputable machine politicians; the Democrats saw the opportunity to gain the votes of disaffected Republicans by nominating a more honest candidate. The party leaders approached Cleveland, and he agreed to run for Mayor of Buffalo, provided that the rest of the ticket was to his liking. When the more notorious politicians were left off the Democratic ticket, Cleveland accepted the nomination. Cleveland was elected mayor with 15,120 votes, as against 11,528 for Milton C. Beebe, his opponent. He took office January 2, 1882.

Cleveland’s term as mayor was spent fighting the entrenched interests of the party machines. Among the acts that established his reputation was a veto of the street-cleaning bill passed by the Common Council. The street-cleaning contract was open for bids, and the Council selected the highest bidder at $422,000, rather than the lowest of $100,000 less, because of the political connections of the bidder. While this sort of bipartisan graft had previously been tolerated in Buffalo, Mayor Cleveland would have none of it. His veto message said, “I regard it as the culmination of a most bare-faced, impudent, and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people, and to worse than squander the public money.” The Council reversed itself and awarded the contract to the lowest bidder. Cleveland also asked the state legislature to form a Commission to develop a plan to improve the sewer system in Buffalo at a much lower cost than previously proposed locally; this plan was successfully adopted. For this, and other actions safeguarding public funds, Cleveland’s reputation as a leader willing to purge government corruption began to spread beyond Erie County.

Governor of New York

New York Democratic party officials began to consider Cleveland a possible nominee for governor. Daniel Manning, a party insider who admired Cleveland’s record, was instrumental in his candidacy. With a split in the state Republican party in 1882, the Democratic party was considered to be at an advantage; there were several contenders for that party’s nomination. The two leading Democratic candidates were Roswell P. Flower and Henry W. Slocum. Their factions deadlocked, and the convention could not agree on a nominee. Cleveland, in third place on the first ballot, picked up support in subsequent votes and emerged as the compromise choice. The Republican party remained divided against itself, and in the general election Cleveland emerged the victor, with 535,318 votes to Republican nominee Charles J. Folger’s 342,464. Cleveland’s margin of victory was, at the time, the largest in a contested New York election; the Democrats also picked up seats in both houses of the New York State Legislature.

Cleveland brought his opposition to needless spending to the governor’s office; he promptly sent the legislature eight vetos in his first two months in office. The first to attract attention was his veto of a bill to reduce the fares on New York City elevated trains to five cents. The bill had broad support because the trains’ owner, Jay Gould, was unpopular, and his fare increases were widely denounced. Cleveland, however, saw the bill as unjust—Gould had taken over the railroads when they were failing and had made the system solvent again. Moreover, Cleveland believed that altering Gould’s franchise would violate the Contract Clause of the federal Constitution. Despite the initial popularity of the fare-reduction bill, the newspapers praised Cleveland’s veto. Theodore Roosevelt, then a member of the Assembly, had reluctantly voted for the bill to which Cleveland objected, in a desire to punish the unscrupulous railroad barons. After the veto, Roosevelt reversed himself, as did many legislators, and the veto was sustained.

Cleveland’s defiance of political corruption won him popular acclaim, and the enmity of the influential Tammany Hall organization in New York City. Tammany, under its boss, John Kelly, had disapproved of Cleveland’s nomination as governor, and their resistance intensified after Cleveland openly opposed and prevented the re-election of their point man in the State Senate, Thomas F. Grady. Cleveland also steadfastly opposed nominees of the Tammanyites, as well as bills passed as a result of their deal making. The loss of Tammany’s support was offset by the support of Theodore Roosevelt and other reform-minded Republicans who helped Cleveland to pass several laws reforming municipal governments.

Election of 1884

Nomination for president

The Republicans convened in Chicago and nominated former Speaker of the House James G. Blaine of Maine for president on the fourth ballot. Blaine’s nomination alienated many Republicans who viewed Blaine as ambitious and immoral. The GOP standard bearer was weakened by alienating the Mugwumps, and the Conkling faction, recently disenfranchised by President Arthur. Democratic party leaders saw the Republicans’ choice as an opportunity to win the White House for the first time since 1856 if the right candidate could be found.

Among the Democrats, Samuel J. Tilden was the initial front-runner, having been the party’s nominee in the contested election of 1876. After Tilden declined a nomination due to his poor health, his supporters shifted to several other contenders. Cleveland was among the leaders in early support, and Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, Samuel Freeman Miller of Iowa, and Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts also had considerable followings, along with various favorite sons. Each of the other candidates had hindrances to his nomination: Bayard had spoken in favor of secession in 1861, making him unacceptable to Northerners; Butler, conversely, was reviled throughout the South for his actions during the Civil War; Thurman was generally well liked, but was growing old and infirm, and his views on the silver question were uncertain. Cleveland, too, had detractors—Tammany remained opposed to him—but the nature of his enemies made him still more friends. Cleveland led on the first ballot, with 392 votes out of 820. On the second ballot, Tammany threw its support behind Butler, but the rest of the delegates shifted to Cleveland, who won. Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana was selected as his running mate.

Campaign against Blaine

Corruption in politics was the central issue in 1884; indeed, Blaine had over the span of his career been involved in several questionable deals. Cleveland’s reputation as an opponent of corruption proved the Democrats’ strongest asset. William C. Hudson created Cleveland’s contextual campaign slogan “A public office is a public trust.” Reform-minded Republicans called “Mugwumps” denounced Blaine as corrupt and flocked to Cleveland. The Mugwumps, including such men as Carl Schurz and Henry Ward Beecher, were more concerned with morality than with party, and felt Cleveland was a kindred soul who would promote civil service reform and fight for efficiency in government. At the same time the Democrats gained support from the Mugwumps, they lost some blue-collar workers to the Greenback-Labor party, led by ex-Democrat Benjamin Butler. In general, Cleveland abided by the precedent of minimizing presidential campaign travel and speechmaking; Blaine became one of the first to break with that tradition.

The campaign focused on the candidates’ moral standards, as each side cast aspersions on their opponents. Cleveland’s supporters rehashed the old allegations that Blaine had corruptly influenced legislation in favor of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad and the Union Pacific Railway, later profiting on the sale of bonds he owned in both companies. Although the stories of Blaine’s favors to the railroads had made the rounds eight years earlier, this time Blaine’s correspondence was discovered, making his earlier denials less plausible. On some of the most damaging correspondence, Blaine had written “Burn this letter”, giving Democrats the last line to their rallying cry: “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine, ‘Burn this letter!”

Regarding Cleveland, commentator Jeff Jacoby notes that, “Not since George Washington had a candidate for President been so renowned for his rectitude.” But the Republicans found a refutation buried in Cleveland’s past. Aided by the sermons of Reverend George H. Ball, a minister from Buffalo, they made public the allegation that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer there, and their rallies soon included the chant “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?”. When confronted with the scandal, Cleveland immediately instructed his supporters to “Above all, tell the truth.” Cleveland admitted to paying child support in 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, the woman who asserted he had fathered her son Oscar Folsom Cleveland and he assumed responsibility. Shortly before the 1884 election, the Republican media published an affidavit from Halpin in which she stated that until she met Cleveland, her “life was pure and spotless”, and “there is not, and never was, a doubt as to the paternity of our child, and the attempt of Grover Cleveland, or his friends, to couple the name of Oscar Folsom, or any one else, with that boy, for that purpose is simply infamous and false.”

Results of the 1884 election

The electoral votes of closely contested New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Connecticut would determine the election. In New York, the Tammany Democrats decided that they would gain more from supporting a Democrat they disliked than a Republican who would do nothing for them. Blaine hoped that he would have more support from Irish Americans than Republicans typically did; while the Irish were mainly a Democratic constituency in the 19th century, Blaine’s mother was Irish Catholic, and he had been supportive of the Irish National Land League while he was Secretary of State. The Irish, a significant group in three of the swing states, did appear inclined to support Blaine until a Republican, Samuel D. Burchard, gave a speech pivotal for the Democrats, denouncing them as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” The Democrats spread the word of this implied Catholic insult on the eve of the election. They also blistered Blaine for attending a banquet with some of New York City’s wealthiest men.

After the votes were counted, Cleveland narrowly won all four of the swing states, including New York by 1200 votes. While the popular vote total was close, with Cleveland winning by just one-quarter of a percent, the electoral votes gave Cleveland a majority of 219–182. Following the electoral victory, the “Ma, Ma …” attack phrase gained a classic riposte: “Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

First presidency (1885–1889)

Reform

Soon after taking office, Cleveland was faced with the task of filling all the government jobs for which the president had the power of appointment. These jobs were typically filled under the spoils system, but Cleveland announced that he would not fire any Republican who was doing his job well, and would not appoint anyone solely on the basis of party service. He also used his appointment powers to reduce the number of federal employees, as many departments had become bloated with political time-servers. Later in his term, as his fellow Democrats chafed at being excluded from the spoils, Cleveland began to replace more of the partisan Republican officeholders with Democrats; this was especially the case with policy making positions. While some of his decisions were influenced by party concerns, more of Cleveland’s appointments were decided by merit alone than was the case in his predecessors’ administrations.

Cleveland also reformed other parts of the government. In 1887, he signed an act creating the Interstate Commerce Commission. He and Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney undertook to modernize the navy and canceled construction contracts that had resulted in inferior ships. Cleveland angered railroad investors by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by government grant. Secretary of the Interior Lucius Q. C. Lamar charged that the rights of way for this land must be returned to the public because the railroads failed to extend their lines according to agreements. The lands were forfeited, resulting in the return of approximately 81,000,000 acres (330,000 km2).

Cleveland was the first Democratic president subject to the Tenure of Office Act which originated in 1867; the act purported to require the Senate to approve the dismissal of any presidential appointee who was originally subject to its advice and consent. Cleveland objected to the act in principle and his steadfast refusal to abide by it prompted its fall into disfavor and led to its ultimate repeal in 1887.

Vetoes

Cleveland faced a Republican Senate and often resorted to using his veto powers. He vetoed hundreds of private pension bills for American Civil War veterans, believing that if their pensions requests had already been rejected by the Pension Bureau, Congress should not attempt to override that decision. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland also vetoed that. Cleveland used the veto far more often than any president up to that time. In 1887, Cleveland issued his most well-known veto, that of the Texas Seed Bill. After a drought had ruined crops in several Texas counties, Congress appropriated $10,000 (equivalent to $284,556 in 2019) to purchase seed grain for farmers there. Cleveland vetoed the expenditure. In his veto message, he espoused a theory of limited government:

I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

Silver

One of the most volatile issues of the 1880s was whether the currency should be backed by gold and silver, or by gold alone. The issue cut across party lines, with western Republicans and southern Democrats joining together in the call for the free coinage of silver, and both parties’ representatives in the northeast holding firm for the gold standard. Because silver was worth less than its legal equivalent in gold, taxpayers paid their government bills in silver, while international creditors demanded payment in gold, resulting in a depletion of the nation’s gold supply.

Cleveland and Treasury Secretary Daniel Manning stood firmly on the side of the gold standard, and tried to reduce the amount of silver that the government was required to coin under the Bland–Allison Act of 1878. Cleveland unsuccessfully appealed to Congress to repeal this law before he was inaugurated. Angered Westerners and Southerners advocated for cheap money to help their poorer constituents. In reply, one of the foremost silverites, Richard P. Bland, introduced a bill in 1886 that would require the government to coin unlimited amounts of silver, inflating the then-deflating currency. While Bland’s bill was defeated, so was a bill the administration favored that would repeal any silver coinage requirement. The result was a retention of the status quo, and a postponement of the resolution of the Free Silver issue.

Tariffs

“When we consider that the theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him, it is plain that the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice … The public Treasury, which should only exist as a conduit conveying the people’s tribute to its legitimate objects of expenditure, becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people’s use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country’s development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder.”--Cleveland’s third annual message to Congress, December 6, 1887.

Another contentious financial issue at the time was the protective tariff. These tariffs had been implemented as a temporary measure during the civil war to protect American industrial interests but remained in place after the war. While it had not been a central point in his campaign, Cleveland’s opinion on the tariff was that of most Democrats: that the tariff ought to be reduced. Republicans generally favored a high tariff to protect American industries. American tariffs had been high since the Civil War, and by the 1880s the tariff brought in so much revenue that the government was running a surplus.

In 1886, a bill to reduce the tariff was narrowly defeated in the House. The tariff issue was emphasized in the Congressional elections that year, and the forces of protectionism increased their numbers in the Congress, but Cleveland continued to advocate tariff reform. As the surplus grew, Cleveland and the reformers called for a tariff for revenue only. His message to Congress in 1887 highlighted the injustice of taking more money from the people than the government needed to pay its operating expenses. Republicans, as well as protectionist northern Democrats like Samuel J. Randall, believed that American industries would fail without high tariffs, and they continued to fight reform efforts. Roger Q. Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, proposed a bill to reduce the tariff from about 47% to about 40%. After significant exertions by Cleveland and his allies, the bill passed the House. The Republican Senate failed to come to agreement with the Democratic House, and the bill died in the conference committee. Dispute over the tariff persisted into the 1888 presidential election.

Foreign policy, 1885–1889

Cleveland was a committed non-interventionist who had campaigned in opposition to expansion and imperialism. He refused to promote the previous administration’s Nicaragua canal treaty, and generally was less of an expansionist in foreign relations. Cleveland’s Secretary of State, Thomas F. Bayard, negotiated with Joseph Chamberlain of the United Kingdom over fishing rights in the waters off Canada, and struck a conciliatory note, despite the opposition of New England’s Republican Senators. Cleveland also withdrew from Senate consideration the Berlin Conference treaty which guaranteed an open door for U.S. interests in the Congo.

Military policy, 1885–1889

Cleveland’s military policy emphasized self-defense and modernization. In 1885 Cleveland appointed the Board of Fortifications under Secretary of War William C. Endicott to recommend a new coastal fortification system for the United States. No improvements to US coastal defenses had been made since the late 1870s. The Board’s 1886 report recommended a massive $127 million construction program (equivalent to $3.6 billion in 2019) at 29 harbors and river estuaries, to include new breech-loading rifled guns, mortars, and naval minefields. The Board and the program are usually called the Endicott Board and the Endicott Program. Most of the Board’s recommendations were implemented, and by 1910, 27 locations were defended by over 70 forts. Many of the weapons remained in place until scrapped in World War II as they were replaced with new defenses. Endicott also proposed to Congress a system of examinations for Army officer promotions. For the Navy, the Cleveland administration spearheaded by Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney moved towards modernization, although no ships were constructed that could match the best European warships. Although completion of the four steel-hulled warships begun under the previous administration was delayed due to a corruption investigation and subsequent bankruptcy of their building yard, these ships were completed in a timely manner in naval shipyards once the investigation was over. Sixteen additional steel-hulled warships were ordered by the end of 1888; these ships later proved vital in the Spanish–American War of 1898, and many served in World War I. These ships included the “second-class battleships” Maine and Texas, designed to match modern armored ships recently acquired by South American countries from Europe, such as the Brazilian battleship Riachuelo. Eleven protected cruisers (including the famous Olympia), one armored cruiser, and one monitor were also ordered, along with the experimental cruiser Vesuvius.

Civil rights and immigration

Cleveland, like a growing number of Northerners (and nearly all white Southerners) saw Reconstruction as a failed experiment, and was reluctant to use federal power to enforce the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed voting rights to African Americans. Though Cleveland appointed no black Americans to patronage jobs, he allowed Frederick Douglass to continue in his post as recorder of deeds in Washington, D.C. and appointed another black man (James Campbell Matthews, a former New York judge) to replace Douglass upon his resignation. His decision to replace Douglass with a black man was met with outrage, but Cleveland claimed to have known Matthews personally.

Although Cleveland had condemned the “outrages” against Chinese immigrants, he believed that Chinese immigrants were unwilling to assimilate into white society. Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard negotiated an extension to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Cleveland lobbied the Congress to pass the Scott Act, written by Congressman William Lawrence Scott, which prevented the return of Chinese immigrants who left the United States. The Scott Act easily passed both houses of Congress, and Cleveland signed it into law on October 1, 1888.

Native American policy

Henry L. Dawes wrote the Dawes Act, which Cleveland signed into law.

Cleveland viewed Native Americans as wards of the state, saying in his first inaugural address that “[t]his guardianship involves, on our part, efforts for the improvement of their condition and enforcement of their rights.” He encouraged the idea of cultural assimilation, pushing for the passage of the Dawes Act, which provided for distribution of Indian lands to individual members of tribes, rather than having them continued to be held in trust for the tribes by the federal government. While a conference of Native leaders endorsed the act, in practice the majority of Native Americans disapproved of it. Cleveland believed the Dawes Act would lift Native Americans out of poverty and encourage their assimilation into white society. It ultimately weakened the tribal governments and allowed individual Indians to sell land and keep the money.

In the month before Cleveland’s 1885 inauguration, President Arthur opened four million acres of Winnebago and Crow Creek Indian lands in the Dakota Territory to white settlement by executive order. Tens of thousands of settlers gathered at the border of these lands and prepared to take possession of them. Cleveland believed Arthur’s order to be in violation of treaties with the tribes, and rescinded it on April 17 of that year, ordering the settlers out of the territory. Cleveland sent in eighteen companies of Army troops to enforce the treaties and ordered General Philip Sheridan, at the time Commanding General of the U. S. Army, to investigate the matter.

Romance Told through Text

Write a story told only through text messages.

Dialog #1

Guy online: Hey there, UR cute?

Girl online: You’re not so bad URself.

Guy: Name’s Stan.

Girl: Melanie.

Stan: Wanna chat?

Melanie: Sure, why not.

Stan: Glad I came to Tagged.

Melanie: U R?

Stan: Yes. My friend said I should try online dating, but was a little iffy on it?

Melanie: Not N2 dating on the web?

Stan: It’s not that? Hard 2 no who U can trust.

Melanie: I hear ya.

Stan: So, what do you say we just close R accounts and send texts?

Melanie: OK.

Stan: My # xxx-xxx-6789

Melanie: Here’s mine # xxx-xxx-2345

Stan: OK. Closing my account now. Send U text N few.

Melanie I’m doing the same.

Dialog #2

Stan: Mel? Can I call you Mel?

Melanie: Sure.

Stan: So what do you do 4 a living?

Melanie: I’m a freelance writer.

Stan: Sounds interesting. I’m a truck driver.

Melanie: Ooh. What do you transport?

Stan: Hazardous materials.

Melanie: Wow! Isn’t that dangerous?

Stan: Yah. But it pays the bills.

Melanie: U got a point.

Stan: What do U do 4 fun?

Melanie: Read, write, watch TV, movies.

Stan: Interesting.

Melanie: What do U like 2 do?

Stan: The same.

Melanie: Stan, I gotta go. My mother is calling.

Stan: OK. TTYL. Bye.

Dialog #3

Stan: Good morning?

Melanie: Good morning.

Stan: How R U?

Melanie: I’m good. U?

Stan: I’m good. What R U doing 2day?

Melanie: Writing an article. Due 2day. U?

Stan: Home 4 a couple hours. Gotta B on the road again.

Melanie: Sounds like we’re both busy?

Stan: Yeah.

Melanie: Well gotta go & write that article.

Stan: OK. TTYL!

Dialog #4

Stan: Hello?

Melanie: Hi.

Stan: Missed talking w/ U yesterday? U OK?

Melanie: Yea. Just sick yesterday.

Stan: Oh. Sorry. Hope U feeling better?

Melanie: I am.

Stan: I have confession to make.

Melanie: OK. Spill!

Stan: I think I’m N luv w/ U?

Melanie: U think UR N luv w/ me?

Stan: Scratch that. I know UR my soulmate.

Melanie: Hmmmmmm….

Stan: We’re destined 2 B 2gether. We have a connection.

Melanie: Really?

Stan: Mel? U there?

Dialog #5

Stan: Babe? U there?

Melanie: Sorry. No connection.

Stan: That’s OK.

Melanie: Listen. I wasn’t ignoring U. My data stopped working the last time we chatted.

Stan: I understand.

Melanie: Oh, sorry, but I gotta go. Mom drama!

Dialog #6

Melanie: Hello.

Stan: Hey, babe. UR mom OK?

Melanie: She’s good.

Stan: U said U had mom drama?

Melanie: Oh, just the usual checking up on me.

Stan: Yeah. Sometimes that sucks!

Melanie: Tell me about it?

Stan: UR mother always nitpicking?

Melanie: Not usually.

Stan: Oh? Maybe she’s just worried for you?

Melanie: Yeah. Maybe?

Stan: Babe, I’ve gotta go.

Melanie: OK. TTYL.

Dialogue #7

Melanie: Baby?

Melanie: U there?

Dialogue #8

Stan: Baby, sorry I didn’t chat with you. Been busy with work.

Melanie: That’s OK.

Stan: U OK?

Melanie: Just have a touch of the flu.

Stan: Oh. Hope you feel better.

Melanie: I am. Been sleeping it off.

Stan: So, Halloween’s coming. U doing anything?

Melanie: No. Have to work.

Stan: U RNT dressing up?

Melanie: No.

Stan: Oh OK.

Melanie: R U doing anything?

Stan: Going to a party with friends.

Melanie: Oh OK. Hope U have fun.

Stan: Yeah. I’ll B thinking of U tho.

Melanie: Yeah. Me 2.

Stan: Well, duty calls.

Melanie: Yeah. Me 2.

Dialogue #9

Stan: hello?

Melanie: Baby, how R U?

Stan. I’m gud. How was Halloween?

Melanie: OK. U?

Stan: didn’t go as well as it cud?!

Melanie: Oh….

Stan: the party turned N2 a fiasco & cops were called.

Melanie: Oh no. Were U arrested?

Stan: I wasn’t, but my friend was.

Melanie: What happened?

Stan: there were drugs @ the party & those who had drugs on them were taken N.

Melanie: was the party a sting 4 a raid?

Stan: yeah.

Melanie: Well, I’m glad U weren’t affected by it…

Stan: yeah, me 2. It’s the last time I’ll trust my friend.

Melanie: R U & UR friend on the outs?

Stan: 4 now. Don’t know how I’ll ever trust him again?

Melanie: I’m sure Ull work it out somehow?

Stan: Babe, can we meet sometime?

Dialogue #10

Stan: Babe?

Stan: U there?

Stan: U avoiding me?

Dialogue #11

Stan: Babe, hello?

Stan: Melanie?

Melanie: hello.

Stan: U not talking to me?

Melanie: sorry, was working a lot.

Stan: Oh. Thot U were avoiding after I asked if we could meet?

Melanie: No I wasn’t. But I’m not ready to meet yet.

Stan: Oh? U like texting?

Melanie: 4 now.

Stan: OK. If that’s what U want?

Melanie: So what did U eat 4 breakfast?

Stan: Just some toast & coffee.

Melanie: Oh, how do U drink UR coffee?

Stan: Black. U drink coffee?

Melanie: Yeah. But it has 2 B sickeningly sweet. U know—lots of cream & sugar & hot chocolate.

Stan: sounds disgusting! Lol! 😀

Melanie: Maybe, but it’s the only way I can get it down.

Stan: I gotta go to work now, but how about R next chat we talk romantically?

Melanie: OK. Next time then.

Stan: Bye 4 now.

Dialogue #12

Stan: Good morning babe! 🙂

Melanie: Baby! Missed U! ❤ 🙂

Stan: What R U wearing?

Melanie: Still N my PJs.

Stan: Hmmmmm…can I rip em off?! LOL!

Melanie: U have 2 catch me first!

Stan: Is that a dare!

Melanie: Yes!

Stan: OK. I’m on it!

Melanie: Oh darn!

Stan: What’s up, Babe?

Melanie: I gotta go! This has been fun. We shud do it again soon!

Stan: U can bet we will! TTYL lover!

Homewrecker

Introduction

Cassidy Jenkins hadn’t seen her childhood friend, Daniella Thompson, since their high school days. When she suddenly receives a call saying that she is coming for a visit, Cassidy is overjoyed. But Daniella has learned of Cassidy’s recent marriage to Tyler Jenkins, and is jealous of Cassidy’s happiness. Daniella tries to come between Cassidy and Tyler by seducing Cassidy’s husband, Tyler. When Cassidy discovers Daniella’s secret and the real reason Daniella is here, will Cassidy forgive her friend?

Chapter 1

“Hello?” Cassidy Jenkins answered her cell.

“Cassidy?” Daniella asked.

“Daniella?” Cassidy asked surprised to hear from her childhood friend. “I was just wondering about you?”

“I just want to let you know that I was coming for a visit.”

“You are? That’s great, Daniella! You can meet my new husband, Tyler!” Cassidy exclaimed excitedly.

“Yeah, that would be nice!” Daniella replied in a somber tone.

“Well, Daniella, I hate to break off our call, but I have to be getting to work now.” Cassidy told her.

“Yeah, sure! See you in a few days!” Daniella said, hanging up.

Cassidy hung up and began to get ready for work as a paralegal in her father’s law firm, she couldn’t believe she would see Daniella again. It’s been so long—too long! One thing bothered her though—their rivalry over the quarterback James Mitchell, whom both Cassidy and Daniella both had eyes for. It had been an ugly rivalry to which Daniella won the heart of James when the two married right after they graduated high school. Cassidy never heard from Daniella again—until now!

Daniella had packed her few belongings that James had let her have. When Daniella and James first married, it seemed the two were inseparable. They were the picture of happiness—that is for the first two months. Then James changed. He became possessive over Daniella. He controlled her every move, from the friends she had to the family she could talk to.

Things escalated further when James began beating Daniella and leaving bruises on her, even putting her in the hospital a few times. Daniella thought she was a dead woman—until a month ago when Daniella finally had enough and shot and killed James when he was sleeping.

The next morning, she woke in a daze to the news of Cassidy’s marriage to celebrity architect to the stars, Tyler Jenkins. After Daniella’s ordeal the last 10 years, Daniella seethed with anger toward Cassidy. How could she end up happy when she was miserable? It wasn’t fair that Cassidy got what she wanted and she ended up in a nightmare of a marriage. Daniella blamed Cassidy for her marriage woes. After all, Cassidy gave up on James way to easily, and Daniella wanted Cassidy to pay.

That’s when Daniella made up her mind to ruin Cassidy’s happiness at all costs. Daniella intended to steal Tyler away from Cassidy and make Cassidy pay for everything she went through. Her troubled life was Cassidy’s fault.

Chapter 2

“Dani!” Cassidy shrieked with excitement when she spotted her friend in the airport while waiting for her.

“Cassie.” Dani shrieked with fake excitement as she gave her friend a hug, while secretly eyeing Cassidy’s husband, Tyler.

“Oh, Dani, it’s been so long.” Cassidy said sadly. “How did we ever lose touch with each other?”

“I know.” Daniella lied. “I’m sorry for everything.’

Daniella and Cassidy talked about old times while waiting for her luggage at the baggage claim. When it finally came out, Daniella pointed it out and Tyler, like the true gentleman, picked up Daniella’s luggage and carried it to his and Cassidy’s car. Daniella was amazed that they had a driver. No, more like jealous!

As Max drove Cassidy, Tyler and Daniella back to Tyler and Cassidy’s mansion, Tyler poured Cassidy and Daniella a drink from the mini bar in the limousine. As the three enjoyed the drink, Daniella thought about her revenge on Cassidy and how to make the moves on Tyler. He was a man Daniella could fall for with his rugged good looks and chiseled features, those gorgeous blue eyes the color of the ocean—Daniella could get lost in them forever.

“Dani?” Cassidy spoke, breaking Daniella free of her thoughts.

“What? I’m sorry Cassie. I must have been lost in thought.” Daniella lied, as she continued to think about having Tyler all to herself.

“What do you want to do first when we get home?” Cassidy repeated.

“Oh, surprise me!” Daniella told her friend.

“Well, why don’t you two take a swim out in our pool while I make you two some lunch.” Tyler suggested.

“That’s sounds good, honey.” Cassidy said, giving him a kiss on the lips.

Max had just pulled into the drive of Cassidy and Tyler’s mansion. Tyler grabbed Daniella’s bags and followed Cassidy and Daniella up the front steps to the front door as Cassidy pushed the code for the security alarm.

Once inside, Cassidy led Daniella to her room—actually wing—that she would have all to herself. Amazed as she was by Cassidy’s success, Daniella couldn’t wait to take all of this from Cassidy for payment for all her hurt.

Daniella still couldn’t believe that Cassidy managed to get everything while she lost all she had.

“I’ll wait for you out by the pool.” Cassidy said to Daniella.

“Okay. I’ll get dressed and be out there in a few.” Daniella promised.

But first, Daniella had to put the first part of her plan into motion.

Chapter 3

Daniella dressed in her sexiest bikini…a blue bikini…and threw on her cover up. Daniella held her long locks up as she tried to decide whether she should put it up or let hang loose around her shoulders. After a few minutes, she decided she looked sexier with it hanging loose around her shoulders. Satisfied with her look, Daniella grabbed her cell and headed downstairs to meet Cassidy and Tyler out by their pool.

“What took you so long?” Cassidy asked her when Daniella finally emerged from the sliding glass door.

“Oh, just had to get ready.” Daniella expressed as she flung her cover up into the lounge chair and flipped her locks in Tyler’s direction.

“You. . .look nice.” Tyler commented, trying not to get excited by Daniella’s appearance, as hot as he thought she looked.

“Yeah, Daniella, you look great, as always.” Cassidy said, a bit jealous.

Daniella’s performance brought Cassidy back to their high school days. Daniella always seemed to get the guys, even the ones that Cassidy was interested in. She remembered how Daniella took advantage of the fact that she also liked James Mitchell and managed to land James before she could tell him how she felt. Now that she was married to Tyler, it seemed to Cassidy that Daniella was trying to do the same? But Cassidy shook it off thinking that Daniella was above that now. . .we were all adults. . .no time to play childish games we played back in high school.

Daniella went in the pool giving a show for Tyler. And as Tyler loved Cassidy, he couldn’t help but look at Daniella. She was hot and sexy, not that Cassidy wasn’t either. But there was something about Daniella. . .something that he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He felt guilty for the way he looked at her. . .like he was cheating on Cassidy. . .but. . .he just couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Daniella swam in Cassidy’s pool, all the while, watching Tyler. She liked that he couldn’t take his eyes off her. . .her plan was working. Soon, Tyler would be all hers. And Cassidy would be left out in the cold. . .just as Cassidy deserved. . .

Cassidy, not wanting to watch Daniella’s obvious game, made an excuse to go into the house and get some snacks for them to munch on. When she got into the house, Cassidy opened up the refrigerator and took out the ribs that Tyler would barbecue for their dinner. Cassidy knew Daniella liked barbecued ribs. She placed the ribs on the cart along with the barbecue sauce for the ribs, the spatula, and salt.

When she brought the ribs outside for Tyler to start grilling, she couldn’t help but notice Daniella was hanging all over Tyler as he fired up the grill. Even after a swim, Daniella looked great. She couldn’t help but think that Daniella was after Tyler. . .she hoped she was wrong. . .but she just wasn’t so sure.

“So, Dani, what brings you out here?” Tyler asked, trying to keep his eyes off her gorgeous body.

“My husband died recently and I needed a break.” Dani explained. “I haven’t seen Cassie in awhile so I thought ‘why not?’”

“Well, I think Cassie is glad to see you. . .and catch up.”

“So how did you and Cassie meet?” Dani asked with mock enthusiasm.

“Our jobs.” Tyler explained. “I was an architect to the stars and Cassie was an interior designer we were both working for the same celebrity on their house.”

“Was it love at first sight?”

“No, Cassie couldn’t stand me at first.”

“Oh, really?”

“It took me months to get Cassie to warm up to me.”

“Yeah, Cassie always did seem to be like that.” Daniella reflected back on their high school days.

“But I finally won her over and I couldn’t be happier.”

“Yeah, Cassie does seem quite happy.” Daniella remarked, a hint of jealousy in her voice.

Cassidy came out with the cart so Tyler to begin grilling the ribs. She couldn’t help that Daniella seemed a bit too comfortable chatting with Tyler.

“Hey, you two. . .are you hungry?” Cassidy asked, as if trying to break the ice.

“Yeah, it’s about time you brought those ribs out.” Tyler joked.

“Mmmmmm, my favorite.” Daniella remarked.

“I know. And Tyler makes the best ribs.” Cassidy told her.

“I can’t wait to try them.” Daniella licked her lips seductively, catching a glimpse of Tyler eyeing her.

After twenty minutes of uncomfortable silence watching Tyler grilled the ribs, Tyler finally brought the ribs to the table where Cassidy and Daniella were sitting.

“Ribs are ready!” Tyler announced.

“Yeah. I can’t wait!” Daniella said as Tyler put a rib smothered in barbecue sauce onto Daniella’s plate.

“Mmmmmm.” Daniella said, as she took a bite immediately. “These are so-o-o-o good, Tyler. Cassidy is right. You do make the best ribs.”

The three of them enjoyed dinner and spent a few more hours by the poolside before turning in for the night. As Cassidy watched Daniella head up to her wing, Cassidy and Tyler got into a heated spat.

“Really, Tyler?” Cassidy accused. “You couldn’t take your eyes off of her!”

“What do you mean, Cassie?!” Tyler defended himself.

“The way you looked at her?”

“She’s a beautiful woman, but that doesn’t mean I want her?!”

“She was doing it on purpose!” Cassidy accused. “She wants you! It’s our high school days all over again!”

“Oh, come on, Cassie! You’re paranoid!”

“I don’t think so!” Cassie warned Tyler. “She has an agenda and you’re it!”

“Don’t be silly, Cassie!” Tyler told her. “You know I only have eyes for you!”

“But you couldn’t take your eyes off Dani all afternoon!”

“I can’t take your accusations!” Tyler said, storming off.

Cassidy couldn’t help it. She knew Daniella was up to her old tricks. She couldn’t believe that Tyler couldn’t see it.

Chapter 4

Daniella couldn’t be happier as she listened to Cassidy and Tyler fighting. All she cared about was that her plan was working perfectly. Cassidy was making the usual assumptions she did back in high school. And Tyler didn’t believe her. Soon, Tyler would be all hers. . .and Cassidy would be left out in the cold. . .just where she belonged.

As Daniella made her way downstairs to work on the next plot in her scheme, Cassidy fumed upstairs after Tyler had marched out of their room and into one of the other rooms.

Tyler, on the other hand, decided he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over Cassidy’s paranoia. It was ridiculous that Daniella was coming on to him. She was just his wife’s friend from high school. He had no interest in her. Why couldn’t Cassidy see that?

As Tyler tried to sleep, he heard the door open and someone come in.

“Cassidy?” Tyler questioned the intruder coming in. “Come to your senses, did you?”

But there was no answer, and assuming the intruder left, Tyler tried to go back to sleep. But instead, he felt a warm hand caress his body, and assuming it was Cassidy, turned over and planted a kiss on her.

“I’m sorry, Tyler.” Daniella lied. “I had no idea there was anybody in here.”

“What are you doing in here?” Tyler said, when he realized it wasn’t Cassidy he just kissed.

“I had to find another room to sleep in.” was Daniella’s excuse. “The sheets in my bed were all wet when I went to pull down the blankets.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Dani.” Tyler apologized.

“I’ll go check out what’s wrong.” Tyler told her. “Just to make sure there’s no leak.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.” Daniella told him. “I’m sure the sheets will be dry in the morning.”

“It’s no problem, really.” Tyler offered. “I pride myself on having a leak-proof home and if you have a leak, I need to fix it.”

“Can’t you do it in the morning?” Daniella asked him, hoping to buy some time before she could get back to her room.

“Okay, I will wait until morning.” Tyler promised her.

“Thank you, Tyler. You’re such a doll.” Daniella said sweetly.

“I think I will go sleep in my own room with my wife, where I belong.” Tyler said.

As Tyler went back up to his and Cassidy’s room, Daniella made her way back to her room and crawled into the bed, knowing it wouldn’t be long before she had Tyler right where she wanted him. . .and Cassidy would be alone. . .just like her.

Chapter 5

Cassidy woke to find Tyler sleeping next to her, snoring as loudly as ever. It kept Cassidy awake and she couldn’t sleep ever since Tyler came back into the room. Not wanting to give into Tyler, Cassidy got up and put on her bathrobe to prepare breakfast. Cooking always managed to make Cassidy feel better.

But when she got downstairs to the kitchen, Daniella was already there dressed in a sexy black dress, cooking breakfast.

“Daniella, what are you doing in my kitchen?” Cassidy demanded.

“Well, I saw how busy you and Tyler were, so I wanted to help out a little.”Daniella told her sweetly.

“Well, I don’t need your help.” Cassidy spat out. “Especially with you looking like that!”

“What’s wrong with how I look?” Daniella asked innocently.

“That dress?!” Cassidy raged. “How many people cook in a sexy black dress?!”

“Well, I had a prior commitment so I got ready and thought I would make you and Tyler dinner before I left.” Daniella explained in her sugar-sweet voice.

“Yeah, I bet!” Cassidy screamed at her. “Why don’t you admit you’re trying to take Tyler away from me!”

As Cassidy threw out accusations, Daniella continued cooking, remaining calm. Cassidy’s ranting woke Tyler, who was still asleep upstairs, came downstairs to see what all the commotion was.

“What is going on down here?!” Tyler exploded.

“I was just making you two some breakfast and Cassie just flew off the handle?” Daniella said in her sugary sweet voice. “And she flew into a rage.”

“Cassie, what is wrong with you?” Tyler asked. “She’s just making breakfast.”

“Dressed like that!”

“I told your wife that I had somewhere to go, but thought I would make you two some breakfast before I go.” Daniella explained as sweetly as possible.

“There, Cassie, she’s just making breakfast for us.” Tyler tried to get Cassie to be rational.

“She’s trying to take you away! Who makes breakfast in that attire!”

“Cassie, she just told us she had somewhere to be after making breakfast.” Tyler continued to reason with Cassie.

“You know what, Tyler, I’m leaving.” Cassie yelled. “If you’re going to take her side, you can have her!”

Cassidy stormed out of the house and to her car and drove off. She had to get out. Drive somewhere—anywhere, but at home. Daniella was ruining their life and Tyler couldn’t see it.

Meanwhile, Daniella had breakfast ready and on the table when Tyler came back. She was sitting at the table waiting for Tyler and Cassidy to join her.

“Breakfast is served.” Daniella told Tyler when he came back to the kitchen after failing to reason with Cassidy.

“Thanks, Daniella.” Tyler told her as he sat down to eat.

“Where’s Cassie?” Daniella asked him, secretly happy inside.

“She left.” Was all Tyler said.

“I’m sorry, Tyler.” Daniella said as she squeezed his hand.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

With Cassidy gone, it was time to make her move. Daniella soothed Tyler’s hand, as she inched her hand further up his arm, rubbing it soothingly. Enjoying the touch, Tyler let Daniella caress him, as he was hurting from Cassidy’s tirade.

Still hurting from Cassidy leaving so angrily and her irrational behavior, Tyler kissed Daniella. Daniella had Tyler right where she wanted him. Tyler grabbed Daniella and kissed her, as the two ended up in a passionate kiss.

While Daniella and Tyler were getting passionate, Cassidy was driving so fast as thoughts of her argument came back to her, making her more angry that Tyler would side with Daniella. The past was coming back to haunt her.

Daniella was coming between her and Tyler just like when they were in high school when Daniella came between her and any guy she was interested in.

Cassidy, seeing the oncoming car through her angry tears, swerved to the side of the road and went off into a ditch.

Chapter 6

As Daniela was busy seducing an unsuspecting Tyler, Cassidy lay unconscious in her car in the ditch with her head on the steering wheel.

A passerby who was making his usual jog, found Cassidy’s car and called 9-1-1 to get the paramedics on the scene.

Then he checked Cassidy’s wrist for a pulse and found one, although very faint.

The paramedics arrived on scene within 10 minutes and rushed to see how Cassidy was. They check her vitals: Temp—98.9, Pulse—110, Respirations—24, Blood Pressure—190/99, O2 sats—70 and falling fast.

The paramedics put an oxygen mask on Cassidy to help get more oxygen to Cassidy’s brain. They reported Cassidy’s condition to the hospital via radio before putting her in the ambulance for transport to the hospital.

“Do you know this lady?” the paramedic asked the jogger.

“No. I found her car while out on a jog.” The jogger asked.

“Well, does she have any identification?”

“I saw a purse in the car.” The jogger told the paramedic. “It said Cassidy Jenkins.”

“Thank you sir.” The paramedic said. “We will give her husband a call.”

As Cassidy was on her way to the hospital, the paramedic riding in the ambulance gave Tyler a call.

Back at Tyler’s home, Daniela was about to unbutton her blouse to give Tyler a show after kissing him passionately when the phone near the bed began ringing.

“I’m sorry, Daniela, but I must get this. It could be my employer.” Tyler said, feeling guilty about what he was about to do with his wife’s friend.

“Hello?” Tyler said, after picking up the phone by the bed.

“Mr. Jenkins?” the paramedic said.

“Yes, this Tyler Jenkins.”

“I’m afraid to tell you, but your wife is being taken to the hospital.”

“The hospital? What happened?” Tyler asked the paramedic.

“There’s been an accident. Your wife is holding her own, but is unconscious.”

“I’m on my way!” Tyler said, hanging up and pushing Daniela off the bed and putting his pants and shirt back on, making Daniela a little ticked off.

“Can’t you forget about Cassidy?” Daniela said selfishly.

“Who the hell are you?” Tyler accused. “I thought you were her best friend?”

“Oh fine. Have it your way.” Daniela said with irritation.

As Tyler left Daniela alone on the bed, Daniela felt hurt that Cassidy always seemed to win.

“Damn you, Cassidy!” Daniela said. “You won’t win this!”

Chapter 7

Daniela was left to sulk after Tyler fled to the hospital to see Cassidy. When he got there Cassidy was admitted to her room where she was resting peacefully. Or so the doctors and nurses thought. But Cassidy was having anything but a peaceful sleep. Despite being in a coma, Cassidy was wracked with nightmares that Tyler had left her for Daniela.

When Tyler held Cassidy’s hand, Cassidy’s eyes twitched. She wanted to wake up but something was preventing her from doing so.

Suddenly, Cassidy’s monitor started beeping and Cassidy was in cardiac arrest as doctors and nurses entered Cassidy’s room with a crash cart to begin CPR on Cassidy.

A nurse’s aide shuffled Tyler out of Cassidy’s room, despite Tyler’s objection to remain in the room.

Several minutes later—it seemed like an eternity to Tyler—the doctor came out to give Tyler the news:

“Cassidy was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” Tyler asked in surprise. “Who would do that?” Then he thought of Daniela. Could she have done this?

“We have given your wife the antidote and are waiting to see if she responds to the treatment.” The doctor informed Tyler, just as Daniela arrived to check on her friend.

“Is Cassidy alright?” Daniela asked sweetly, almost too sweetly it made Tyler suspicious.

“Mr, Jenkins will give you the details.” The doctor told Daniela before walking away.

“Doctor, can I go see her?” Tyler asked the departing doctor.

Tyler felt a hand on his shoulder as Daniela tried to comfort him, but he pulled away from her.

“Leave me alone.”

“I just want to help.”

“After trying to seduce me?”

“I couldn’t help myself.” Daniela defended herself.

“I love my wife.”

“I know. And I’m sorry.”

“Well, if you’re so sorry then you’ll pack your things and leave our home.” Tyler lashed out at her.

“Okay. If that’s how you feel.”

Tyler didn’t say a word. He just left her standing there as he walked on to see Cassidy.

“Fine. Have it your way, Tyler! For now!” Daniela whispered to herself, as she went back to Tyler and Cassidy’s home and packed her things and then headed for a motel.

Chapter 8

Daniela didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her seduction attempt on Tyler. Cassidy deserved to lose Tyler and Daniela was determined to sleep with him and destroy Cassidy’s marriage, the way she destroyed her marriage.

Daniela flashed to the night before her husband, Stefan, and her fight the night before he died when he confronted her over what Cassidy had told him about cheating on him. It was a bitter fight between them that led to a heart attack that ultimately killed him.

It was from that moment on, that Daniela vowed revenge on Cassidy by seducing Tyler. She couldn’t believe that her best friend would rat her out about her one-night stand with an office worker. She told that secret to Cassidy in confidence. But little did Daniela know, it wasn’t Cassidy who told the secret to Daniella’s husband—the person who told Stefan not to tell Daniela who told him. That’s when Stefan lied and said it was Cassidy.

In an undisclosed location, a mystery figure was calculating his revenge as Daniela was driving to the hospital to visit Cassidy.

Daniela parked her car and checked in with the front desk at the hospital. Heading to Cassidy’s room, Daniela attempted to gain Cassidy’s forgiveness before Tyler could spill the beans about her seduction attempt.

And it was a good thing Tyler had to go to the office to meet with clients about their plans for the house he was designing for them.

“Cassidy.” Daniela said, knocking on Cassidy’s door.

“Daniela?” a groggy Cassidy said upon waking from a deep-drug –induced sleep.

“Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t visited. Been busy.”

“That’s okay.”

“So, how you been feeling.” Daniela said, breaking the ice between them.

“Lonely. I miss Tyler.” Cassidy said depressed.

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be by shortly.” Daniela encouraged her.

“Yeah.” Cassidy said unenthused after her and Tyler’s argument.

“Hey, he loves you.”

“Yeah. You think so?” Cassidy’s spirits perked up.

“Yeah. He told me so after a long discussion.”

Cassidy felt a little better after Daniela told her about Tyler.

“So, I just wanted to apologize for any inconvenience I may have cause you and Tyler?” Daniela told her.

“That’s okay. I forgive you.” Cassidy told her, as she fell for Daniella’s story.

“Friends?” Daniela said with crossed fingers behind her back.

“Friends.” Cassidy said as the two besties hugged each other.

“So when do you get to break this pop stand?”

“I don’t know. The doctor is due any time.”

“Well, when you do get out, what you say, we go for a burger and fries?” Daniela offered.

“Sounds good.” Cassidy agreed.

“Well, I’ll let you get some rest.” Daniela said as she headed for the door.

“Thanks, Dani.” Cassidy said before Daniela disappeared.

Daniela smiled knowing she had duped Cassidy into forgiving her. Cassidy was always a sucker for forgiveness. As Daniela got into her car and turned on the ignition, she was unaware that she was being followed.

Chapter 9

Daniela was driving back to Cassidy and Tyler’s home when she looked in the rear-view mirror and noticed a police car with flashing red and blue lights. Pulling over to the side of the road, hoping the cop would pass her by, Daniela waited on the shoulder, since she wasn’t doing anything illegal.

But the car didn’t pass her by but pulled up behind her car. The officer got out of the car and walked up to Daniela’s window, tapping on it as Daniela rolled it down.

“Is anything wr—-“ Daniela started to say but was shocked when she realized who it was. “James?”

“Daniela, darling!”

“You’re dead?”

“No, Daniela, I’m not!”

“But how did you survive the fire?”

“I got out before the smoke and flames consumed me.”

“But, they found a body?”

“Well, obviously, it wasn’t mine!”

“I got to get going, James. I’m expected at a friend’s home.”

“Well, it was nice seeing you, Daniela.”

Daniela drove off creeped out that James was alive after she was sure he had died in the fire. Daniela got back to Cassidy and Tyler’s where Cassidy was recuperating from being in the hospital. She sensed Daniela was in a frantic mood when she came in to the living room.

“Dani, are you okay? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost?”

“I have.”

“What?”

“My husband?! He’s alive!”

“What? James is alive? But you never said he died?”

“It was too hard to talk about, Cassie.” Daniela said, covering for her lie.

“How did you find out?”

“A cop pulled me over and when he walked to my car window, it was James.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Cassidy comforted Daniela, who was distraught at James’ sudden resurrection.

Meanwhile, back at a motel room, James stood in front of the bathroom mirror, laughing as he pulled off his mask, revealing an old classmate of Daniela and Cassidy’s, Jeremiah Tompkins, who was in town to seek revenge on Daniela for dissing him back in high school.

Chapter 10

Cassidy felt for Daniela. She never knew James had died. But to have Daniela think that he was somehow alive—it didn’t make sense? But Cassidy would find out that a lot of things wouldn’t be making sense.

Meanwhile, Jeremiah began to put the second part of his scheme into play. It was time to reveal the not-so-dead husband!

“Hello?” the mystery voice said, picking up their cell.

“It’s time.” Jeremiah informed the person.

The mystery person did as they were told and got into their car, driving to town to put the Jeremiah’s scheme in place.

Daniela waited for Cassidy, who agreed to meet her for coffee. The mystery person watched the two girls from a distance—as Jeremiah instructed them to do.

But Cassidy couldn’t shake the feeling of her and Daniela being followed. She looked behind them to spy someone sitting at the table behind them.

“Dani, I think that guy is following us?” Cassidy said.

“Oh, don’t be crazy, Cassie. Why would they follow us?” Dani told her friend.

“It’s just funny how he sat down immediately after we did?” Cassidy said.

“It’s probably just a coincidence. I wouldn’t think too much of it.”

“Maybe.” Cassidy said, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling he was following them.

But Daniela got a sly smile on her face. Cassidy was slowly slipping away. Now, she thinks someone is following them? It wouldn’t be long before Tyler caught on and had her committed……

….Paving the way for her to be with Tyler Jenkins—the man she’s wanted since high school!

Chapter 11

Tyler went to the mental institution to check on Cassidy’s progress, hoping to bring her home. But when he saw her, she appeared to be worse, claiming that she was being followed. With Cassidy’s state of mind, Tyler made the uncomfortable decision to leave her at the institution, despite Cassidy’s claims that she was sane.

As Tyler drove home, he didn’t see the car behind him and when he stopped for a traffic light, the car behind him pulled up beside him and narrowly ran off the side of the road.

Tyler thought nothing of the incident, but it was just the first in his nightmare that was about to come. He pulled into the driveway, where Daniela had just finished putting the finishing touches on her surprise romantic dinner for Tyler.

“There!” Daniela said to herself. “Now I just have to wait until Tyler gets here! I hope he likes it!”

But Daniela didn’t see the hidden intruder in the window watching her. All Daniela cared about was seducing Tyler so he would forget about Cassidy.

Tyler came in the front door thinking only about getting some sleep. It had been a long day, but when he saw Daniela’s dinner, he put the thought of sleep out of his mind.

“I’m touched you went to all the trouble to make dinner.” Tyler gratefully thanked her, oblivious to the candles and romantic decorations.

“Well, it’s the least I could do!” Daniela replied.

“Let’s eat!” Tyler said as he dug into the pot roast Daniela had made.

As Tyler loaded his plate with the food Daniela made, they heard a noise outside, but the two of them ignored it as they enjoyed the dinner.

Daniela was getting impatient that Tyler hadn’t made a move on her after she sent numerous passes his way, so she decided it was up to her to start the flirtations, as she touched Tyler’s foot.

“What was that?” Tyler asked, feeling Daniela’s foot graze his.

“I’m sorry.” Daniela said.

“it’s okay.”

Daniela did it again, only more seductively, that so Tyler would get the hint. But Tyler continued to reject Daniela’s advances. As he got up to put his dirty dishes in the sink, Daniela made a last-ditch effort and planted a kiss on Tyler’s lips.

Not having had that kind of intimacy with his wife for months, a hungry Tyler gave in to Daniela’s advances and kissed her back.

After the kiss, the two decided to head upstairs to the bedroom for a little alone time. But as soon as they got in the bedroom, Daniela let out a blood-curdling scream.

“Aaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Chapter 12

“Hello, Daniela!” the intruder said, surprising Daniela.

“James!”

“What’s wrong, Daniela? Cat got your tongue?” James taunted her.

“I-I-I don’t understand?”

“You’re probably asking if it’s really me…or my ghost?”

“Uh, yeah. I thought I killed you?”

“Let me give you a tip…always check to make sure there’s no pulse before you assume someone’s dead.” James warned Daniela.

“But, you were just lying there?”

“Hello, you couldn’t check to see if I was still breathing!” James said angrily.

“So you’re alive? What do you want?”

“I want you to come back home and stop your shenanigans with this guy!”

“And just how did you find me?”

While Daniela was trying to make a break from James, Tyler was beside himself as he listened to the two of them bicker.

“It wasn’t that hard.” James told her. “All I had to do was look in your drawer.”

Daniela knew she put her journal in there…the one with her plan to steal Cassidy’s husband from her.

“So you know…big deal!” Dani said, trying not to cave to James’ threats.

“Well, what would Tyler here think of your plan?” James asked. “Think he’d be happy with you?”

“So, you were trying to gaslight my wife?” Tyler asked angrily. “Cassidy was right all along and I didn’t listen to her?”

Tyler sat down thinking about how he just left Cassidy at the mental institution. He believed Daniela over his own wife?

“Look, I don’t know what kind of game you thought you could play on me on my wife, but I want you out now!” Tyler told Daniela.

Tyler left Daniela alone with James as he went to get his keys to see if he could rectify the situation with Cassidy.

James and Daniela went back home where life went back the same way they had been living…but this time, Daniela was plotting to rid the world of James once and for all.

Chapter 13

Tyler brought Cassidy home after learning of Daniela’s plot when her not-so-dead husband showed up, ruining Daniela’s scheme to get Tyler into bed. Tyler couldn’t believe he nearly went to bed with Daniela. And what’s more, he couldn’t believe he let Daniela think Cassidy was crazy and put her in an institution. Luckily for Tyler, he had the most forgiving woman for wife.

Cassidy was just glad it was all over and they could forget about Daniela and her plot to come between them.

Tyler and Cassidy enjoyed the next 6 months happy and free from Daniela’s drama and schemes. Cassidy had a surprise for Tyler and made a special dinner when he got home from work to announce her news.

“What’s the big celebration?” Tyler asked as soon as he walked in the door.

On Tyler’s plate was a baby rattle, “Cassidy, are you suggesting…..” Tyler said, unable to finish his sentence.

“Yes, baby. We’re having a baby!” Cassidy announced, the glee in her voice as Tyler kissed her.

Meanwhile, life wasn’t going so well for Daniela. She had to endure parties with James and play the dutiful wife. It made her more envious of Cassidy’s life and she vowed to come up with a plan to get out from under James’ thumb. But first, she had to find a way to have James murdered.

Daniela saw her chance when a charming young man came up to her and started talking to her while James was schlepping it up with his business colleagues.

“Hello.” The young man said to Daniela.

“Hello.” Daniela replied back.

“I’m Ronny.”

“Daniela. But you can call me Dani.”

“What’s a pretty lady doing all alone?”

“My date left to schmooze with the guests.” Daniela said, more bitter than she wanted to sound.

“I’m sorry. What a creep!” Ronny said.

“Yea. Tell him that?”

“If you were my date, I’d never leave you alone.”

Daniela saw her chance and spirited Ronny off to have a talk with him, and Ronny was more than willing to go along.

“What?! You want me to kill your date?!” Ronny said, appalled that Daniela would ask him.

“Hey, if you do, you can have me all to yourself!” Daniela explained, knowing she was lying. As soon as Ronny agreed to do what she wanted, she would be out of the city and on her own again.

Chapter 14

7 months later, Cassidy went into early labor and delivered a baby girl. Overjoyed with their daughter, Tyler and Cassidy named her Terlyn Rose Jenkins. It was a happy time for the three of them when Tyler and Cassidy brought Terlyn home to her nursery.

Tyler took some time off work to spend some time with Cassidy and Terlyn after he was advised at how fast children grow up. Tyler decided he didn’t want to miss a moment of Terlyn’s life.

While Tyler and Cassidy were adjusting to parenthood, Daniela was working a scheme to weasel her way into Cassidy’s life again when she came upon a birth announcement announcing the birth of Baby Girl Jenkins. Seething with envy, Daniela knew how to get back into Cassidy’s life.

Cassidy wanted to go back to work part time starting her own catering business. So she applied with caterers to get a feel for the business. When she got accepted for a job, Cassidy needed a nanny for the times she would be away at work.

Cassidy interviewed a few people for the job of being a nanny to Terlyn, but none seemed right for the job…until she interviewed Jane, a Mary-Poppins-type who enjoyed being around children. After checking on Jane’s references, Cassidy gave Jane a call….

“Is Jane Cummings there?” Cassidy asked when she heard a voice answer.

“I’m her.” the voice said.

“I went over your references and I would like to hire you as a nanny to look after my daughter?”

“That’s great!” Jane said excited. “You won’t regret hiring me!”

“I’d like you to be here tomorrow by 8:00 a.m.” Cassidy told Jane.

“I’ll be there with bells on.” Jane said happily.

“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” Jane said.

As Jane got off the phone, she smiled into the mirror as she pulled off her wig…as Daniela said to herself, “I’ll be the best damn nanny for your new daughter!”

Chapter 15

The next morning, Cassidy was up bright and early to fix dinner for Tyler, who had to be to work, leaving Cassidy alone with Terlyn. Kissing Cassidy and Terlyn good bye, Tyler left the house in good spirits. Life was good since their daughter was born, especially since it looked like they were finally free of Daniela. In fact, last they heard, Daniela was in a mental institution.

Back home, Cassidy was tending to a fussy Terlyn when the door bell rang.

“Darn! Who could that be?” Cassidy said, nearly forgetting she had an interview for a potential nanny for Terlyn.

Cassidy picked up Terlyn as she answered the door to a pretty 30-something lady standing on her door step.

“Can I help you?” Cassidy asked the woman.

“I’m Jane Cummings, you called me to interview for the nanny position?”

“Ms. Cummings, I’m so sorry. it’s been a hectic morning.” Cassidy apologized.

“It’s quite all right. I guess that’s why you need a nanny?”

“Yes. I am going back to work part time. Please, come in…have a seat and I’ll get us some tea and cookies.” Cassidy motioned to Jane as she put Terlyn in her swing.

As Cassidy headed into the kitchen for refreshments, Terlyn began crying for her mother.

“Oh, it’s okay baby girl.” Jane said softly, soothing Terlyn’s cries, as Cassidy came out to witness the interaction.

“What are you doing with my daughter?” Cassidy said, worried for some odd reason but couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your daughter was crying and I was just trying to quiet her.” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds.”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.” Cassidy apologized again.

“It’s okay.”

“Shall we sit and discuss the nanny position?” Cassidy said, as Jane took a seat in a chair while Cassidy set the tea and cookies on the coffee table and sat on the davenport.

The interview went well as Jane gave all the right answers that Cassidy wanted to hear, as well as excellent credentials that Cassidy called about before the interview. The interview went so well compared to the last few interviews, Cassidy was ready to give Jane her decision about whether she was hiring her as Terlyn’s nanny.

“Well, I think you’re exactly what I’m looking for as my daughter’s nanny, if you’d like to accept the position?” Cassidy said, offering Jane the position.

“That’s great, Ms. Jenkins. I’d be honored to accept the position.”

“Great! The position is live-in, so if you’d like, I can show you to your room you’ll be staying in?”

“Show me the way!” Jane said enthusiastically.

As Cassidy showed Jane her room, Jane took mental notes of the room she’d be sleeping in before Cassidy showed Jane Terlyn’s nursery.

“Wow! The nursery is really awesome!” Jane said, at the unicorn-themed nursery that was Terlyn’s room. “I would’ve never thought to use unicorns.”

“Unicorns are my favorite and wanted my daughter’s nursery to every girl’s dream.” Cassidy said.

“Well, it’s lovely.” Jane said. “So when do you want me to move in?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Great. I’ll go home and pack and be here in the morning?”

“That’d be good.” Cassidy said as she picked up Terlyn on their way down stairs before showing Jane the way out.

As Jane got into the car, she took off the wig as she smiled slyly into the rear view mirror, “Great! Cassidy didn’t suspect who I was! Still trusting as ever!”

Then Jane/Daniela drove off to her motel and packed her things so she move in and start her job as Cassidy Jenkins nanny to her daughter. But first, Daniela had to take care of one thing before she headed over to Cassidy’s.

Chapter 16

Daniela stopped into the nursing facility where her mother was living.  It pained her to see her mother in such a frail condition.  The lively woman she remembered growing up, reduced to this?  It was a cruel joke on humanity! 

That is why Daniela needed revenge on Cassidy so bad!  She blamed Cassidy for everything!  The accident�”unintentionally�”caused by Cassidy (Daniela didn’t see it that way) that put her mother in the hospital. 

Daniela spent years harboring revenge against Cassidy for the hell she went through taking care of her ill mother while Cassidy moved on with her life so easily and without any guilt.  She got away with everything!   Well, one way or another, Cassidy was going to pay!

But, Daniela didn’t know it, but Daniela’s mother was harboring a secret of her own….

“Hey, mother, I’ here!” Daniela spoke to her mother as she opened up the blinds to let the sunshine in.  “It’s a gorgeous day out!  Why don’t we go for a walk!”

Daniela pushed her mother’s wheelchair out of her mother’s room and to the front entrance of the nursing home and stopped at the front desk to sign her mother out.

As Daniela pushed her mother, the warm sunshine perked her mother up to point that she said her first words in years.

“Daniela!”

“Mother, you spoke!” Daniela said gleefully.

“Dani, don’t be angry at her.” Daniela’s mother said, sensing her daughter’s tension with her friend.

“Mother, whatever are you talking about?” Daniela asked her mother, shrugging off her mother’s response as part of her illness.

But Daniela’s mother confessed a long-held secret, “She’s your sister!”

“Whoever are you talking about, mother?” Daniela asked.  “I have no sister?”

“Cassidy.  She’s your sister!” her mother confessed, as Daniela’s face went white with shock.

“I think we need to get you back, mother.” Daniela told her mother, as she wheeled her mother back to the nursing home.

After Daniela dropped her mother off, she thought about what her mother blurted out.  Was it true?  Was Cassidy really her sister?  Or just the ramblings of a sick woman?  All these years, she thought of herself as an only child?  It was always her and her mother.  Now, it appears she has a sister, and that sister is Cassidy?!  The woman she’s been intent on getting revenge?!

She had to find out the truth…and the only person she knew she could get the answer from was her father. 

Chapter 17

Cassidy was waiting at home for Jane, who said she was coming back soon.  It was her first day on the job and Jane was already late.  And she would be late for her first day back to work.  She dialed the number Jane gave her, but it went straight to voicemail.

Cassidy wondered what was taking Jane so long to arrive so she could head to her first day at her catering job.  Terlyn was fussy as Cassidy picked her up to soothe her.

“Hey, sweetheart.  What’s wrong with my little pumpkin?”

Cassidy said as she felt Terlyn’s forehead to discover a fever.

Getting the thermometer, Cassidy took Terlyn’s temperature to discover it was 101.3˚F.  It wasn’t too high, but high enough to keep a watch on it.

Cassidy was just laying Terlyn down after finally getting her to sleep when the doorbell rang.

Cassidy went downstairs to answer it, “Oh, Jane, I was beginning to wonder if you were going to get here?”

“I’m sorry, I’m late, I had something do before I got here.” Jane/Daniela explained.  “I really didn’t think it would take so long.”

“Oh, that’s okay.  luckily, I know the boss, so all is good.” Cassidy told her.

“Well, I guess you’ll be off?” Jane/Daniela asked, trying to hide her enthusiasm.

“Yes, but one thing, Terlyn has a slight fever, so if you could give me a ring if it gets worse, that would be great.  Other than that, I just laid her down for a nap, so you should have a quiet couple hours.”

“Okay,  thanks.  I will let you know if Terlyn gets worse.” Jane/Daniela assured Cassidy as she got into her car and drove off to work.

Daniela sat down and got down to business after Cassidy left.  Cassidy’s naivete was one thing that Daniela liked about her friend.  Cassidy always did forgive a little too easy.  But anyway, now to get down to business now that she was in good graces with Cassidy again.

“Hello, I need your services?” Daniela told the gentleman on the other end.

“What can I do for you?”

As Daniela gave instructions to the gentleman, she hung up smiling at her handiwork.  Soon, Cassidy would be gone and she would be a mother to that sweet little girl.

Chapter 18

Cassidy arrived at work a few minutes late and her boss was a little peeved.

“I thought I told you to be here on time!” Cassidy’s boss said ired.

“I’m sorry, my nanny didn’t get home in time.” Cassidy explained.

“Well, one more time, and I’ll have to let you go.  I have no time for my staff who can’t show up on time!” Cassidy’s boss explained.

“It won’t happen again.” Cassidy said.

“If you’ll just get started washing those dishes…” her boss told her.

“But….” Cassidy began, but her boss just shook her head at her and motioned her to get to work.

Cassidy couldn’t believe her luck?  She thought she would be helping with the cooking and prep…not dishwashing?

“Oh well, guess I better just do as I’m told before I lose this job?” Cassidy said under her breath so her boss wouldn’t hear her.  it was the last thing Cassidy needed was her boss jumping down her throat again!

Back at the Jenkins’ home, Jane/Daniela was cradling a fussy Terlyn when Tyler came home hoping Cassidy would be home.

“Oh, it’s you?” Tyler said a little sad.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy hasn’t gotten home yet.” Jane/Daniela told him.

“it’s a little late?  Cassidy should have gotten home by now?” Tyler mused at Cassidy being late getting home.

Just then, the TV sent a special news report about a shooting at the catering business where Cassidy worked.  Tyler was glued to the TV wondering if Cassidy was alright, and Jane/Daniela secretly kept her fingers crossed.

Chapter 19

When Tyler got word that his wife was being taken to the hospital, he left Jane/Daniela home to look after Terlyn to go see Cassidy.  When he arrived, the doctors gave a grim report on Cassidy’s condition. 

Tyler sat down in a chair in the waiting room until he was given word that he could see Cassidy.  Tyler’s cell rang and it was Jane/Daniela.

“Hello?” Tyler answered crying.

“Tyler, is Cassidy alright?” Jane/Daniela asked with mock concern.

“Cassidy is unconscious and the doctors don’t know if she will wake up?” Tyler informed Jane/Daniela.

“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry!”

“This can’t be happening?  We just had a baby and were getting our lives back on track after…” Tyler ranted at Jane/Daniela before ending the call.

That’s all Jane/Daniela needed to know…that Cassidy was on her way out.  Soon!  Cassidy would be gone and no one would be wiser that she was the mastermind behind it all!

Life was good once again!

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Mark: Chapter 1

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;

2 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

5 And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

6 And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;

7 And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

8 I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.

9 And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan.

10 And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him:

11 And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

12 And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.

13 And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.

14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,

15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

16 Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

17 And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.

18 And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

19 And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.

20 And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.

21 And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught.

22 And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.

23 And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out,

24 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.

25 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.

26 And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him.

27 And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him.

28 And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee.

29 And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.

30 But Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her.

31 And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them.

32 And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.

33 And all the city was gathered together at the door.

34 And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him.

35 And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.

36 And Simon and they that were with him followed after him.

37 And when they had found him, they said unto him, All men seek for thee.

38 And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth.

39 And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils.

40 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

41 And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

42 And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed.

43 And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away;

44 And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

45 But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter.

Genesis: Chapter 29

1 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east.

2 And he looked, and behold a well in the field, and, lo, there were three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks: and a great stone was upon the well’s mouth.

3 And thither were all the flocks gathered: and they rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again upon the well’s mouth in his place.

4 And Jacob said unto them, My brethren, whence be ye? And they said, Of Haran are we.

5 And he said unto them, Know ye Laban the son of Nahor? And they said, We know him.

6 And he said unto them, Is he well? And they said, He is well: and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep.

7 And he said, Lo, it is yet high day, neither is it time that the cattle should be gathered together: water ye the sheep, and go and feed them.

8 And they said, We cannot, until all the flocks be gathered together, and till they roll the stone from the well’s mouth; then we water the sheep.

9 And while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep: for she kept them.

10 And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother.

11 And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept.

12 And Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s brother, and that he was Rebekah’s son: and she ran and told her father.

13 And it came to pass, when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob’s his sister’s son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. And he told Laban all these things.

14 And Laban said to him, Surely thou art my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him the space of a month.

15 And Laban said unto Jacob, Because thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nought? Tell me, what shall thy wages be?

16 And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel.

17 Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.

18 And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy younger daughter.

19 And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me.

20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few a days, for the love he had to her.

21 And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in unto her.

22 And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast.

23 And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in unto her.

24 And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah Zilpah his maid for an handmaid.

25 And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? Did not I serve with thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?

26 And Laban said, it must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.

27 Fulfill her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.

28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also.

29 And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid.

30 And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years.

31 And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren.

32 And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben: for she said, Surely the LORD hath looked upon my affliction; now therefore my husband will love me.

33 And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Because the LORD hath heard that I was hated, he hath therefore given me this son also: and she called his name Simeon.

34 And she conceived again, and bare a son; and said, Now this time will my husband be joined unto me, because I have born him three sons: therefore was his name called Levi.

35 And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name Judah; and left bearing.

Galatians 1: 8

Galatians 1: 8—But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Romans 16: 17-18—Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.

John 3: 16—For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Acts 2: 38—Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Acts 3: 19—Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;

Romans 10: 9-10—That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart of man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Acts 8: 35-38—Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.

Mark 16: 16—He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

1 Peter 3: 20-21—Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Acts 22: 16—And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

John 3: 5—Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

Titus 3: 5—Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.

Galatians 3: 26-27—For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Romans 6: 3-7—God forbid; for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abound through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judge as a sinner?

Ephesians 5: 25-27—Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

Colossians 2: 11-13—In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trepasses;

Devotion: Without the Lord, I Have Nothing

Daily Bible Verse

Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. ~Acts 4; 10-12

Daily Inspiration

“No other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” Jesus Christ, our strength and our redeemer. Blessed are they who come in His name. Hosanna in the highest!

Daily Prayer

I believe in God, the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Without the Lord, I Have Nothing

By Frances Taylor

The Lord is Our Hope—To raise people’s awareness of the destruction caused by the careless, selfish actions of others. ~Lamentations 2: 13-16

It’s hard to be joyful when you are being sent into exile. It’s especially hard when you know that you are partly to blame. Those exiled into Babylon knew that their leaders and themselves had been unfaithful to God and had refused to listen to the prophets. Today there are men and women who’ve lost their jobs because they refuse to follow the rules, and sometimes others lose their jobs because of them. Owners of companies and heads of corporations have been known to commit crimes of fraud or embezzlement and lose so much money or break so many government laws that their companies or corporations are shut down and hundreds and sometimes thousands of men and women lose their jobs. Can you imagine asking them to sing joyfully for anything? The kings of Israel had a responsibility to the people who depended on them. The prophets warned them again and again that they were weak because they depended on themselves and had lost their trust in God. They broke the commandments and allowed and sometimes encouraged their advisors to do the same. It’s no wonder that the exiles felt a sense of guilt, and probably anger. I’m not head of a large corporation or company, and you may or not be either. What I am is the head of my family. I have a responsibility to them to do my best to keep them safe, to follow the law of love and teach them to do the same. I want them and my grandchildren to find joy in their lives and I believe that teaching them the joys of knowing Jesus is one of the ways that I can help them to do that. I would not want to them to turn their backs on God because of me. What about you?

Prayer: Thank you, Lord for your patience with us and your love for us. We try to be the people you have called us to be even when it’s difficult. Help us to never be the cause of someone else’s pain, or of turning away from you. Amen.

U.S. President #21: Chester A. Arthur (Part II)

Presidency 1881–1885

Arthur arrived in Washington, D.C. on September 21. On September 22, he re-took the oath of office, this time before Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite. Arthur took this step to ensure procedural compliance; there had been a lingering question about whether a state court judge (Brady) could administer a federal oath of office. He initially took up residence at the home of Senator John P. Jones, while a White House remodeling he had ordered was carried out, including addition of an elaborate fifty-foot glass screen by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Arthur’s sister, Mary Arthur McElroy, served as White House hostess for her widowed brother; Arthur became Washington’s most eligible bachelor and his social life became the subject of rumors, though romantically, he remained singularly devoted to the memory of his late wife. His son, Chester Jr., was then a freshman at Princeton University and his daughter, Nell, stayed in New York with a governess until 1882; when she arrived, Arthur shielded her from the intrusive press as much as he could.

Arthur quickly came into conflict with Garfield’s cabinet, most of whom represented his opposition within the party. He asked the cabinet members to remain until December, when Congress would reconvene, but Treasury Secretary William Windom submitted his resignation in October to enter a Senate race in his home state of Minnesota. Arthur then selected Charles J. Folger, his friend and fellow New York Stalwart as Windom’s replacement. Attorney General Wayne MacVeagh was next to resign, believing that, as a reformer, he had no place in an Arthur cabinet. Despite Arthur’s personal appeal to remain, MacVeagh resigned in December 1881 and Arthur replaced him with Benjamin H. Brewster, a Philadelphia lawyer and machine politician reputed to have reformist leanings. Blaine, nemesis of the Stalwart faction, remained Secretary of State until Congress reconvened, then departed immediately. Conkling expected Arthur to appoint him in Blaine’s place, but the President chose Frederick T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, a Stalwart recommended by ex-President Grant. Frelinghuysen advised Arthur not to fill any future vacancies with Stalwarts, but when Postmaster General James resigned in January 1882, Arthur selected Timothy O. Howe, a Wisconsin Stalwart. Navy Secretary William H. Hunt was next to resign, in April 1882, and Arthur attempted a more balanced approach by appointing Half-Breed William E. Chandler to the post, on Blaine’s recommendation. Finally, when Interior Secretary Samuel J. Kirkwood resigned that same month, Arthur appointed Henry M. Teller, a Colorado Stalwart to the office. Of the Cabinet members Arthur had inherited from Garfield, only Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln remained for the entirety of Arthur’s term.

Civil service reform

In the 1870s, a scandal was exposed, in which contractors for star postal routes were greatly overpaid for their services with the connivance of government officials (including Second Assistant Postmaster General Thomas J. Brady and former Senator Stephen Wallace Dorsey). Reformers feared Arthur, as a former supporter of the spoils system, would not commit to continuing the investigation into the scandal. But Arthur’s Attorney General, Brewster, did in fact continue the investigations begun by MacVeagh, and hired notable Democratic lawyers William W. Ker and Richard T. Merrick to strengthen the prosecution team and forestall the skeptics. Although Arthur had worked closely with Dorsey before his presidency, once in office he supported the investigation and forced the resignation of officials suspected in the scandal. An 1882 trial of the ringleaders resulted in convictions for two minor conspirators and a hung jury for the rest. After a juror came forward with allegations that the defendants attempted to bribe him, the judge set aside the guilty verdicts and granted a new trial. Before the second trial began, Arthur removed five federal office holders who were sympathetic with the defense, including a former senator. The second trial began in December 1882 and lasted until July 1883 and, again, did not result in a guilty verdict. Failure to obtain a conviction tarnished the administration’s image, but Arthur did succeed in putting a stop to the fraud.

Garfield’s assassination by a deranged office seeker amplified the public demand for civil service reform. Both Democratic and Republican leaders realized that they could attract the votes of reformers by turning against the spoils system and, by 1882, a bipartisan effort began in favor of reform. In 1880, Democratic Senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio introduced legislation that required selection of civil servants based on merit as determined by an examination. This legislation greatly expanded similar civil service reforms attempted by President Franklin Pierce 30 years earlier. In his first annual presidential address to Congress in 1881, Arthur requested civil service reform legislation and Pendleton again introduced his bill, but Congress did not pass it. Republicans lost seats in the 1882 congressional elections, in which Democrats campaigned on the reform issue. As a result, the lame-duck session of Congress was more amenable to civil service reform; the Senate approved Pendleton’s bill 38–5 and the House soon concurred by a vote of 155–47. Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law on January 16, 1883. In just two years’ time, an unrepentant Stalwart had become the president who ushered in long-awaited civil service reform.

At first, the act applied only to 10% of federal jobs and, without proper implementation by the president, it could have gone no further. Even after he signed the act into law, its proponents doubted Arthur’s commitment to reform. To their surprise, he acted quickly to appoint the members of the Civil Service Commission that the law created, naming reformers Dorman Bridgman Eaton, John Milton Gregory, and Leroy D. Thoman as commissioners. The chief examiner, Silas W. Burt, was a long-time reformer who had been Arthur’s opponent when the two men worked at the New York Custom House. The commission issued its first rules in May 1883; by 1884, half of all postal officials and three-quarters of the Customs Service jobs were to be awarded by merit. That year, Arthur expressed satisfaction with the new system, praising its effectiveness “in securing competent and faithful public servants and in protecting the appointing officers of the Government from the pressure of personal importunity and from the labor of examining the claims and pretensions of rival candidates for public employment.”

Surplus and the tariff

With high revenue held over from wartime taxes, the federal government had collected more than it spent since 1866; by 1882 the surplus reached $145 million. Opinions varied on how to balance the budget; the Democrats wished to lower tariffs, in order to reduce revenues and the cost of imported goods, while Republicans believed that high tariffs ensured high wages in manufacturing and mining. They preferred the government spend more on internal improvements and reduce excise taxes. Arthur agreed with his party, and in 1882 called for the abolition of excise taxes on everything except liquor, as well as a simplification of the complex tariff structure. In May of that year, Representative William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania introduced a bill to establish a tariff commission; the bill passed and Arthur signed it into law but appointed mostly protectionists to the committee. Republicans were pleased with the committee’s make-up but were surprised when, in December 1882, they submitted a report to Congress calling for tariff cuts averaging between 20 and 25%. The commission’s recommendations were ignored, however, as the House Ways and Means Committee, dominated by protectionists, provided a 10% reduction. After conference with the Senate, the bill that emerged only reduced tariffs by an average of 1.47%. The bill passed both houses narrowly on March 3, 1883, the last full day of the 47th Congress; Arthur signed the measure into law, with no effect on the surplus.

Congress attempted to balance the budget from the other side of the ledger, with increased spending on the 1882 Rivers and Harbors Act in the unprecedented amount of $19 million. While Arthur was not opposed to internal improvements, the scale of the bill disturbed him, as did its narrow focus on “particular localities,” rather than projects that benefited a larger part of the nation. On August 1, 1882, Arthur vetoed the bill to widespread popular acclaim; in his veto message, his principal objection was that it appropriated funds for purposes “not for the common defense or general welfare, and which do not promote commerce among the States.” Congress overrode his veto the next day and the new law reduced the surplus by $19 million. Republicans considered the law a success at the time, but later concluded that it contributed to their loss of seats in the elections of 1882.

Foreign affairs and immigration

During the Garfield administration, Secretary of State James G. Blaine attempted to invigorate United States diplomacy in Latin America, urging reciprocal trade agreements and offering to mediate disputes among the Latin American nations. Blaine, venturing a greater involvement in affairs south of the Rio Grande, proposed a Pan-American conference in 1882 to discuss trade and an end to the War of the Pacific being fought by Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Blaine did not remain in office long enough to see the effort through, and when Frederick T. Frelinghuysen replaced him at the end of 1881, the conference efforts lapsed. Frelinghuysen also discontinued Blaine’s peace efforts in the War of the Pacific, fearing that the United States might be drawn into the conflict. Arthur and Frelinghuysen continued Blaine’s efforts to encourage trade among the nations of the Western Hemisphere; a treaty with Mexico providing for reciprocal tariff reductions was signed in 1882 and approved by the Senate in 1884. Legislation required to bring the treaty into force failed in the House, however, rendering it a dead letter. Similar efforts at reciprocal trade treaties with Santo Domingo and Spain’s American colonies were defeated by February 1885, and an existing reciprocity treaty with the Kingdom of Hawaii was allowed to lapse.

The 47th Congress spent a great deal of time on immigration, and at times was in accord with Arthur. In July 1882 Congress easily passed a bill regulating steamships that carried immigrants to the United States. To their surprise, Arthur vetoed it and requested revisions, which they made and Arthur then approved. He also signed in August of that year the Immigration Act of 1882, which levied a 50-cent tax on immigrants to the United States, and excluded from entry the mentally ill, the intellectually disabled, criminals, or any other person potentially dependent upon public assistance.

A more contentious debate materialized over the status of Chinese immigrants; in January 1868, the Senate had ratified the Burlingame Treaty with China, allowing an unrestricted flow of Chinese into the country. As the economy soured after the Panic of 1873, Chinese immigrants were blamed for depressing workmen’s wages; in reaction Congress in 1879 attempted to abrogate the 1868 treaty by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act, but President Hayes vetoed it. Three years later, after China had agreed to treaty revisions, Congress tried again to exclude working class Chinese laborers ; Senator John F. Miller of California introduced another Chinese Exclusion Act that blocked entry of Chinese laborers for a twenty-year period. The bill passed the Senate and House by overwhelming margins, but this as well was vetoed by Arthur, who concluded the 20-year ban to be a breach of the renegotiated treaty of 1880. That treaty allowed only a “reasonable” suspension of immigration. Eastern newspapers praised the veto, while it was condemned in the Western states. Congress was unable to override the veto, but passed a new bill reducing the immigration ban to ten years. Although he still objected to this denial of entry to Chinese laborers, Arthur acceded to the compromise measure, signing the Chinese Exclusion Act into law on May 6, 1882. The Chinese Exclusion Act attempted to stop all Chinese immigration into the United States for ten years, with exceptions for diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers. It was widely evaded.

Naval reform

In the years following the Civil War, American naval power declined precipitously, shrinking from nearly 700 vessels to just 52, most of which were obsolete. The nation’s military focus over the fifteen years before Garfield and Arthur’s election had been on the Indian wars in the West, rather than the high seas, but as the region was increasingly pacified, many in Congress grew concerned at the poor state of the Navy. Garfield’s Secretary of the Navy, William H. Hunt, advocated reform of the Navy and his successor, William E. Chandler, appointed an advisory board to prepare a report on modernization. Based on the suggestions in the report, Congress appropriated funds for the construction of three steel protected cruisers (Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago) and an armed dispatch-steamer (Dolphin), collectively known as the ABCD Ships or the Squadron of Evolution. Congress also approved funds to rebuild four monitors (Puritan, Amphitrite, Monadnock, and Terror), which had lain uncompleted since 1877. The contracts to build the ABCD ships were all awarded to the low bidder, John Roach & Sons of Chester, Pennsylvania, even though Roach once employed Secretary Chandler as a lobbyist. Democrats turned against the “New Navy” projects and, when they won control of the 48th Congress, refused to appropriate funds for seven more steel warships. Even without the additional ships, the state of the Navy improved when, after several construction delays, the last of the new ships entered service in 1889.

Civil rights

Like his Republican predecessors, Arthur struggled with the question of how his party was to challenge the Democrats in the South and how, if at all, to protect the civil rights of black southerners. Since the end of Reconstruction, conservative white Democrats (or “Bourbon Democrats”) had regained power in the South, and the Republican party dwindled rapidly as their primary supporters in the region, blacks, were disenfranchised. One crack in the solidly Democratic South emerged with the growth of a new party, the Readjusters, in Virginia. Having won an election in that state on a platform of more education funding (for black and white schools alike) and abolition of the poll tax and the whipping post, many northern Republicans saw the Readjusters as a more viable ally in the South than the moribund southern Republican party. Arthur agreed, and directed the federal patronage in Virginia through the Readjusters rather than the Republicans. He followed the same pattern in other Southern states, forging coalitions with independents and Greenback Party members. Some black Republicans felt betrayed by the pragmatic gambit, but others (including Frederick Douglass and ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce) endorsed the administration’s actions, as the Southern independents had more liberal racial policies than the Democrats. Arthur’s coalition policy was only successful in Virginia, however, and by 1885 the Readjuster movement began to collapse with the election of a Democratic president.

Other federal action on behalf of blacks was equally ineffective: when the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), Arthur expressed his disagreement with the decision in a message to Congress, but was unable to persuade Congress to pass any new legislation in its place. Arthur did, however, effectively intervene to overturn a court-martial ruling against a black West Point cadet, Johnson Whittaker, after the Judge Advocate General of the Army, David G. Swaim, found the prosecution’s case against Whittaker to be illegal and based on racial bias. The administration faced a different challenge in the West, where the LDS Church was under government pressure to stop the practice of polygamy in Utah Territory. Garfield had believed polygamy was criminal behavior and was morally detrimental to family values, and Arthur’s views were, for once, in line with his predecessor’s. In 1882, he signed the Edmunds Act into law; the legislation made polygamy a federal crime, barring polygamists both from public office and the right to vote.

Native American policy

The Arthur administration was challenged by changing relations with western Native American tribes. The American Indian Wars were winding down, and public sentiment was shifting toward more favorable treatment of Native Americans. Arthur urged Congress to increase funding for Native American education, which it did in 1884, although not to the extent he wished. He also favored a move to the allotment system, under which individual Native Americans, rather than tribes, would own land. Arthur was unable to convince Congress to adopt the idea during his administration but, in 1887, the Dawes Act changed the law to favor such a system. The allotment system was favored by liberal reformers at the time, but eventually proved detrimental to Native Americans as most of their land was resold at low prices to white speculators. During Arthur’s presidency, settlers and cattle ranchers continued to encroach on Native American territory. Arthur initially resisted their efforts, but after Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller, an opponent of allotment, assured him that the lands were not protected, Arthur opened up the Crow Creek Reservation in the Dakota Territory to settlers by executive order in 1885. Arthur’s successor, Grover Cleveland, finding that title belonged to the Native Americans, revoked Arthur’s order a few months later.

Health, travel, and 1884 election

Shortly after becoming president, Arthur was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment now referred to as nephritis. He attempted to keep his condition private, but by 1883 rumors of his illness began to circulate; he had become thinner and more aged in appearance, and struggled to keep the pace of the presidency. To rejuvenate his health outside the confines of Washington, Arthur and some political friends traveled to Florida in April 1883. The vacation had the opposite effect, and Arthur suffered from intense pain before returning to Washington. Later that year, on the advice of Missouri Senator George Graham Vest, he visited Yellowstone National Park. Reporters accompanied the presidential party, helping to publicize the new National Park system. The Yellowstone trip was more beneficial to Arthur’s health than his Florida excursion, and he returned to Washington refreshed after two months of travel.

As the 1884 presidential election approached, James G. Blaine was considered the favorite for the Republican nomination, but Arthur, too, contemplated a run for a full term as president. In the months leading up to the 1884 Republican National Convention, however, Arthur began to realize that neither faction of the Republican party was prepared to give him their full support: the Half-Breeds were again solidly behind Blaine, while Stalwarts were undecided; some backed Arthur, with others considering Senator John A. Logan of Illinois. Reform-minded Republicans, friendlier to Arthur after he endorsed civil service reform, were still not certain enough of his reform credentials to back him over Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont, who had long favored their cause. Business leaders supported him, as did Southern Republicans who owed their jobs to his control of the patronage, but by the time they began to rally around him, Arthur had decided against a serious campaign for the nomination. He kept up a token effort, believing that to drop out would cast doubt on his actions in office and raise questions about his health, but by the time the convention began in June, his defeat was assured. Blaine led on the first ballot, and by the fourth ballot he had a majority. Arthur telegraphed his congratulations to Blaine and accepted his defeat with equanimity. He played no role in the 1884 campaign, which Blaine would later blame for his loss that November to the Democratic nominee, Grover Cleveland.

Administration and cabinet

Judicial appointments

Arthur made appointments to fill two vacancies on the United States Supreme Court. The first vacancy arose in July 1881 with the death of Associate Justice Nathan Clifford, a Democrat who had been a member of the Court since before the Civil War. Arthur nominated Horace Gray, a distinguished jurist from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to replace him, and the nomination was easily confirmed. The second vacancy occurred when Associate Justice Ward Hunt retired in January 1882. Arthur first nominated his old political boss, Roscoe Conkling; he doubted that Conkling would accept, but felt obligated to offer a high office to his former patron. The Senate confirmed the nomination but, as expected, Conkling declined it, the last time a confirmed nominee declined an appointment. Senator George Edmunds was Arthur’s next choice, but he declined to be considered. Instead, Arthur nominated Samuel Blatchford, who had been a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for the prior four years. Blatchford accepted, and his nomination was approved by the Senate within two weeks. Blatchford served on the Court until his death in 1893.

Later years

Arthur left office in 1885 and returned to his New York City home. Two months before the end of his term, several New York Stalwarts approached him to request that he run for United States Senate, but he declined, preferring to return to his old law practice at Arthur, Knevals & Ransom. His health limited his activity with the firm, and Arthur served only of counsel. He took on few assignments with the firm and was often too ill to leave his house. He managed a few public appearances, until the end of 1885.

After spending the summer of 1886 in New London, Connecticut, he returned home where he became seriously ill, and on November 16, ordered nearly all of his papers, both personal and official, burned. The next morning, Arthur suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness; he died the following day, November 18, at the age of 57. On November 22, a private funeral was held at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City, attended by President Cleveland and ex-President Hayes, among other notables. Arthur was buried with his family members and ancestors in the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York. He was laid beside his wife in a sarcophagus on a large corner of the plot. In 1889, a monument was placed on Arthur’s burial plot by sculptor Ephraim Keyser of New York, consisting of a giant bronze female angel figure placing a bronze palm leaf on a granite sarcophagus.

Arthur’s post-presidency was the second shortest of all presidents who lived past their presidency, after James K. Polk’s brief three-month retirement before he died.

Legacy

Several Grand Army of the Republic posts were named for Arthur, including Goff, Kansas, Lawrence, Nebraska, Medford, Oregon, and Ogdensburg, Wisconsin. On April 5, 1882, Arthur was elected to the District of Columbia Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) as a Third Class Companion (insignia number 02430), the honorary membership category for militia officers and civilians who made significant contributions to the war effort.

Union College awarded Arthur the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1883.

In 1898, the Arthur memorial statue—a fifteen-foot (4.6 m), bronze figure of Arthur standing on a Barre Granite pedestal—was created by sculptor George Edwin Bissell and installed at Madison Square, in New York City. The statue was dedicated in 1899 and unveiled by Arthur’s sister, Mary Arthur McElroy. At the dedication, Secretary of War Elihu Root described Arthur as, “…wise in statesmanship and firm and effective in administration,” while acknowledging that Arthur was isolated in office and unloved by his own party.

Arthur’s unpopularity in life carried over into his assessment by historians, and his reputation after leaving office disappeared. By 1935, historian George F. Howe said that Arthur had achieved “an obscurity in strange contrast to his significant part in American history.” By 1975, however, Thomas C. Reeves would write that Arthur’s “appointments, if unspectacular, were unusually sound; the corruption and scandal that dominated business and politics of the period did not tarnish his administration.” As 2004 biographer Zachary Karabell wrote, although Arthur was “physically stretched and emotionally strained, he strove to do what was right for the country.” Indeed, Howe had earlier surmised, “Arthur adopted [a code] for his own political behavior but subject to three restraints: he remained to everyone a man of his word; he kept scrupulously free from corrupt graft; he maintained a personal dignity, affable and genial though he might be. These restraints … distinguished him sharply from the stereotype politician.”

Arthur’s townhouse, the Chester A. Arthur Home, was sold to William Randolph Hearst. Since 1944 it has been the location of Kalustyan’s Spice Emporium.

Notes

Arthur was Vice President under James A. Garfield and became President upon Garfield’s death on September 19, 1881. This was prior to the adoption of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment in 1967, and a vacancy in the office of Vice President was not filled until the next election and inauguration.

Some older sources list the date as October 5, 1830, but biographer Thomas C. Reeves confirms that this is incorrect: Arthur claimed to be a year younger “out of simple vanity.”

Arthur pronounced his middle name with the accent on the second syllable.

Even if he had been born in Canada, Arthur might have still claimed to be a “natural born citizen” based on his mother having been born in and recently resided in the United States.

The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution applies that clause, which specifically restricts presidential eligibility, to would-be vice presidents: “No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President.”

Among the facts that argue against Hinman’s theories are the entries for Chester A. Arthur in several U.S. Censuses from before he was politically prominent, which list his birthplace as Vermont, and the entry of his birth in the Arthur family Bible, which also indicates Vermont as his birthplace. In addition, contemporary newspaper articles, including the 1871 stories about his appointment as Collector of the Port of New York, all indicate that he was born in Vermont, though some incorrectly give his birthplace as Burlington. Hinman failed to explain why Arthur would have fabricated these records and the biographical information he provided to newspapers to conceal a Canadian birth when the only thing being born in Canada might possibly affect was Arthur’s eligibility for the presidency, which no one at the time of his birth or in the years between his birth and his nomination for vice president in 1880 had any reason to think he would aspire to.

$10,000 in 1870 is equal to $202 thousand in present terms.

$50,000 in 1871 is equal to $1.07 million in present terms.

Charles K. Graham filled Merritt’s former position.

Biographer George Howe takes this exchange at face value, but later biographers suspect it may be apocryphal.

Before the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Senators were elected by state legislatures.

Conkling and Pratt were ultimately denied re-election, being succeeded by Elbridge G. Lapham and Warner Miller, respectively.

One presidential oath was administered by a state court judge, also in New York City by a New York State judge: Robert Livingston, Chancellor of New York, administered the first presidential oath to George Washington at Federal Hall in 1789 (there were yet no federal judges). The only other presidential oath administered by someone other than a Federal justice or judge, the first swearing in of Calvin Coolidge in 1923 (by his father John Calvin Coolidge, Sr., a justice of the peace and notary public, in the family home), was also re-taken in Washington due to questions about the validity of the first oath. This second oath taking was done in secret, and did not become public knowledge until Harry M. Daugherty revealed it in 1932.

Arthur first offered the post to Edwin D. Morgan, who had been his patron in New York; Morgan was confirmed by the Senate, but declined on the grounds of age. He died in 1883.

The portion of the law denying citizenship to Chinese-American children born in the United States was later found unconstitutional in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898.

A small number of Arthur’s papers survived and passed to his grandson, Gavin Arthur (born Chester Alan Arthur III), who allowed Arthur’s biographer, Thomas C. Reeves, to examine them in the 1970s.

U.S. President #21: Chester A. Arthur (Part I)

Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. Previously the 20th vice president, he succeeded to the presidency upon the death of President James A. Garfield in September 1881, two months after Garfield was shot by an assassin.

Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, grew up in upstate New York, and practiced law in New York City. He served as quartermaster general of the New York Militia during the American Civil War. Following the war, he devoted more time to New York Republican politics and quickly rose in Senator Roscoe Conkling’s political organization. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the post of Collector of the Port of New York in 1871, and he was an important supporter of Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal patronage system in New York. Garfield won the Republican nomination for president in 1880, and Arthur was nominated for vice president to balance the ticket as an Eastern Stalwart. Four months into his term, Garfield was shot by an assassin; he died 11 weeks later, and Arthur assumed the presidency.

At the outset, Arthur struggled to overcome a negative reputation as a Stalwart and product of Conkling’s organization. To the surprise of reformers, he advocated and enforced the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. He presided over the rebirth of the US Navy, but he was criticized for failing to alleviate the federal budget surplus which had been accumulating since the end of the Civil War. Arthur reluctantly signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred the entry of Chinese laborers. The 1875 Page Act barred Chinese women from entering the country and was the first total ban on a nation or ethnic group from immigrating to the country.

Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a limited effort to secure the Republican Party’s nomination in 1884, and he retired at the end of his term. Journalist Alexander McClure wrote, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired… more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe.” Arthur’s failing health and political temperament combined to make his administration less active than a modern presidency, yet he earned praise among contemporaries for his solid performance in office. The New York World summed up Arthur’s presidency at his death in 1886: “No duty was neglected in his administration, and no adventurous project alarmed the nation.” Mark Twain wrote of him, “It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur’s administration.”

Early life

Birth and family

Chester Alan Arthur was born October 5, 1829, in Fairfield, Vermont. Arthur’s mother, Malvina Stone, was born in Berkshire, Vermont, the daughter of George Washington Stone and Judith Stevens. Her family was primarily of English and Welsh descent, and her grandfather, Uriah Stone, had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Arthur’s father, William Arthur, was born in Dreen, Cullybackey, County Antrim, Ireland to a Presbyterian family of Scots-Irish descent; he graduated from college in Belfast and emigrated to the Province of Lower Canada in 1819 or 1820. Malvina Stone met William Arthur when Arthur was teaching school in Dunham, Quebec, near the Vermont border. They married in Dunham on April 12, 1821, soon after meeting. The Arthurs moved to Vermont after the birth of their first child, Regina. They quickly moved from Burlington to Jericho, and finally to Waterville, as William received positions teaching at different schools. William Arthur also spent a brief time studying law, but while still in Waterville, he departed from both his legal studies and his Presbyterian upbringing to join the Free Will Baptists; he spent the rest of his life as a minister in that sect. William Arthur became an outspoken abolitionist, which often made him unpopular with some members of his congregations and contributed to the family’s frequent moves. In 1828, the family moved again, to Fairfield, where Chester Alan Arthur was born the following year; he was the fifth of nine children. He was named “Chester” after Chester Abell, the physician and family friend who assisted in his birth, and “Alan” for his paternal grandfather. The family remained in Fairfield until 1832, when William Arthur’s profession took them to churches in several towns in Vermont and upstate New York. The family finally settled in the Schenectady, New York area.

Arthur had seven siblings who lived to adulthood:

Regina (1822–1910), the wife of William G. Caw, a grocer, banker, and community leader of Cohoes, New York who served as town supervisor and village trustee

Jane (1824–1842)

Almeda (1825–1899), the wife of James H. Masten, who served as postmaster of Cohoes and publisher of the Cohoes Cataract newspaper

Ann (1828–1915), a career educator who taught school in New York, as well as working in South Carolina in the years immediately before and after the Civil War.

Malvina (1832–1920), the wife of Henry J. Haynesworth, who was an official of the Confederate government and a merchant in Albany, New York before being appointed as a captain and assistant quartermaster in the U.S. Army during Arthur’s presidency

William (1834–1915), a medical school graduate who became a career Army officer and paymaster, he was wounded during his Civil War service. William Arthur retired in 1898 with the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel, and permanent rank of major.

George (1836–1838)

Mary (1841–1917), the wife of John E. McElroy, an Albany businessman and insurance executive, and Arthur’s official White House hostess during his presidency.

The family’s frequent moves later spawned accusations that Chester Arthur was not a native-born citizen of the United States. When Arthur was nominated for vice president in 1880, a New York attorney and political opponent, Arthur P. Hinman, initially speculated that Arthur was born in Ireland and did not come to the United States until he was fourteen years old. Had that been true, opponents might have argued that Arthur was constitutionally ineligible for the vice presidency under the United States Constitution’s natural-born-citizen clause. When Hinman’s original story did not take root, he spread a new rumor that Arthur was born in Canada. This claim, too, failed to gain credence.

Education

Arthur spent some of his childhood years living in the New York towns of York, Perry, Greenwich, Lansingburgh, Schenectady, and Hoosick. One of his first teachers said Arthur was a boy “frank and open in manners and genial in disposition.” During his time at school, he gained his first political inclinations and supported the Whig Party. He joined other young Whigs in support of Henry Clay, even participating in a brawl against students who supported James K. Polk. Arthur also supported the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish republican organization founded in America; he showed this support by wearing a green coat. After completing his college preparation at the Lyceum of Union Village (now Greenwich) and a grammar school in Schenectady, Arthur enrolled at Schenectady’s Union College in 1845, where he studied the traditional classical curriculum. As a senior, he was president of the debate society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During his winter breaks, Arthur served as a teacher at a school in Schaghticoke.

After graduating in 1848, Arthur returned to Schaghticoke and became a full-time teacher, and soon began to pursue an education in law. While studying law, he continued teaching, moving closer to home by taking a job at a school in North Pownal, Vermont. Coincidentally, future president James A. Garfield taught penmanship at the same school three years later, but the two did not cross paths during their teaching careers. In 1852, Arthur moved again, to Cohoes, New York, to become the principal of a school at which his sister, Malvina, was a teacher. In 1853, after studying at State and National Law School in Ballston Spa, New York, and then saving enough money to relocate, Arthur moved to New York City to read law at the office of Erastus D. Culver, an abolitionist lawyer and family friend. When Arthur was admitted to the New York bar in 1854, he joined Culver’s firm, which was subsequently renamed Culver, Parker, and Arthur.

Early career

New York lawyer

When Arthur joined the firm, Culver and New York attorney John Jay (the grandson of the Founding Father John Jay) were pursuing a habeas corpus action against Jonathan Lemmon, a Virginia slaveholder who was passing through New York with his eight slaves. In Lemmon v. New York, Culver argued that, as New York law did not permit slavery, any slave arriving in New York was automatically freed. The argument was successful, and after several appeals was upheld by the New York Court of Appeals in 1860. Campaign biographers would later give Arthur much of the credit for the victory; in fact his role was minor, although he was certainly an active participant in the case. In another civil rights case in 1854, Arthur was the lead attorney representing Elizabeth Jennings Graham after she was denied a seat on a streetcar because she was black. He won the case, and the verdict led to the desegregation of the New York City streetcar lines.

In 1856, Arthur courted Ellen Herndon, the daughter of William Lewis Herndon, a Virginia naval officer. The two were soon engaged to be married. Later that year, he started a new law partnership with a friend, Henry D. Gardiner, and traveled with him to Kansas to consider purchasing land and setting up a law practice there. At that time, the state was the scene of a brutal struggle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces, and Arthur lined up firmly with the latter. The rough frontier life did not agree with the genteel New Yorkers; after three or four months the two young lawyers returned to New York City, where Arthur comforted his fiancée after her father was lost at sea in the wreck of the SS Central America. In 1859, they were married at Calvary Episcopal Church in Manhattan. The couple had three children:

William Lewis Arthur (December 10, 1860 – July 7, 1863), died of “convulsions”

Chester Alan Arthur II (July 25, 1864 – July 18, 1937), married Myra Townsend, then Rowena Graves, father of Gavin Arthur

Ellen Hansbrough Herndon “Nell” Arthur Pinkerton (November 21, 1871 – September 6, 1915), married Charles Pinkerton

After his marriage, Arthur devoted his efforts to building his law practice, but also found time to engage in Republican party politics. In addition, he indulged his military interest by becoming Judge Advocate General for the Second Brigade of the New York Militia.

Civil War

In 1861, Arthur was appointed to the military staff of Governor Edwin D. Morgan as engineer-in-chief. The office was a patronage appointment of minor importance until the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, when New York and the other northern states were faced with raising and equipping armies of a size never before seen in American history. Arthur was commissioned as a brigadier general and assigned to the state militia’s quartermaster department. He was so efficient at housing and outfitting the troops that poured into New York City that he was promoted to inspector general of the state militia in March 1862, and then to quartermaster general that July. He had an opportunity to serve at the front when the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment elected him commander with the rank of colonel early in the war, but at Governor Morgan’s request, he turned it down to remain at his post in New York. He also turned down command of four New York City regiments organized as the Metropolitan Brigade, again at Morgan’s request. The closest Arthur came to the front was when he traveled south to inspect New York troops near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in May 1862, shortly after forces under Major General Irvin McDowell seized the town during the Peninsula Campaign. That summer, he and other representatives of northern governors met with Secretary of State William H. Seward in New York to coordinate the raising of additional troops, and spent the next few months enlisting New York’s quota of 120,000 men. Arthur received plaudits for his work, but his post was a political appointment, and he was relieved of his militia duties in January 1863 when Governor Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, took office. When Reuben Fenton won the 1864 election for governor, Arthur requested reappointment; Fenton and Arthur were from different factions of the Republican Party, and Fenton had already committed to appointing another candidate, so Arthur did not return to military service.

Arthur returned to being a lawyer, and with the help of additional contacts made in the military, he and the firm of Arthur & Gardiner flourished. Even as his professional life improved, however, Arthur and his wife experienced a personal tragedy as their only child, William, died suddenly that year at the age of two. The couple took their son’s death hard, and when they had another son, Chester Alan Jr., in 1864, they lavished attention on him. They also had a daughter, Ellen, in 1871. Both children survived to adulthood.

Arthur’s political prospects improved along with his law practice when his patron, ex-Governor Morgan, was elected to the United States Senate. He was hired by Thomas Murphy, a Republican politician, but also a friend of William M. Tweed, the boss of the Tammany Hall Democratic organization. Murphy was also a hatter who sold goods to the Union Army, and Arthur represented him in Washington. The two became associates within New York Republican party circles, eventually rising in the ranks of the conservative branch of the party dominated by Thurlow Weed. In the presidential election of 1864, Arthur and Murphy raised funds from Republicans in New York, and they attended the second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

New York politician

Conkling’s machine

A columned building with a domed roof

The end of the Civil War meant new opportunities for the men in Morgan’s Republican machine, including Arthur. Morgan leaned toward the conservative wing of the New York Republican party, as did the men who worked with him in the organization, including Weed, Seward (who continued in office under President Andrew Johnson), and Roscoe Conkling (an eloquent Utica Congressman and rising star in the party). Arthur rarely articulated his own political ideas during his time as a part of the machine; as was common at the time, loyalty and hard work on the machine’s behalf was more important than actual political positions.

At the time, U.S. custom houses were managed by political appointees who served as Collector, Naval Officer, and Surveyor. In 1866, Arthur unsuccessfully attempted to secure the position of Naval Officer at the New York Custom House, a lucrative job subordinate only to the Collector. He continued his law practice (now a solo practice after Gardiner’s death) and his role in politics, becoming a member of the prestigious Century Club in 1867. Conkling, elected to the United States Senate in 1867, noticed Arthur and facilitated his rise in the party, and Arthur became chairman of the New York City Republican executive committee in 1868. His ascent in the party hierarchy kept him busy most nights, and his wife resented his continual absence from the family home on party business.

Conkling succeeded to leadership of the conservative wing of New York’s Republicans by 1868 as Morgan concentrated more time and effort on national politics, including serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Conkling machine was solidly behind General Ulysses S. Grant’s candidacy for president, and Arthur raised funds for Grant’s election in 1868. The opposing Democratic machine in New York City, known as Tammany Hall, worked for Grant’s opponent, former New York Governor Horatio Seymour; while Grant was victorious in the national vote, Seymour narrowly carried the state of New York. Arthur began to devote more of his time to politics and less to law, and in 1869 he became counsel to the New York City Tax Commission, appointed when Republicans controlled the state legislature. He remained at the job until 1870 at a salary of $10,000 a year. Arthur resigned after Democrats controlled by William M. Tweed of Tammany Hall won a legislative majority, which meant they could name their own appointee. In 1871, Grant offered to name Arthur as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, replacing Alfred Pleasonton; Arthur declined the appointment.

In 1870, President Grant gave Conkling control over New York patronage, including the Custom House at the Port of New York. Having become friendly with Murphy over their shared love of horses during summer vacations on the Jersey Shore, in July of that year, Grant appointed him to the Collector’s position. Murphy’s reputation as a war profiteer and his association with Tammany Hall made him unacceptable to many of his own party, but Conkling convinced the Senate to confirm him. The Collector was responsible for hiring hundreds of workers to collect the tariffs due at the United States’ busiest port. Typically, these jobs were dispensed to adherents of the political machine responsible for appointing the Collector. Employees were required to make political contributions (known as “assessments”) back to the machine, which made the job a highly coveted political plum. Murphy’s unpopularity only increased as he replaced workers loyal to Senator Reuben Fenton’s faction of the Republican party with those loyal to Conkling’s. Eventually, the pressure to replace Murphy grew too great, and Grant asked for his resignation in December 1871. Grant offered the position to John Augustus Griswold and William Orton, each of whom declined and recommended Arthur. Grant then nominated Arthur, with the New York Times commenting, “his name very seldom rises to the surface of metropolitan life and yet moving like a mighty undercurrent this man during the last 10 years has done more to mold the course of the Republican Party in this state than any other one man in the country.”

The Senate confirmed Arthur’s appointment; as Collector he controlled nearly a thousand jobs and received compensation as great as any federal officeholder. Arthur’s salary was initially $6,500, but senior customs employees were compensated additionally by the “moiety” system, which awarded them a percentage of the cargoes seized and fines levied on importers who attempted to evade the tariff. In total, his income came to more than $50,000—more than the president’s salary, and more than enough for him to enjoy fashionable clothes and a lavish lifestyle. Among those who dealt with the Custom House, Arthur was one of the era’s more popular collectors. He got along with his subordinates and, since Murphy had already filled the staff with Conkling’s adherents, he had few occasions to fire anyone. He was also popular within the Republican party as he efficiently collected campaign assessments from the staff and placed party leaders’ friends in jobs as positions became available. Arthur had a better reputation than Murphy, but reformers still criticized the patronage structure and the moiety system as corrupt. A rising tide of reform within the party caused Arthur to rename the financial extractions from employees as “voluntary contributions” in 1872, but the concept remained, and the party reaped the benefit of controlling government jobs. In that year, reform-minded Republicans formed the Liberal Republican party and voted against Grant, but he was re-elected in spite of their opposition. Nevertheless, the movement for civil service reform continued to chip away at Conkling’s patronage machine; in 1874 Custom House employees were found to have improperly assessed fines against an importing company as a way to increase their own incomes, and Congress reacted, repealing the moiety system and putting the staff, including Arthur, on regular salaries. As a result, his income dropped to $12,000 a year—more than his nominal boss, the Secretary of the Treasury, but far less than what he had previously received.

Clash with Hayes

Arthur’s four-year term as Collector expired on December 10, 1875, and Conkling, then among the most powerful politicians in Washington, arranged his protégé’s reappointment by President Grant. By 1876, Conkling was considering a run for the presidency himself, but the selection of reformer Rutherford B. Hayes by the 1876 Republican National Convention preempted the machine boss. Arthur and the machine gathered campaign funds with their usual zeal, but Conkling limited his own campaign activities to a few speeches. Hayes’s opponent, New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, carried New York and won the popular vote nationwide, but after the resolution of several months of disputes over twenty electoral votes (from the states of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina), he lost the presidency.

Hayes entered office with a pledge to reform the patronage system; in 1877, he and Treasury Secretary John Sherman made Conkling’s machine the primary target. Sherman ordered a commission led by John Jay to investigate the New York Custom House. Jay, with whom Arthur had collaborated in the Lemmon case two decades earlier, suggested that the Custom House was overstaffed with political appointments, and that 20% of the employees were expendable. Sherman was less enthusiastic about the reforms than Hayes and Jay, but he approved the commission’s report and ordered Arthur to make the personnel reductions. Arthur appointed a committee of Custom House workers to determine where the cuts were to be made and, after a written protest, carried them out. Notwithstanding his cooperation, the Jay Commission issued a second report critical of Arthur and other Custom House employees, and subsequent reports urging a complete reorganization.

Hayes further struck at the heart of the spoils system by issuing an executive order that forbade assessments, and barred federal office holders from “…tak[ing] part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns.” Arthur and his subordinates, Naval Officer Alonzo B. Cornell and Surveyor George H. Sharpe, refused to obey the president’s order; Sherman encouraged Arthur to resign, offering him appointment by Hayes to the consulship in Paris in exchange, but Arthur refused. In September 1877, Hayes demanded the three men’s resignations, which they refused to give. Hayes then submitted the appointment of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., L. Bradford Prince, and Edwin Merritt (all supporters of Conkling’s rival William M. Evarts) to the Senate for confirmation as their replacements. The Senate’s Commerce Committee, chaired by Conkling, unanimously rejected all the nominees; the full Senate rejected Roosevelt and Prince by a vote of 31–25, and confirmed Merritt only because Sharpe’s term had expired.

Arthur’s job was spared only until July 1878, when Hayes took advantage of a Congressional recess to fire him and Cornell, replacing them with the recess appointment of Merritt and Silas W. Burt. Hayes again offered Arthur the position of consul general in Paris as a face-saving consolation; Arthur again declined, as Hayes knew he probably would. Conkling opposed the confirmation of Merritt and Burt when the Senate reconvened in February 1879, but Merritt was approved by a vote of 31–25, as was Burt by 31–19, giving Hayes his most significant civil service reform victory. Arthur immediately took advantage of the resulting free time to work for the election of Edward Cooper as New York City’s next mayor. In September 1879 Arthur became Chairman of the New York State Republican Executive Committee, a post in which he served until October 1881. In the state elections of 1879, he and Conkling worked to ensure that the Republican nominees for state offices would be men of Conkling’s faction, who had become known as Stalwarts. They were successful, but narrowly, as Cornell was nominated for governor by a vote of 234–216. Arthur and Conkling campaigned vigorously for the Stalwart ticket and, owing partly to a splintering of the Democratic vote, were victorious. Arthur and the machine had rebuked Hayes and their intra-party rivals, but Arthur had only a few days to enjoy his triumph when, on January 12, 1880, his wife died suddenly while he was in Albany organizing the political agenda for the coming year. Arthur felt devastated, and perhaps guilty, and never remarried.

Election of 1880

Conkling and his fellow Stalwarts, including Arthur, wished to follow up their 1879 success at the 1880 Republican National Convention by securing the nomination for their ally, ex-President Grant. Their opponents in the Republican party, known as Half-Breeds, concentrated their efforts on James G. Blaine, a Senator from Maine who was more amenable to civil service reform. Neither candidate commanded a majority of delegates and, deadlocked after thirty-six ballots, the convention turned to a dark horse, James A. Garfield, an Ohio Congressman and Civil War general who was neither Stalwart nor Half-Breed.

Garfield and his supporters knew they would face a difficult election without the support of the New York Stalwarts and decided to offer one of them the vice presidential nomination. Levi P. Morton, the first choice of Garfield’s supporters, consulted with Conkling, who advised him to decline, which he did. They next approached Arthur, and Conkling advised him to also reject the nomination, believing the Republicans would lose. Arthur thought otherwise and accepted. According to a purported eyewitness account by journalist William C. Hudson, Conkling and Arthur argued, with Arthur telling Conkling, “The office of the Vice-President is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining.” Conkling eventually relented, and campaigned for the ticket.

As expected, the election was close. The Democratic nominee, General Winfield Scott Hancock, was popular and, having avoided taking definitive positions on most issues of the day, he had not offended any pivotal constituencies. As Republicans had done since the end of the Civil War, Garfield and Arthur initially focused their campaign on the “bloody shirt”—the idea that returning Democrats to office would undo the victory of the Civil War and reward secessionists.

1880 electoral vote results

With the war fifteen years in the past and Union generals at the head of both tickets, the tactic was less effective than the Republicans hoped. Realizing this, they adjusted their approach to claim that Democrats would lower the country’s protective tariff, which would allow cheaper manufactured goods to be imported from Europe, and thereby put thousands out of work. This argument struck home in the swing states of New York and Indiana, where many were employed in manufacturing. Hancock did not help his own cause when, in an attempt to remain neutral on the tariff, he said that “[t]he tariff question is a local question”, which only made him appear uninformed about an important issue. Candidates for high office did not personally campaign in those days, but as state Republican chairman, Arthur played a part in the campaign in his usual fashion: overseeing the effort in New York and raising money. The funds were crucial in the close election, and winning his home state of New York was critical. The Republicans carried New York by 20,000 votes and, in an election with the largest turnout of qualified voters ever recorded—78.4%—they won the nationwide popular vote by just 7,018 votes. The Electoral College result was more decisive—214 to 155—and Garfield and Arthur were elected.

Vice presidency

After the election, Arthur worked in vain to persuade Garfield to fill certain positions with his fellow New York Stalwarts—especially that of the Secretary of the Treasury; the Stalwart machine received a further rebuke when Garfield appointed Blaine, Conkling’s arch-enemy, as Secretary of State. The running mates, never close, detached as Garfield continued to freeze out the Stalwarts from his patronage. Arthur’s status in the administration diminished when, a month before inauguration day, he gave a speech before reporters suggesting the election in Indiana, a swing state, had been won by Republicans through illegal machinations. Garfield ultimately appointed a Stalwart, Thomas Lemuel James, to be Postmaster General, but the cabinet fight and Arthur’s ill-considered speech left the President and Vice President clearly estranged when they took office on March 4, 1881.

The Senate in the 47th United States Congress was divided among 37 Republicans, 37 Democrats, one independent (David Davis) who caucused with the Democrats, one Readjuster (William Mahone), and four vacancies. Immediately, the Democrats attempted to organize the Senate, knowing that the vacancies would soon be filled by Republicans. As vice president, Arthur cast tie-breaking votes in favor of the Republicans when Mahone opted to join their caucus. Even so, the Senate remained deadlocked for two months over Garfield’s nominations because of Conkling’s opposition to some of them. Just before going into recess in May 1881, the situation became more complicated when Conkling and the other Senator from New York, Thomas C. Platt, resigned in protest of Garfield’s continuing opposition to their faction.

With the Senate in recess, Arthur had no duties in Washington and returned to New York City. Once there, he traveled with Conkling to Albany, where the former Senator hoped for a quick re-election to the Senate, and with it, a defeat for the Garfield administration. The Republican majority in the state legislature was divided on the question, to Conkling and Platt’s surprise, and an intense campaign in the statehouse ensued.

While in Albany on July 2, Arthur learned that Garfield had been shot. The assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, was a deranged office-seeker who believed that Garfield’s successor would appoint him to a patronage job. He proclaimed to onlookers: “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be President!” Guiteau was found to be mentally unstable, and despite his claims to be a Stalwart supporter of Arthur, they had only a tenuous connection that dated from the 1880 campaign. Twenty-nine days before his execution for shooting Garfield, Guiteau composed a lengthy, unpublished poem claiming that Arthur knew the assassination had saved “our land [the United States]”. Guiteau’s poem also states he had (incorrectly) presumed that Arthur would pardon him for the assassination.

More troubling was the lack of legal guidance on presidential succession: as Garfield lingered near death, no one was sure who, if anyone, could exercise presidential authority. Also, after Conkling’s resignation, the Senate had adjourned without electing a president pro tempore, who would normally follow Arthur in the succession. Arthur was reluctant to be seen acting as president while Garfield lived, and for the next two months there was a void of authority in the executive office, with Garfield too weak to carry out his duties, and Arthur reluctant to assume them. Through the summer, Arthur refused to travel to Washington and was at his Lexington Avenue home when, on the night of September 19, he learned that Garfield had died. Judge John R. Brady of the New York Supreme Court administered the oath of office in Arthur’s home at 2:15 a.m. on September 20. Later that day he took a train to Long Branch to pay his respects to Garfield and to leave a card of sympathy for his wife, afterwards returning to New York City. On September 21, he returned to Long Branch to take part in Garfield’s funeral, and then joined the funeral train to Washington. Before leaving New York, he ensured the presidential line of succession by preparing and mailing to the White House a proclamation calling for a Senate special session. This step ensured that the Senate had legal authority to convene immediately and choose a Senate president pro tempore, who would be able to assume the presidency if Arthur died. Once in Washington he destroyed the mailed proclamation and issued a formal call for a special session.

Double Daddy Duty: A Y&R/B&B Crossover

Plot

Finally reunited with Summer, Kyle Abbott is happy after his divorce from Lola. But Kyle’s life takes a turn when both Summer and Lola shock Kyle with incredible news?

With all the baby drama between Lola and Summer, Kyle becomes friends with Liam Spencer in L.A. through a website devoted to dads who fathered two families and gets gainful advice.

Cast

Kyle Abbott – Michael Mealor

Summer Newman – Hunter King

Lola Rosales – Sasha Calle

Theo Vanderway – Tyler Johnson

Liam Spencer – Scott Clifton

Hope Logan Spencer – Annika Noelle

Steffy Forrester – Jacqueline MacInnes Wood

Chapter 1

“What’s the occasion?” Kyle asks Summer when he arrives back at the Abbott mansion where Summer has planned a special dinner.

“I’ve fixed all our favorites, hun!” Summer told Kyle with a kiss.

“You cooked?” Kyle said knowing Summer didn’t cook.

“I wanted our 1-month anniversary to be special!” Summer said excitedly.

“Well, that was touching.” Kyle said kissing Summer.

“That’s not all!” Summer hinted.

“There’s more!”

“We’re pregnant!” Summer announced, as an ecstatic Kyle kissed Summer.

“You’re happy?” Summer asked, not so sure.

“I’m happy!”

Kyle’s phone beeped as it received a text as Kyle reached to see it was from Lola, “This can wait til later.” Kyle told Summer.

“No, go ahead. See what she has to say.” Summer told him.

Kyle looked at Lola’s text: “We need to talk! ASAP!”

“Hmmmm, Lola says that I need to talk.” Kyle told Summer after reading Lola’s message.

“You should go. It could be about the divorce.” Summer obliged him.

“But what about your dinner?”

“Go see what she wants.” Summer said, nearly kicking him out the front door.

While Kyle was gone, Summer got things ready for when Kyle got back, so they could finish celebrating their news.

Chapter 2

Kyle arrived at Society where Lola told him she was working. He found her busy in the kitchen.

“Lola?” Kyle asked. “I’m here.”

“We need to talk.” Lola said, looking worried.

“Is there something wrong with the divorce?”

“No. The divorce is going along smoothly, according to Michael. It won’t be long and the marriage will be dissolved.”

“Then, what is it?”

“I don’t know how to tell you?” Lola said.

“Tell me what?” Kyle said worried.

“I’m pregnant!” Lola said, taking Kyle completely off guard.

“Are you sure it’s mine?” Kyle asked, as Lola looked hurt by his words.

Kyle had to get out of Society after he said the words that stung Lola. He couldn’t believe he actually said the words. But after Summer’s reveal that she was pregnant—and now, Lola’s revelation that she’s also pregnant—Kyle just didn’t know what to say. He had gotten two women, whom he both loves dearly, pregnant!

Chapter 3

Kyle never went back to the Abbott mansion after he saw Lola. Instead, he went to Jabot to do some work.

Summer was worried and decided to confront Lola at Society when Kyle never came back home.

“Lola, have you seen Kyle?” Summer asked Lola, who was chatting with Theo.

“No. He didn’t go back home?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“That’s odd?” Lola said, knowing it must have been her news that surprised Kyle.

“What did you two talk about?” Summer asked.

“Just about the divorce.” Lola lied to Summer, not wanting to tell her about her pregnancy.

“It’s still happening? Right?” Summer asked worried now that she was pregnant with Kyle’s baby.

“Yes, Summer, you can relax.” Lola said.

“Good, because I wouldn’t want to lose Kyle now.” Summer said as she rubbed her stomach, giving Lola the impression Summer was pregnant,

“No wonder Kyle acted the way he did at her news?” Lola thought to herself, as she reflected on their conversation the night before. They were both pregnant!

“Lola!” Summer said, waking Lola from her reverie.

“Oh, Summer, I’m sorry, but I must get back to work.” Lola said, dismissing Summer.

“What was that about?” Summer asked Theo, who was just as confused by Lola’s behavior.

Chapter 4

Kyle didn’t get any work done when he arrived at Jabot. Instead, he went online and found a support group, doubledaddyduty.com, where he immediately began speaking with a gentleman named Liam.

Kyle introduced himself and told Liam his issue and Liam instantly connected with Kyle.

The two gentlemen talked about their similar issues and formed a bond.

But Kyle’s time with Liam was interrupted when Summer barged through Kyle’s door when she saw the light on.

“Kyle, here you are! I was worried when you didn’t come home!”

Kyle told Liam he would chat later as something came up.

Chapter 5

Kyle couldn’t wait to talk with Liam about their similar fates but Summer was insistent that they bond now more than ever. But Kyle was distracted by the fact that he would be having two families with both Lola and Summer. He was in a tailspin.

Meanwhile, at Society, Lola was working in the kitchen when Theo found her.

“There you are?” Theo said. “You missed out date.”

“Sorry Theo but I’ve been a little preoccupied.” Lola snapped not wanting to tell him about the pregnancy.

“Gee, you don’t have to bite my head off!” Theo shot back at her, but instantly felt bad when Lola nearly fainted in his arms. “Lola!”

After catching Lola so she didn’t hit the floor, “Lola, are you alright?”

“It’s nothing. I just forgot to eat breakfast.” Lola lied not wanting to reveal to Theo her being pregnant with Kyle’s baby.

“C’mon, you need to take a break and eat something before pass out again.” Theo told her.

But their breakfast date was quickly interrupted by Kyle needing to talk about recent events.

“Lola, we need to talk.” Kyle said.

“A can it wait, Cuz?” Theo asked.

“No, it can’t, Theo. It’s urgent!” Kyle said.

“It’s okay. It’s probably just about the divorce proceedings.” Lola said.

“But you need to eat. You nearly passed out a few minutes ago.” Theo urged.

“It’s okay. I’ll get something in the kitchen.” Lola promised as she led Kyle to the kitchen so they could talk privately.

While Theo waited for Lola, Summer arrived at Society worried that Kyle had left their apartment.

“Theo, have you seen Kyle?” Summer asked him when she saw him sitting alone.

“He’s in the kitchen talking with Lola.”

“Oh thanks.” Summer said as she headed for the kitchen door.

“Where are you going?” Theo demanded. “They’re having a private talk. About the divorce.”

“Well, I need Kyle and it can’t wait.” Summer said as she headed for the kitchen door before Theo could stop her. But the two got the shock of their life when they overheard Kyle and Lola talking.

“I can’t believe Lola is pregnant too?” Summer said in an accusing tone. “I knew Lola still wanted Kyle. I bet she purposely got pregnant to keep him in the marriage!”

For once, he wondered if Summer was right….

(Coming: Summer and Lola get into a catfight and Kyle heads to L.A.!)

Crossover One Shots: Dr. Rolf Meets Dr. Hayward

Dr. Wilhelm Rolf was transferred to Statesville Prison in Pine Valley, Pennsylvania due to death threats he was receiving. While there, he met his prison cellmate—Dr. David Hayward.

“Good day.” Dr. David Hayward said as he greeted his new cellmate, Dr. Wilhelm Rolf.

But Dr. Rolf was in no mood to socialize. It was bad enough he was getting death threats due to his formula that brought Salemites from the dead, now he was clear across the country.

But David didn’t let Rolf’s silence deter him, “so what are you in for?”

“Bringing people back from the dead!” Rolf said more as a joke.

“You’re joking!” David said not surprised.

“Actually, no I’m not.” Rolf said setting him straight.

“You actually bring people back from the dead?” David said as he flashed back to his discoveries and needled Rolf about his.

“Yeah, I came up with a formula that starts the heart after someone flatlines.” Rolf told David, unaware of David’s accomplishments.

“Really?” David mused as he secretly constructed a plot to get Rolf’s secret formula and break out of prison.

As Rolf and David bonded over their love for science, Rolf had no idea that he was being scammed by Pine Valley’s Dr. David Hayward.

Spoilers/Classic Episodes: June 29-July 3, 2020

The Young & the Restless

It’s ‘Paul & Christine Week’. The CBS soap opera will air classic episodes featuring Paul Williams and Christine Blair Williams dating back to 1994.

Young and Restless spoilers for Thursday June 25:

(Peter Bergman won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in this episode.)

Jack (Peter Bergman) makes a confession about his marriage to Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott), Dina (Marla Adams) makes amends with John (Jerry Douglas), and Jill (Jess Walton) has a special assignment for Paul (Doug Davidson) and Nathan (Nathan Purdee). Originally aired on November 15, 1991.

Young and Restless spoilers for Friday June 26:

(Camryn Grimes wont the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Younger Actress for her performance in this episode)

Sharon (Sharon Case) and Nick (Joshua Morrow) are awarded custody of Cassie (Camryn Grimes), Cole (J. Eddie Peck) romances Ashley (Eileen Davidson) and Neil (Kristoff St. John) helps Victor (Eric Braeden) protect Newman Enterprises. Originally aired on July 19, 1999.

Young and Restless spoilers for the week of June 29:

Young and Restless spoilers for Monday June 29:

Paul (Doug Davidson) pulls out all the stops to propose to Christine (Lauralee Bell), Sharon Collins (Sharon Case) sets her sights on Nick (Joshua Morrow) and Victor (Eric Braeden) makes a sacrifice to protect Newman Enterprises. Originally aired on September 21, 1994.

Young and Restless spoilers for Tuesday June 30:

Paul’s (Doug Davidson) mother, Mary Williams (Carolyn Conwell) makes a surprise appearance at Christine’s (Lauralee Bell) bridal shower, Drucilla (Victoria Rowell) shares surprising news and Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) worries about Nick’s (Joshua Morrow) interest in Sharon. Originally aired on December 14, 1994.

Young and Restless spoilers for Wednesday July 1:

Christine (Lauralee Bell) and Paul’s (Doug Davidson) wedding day takes a shocking turn, Olivia (Tonya Lee Williams) plays matchmaker for Malcolm (Shemar Moore) and Stephanie (Vivica A. Fox), and Danny (Michael Damian) confides in Katherine (Jeanne Cooper). Originally aired on December 29, 1994.

Young and Restless spoilers for Thursday July 2:

Christine (Lauralee Bell) and Paul (Doug Davidson) walk down the aisle, Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) makes a confession, and Neil (Kristoff St. John) worries about Olivia (Tonya Lee Williams). Originally aired on August 7, 1996.

Young and Restless spoilers for Friday July 3:

Paul (Doug Davidson) interrupts Isabella’s (Eva Longoria) revenge plot against Christine (Lauralee Bell), Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) learns of Victoria’s (then played by Heather Tom) interest in Damon (Keith Hamilton Cobb) and Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) stands her ground at Jabot. Originally aired on August 15, 2003.

The Bold & the Beautiful

It’s ‘Love Conquers All Week’. The CBS soap opera will air episodes going back to 2014 featuring stories of romance that prevailed.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Thursday June 25:

(Heather Tom won her first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for this episode.)

Katie suffers a heart attack when Taylor (Hunter Tylo) informs her that Bill and Steffy (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) are having an emotional affair. Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang) demands that Taylor and Ridge make Steffy stop making a play for Bill. Katie sneaks out of her ICU room to confront Steffy. Originally aired on August 5, 2011.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Friday June 26:

(Jacqueline MacInnes Wood won her first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress for this episode.)

Liam discovers Steffy slept with his father Bill after he learns she had a paternity test on their baby. An emotionally distraught Steffy begs Liam not to leave her as reality sets in that his wife betrayed him by having a one-night stand with his dad. Originally aired on January 2, 2018.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for the week of June 29:

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Monday June 29:

Wyatt convinces Hope to take the marital plunge — literally — in Monte Carlo. Originally aired on August 13, 2014.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Tuesday June 30:

Maya and Rick’s wedding day arrives. Originally aired on August 12, 2015.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Wednesday July 1:

Ridge and Caroline head to the beach and pronounce themselves ‘husband and wife’. Originally aired on September 14, 2015.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Thursday July 2:

Eric and Quinn tie the knot and celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton guest stars as Reverend Murphy. Originally aired on September 26, 20174.

Bold and Beautiful spoilers for Friday July 3:

Steffy tells Ridge that she is ready to marry Liam, just as he learns that Hope is pregnant with his child. Originally aired on July 4, 2018.

General Hospital

The ABC soap reflects on Port Charles’ resident mob boss Sonny Corinthos and his relationships with his children…

General Hospital spoilers week of June 29:

General Hospital’s plans to return to production. Could we get new episodes this summer?

General Hospital spoilers for Monday June 29:

Original air date January 29, 2010: Sonny shoots Dante.

General Hospital spoilers for Tuesday June 30:

Original air date July 4, 2010: Kristina and Sonny attend therapy.

General Hospital spoilers for Wednesday July 1:

Original air date November 7, 2014: Michael holds a gun on Sonny to make him pay for killing AJ

General Hospital spoilers for Thursday July 2:

Original air date June 29, 2015: Michael gives Avery back to Sonny

General Hospital spoilers for Friday July 3:

Original air date February 26, 2016: Sonny stops Morgan from jumping off the roof of General Hospital.

General Hospital spoilers week of July 6:

General Hospital spoilers for Monday July 6:

Original air date April 4, 2008: Michael takes a bullet intended for Sonny

General Hospital spoilers for Tuesday July 7:

Original air date May 4, 2010: Michael confesses to killing Claudia.

General Hospital spoilers for Wednesday July 8:

Original air date September 30, 2010: Michael is sentenced to prison.

General Hospital spoilers for Thursday July 9:

Original air date January 6, 2011: Sonny visits Kristina at the hospital.

General Hospital spoilers for Friday July 10:

Original air date July 25, 2016: Sonny tells Kristina about Parker.

Days of Our Lives

Drama unfolds for many as a verdict arrives in Gabi’s case and Jake’s DNA results are revealed – plus Vivian’s presence leaves him unsettled. Lani and Eli’s wedding is in disarray, while Ben and Ciara demand answers from Claire about the state of her wedding dress. But that’s not all… Kristen surfaces.

Days of our Lives spoilers week of June 29:

ILani and Eli’s wedding is crashed by a shocking guest.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Monday June 29:

Gabi’s verdict is delivered.

Lani receives help from someone unexpected.

Valerie has a surprise for Eli.

Marlena comforts Brady, who longs for his family.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Tuesday June 30:

Kristen and Brady reunite.

A shocking guest crashes Lani and Eli’s wedding!

Rafe and Hope share a nice moment.

Gabi and Chad face off.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Wednesday July 1:

Chaos erupts at Lani and Eli’s wedding.

Lani attempts to diffuse a dangerous situation.

Gabi and Jake eagerly await his DNA test results.

Claire and Ciara bond over wedding planning.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Thursday July 2:

Jake and Gabi reel over his DNA test results.

Ben and Ciara confront Claire about the damaged wedding dress.

Vivian is stunned to learn about Jake.

Allie makes Rafe an unexpected offer.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Friday July 3:

Jake is rattled by his encounter with Vivian.

Eric gives Will and Sonny disappointing news.

Eli and Lani have a romantic wedding night.

Gabi attempts to enlist Vivian’s help.

More Days of our Lives spoilers…

Lani’s mother faints at the wedding before Gabi crashes the event – then Vivian appears with a gun. Vivian wants to take Lani’s life for taking her son Stefan from her. However, Lani pleads with Vivian – if she kills her, she’ll kill her unborn baby too. Rafe appears and tells Vivian that Stefan might be alive.

Chad finds Kristen with Brady and promises not to turn her in but asks for her DiMera stocks. Brady can’t let Kristen go and plans to leave town with her.

Days of our Lives spoilers week of July 6:

Days of our Lives spoilers for Monday July 6:

Kayla learns of a major crisis as she gets ready for her ceremony.

Sonny bolsters Justin the morning of his father’s wedding.

Xander confides in Jack about Sarah.

Victor defends Xander to Sarah.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Tuesday July 7:

Steve makes a big announcement to John and Marlena.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Wednesday July 8:

Justin stuns Kayla with a huge confession.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Thursday July 9:

Justin gets a shock at Adrienne’s grave site.

Days of our Lives spoilers for Friday July 10:

Vivian asks Kate for a favor.

Gabi gets an unpleasant surprise when she drops by Jake’s apartment.

Days of our Lives spring casting:

Kassie DePaiva and others return in our Days of our Lives comings and goings and learn who will be leaving the soap.

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary (Part II)

Prison life and the cells

An inmate register reveals that there were 1,576 prisoners in total held at Alcatraz during its time as a Federal Penitentiary, although figures reported have varied and some have stated 1557. The prison cells, purposefully designed so that none adjoined an outside wall, typically measured 9 feet (2.7 m) by 5 feet (1.5 m) and 7 feet (2.1 m) high. The cells were primitive with a bed, a desk and a washbasin and toilet on the back wall and few furnishings except a blanket. An air vent, measuring 6 inches (150 mm) by 9 inches (230 mm), covered by a metal grill, lay at the back of the cells which led into the utility corridors. Prisoners had no privacy in going to the toilet and the toilets would emit a strong stench because they were flushed with salt water. Hot water faucets were not installed until the early 1960s, shortly before closure.

The penitentiary established a very strict regimen of rules and regulations under the title “the Rules and Regulations for the Government and Discipline of the United States Penal and Correctional Institutions” and also a “Daily Routine of Work and Counts” to be followed by the prisoners and also the guards; copies of these were provided to the prisoners to read and follow. Inmates were basically entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Anything else was seen as a privilege. Inmates were given a blue shirt, grey pants (blue and white in later years), cotton long underwear, socks and a blue handkerchief; the wearing of caps was forbidden in the cellhouse. Cells were expected to be kept tidy and in good order. Any dangerous article found in the cells or on inmates such as money, narcotics, intoxicating substances or tools which had the potential to inflict injury or assist in an escape attempt was considered contraband and made the prisoners eligible for disciplinary action. It was compulsory for prisoners to shave in their cells three times a week. Attempting to bribe, intimidate, or assault prison officers was seen as a very serious offense. African-Americans were segregated from the rest in cell designation due to racial abuse being prevalent. Toilet paper, matches, soap, and cleanser were issued to the cells on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and inmates could request hot water and a mop to clean their cells. The bars, windows and floors of the prison were cleaned on a daily basis. In earlier years there was a strict code of silence but by the 1950s this had relaxed and talking was permitted in the cellhouse and dining hall provided conversations were quiet and there was no shouting, loud talking, whistling or singing.

Plan of the main cellhouse

Prisoners would be woken at 6:30 am, and sent to breakfast at 6:55 am. After returning to the cell, inmates then had to tidy their cell and place the waste basket outside. At 7:30 am, work started in the shifts for those privileged enough to do so, punctuated by a whistle, and prisoners would have to go through a metal detector during work shifts. If assigned a job, prisoners had to accept that line of work; prisoners were not permitted to have money in their possessions but earnings went into a prisoner’s Trust Fund. Some of the prisoners were assigned duties with the guards and foremen in the Laundry, Tailor Shop, Cobblers Shop, Model Shop etc. and in gardening and labor. Smoking, a privilege, was permitted in the workplace providing there wasn’t any hazardous condition, but inmates were not permitted to smoke between the recreation yard and work. Lunch was served at 11:20 am, followed by a 30-minute rest in the cell, before returning to work until 16:15. Dinner was served at 16:25 and the prisoners would then retire to their cells to be locked in for the night at 16:50, and lights went off at 21:30. After being locked in for the night, 6 guards usually patrolled the four cell blocks. Many prisoners have compared their duration at Alcatraz to hell and would have preferred death to continued incarceration.

Alcatraz Library was located at the end of D-Block. Upon entering Alcatraz, every inmate was given a library card and a catalog of books found in the library; inmates could place orders by putting a slip with their card in a box at the entrance to the dining hall before breakfast, and the books would be delivered to and from their cell by a librarian. The library, which utilized a closed-stack paging system, had a collection of 10,000 to 15,000 books, mainly left over from the army days. Inmates were permitted a maximum of three books in addition to up to 12 text books, a Bible, and a dictionary. They were permitted to subscribe to magazines but crime-related pages were torn out and newspapers were prohibited. Sex, crime and violence were censored from all books and magazines, and the library was governed by a chaplain who regulated the censorship and the nature of the reading material to ensure that the material was wholesome. Failure to return books by the date given made the inmate liable to removal of privileges. The average prisoner read 75 to 100 books a year. Every evening, inmates would generally read books loaned from the library and usually an hour or 75 minutes was allocated to the practicing of musical instruments, from the guitar to the accordion. A prison band often practiced in the dining room or auditorium above it; Al Capone famously practiced the banjo in the shower block, although most prisoners were limited to playing in their cells alone.

Corridors

“Broadway”

Alcatraz cellhouse had a corridor naming system named after major American streets and landmarks. Michigan Avenue was the corridor to the side of A-Block, and Broadway was the central corridor in which the inmates would assemble as they massed through Times Square (an area with a clock on the wall), before entering the dining hall for their meals. Broadway separated Block-B and Block-C and prisoners kept along it had the least privacy in the prison. The corridor between Block-C and the library was called Park Avenue. The corridor in D-Block was named Sunset Strip. Gun galleries lay at the end of each block, including the West and East Gun Galleries.

A-Block

A-Block was never modernized, so retained its “flat strap-iron bars, key locks and spiral staircases” from the original military prison. No inmates were permanently held there during the years Alcatraz was a federal penitentiary. Several inmates, however, were held briefly in A-Block before a hearing or transfer. In the later years, A-Block was mainly used for storage. A law library was set up at some point, where inmates could type legal documents. A small barber’s shop was located at the end of A-block where inmates would have a monthly haircut.

B-Block

Most new inmates at Alcatraz were assigned to the second tier of B-Block.[69] They had “quarantine status” for their first three months in confinement in Alcatraz, and were not permitted visitors for a minimum of 90 days. Inmates were permitted one visitor a month, although anybody likely to cause trouble such as registered criminals were barred from visiting. Letters received by inmates were checked by prison staff first, to see if they could decipher any secret messages. Frank Morris and his fellow escapees escaped Alcatraz during the June 1962 escape from Alcatraz by entering a utility corridor behind B-Block.

C-Block

D-Block

D-Block gained notoriety as a “Treatment block” for some of the worst inmates, with varying degrees of punishment, including Isolation, Solitary and Strip. Prisoners usually spent anywhere from 3 to 19 days in Solitary. Prisoners held here would be given their meals in their cells, were not permitted to work and could only shower twice a week. After a 1939 escape attempt in which Arthur “Doc” Barker was killed, the Bureau of Prisons tightened security in the D-Block. The Birdman of Alcatraz inhabited cell 42 in D-Block in solitary confinement for 6 years.

D-Block

The worst cells for confinement as a punishment for inmates who stepped out of line were located at the end of D-Block in cells 9–14, known as “The Hole”. Inmates held in the hole were limited to just one 10-minute shower and an hour of exercise in the yard a week. The five cells of “The Hole” had nothing but a sink and toilet and the very worst cell was nicknamed “The Oriental” or “Strip Cell”, the final cell of the block with nothing but a hole in the floor as a toilet, in which prisoners would often be confined naked with nothing else for two days. The guards controlled the flushing of the toilet in that cell. After completing the punishment in the hole, the prisoner could then return to his cell but be tagged; a red tag, third grade, denoted a prisoner who was restricted from leaving his cell for perhaps 3 months. At second grade the prisoners could receive letters, and if after 30 days they remained behaved, they would then be restored full prison privileges.

ts size was approximately that of a regular cell-9 feet by 5 feet by about 7 feet high. I could just touch the ceiling by stretching out my arm … You are stripped nude and pushed into the cell. Guards take your clothes and go over them minutely for what few grains of tobacco may have fallen into the cuffs or pockets. There is no soap. No tobacco. No toothbrush, The smell – well you can describe it only by the word ‘stink.’ It is like stepping into a sewer. It is nauseating. After they have searched your clothing, they throw it at you. For bedding, you get two blankets, around 5 in the evening. You have no shoes, no bed, no mattress-nothing but the four damp walls and two blankets. The walls are painted black. Once a day I got three slices of bread—no—that is an error. Some days I got four slices. I got one meal in five days, and nothing but bread in between. In the entire thirteen days I was there, I got two meals … I have seen but one man get a bath in solitary confinement, in all the time that I have been there. That man had a bucket of cold water thrown over him.— Henri Young testifying his experiences in “The Hole” at Alcatraz during his 1941 trial.

Dining

Alcatraz Dining Hall, often referred to as the Mess Hall, is the dining hall where the prisoners and staff ate their meals. It is a long wing on the west end of the Main Cellhouse of Alcatraz, situated in the center of the island. It is connected to the block by a corridor known as “Times Square”, as it passes beneath a large clock approaching the entrance way to the dining hall. This wing includes the dining hall and the kitchen beyond it. On the second floor was the hospital and the auditorium, which was where movies were screened to the inmates at weekends.

Dining hall protocol was a scripted process, including a whistle system to indicate which block and tier of men would move into and out of the hall at any given time, who sat where, where to place hands, and when to start eating. Prisoners would be awakened at 6:30 am, and sent to breakfast at 6:55 am. A breakfast menu is still preserved on the hallway board, dated 21 March 1963. The breakfast menu included assorted dry cereals, steamed whole wheat, a scrambled egg, milk, stewed fruit, toast, bread, and butter. Lunch was served in the dining hall at 11:20 am, followed by a 30-minute rest in the cell, before returning to work until 16:15. Dinner was served at 16:25 and the prisoners would then go to their cells at 16:50 to be locked in for the night. Inmates were permitted to eat as much as they liked within 20 minutes, provided they left no waste; waste would be reported and may make the prisoner subject to removal of privileges if they made a habit of it.

Each dining table had benches which held up to six men, although smaller tables and chairs later replaced these which seated four. All of the prison population, including the guards and officials would dine together, thus seating over 250 people. The food served at Alcatraz was reportedly the best in the United States prison system.

Recreation

Recreation Yard

The Recreation Yard was the yard used by inmates of the prison between 1934 and 1963. It is located opposite the dining hall south of the end of D-Block, facing the mainland on a raised level surrounded by a high wall and fence above it. Guard Tower #3 lay just to the west of the yard. The gun gallery was situated in the yard, mounted on one of the dining hall’s exterior walls.

In 1936, the previously dirt-covered yard was paved. The yard was part of the most violent escape attempt from Alcatraz in May 1946 when a group of inmates hatched a plot to obtain the key into the recreation yard, kill the tower guards, take hostages, and use them as shields to reach the dock.

Inmates were permitted out into the yard on Saturdays and Sundays and on holidays for a maximum of 5 hours. Inmates who worked seven days a week in the kitchen were rewarded with short yard breaks during the weekdays. Badly behaved prisoners were liable to having their yard access rights taken away from them on weekends. The prisoners of Alcatraz were permitted to play games such as baseball, softball and other sports at these times and intellectual games such as chess. Because of the small size of the yard and the diamond at the end of it, a section of the wall behind the first base had to be padded to cushion the impact of inmates overrunning it. Inmates were provided gloves, bats, and balls, but no sport uniforms. In 1938, there were four amateur teams, the Bees, Oaks, Oilers, and Seals, named after Minor League clubs, and four league teams named after Major League clubs, the Cardinals, Cubs, Giants, and Tigers. Many of the inmates used weekends in the yards to converse with each other and discuss crime, the only real opportunities they had during the week for a durable conversation.

Other buildings

Warden’s House

Warden’s House and lighthouse

The Warden’s House is located at the northeastern end of the Main Cellblock, next to Alcatraz Lighthouse. The 3-floor 15-room mansion was built in 1921 according to the Golden Gate National Recreational Area signpost, although some sources say it was built in 1926 or 1929 and had 17 or 18 rooms.

Between 1934 and 1963, the four wardens of Alcatraz resided here, including the first warden, James A. Johnston. A house of luxury, in stark contrast to the jail next to it, the wardens often held lavish cocktail parties here. The signpost at the spot shows a photograph of a trusted inmate doing chores at the house for the warden and that the house had a terraced garden and greenhouse. The mansion had tall windows, providing fine views of San Francisco Bay. Today, the house is a ruin, burned down by Native Americans during the Occupation of Alcatraz on 1 June 1970.

Building 64

Building 64 Residential Apartments was the first building constructed on the island of Alcatraz, intended entirely for the purpose of accommodating the military officers and their families living on the island. Located next to the dock on the southeastern side of the island, below the Warden’s House, the three-story apartment block was built in 1905 on the site of a U.S. Army barracks which had been there from the 1860s. It functioned as the Military Guard Barracks from 1906 until 1933. One of its largest apartments in the southwest corner was known as the “Cow Palace” and a nearby alleyway was known as “Chinatown”.

Social Hall

The ruined Social Hall of Alcatraz

The Social Hall, also known as the Officers’ Club, was a social club located on the northwestern side of the island. Located in proximity to the Power House, water tower and Former Military Chapel (Bachelor Quarters), it formerly housed the post exchange. The club was a social venue for the Federal Penitentiary workers and their families on the island to unwind after a hard week’s work dealing with America’s most hardened criminals after they’d been locked up at 17:30. It was burned down by Native Americans during the Occupation of Alcatraz in 1970, leaving a shell which still remains.

The club had a small bar, library, large dining and dance floor, billiards table, ping pong table and a two-lane bowling alley, and was the center of social life on the island for the employees of the penitentiary. It regularly hosted dinners, bingo events, and from the 1940s onward showed movies every Sunday night after they had been shown to the inmates during the day on Saturday and Sunday. The club was responsible for organizing numerous special events on the island (held either in the hall or the Parade Grounds) and the fundraising associated with it, anything from ice cream and watermelon feasts to Halloween fancy dress and Christmas parties.

Power House

The Power House is located on the northwest coast of Alcatraz Island. It was constructed in 1939 for $186,000 as part of a $1.1 million modernization scheme which also included the water tower, New Industries Building, officers quarters and remodeling of the D-block. The white powerhouse smokestack and lighthouse were said to give an “appearance of a ship’s mast on either side of the island”. A sign reading “A Warning. Keep Off. Only Government permitted within 200 yards” lay in front of the powerhouse to deter people landing on the island at the point.

Between 1939 and 1963, it supplied power to the Federal Penitentiary and other buildings on the island. The powerhouse had a tower duty station which was guarded with a “30-caliber Winchester rifle with 50 rounds of ammunition, a 1911 semiautomatic pistol with three seven-round magazines, three gas grenades, and a gas mask.”

Alcatraz water tower

The water tower is located on the northwestern side of the island, near Tower No. 3, beyond the Morgue and Recreation Yard. The water tank is situated on six cross-braced steel legs submerged in concrete foundations.

As Alcatraz had no water supply of its own, it had to import it from the mainland, brought by tug and barge. During the island’s military years, there were in-ground water tanks and water tanks were situated on the roof of the citadel. The water tower was built in 1940–41 by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, after the island received a government renovations grant to supply the majority of the island’s fresh water.

It is the tallest building on the island, at a height of 94 feet (29 m) with a volume of 250,000 US gallons (950 kL) gallons of fresh water. It was used to store potable water for drinking, water for firefighting, and water for the island’s service laundry facility.

Model Industries Building

The Model Industries Building is a three/four-story building on the northwest corner of Alcatraz Island. This building was originally built by the U.S. military and was used as a laundry building until the New Industries Building was built as part of a redevelopment program on Alcatraz in 1939 when it was a federal penitentiary. As part of the Alcatraz jail, it held workshops for inmates to work in.

On 10 January 1935, the building shifted to within 2.5 feet from the edge of the cliff following a landslide caused by a severe storm. The warden at the time, James A. Johnston, proposed extend the seawall next to it and asked the Bureau for $6500 to fund it; he would later claim to dislike the building because it was irregularly shaped. A smaller, cheaper riprap was completed by the end of 1935. A guard tower and a catwalk from Hill Tower was added to the roof of the Industries Building in June 1936 and the building was made secure with bars from old cells to bar the windows and grill the roof ventilators and to prevent inmates from escaping from the roof. It ceased use as a laundry in 1939 when it was moved to the upper floor of the New Industries Building. Today the building is heavily rusted after decades of exposure to the salt air and wind, and neither the guard tower on top of the building nor the Hill Tower still exist.

New Industries Building

The New Industries Building was constructed in 1939 for $186,000 as part of a $1.1 million modernization scheme which also included the water tower, power house, officers’ quarters and remodeling of the D-block.

The ground floor of the two-story 306 ft long building contained a clothing factory, dry cleaning plant, furniture plant, brush factory, and an office, where prisoners of the federal penitentiary could work for money. They earned a small wage for their labor which was put into an account, known as a Prisoner’s Trust Fund, which would be given to them upon leaving Alcatraz. They made items such as gloves, furniture mats, and army uniforms. The laundry room occupied the entire upper floor, the largest in San Francisco at the time. Each window has 9 panes and there are 17 bays on each floor on either side.

Notable inmates

Arthur R. Barker (“Doc”)–#268 1935–39: Arthur Barker (4 June 1899 – 13 January 1939) was the son of Ma Barker and a member of the Barker-Karpis gang along with Alvin Karpis. In 1935, Barker was sent to Alcatraz Island on conspiracy to kidnap charges. On the night of 13 January 1939, Barker with Henri Young and Rufus McCain attempted escape from Alcatraz. Barker was shot and killed by the guards.

Alphonse “Al” Gabriel Capone (“Scarface”)–#85 1934–39: When Al Capone (17 January 1899 – 25 January 1947) arrived on Alcatraz in 1934, prison officials made it clear that he would not be receiving any preferential treatment. While serving his time in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Capone, a master manipulator, had continued running his rackets from behind bars by buying off guards. Capone generated major media attention while on Alcatraz, though he served just four and a half years of his sentence there before developing symptoms of tertiary syphilis and poor mental health before being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Los Angeles in 1938. He tried his best to seek favors from warden Johnston, but failed, and was given work in the prison performing numerous menial jobs. Capone was involved in many fights with fellow prisoners, including one with an inmate who held a blade to his throat in the prison barbershop after Capone attempted to jump the queue. He was released from jail in November 1939 and lived in Miami until his death in 1947 at 48 years of age.

Meyer Harris Cohen (“Mickey”)–#1518 1961–63: Mickey Cohen (4 September 1913 – 29 July 1976) worked for the Mafia’s gambling rackets; he was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 15 years in Alcatraz Island. He was transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta shortly before Alcatraz closed permanently on 21 March 1963. While at Atlanta, on 14 August 1963, fellow inmate Burl Estes McDonald clobbered Cohen with a lead pipe, partially paralyzing the mobster. After his release in 1972, Cohen led a quiet life with old friends.

Ellsworth Raymond Johnson (“Bumpy”)–#1117 1954–63: “Bumpy” Johnson (31 October 1905 – 7 July 1968), referred to as the “Godfather of Harlem”, was an African-American gangster, numbers operator, racketeer, and bootlegger in Harlem in the early 20th century. He was sent to Alcatraz in 1954 and was imprisoned until 1963. He was believed to have been involved in the 1962 escape attempt of Frank Morris, John and Clarence Anglin.

Alvin Francis Karpavicz (“Creepy Karpis”)–#325 1936–62: Alvin Karpis (10 August 1907 – 26 August 1979) was Canadian, of Lithuanian descent. He was nicknamed “Creepy” for his sinister smile and called “Ray” by his gang members. He was known for being one of the three leaders of the Ma Barker-Karpis gang in the 1930s; the other two leaders were Fred and Doc Barker of the Ma Barker Gang. He was the only “Public Enemy #1” to be taken personally by J. Edgar Hoover. There were only four “public enemies” ever given the title of “Public Enemy #1”by the FBI. The other three, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson, were all killed before being captured. He also spent the longest time as a federal prisoner in Alcatraz Prison at 26 years. Karpis was credited with ten murders and six kidnappings apart from bank robbery. He was deported to Canada in 1971 and died in Spain in 1979.

George Kelly Barnes (“Machine Gun Kelly”)–#117 1934–51: “Machine Gun Kelly” (18 July 1895 – 18 July 1954) arrived on 4 September 1934. At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting about several robberies and murders that he had never committed. Although his boasts were said to be tiresome to other prisoners, Warden Johnson considered him a model inmate. Inmate #139, Harvey Bailey was his partner. Kelly was returned to Leavenworth in 1951.

Rafael Cancel Miranda–#1163 1954–60: In July 1954, Rafael Cancel Miranda (18 July 1930 – 2 March 2020) was sent to Alcatraz, where he served six years of his sentence. At Alcatraz he was a model prisoner, where he worked in the brush factory and served as an altar boy at Catholic services. His closest friends were fellow Puerto Ricans Emerito Vasquez and Hiram Crespo-Crespo. They spoke Spanish and watched out for each other. On the recreation yard he often played chess with “Bumpy” Johnson. He also befriended Morton Sobell; they developed a friendship that lasts to this day.

His family made trips to San Francisco to visit him, but he wasn’t allowed to see his children. His wife was allowed to talk to him through a glass in the visiting room, using a phone. They were not allowed to speak in Spanish and had to speak in English. He was transferred to Leavenworth in 1960.

Robert Franklin Stroud (“Birdman of Alcatraz”)–#594 1942–59: Robert Stroud, who was better known to the public as the Birdman of Alcatraz (28 January 1890 – 21 November 1963), was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. At a young age he took to pimping and was involved in a murder during a drunken brawl. After terms in McNeil Island and Leavenworth Federal Prison, where he had killed Officer Andrew Turner, he was transferred to Alcatraz, with his sentence extended.

A self-taught ornithologist, he wrote several books. His Digest on the Diseases of Birds is considered a classic in Ornithology. He was confined to D-Block in solitary confinement for most of his duration in Alcatraz. and after a term in the prison hospital, was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, due to seriously deteriorating health. Although he was given the name “The Birdman of Alcatraz”, he was not permitted to keep birds in his prison cell at Alcatraz, as he had at Leavenworth, because it was prohibited. He died in 1963.

Legends

The Miwok nation mentioned the evil spirits they purportedly encountered on the island long before it became a military prison. Mark Twain visited it, found the atmosphere of the island eerie, and described it as “being as cold as winter, even in the summer months.” The Los Angeles Times describes Alcatraz as the “most notorious federal penitentiary this country has ever known. Its history runs far and deep, as do the stories, the rumors, and the legends”, and cited it as one of five major “haunted” spots in California.

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary (Part I)

The Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary or United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island (often referred to as Alcatraz [/ˈælkəˌtræz/, Spanish pronunciation: [al-ka-tɾas] (Latin America)/Spanish pronunciation: [al-ka-tɾaθ] (Spain) from Arabic: غطاس‎, romanized: al-ġaţţās, lit. ‘gannet (“the diver”)’] or The Rock) was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States, the site of a fort since the 1850s; the main prison building was built in 1910–1912 as a United States Army military prison. The United States Department of Justice acquired the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Pacific Branch, on Alcatraz on 12 October 1933, and the island became a prison of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in August 1934 after the buildings were modernized and security increased. Given this high security and the island’s location in the cold waters and strong currents of San Francisco Bay, prison operators believed Alcatraz to be escape-proof and America’s strongest prison.

The three-story cellhouse included the four main cell blocks, A-block through D-block, the warden’s office, visitation room, the library, and the barber shop. The prison cells typically measured 9 feet (2.7 m) by 5 feet (1.5 m) and 7 feet (2.1 m) high. The cells were primitive and lacked privacy, with a bed, desk, and washbasin, and a toilet on the back wall, and with few furnishings except a blanket. African-Americans were segregated from other inmates in cell designation due to racial abuse. D-Block housed the worst inmates, and six cells at its end were designated “The Hole,” where badly behaving prisoners would be sent for periods of often brutal punishment. The dining hall and kitchen extended from the main building. Prisoners and staff ate three meals a day together. The Alcatraz Hospital was above the dining hall.

Prison corridors were named after major U.S. streets such as Broadway and Michigan Avenue. Working at the prison was considered a privilege for inmates and many of the better inmates were employed in the Model Industries Building and New Industries Building during the day, actively involved in providing for the military in jobs such as sewing and woodwork, and performing various maintenance and laundry chores.

Today, Alcatraz is a public museum and one of San Francisco’s major tourist attractions, attracting some 1.5 million visitors annually. Now operated by the National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the timeworn former prison is being restored and maintained.

History

Construction

Alcatraz Cellhouse

The main cellhouse was built incorporating some parts of Fort Alcatraz’s citadel, a partially fortified barracks from 1859 that had come to be used as a jail. A new cellhouse was built from 1910–1912 on a budget of $250,000, and upon completion, the 500 feet (150 m) long concrete building was reputedly the longest concrete building in the world at the time. This building was modernized in 1933 and 1934 and became the main cellhouse of the federal penitentiary until its closure in 1963. When the new concrete prison was built, many materials were reused in its construction. Iron staircases in the interior and the cellhouse door near the barber’s shop at the end of A-block were retained from the old citadel and massive granite blocks originally used as gun mounts were reused as the wharf’s bulkheads and retaining walls. Many of the old cell bars were used to reinforce the walls, causing structural problems later due to the fact that many placed near the edge were subject to erosion from the salt air and wind over the years.

Entrance

After the United States Army’s use of the island for over 80 years, it was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which hoped an escape-proof jail would help break the crime wave of the 1920s and 1930s. The Department of Justice acquired the Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz on 12 October 1933, and it became a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in August 1934. $260,000 was spent to modernize and improve it from January 1934. George Hess of the United States Public Health Service was appointed chief medical officer and Edward W. Twitchell became a consultant in psychiatry for Alcatraz in January 1934. The hospital was checked by three officials from the Marine Hospital of San Francisco. The Bureau of Prisons personnel arrived on Alcatraz in early February; among them was acting chief clerk Loring O. Mills. In April 1934, the old material was removed from the prison; holes were cut in the concrete and 269 cell fronts were installed, built using four carloads of steel ordered from the Stewart Iron Works. Two of four new stairways were built, as were 12 doors to the utility corridors and gratings at the top of the cells. On 26 April, an accidental small fire broke out on the roof and an electrician injured his foot by dropping a manhole cover on it. The Anchor Post Fence Company added fencing around Alcatraz and the Enterprise Electric Works added emergency lighting in the morgue and switchboard operations. In June 1934, the Teletouch Corporation of New York began the installation of an “electro-magnetic gun or metal detecting system” at Alcatraz; detectors were added on the wharf, at the front entrance into the cellblock, and at the rear entrance gate. The correctional officers were instructed how to operate the new locking devices on 30 July 1934, and both the United States Coast Guard and the San Francisco Police Department tested the new radio equipment on the same day. Final checks and assessments were made on the first two days of August.

Early history

Alcatraz laundry service

Alcatraz was intended for prisoners who continuously caused trouble at other federal prisons, a “last resort prison” to hold the worst of the worst who had no hope of rehabilitation. At 9:40 a.m. on 11 August 1934, the first batch of 137 prisoners arrived at Alcatraz from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, having traveled by rail to Santa Venetia, California. Before being escorted to Alcatraz, they were handcuffed in high-security coaches and guarded by some 60 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents, U.S. Marshals, and railway security officials. Most of the prisoners were notorious bank robbers, counterfeiters, murderers, or sodomites. Among the first inmates were also 14 men from McNeil Island, Washington. On 22 August 43 prisoners arrived from Atlanta Penitentiary and 10 from North Eastern Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. On 1 September, one prisoner arrived from Washington Asylum and Jail and seven from the District of Columbia Reformatory in Virginia, and on 4 September, another batch of 103 prisoners arrived by train from Leavenworth. Prisoners continued to arrive, mainly from Leavenworth and Atlanta, into 1935 and by 30 June 1935, the penitentiary’s first anniversary, it had a population of 242 prisoners, although some inmates such as Verrill Rapp had already been transferred from Alcatraz some months earlier. On the first anniversary, the Bureau of Prisons wrote, “The establishment of this institution not only provided a secure place for the detention of the more difficult type of criminal but has had a good effect upon discipline in our other penitentiaries also. No serious disturbance of any kind has been reported during the year.” The metal detectors often overheated and had to be turned off. After the Teletouch Corporation failed to address the problem, their contract was terminated in 1937 and they were charged over $200 for three new detectors supplied by Federal Laboratories.

On 10 January 1935, a severe storm caused a landslide on Alcatraz, causing the Model Industries Building to slide. This prompted a series of changes to the structures on the island. A riprap was built around Model Industries Building, it was strengthened, and a guard tower added to the roof in June 1936. That same month, the barracks building was remodeled into 11 new apartments and nine single rooms for bachelors; by this time there were 52 families living on Alcatraz, including 126 women and children. The problems with the Model Industries Building and continuing utility problems with some of the old buildings and systems led to extensive updates in 1937, including new tool-proof grills on the ventilators of the cell house roof, two new boilers installed in the power house, and a new pump for salt water sanitation and guardrails added to stairways. In 1939–40, a $1.1 million redevelopment was begun, including construction of the New Industries Building, a complete overhaul of the power house with a new diesel engine, the building of a new water tower to solve the water storage problem, new apartment blocks for officers, improvements to the dock, and the conversion of D-block into isolation cells. The changes were completed in July 1941. The workshops of the New Industries Building became highly productive, making army uniforms, cargo nets, and other items in high demand during World War II. In June 1945, it was reported that the federal penitentiaries had made 60,000 nets.

Reputation

Alcatraz gained notoriety from its inception as the toughest prison in America, considered by many the world’s most fearsome prison of the day. Former prisoners reported brutality and inhumane conditions which severely tested their sanity. Ed Wutke was the first prisoner to commit suicide in Alcatraz. Rufe Persful chopped off his fingers after grabbing an axe from the firetruck, begging another inmate to do the same to his other hand. One writer decried Alcatraz as “the great garbage can of San Francisco Bay, into which every federal prison dumped its most rotten apples.” In 1939, the new U.S. Attorney General, Frank Murphy, attacked the penitentiary, saying, “The whole institution is conductive to psychology that builds up a sinister ambitious attitude among prisoners.” The prison’s reputation was not helped by the arrival of more of America’s most dangerous felons, including Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” in 1942. He entered the prison system at age 19, and never left, spending 17 years at Alcatraz. Stroud killed a guard, tangled with other inmates and spent 42 of his 54 years in prison in solitary confinement. Despite its reputation, with many former inmates calling it “Hellcatraz,” some prisoners reported that the living conditions there were much better than most other prisons in the country, especially the food, and many volunteered to come to Alcatraz.

On 3 December 1940, Henri Young murdered fellow inmate Rufus McCain. Running downstairs from the furniture shop to the tailor’s shop where McCain worked, Young violently stabbed McCain’s neck; McCain died five hours later. Young had been sent to Alcatraz for murder in 1933, and was later involved in an escape attempt during which the gangster Doc Barker was shot to death. He spent nearly 22 months in solitary confinement as a result, but was eventually permitted to work in the furniture shop. Young went on trial in 1941, with his attorneys claiming that their client could not be held responsible for the murder, since he had allegedly been subjected to “cruel and unusual punishment” by prison guards prior to the act. The trial brought Alcatraz into further disrepute. Ultimately, Young was convicted of manslaughter and his prison sentence was only extended by a few years.

Final years

By the 1950s, conditions at Alcatraz had improved, and inmates were gradually permitted more privileges, such as playing musical instruments, watching movies on weekends, painting, and radio use; the strict code of silence became more relaxed, and prisoners were permitted to talk quietly. However, it was by far the most expensive prison in the United States, and many still perceived it as America’s most extreme jail. In his annual report for 1952, Bureau of Prisons director James V. Bennett called for a more centralized institution to replace Alcatraz. A 1959 report indicated that the facility was over three times more expensive to run than the average American prison; $10 per prisoner per day compared to $3 in most other prisons. The problem was made worse by the buildings’ structural deterioration from exposure to salt spray. It would need $5 million to fix. Major repairs began in 1958, but by 1961 engineers evaluated the prison as a lost cause. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy submitted plans for a new maximum-security institution at Marion, Illinois. The June 1962 escape from Alcatraz led to acrimonious investigations. Combined with the major structural problems and expensive operation, this led to closure on 21 March 1963. The final Bureau of Prisons report said of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary: “The institution served an important purpose in taking the strain off the older and greatly overcrowded institutions in Atlanta, Leavenworth and McNeil Island since it enabled us to move to the smaller, closely guarded institution for the escape artists, the big-time racketeers, the inveterate connivers and those who needed protection from other groups.”

Today a museum and one of San Francisco’s major tourist attractions, Alcatraz drew some 1.5 million visitors annually (2010). Visitors arrive by boat, and are given a tour of the cellhouse and island, and a slide show and audio narration with anecdotes from former inmates, guards and rangers on Alcatraz. The atmosphere of the former penitentiary is still considered to be “eerie”, “ghostly” and “chilling”. Protected by the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places, the salt-damaged buildings of the former prison are now being restored and maintained.

Escape attempts

According to the prison’s correctional officers, once a convict arrived on the Alcatraz wharf, his first thoughts were on how to leave. During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed that no prisoner successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, two drowned, and five are listed as “missing and presumed drowned”.

The first escape attempt was made on 27 April 1936, by Joseph Bowers, who was assigned to burn trash at the incinerator. He was scaling a chain link fence at the edge of the island when noticed. When he refused orders of the correctional officer located at the West Road guard tower to come down he was shot. He was seriously injured in the fall from over 15 m (50 ft) and consequently died.

The second escape attempt was on 16 December 1937, by Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe. During their work assignment in one of the workshops, they cut the flat iron bars of the window and climbed into the bay. It was a stormy day and the sea was rough. They were thought dead by the prison authorities, who believed that they drowned in the bay and their bodies were swept out to sea.

Battle of Alcatraz

The most violent escape attempt occurred on 2–4 May 1946, when a failed attempt by six prisoners led to the Battle of Alcatraz, also known as the “Alcatraz Blast out”. Bernard Coy, Joseph Cretzer, Sam Shockley, Clarence Carnes, Marvin Hubbard and Miran Thompson daringly took control of the cell house by overpowering correctional officers, and were able to enter the weapons room, where they then demanded keys to the outside recreation door. A quick-thinking guard, William Miller, turned over all but the key to the outer door, which he pocketed. The prisoners’ aim was to escape by boat from the dock, but when they were unable to open the outside door, they decided to battle it out. They held Miller, and a second guard hostage. Prompted by Shockley and Thompson, Cretzer shot the hostages at very close range. Miller succumbed to his injuries while the second guard, Harold Stites, was also killed at the cell house. Although Shockley, Thompson, and Carnes returned to their cells, the other three, Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard, persisted with their fight. The U.S. Marines intervened to help the correctional officers and killed the three prisoners. In this battle, apart from the guards and prisoners killed, 17 other guards and one prisoner were also injured. Shockley, Thompson, and Carnes were tried for the killing of the correctional officers. Shockley and Thompson were sentenced to death via the gas chamber, which was carried out at San Quentin in December 1948. However, Carnes, who was only 19 years of age, was given a second life sentence.

“Escape from Alcatraz”

On 11 June 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, in contrast, attempted to escape using careful planning. Behind their cells in Cell Block B was an unguarded 3-foot (0.91 m) wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the salt-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour, and the progress was concealed by false walls which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards.

The escape route led up through a fan vent; the prisoners removed the fan and motor, replacing them with a steel grill and leaving a shaft large enough for a prisoner to enter. Stealing a carborundum abrasive cord from the prison workshop, the prisoners then removed the rivets from the grill. In their beds, they placed papier-mâché dummies made with human hair stolen from the barbershop. The escapees also made an inflatable raft over many weeks from over 50 stolen raincoats, which they prepared on the top of the cell block, concealed from the guards by sheets which had been put up over the sides. They escaped through a vent in the roof and departed Alcatraz.

The FBI investigation was aided by another prisoner, Allen West, who was part of the escapees’ group but was left behind. West’s false wall kept slipping so he held it in place with cement, which set. When Morris and the Anglins accelerated the schedule, West desperately chipped away at the wall, but by the time he got out, his companions were gone. Hundreds of leads and theories have been pursued by the FBI and local law enforcement officials in the ensuing years, but no conclusive evidence has ever surfaced favoring the success or failure of the attempt. The FBI’s investigation from 1962 to December 1979 was finally treated as closed. The official report on the escape concludes that the prisoners drowned in the cold waters of the bay while trying to reach the mainland, it being unlikely that they made it the 1.25 miles to shore due to the strong ocean currents and the cold sea water temperatures ranging between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

The U.S. Marshals Service case file remains open and active, however. Morris and the Anglin brothers remain on its wanted list. Circumstantial evidence uncovered in the early-2010s seemed to suggest that the men had survived, and that contrary to the official FBI report of the escapee’s raft never being recovered and no car thefts being reported, a raft was discovered on nearby Angel Island with footprints leading away, and a 1955 blue Chevrolet had been stolen on the night of the escape by three men, who could have been Morris and the Anglins, and that officials then engaged in a cover-up. Relatives of the Anglin brothers presented further circumstantial evidence in the mid-2010s in support of a longstanding rumor that the Anglin brothers had fled to Brazil following the escape; a facial recognition analyst concluded that the one piece of physical evidence, a 1975 photograph of two men resembling John and Clarence Anglin, did support that conclusion.

Administration

Admin offices of Alcatraz

The prison initially had a staff of 155, including the first warden James A. Johnston and associate warden Cecil J. Shuttleworth, both considered to be “iron men”. None of the staff were trained in rehabilitation but were highly trained in security. The guards’ and staff’s salaries varied. A new guard arriving in December 1948 was offered $3,024.96 per year, but there was a 6% deduction for retirement taxes a year (amounting to $181.50). The guards typically worked 40-hour weeks with five 8-hour shifts. Guards who worked between 6 pm and 6 am were given a 10% increase and guards doing overtime had to be reported and authorized by the warden. Officers generally had to pay 25 cents for meals and were charged $10 to rent an apartment on the island, to include laundry service, although larger families were charged anything from $20–43 a month for larger quarters and charged additional for laundry. In 1960, a Bureau of Prisons booklet revealed that the average prison population between 1935 and 1960 was 263; the highest recorded was 302 in 1937 and the lowest recorded was 222 in 1947.

The main administration center was at the entrance to the prison, which included the warden’s office. The office contained a desk with radio and telegraph equipment, typewriter, and a telephone. The administrative office section also had the offices of the associate warden and secretary, mail desk, captain’s desk, a business office, a clerk’s office, an accounting office, a control room which was added with modern technology in 1961, the officer’s lounge, armory and vault, and a visiting area and restrooms. The basement of Alcatraz prison contained dungeons and the showers. The main stairway to the dungeon lay along Sunrise Alley at the side of A-Block, but the dungeons were also accessible by a staircase in a trapdoor along the corridor of D-Block. All visits to Alcatraz required prior written approval from the warden.

A hospital had originally been installed at Alcatraz during its time as a military prison in the late 19th century. During its time as a federal penitentiary, it was located above the dining hall on the second floor. Hospital staff were U.S. Public Health Service employees assigned to the Federal Prison Service at Alcatraz. Doctors often lasted fewer than several days or months at Alcatraz, because few of them could tolerate the violent inmates who would often terrify them if they failed to be given certain drugs. Prisoners in ill health were often kept in the hospital, most famously Stroud and Al Capone, who spent years in it.

Security

Gun Gallery

When the Bureau of Prisons established the Federal Penitentiary on 1 January 1934, they took measures to strengthen the security of the prison cells to make Alcatraz “escape-proof”, and also to improve living conditions for their own staff. Up-to-date technologies for enhancing security and comfort were added to the buildings. Guard towers were built outside at four strategic locations, cells were rebuilt and fitted with “tool-proof steel cell fronts and locking devices operated from control boxes”, and windows were made covered with iron grills. Electromagnetic metal detectors were placed at the entrances of the dining hall and workshops, with remote controlled tear gas canisters at appropriate locations, remote controlled gun galleries with machine gun armed guards were installed to patrol along the corridors. Improvements were made to the toilet and electricity facilities, old tunnels were sealed up with concrete to avoid hiding and escape by prisoners, and substantial changes and improvements were made to the housing facilities of guards, wardens and Captain to live with their families, with quality relative to rank. Warden Johnston, U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings, and Sanford Bates first Director of the Bureau of Prisons, collaborated very closely to create “a legendary prison” suited to the times, which resulted in the Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary being nicknamed “Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island.’

Guards of Alcatraz

Despite Alcatraz being designed to house the “worst of the worst” of criminals who caused problems at other prisons, under the guidelines and regulations set by the strict prison administrators, courts could not direct a prisoner to be directly sent to Alcatraz, however notorious they were for misbehavior and attempted escape from other prisons. Prisoners entering Alcatraz would undergo vigorous research and assessments prior to their arrival. Security in the prison was very tight, with constant checking of bars, doors, locks, electrical fixtures, and other physical security. Prisoners were normally counted 13 times daily, and the ratio of prisoners to guards was the lowest of any American prison of the time. The front door was made of solid steel, virtually impossible for any prisoners to escape through. The island had many guard towers, most of which have since been demolished, which were heavily guarded at various points in the day at times when security may have been breached; for instance, there were guard towers on each of the industry buildings to ensure that inmates didn’t attempt to escape during the work day shifts. The recreation yard and other parts of the prison had a 25-foot fence around it topped with barbed wire, should any inmates attempt to escape during exercise. One former employee of the jail likened his prison job to being a zoo keeper or his old farm job, due to the fact that prisoners were treated like animals, sending them out to “plough the fields” when some of them worked during the day, and then counting them up and feeding them and so on. He referred to those four years of his life working in the prison as a “total waste of his life”. The corridors were regularly patrolled by the guards, with passing gates along them; the most heavily trafficked corridor was “Broadway” between B and C Block, due to its being the central corridor of the prison and passed not only by guards but other prison workers.

At the end of each 20-minute meal in the dining hall, the forks, spoons and knives were laid out on the table and carefully counted to ensure that nothing had been taken as a potential weapon. In the earlier years as a prison, prisoners were forbidden from talking while eating, but this was later relaxed, provided that the prisoners communicated quietly.

The gun gallery was situated in the Recreation Yard and mounted on one of the dining hall’s exterior walls. There was a metal detector outside of the dining hall for security purposes. The dining hall had tear-gas canisters attached to the rafters of the ceiling which could be activated by remote control, should prisoners riot or attempt to escape. The first warden, James A. Johnston, always entered the dining hall alone and unarmed, due to heavy guarding around him. Several riots did break out in the dining hall during Alcatraz’s history. Those prisoners who were not involved in the fighting hid under the dining hall tables to escape possible gunfire.

Wardens

James A. Johnston—1934–48: James Aloysius Johnston (1874–1954) (nickname “Old Saltwater”) was the first warden of Alcatraz. The former Warden of Folsom and San Quentin, Johnston was instrumental to the creation of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary from conception to design. He was considered to be a highly strict disciplinarian and a devout reformist who imposed a number of rules upon the prison including a strict code of silence, which led to him being nicknamed the ‘Golden Rule Warden’ from his San Quentin days. However, he was relatively popular among inmates and guards, known as “Old Saltwater” to the inmates, and is credited with challenging the barbaric tactics used in the prison when he was there, including strait jackets and solitary confinement in darkness and working towards the general improvement of the lives of prisoners. In 1937 he was attacked by Burton Phillips from behind in the dining hall who beat him in anger at a worker’s strike, but he continued to attend meals unguarded.

Edwin B. Swope—1948–55: Edwin Burnham Swope (1888–1955) (nickname “Cowboy”) was the second warden of Alcatraz. His earlier posts as warden included New Mexico State Prison and Washington State’s McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. He was described as being approximately 1.73 meter (5 feet 9 inches) tall, of slender build, and was a fan of horse racing who dressed like a cowboy off-duty. He was a strict disciplinarian but unlike his predecessor was considered the most unpopular warden of Alcatraz with his officers and the inmates.

Paul J. Madigan—1955–61: Paul Joseph Madigan (1897–1974) was the third warden of Alcatraz. He had earlier served as the last Associate Warden during the term of James A. Johnston. He was the only warden who had worked his way up from the bottom of the ranks of the prison staff hierarchy, having worked originally as a Correctional Officer on Alcatraz from the 1930s. In 21 May 1941, Madigan was the key to quashing an escape attempt after being held hostage in the Model Industries Building, which later led to his promotion as associate warden. He was a stout, ruddy-faced, pipe-smoking, devout Irish Catholic. Unlike his predecessors, Madigan was known for being more lenient and softer in his approach to administering the prison and was better liked by the prison staff.

Olin G. Blackwell—1961–63: Olin Guy Blackwell (1915–1986) was the fourth and final warden of Alcatraz. Associate Warden to Paul J. Madigan from April 1959, Blackwell served as warden of Alcatraz at its most difficult time from 1961 to 1963 when it was facing closure as a decaying prison with financing problems, coinciding with the timing of the infamous June 1962 escape from Alcatraz. At the time of the 1962 escape he was on vacation in Lake Berryessa in Napa County, and he didn’t believe the men could have survived the waters and made it to shore. Blackwell was considered to have been the least strict warden of Alcatraz, perhaps in part due to him having been a heavy drinker and smoker, nicknamed “Gypsy” and known as “Blackie” to his friends. He was said to have been an excellent marksman who had earlier served as Associate Warden of Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

Alcatraz Island

Alcatraz Island (/ˈælkəˌtræz/, Spanish pronunciation: [al-ka-tɾas] (Latin America)/Spanish pronunciation: [al-ka-tɾaθ] (Spain)[4] from Arabic: غطاس‎, romanized: al-ġaţţās, lit. ‘gannet (“the diver”)’) is located in San Francisco Bay, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison, and a federal prison from 1934 until 21 March 1963. The water currents around the island were high at all times, which presumably decreased the chance of an inmate escaping. Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Native Americans from San Francisco, who were part of a wave of Native American activism across the U.S., with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz became part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

Today, the island’s facilities are managed by the National Park Service as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area; it is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island in a little under 15 minutes by ferry ride from Pier 33, located between the San Francisco Ferry Building and Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco. Hornblower Cruises and Events, operating under the name Alcatraz Cruises, is the official ferry provider to and from the island.

Alcatraz Island is home to the abandoned prison, the site of the oldest operating lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States, early military fortifications, and natural features such as rock pools and a seabird colony (mostly western gulls, cormorants, and egrets). According to a 1971 documentary on the history of Alcatraz, the island measures 1,675 feet (511 m) by 590 feet (180 m) and is 135 feet (41 m) at highest point during mean tide. The total area of the island is reported to be 22 acres (8.9 ha).

Landmarks on the island include the Main Cellhouse, Dining Hall, Lighthouse, the ruins of the Warden’s House and Social Hall, Parade Grounds, Building 64, Water Tower, New Industries Building, Model Industries Building, and the Recreation Yard.

History

The first European to document the island was Spanish naval officer and explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala during Spanish rule of California, who charted San Francisco Bay in 1775. He named one of the three islands “La Isla de los Alcatraces”, which translates as “The Island of the Gannets” but is commonly believed to translate as “The Island of the Pelicans (Spanish for Pelicans is Pelícanos)”, from the archaic Spanish alcatraz (“pelican”). Over the years, the Spanish version “Alcatraz” became popular and is now widely used. In August 1827, French Captain Auguste Bernard Duhaut-Cilly wrote “… running past Alcatraze’s (Pelicans) Island … covered with a countless number of these birds. A gun fired over the feathered legions caused them to fly up in a great cloud and with a noise like a hurricane.” The California brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus) is not known to nest on the island today. The Spanish built several small buildings on the island and other minor structures.

Fort Alcatraz

The earliest recorded private owner of the island of Alcatraz is Julian Workman, to whom it was given by Mexican governor Pio Pico in June 1846, with the understanding that Workman would build a lighthouse on it. Julian Workman is the baptismal name of William Workman, co-owner of Rancho La Puente and personal friend of Pio Pico. Later in 1846, acting in his capacity as Military Governor of California, John C. Frémont, champion of Manifest Destiny and leader of the Bear Flag Republic, bought the island for $5,000 in the name of the United States government from Francis Temple. In 1850, President Millard Fillmore ordered that Alcatraz Island be set aside specifically as a United States military reservation, for military purposes based upon the U.S. acquisition of California from Mexico following the Mexican–American War. Frémont had expected a large compensation for his initiative in purchasing and securing Alcatraz Island for the U.S. government, but the U.S. government later invalidated the sale and paid Frémont nothing. Frémont and his heirs sued for compensation during protracted but unsuccessful legal battles that extended into the 1890s.

Following the acquisition of California by the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) which ended the Mexican–American War, and the onset of the California Gold Rush the following year, the U.S. Army began studying the suitability of Alcatraz Island for the positioning of coastal batteries to protect the approaches to San Francisco Bay. In 1853, under the direction of Zealous B. Tower, the United States Army Corps of Engineers began fortifying the island, work which continued until 1858, when the initial version of Fort Alcatraz was complete. The island’s first garrison, numbering about 200 soldiers, arrived at the end of that year.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, the island mounted 85 cannons (increased to 105 cannons by 1866) in casemates around its perimeter, though the small size of the garrison meant only a fraction of the guns could be used at one time. At this time it also served as the San Francisco Arsenal for storage of firearms to prevent them falling into the hands of Confederate sympathizers. Alcatraz, built as a “heavily fortified military site on the West Coast”, was to form a “triangle of defense” with Fort Point and Lime Point, but the contemplated work on Lime Point was never built. The first operational lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States was also built on Alcatraz. During the war, Fort Alcatraz was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers and privateers on the west coast, but never fired its guns at an enemy.

“Binghamton University archaeologist Timothy de Smet and colleagues located historical remains beneath the former recreation yard of the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.” Using ground-penetrating radar data and georectifications, Smet and colleagues uncovered structures, including “a “bombproof” earthwork traverse along with its underlying vaulted brick masonry tunnel and ventilation ducts,” in surprisingly good condition. Archaeologists also found the remains of ammunition magazines, and tunnels below the penitentiary that was built later.

Military prison

Because of its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, tremendous currents of the waters of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was used to house soldiers who were guilty of crimes as early as 1859. By 1861, the fort was the military prison for the Department of the Pacific and housed Civil War prisoners of war (POWs) as early as that year.

Starting in 1863, the military also held private citizens accused of treason, after the writ of habeas corpus in the United States was suspended.

The Civil War era saw rapid changes in artillery and fortification. Alcatraz’s defenses were obsolete. Modernization efforts, including an ambitious plan to level the entire island and construct shell-proof underground magazines and tunnels, were undertaken between 1870 and 1876 but never completed (the so-called “parade ground” on the southern tip of the island represents the extent of the flattening effort). Instead, the army switched the focus of its plans for Alcatraz from coastal defense to detention, a task for which it was well suited because of its isolation. In 1867, a brick jailhouse was built (previously inmates had been kept in the basement of the guardhouse), and in 1868, Alcatraz was officially designated a long-term detention facility for military prisoners. The facility was later discontinued for POWs in 1946. Among those incarcerated at Alcatraz were Confederates caught on the West Coast and some Hopi Native American men in the 1870s.

In 1898, the Spanish–American War increased the prison population from 26 to over 450, and from 1905 to 1907 it was commanded by U.S. Army General George W. McIver. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, civilian prisoners were transferred to Alcatraz for safe confinement. On March 21, 1907, Alcatraz was officially designated as the Western U.S. Military Prison, later Pacific Branch, U.S. Disciplinary Barracks, 1915. In 1909 construction began on the huge concrete main cell block, designed by Major Reuben Turner, which remains the island’s dominant feature. It was completed in 1912. To accommodate the new cell block, the Citadel, a three-story barracks, was demolished down to the first floor, which was actually below ground level. The building had been constructed in an excavated pit creating a defensive dry moat. The first floor was then incorporated as a basement to the new cell block, giving rise to the popular legend of “dungeons” below the main cell block. The US Disciplinary Barracks was deactivated in October 1933 and transferred to the Bureau of Prisons.

During World War I, the prison held conscientious objectors, including Philip Grosser, who wrote a pamphlet entitled Uncle Sam’s Devil’s Island about his experiences.

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary

The United States Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz were acquired by the United States Department of Justice on October 12, 1933, and the island became a federal prison in August 1934. Alcatraz was designed to hold prisoners who continuously caused trouble at other federal prisons. At 9:40 am on August 11, 1934, the first batch of 137 prisoners arrived at Alcatraz, arriving by railroad from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas to Santa Venetia, California, before being escorted to Alcatraz, handcuffed in high security coaches and guarded by 60 special FBI agents, U.S. Marshals and railway security officials. Most of the prisoners were notorious bank robbers and murderers. The prison initially had a staff of 155, including the first warden James A. Johnston and associate warden J. E. Shuttleworth, both considered to be “iron men”. The staff were highly trained in security, but not rehabilitation.

During the 29 years it was in use, the jail held some of the most notorious criminals in American history, such as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the “Birdman of Alcatraz”), George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Bumpy Johnson, Rafael Cancel Miranda (a member of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party who attacked the United States Capitol building in 1954), Mickey Cohen, Arthur R. “Doc” Barker, and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis (who served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate). It also provided housing for the Bureau of Prisons staff and their families.

During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed that no prisoner successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught alive, six were shot and killed during their escape, two drowned, and five are listed as “missing and presumed drowned”. The most violent occurred on May 2, 1946, when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the Battle of Alcatraz. Perhaps the most famous is the intricate escape carried out on June 11, 1962, by Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin; the three men are believed to have drowned in their attempt. Contrary to popular belief, it was possible to escape and swim all of the way to shore. Although most men were caught or drowned before reaching shore, in 1962 prisoner John Paul Scott escaped, and made it to the shore. However, upon reaching the shore he was so weary that he was found unconscious by police and in hypothermic shock. To this day, people compete in the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon and swim the 1.5 miles to shore.

Post-prison years

Closing of the prison

There are several reasons that Alcatraz closed as a penitentiary in 1963: The penitentiary cost much more to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta); half a century of salt water saturation had severely eroded the buildings; and three people had escaped in 1962.

Native American occupation

Alcatraz Island was occupied by Native American activists for the first time on March 8, 1964. The event was reported by, among others, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner.

Beginning on November 20, 1969, a group of Native Americans called United Indians of All Tribes, mostly college students from San Francisco, occupied the island to protest federal policies related to American Indians. Some of them were children of Native Americans who had relocated in the city as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) Indian termination policy, which was a series of laws and policies aimed at the assimilation of Native Americans into mainstream American society, particularly by encouraging Native Americans to move away from the Indian reservations and into cities. A number of employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs also occupied Alcatraz at that time, including Doris Purdy, an amateur photographer, who later produced footage of her stay on the island.

The occupiers, who stayed on the island for nearly two years, demanded the island’s facilities be adapted and new structures built for an Indian education center, ecology center and cultural center. The American Indians claimed the island by provisions of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the US and the Sioux; they said the treaty promised to return all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal lands to the native peoples from whom they were acquired. Indians of All Tribes then claimed Alcatraz Island by the “Right of Discovery”, as indigenous peoples knew it thousands of years before any Europeans had come to North America. Begun by urban Indians of San Francisco, the occupation attracted other Native Americans from across the country, including American Indian Movement (AIM) urban activists from Minneapolis.

The Native Americans demanded reparation for the many treaties broken by the US government and for the lands that were taken from so many tribes. In discussing the Right of Discovery, the historian Troy R. Johnson states in The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, that indigenous peoples knew about Alcatraz at least 10,000 years before any European knew about any part of North America.

During the nineteen months and nine days of occupation by the American Indians, several buildings at Alcatraz were damaged or destroyed by fire, including the lighthouse keeper’s home, the warden’s home, the Officers’ Club, the recreation hall and the Coast Guard quarters. The origin of the fires is disputed. The U.S. government demolished a number of other buildings (mostly apartments) after the occupation had ended. Graffiti from the period of Native American occupation is still visible at many locations on the island.

During the occupation, President Richard Nixon rescinded the Indian termination policy, designed by earlier administrations to end federal recognition of tribes and their special relationship with the US government. He established a new policy of self-determination, in part as a result of the publicity and awareness created by the occupation. The occupation ended on June 11, 1971.

Landmarks

Part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area since 1972, the entire Alcatraz Island was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and was further declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. In 1993, the National Park Service published a plan entitled Alcatraz Development Concept and Environmental Assessment. This plan, approved in 1980, doubled the amount of Alcatraz accessible to the public to enable visitors to enjoy its scenery and bird, marine, and animal life.

Development

Today, American Indigenous groups, such as the International Indian Treaty Council, hold ceremonies on the island, most notably, their “Sunrise Gatherings” every Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day.

The Global Peace Foundation proposed to raze the prison and build a peace center in its place. During the previous year, supporters collected 10,350 signatures that placed it on the presidential primary ballots in San Francisco for February 5, 2008. The proposed plan was estimated at $1 billion. For the plan to pass, Congress would have to have taken Alcatraz out of the National Park Service. Critics of the plan said that Alcatraz is too rich in history to be destroyed. On February 6, 2008, the Alcatraz Island Global Peace Center Proposition C failed to pass, with 72% of voters rejecting the proposition.

The coastal environment of the San Francisco Bay Area has caused deterioration and corrosion of building materials throughout Alcatraz. Beginning in 2011, the National Park Service began major renovations on the island, including the installation of solar panels on the cell house roof, slope stabilization near the Warden’s House and the stabilization and rehabilitation of the outer cell house walls.

One of San Francisco’s major tourist attractions, Alcatraz drew some 1.7 million visitors annually according to a 2018 report. Visitors arrive by ferry, operated under contract by Alcatraz Cruises LLC at Pier 33. The 2018 report indicated that “former prison buildings are being conserved and seismically upgraded and additional areas of the Island are opened to the public as safety hazards are removed”.

Art

Alcatraz has been home to several art installations. In 2014, Chinese artist/dissident Ai Weiwei staged an exhibition which explored “questions about human rights and freedom of expression” called @Large. This exhibit included Lego portraits of famous political prisoners. In 2016, Nelson Saiers used math and prison slang as central elements in a six-month installation that called attention to the imposition of long prison sentences.

Fauna and flora

Habitat

Cisterns. A bluff that, because of its moist crevices, is believed to be an important site for California slender salamanders.

Cliff tops at the island’s north end. Containing a onetime manufacturing building and a plaza, the area is listed as important to nesting and roosting birds.

The powerhouse area. A steep embankment where native grassland and creeping wild rye support a habitat for deer mice.

Tide pools. One of the only complexes in the San Francisco Bay, the island’s tide pools were created by quarrying activities, and contain a variety of typical invertebrate species.

Western cliffs and cliff tops. Rising to heights of nearly 100 feet (30 m), they provide nesting and roosting sites for seabirds including pigeon guillemots, cormorants, Heermann’s gulls, and western gulls. Harbor seals can occasionally be seen on a small beach at the base.

The parade grounds. Carved from the hillside during the late 19th century and covered with rubble since the government demolished guard housing in 1971, the area has become a habitat and breeding ground for black-crowned night herons, western gulls, slender salamanders, and deer mice.

The Agave Path, a trail named for its dense growth of agave. Located atop a shoreline bulkhead on the south side, it provides a nesting habitat for night herons.

Alcatraz prison and its surroundings.

Flora

Flowers on Alcatraz

Gardens planted by families of the original Army post, and later by families of the prison guards, fell into neglect after the prison closure in 1963. After 40 years, they are being restored by a paid staff member and many volunteers, thanks to funding by the Garden Conservancy and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The untended gardens had become severely overgrown and had developed into a nesting habitat and sanctuary for numerous birds. Now, areas of bird habitat are being preserved and protected, while many of the gardens are being restored to their original state.

In clearing out the overgrowth, workers found that many of the original plants were growing where they had been planted – some more than 100 years ago. Numerous heirloom rose hybrids, including a Welsh rose (Bardou Job) that had been believed to be extinct, have been discovered and propagated. Many species of roses, succulents, and geraniums are growing among apple and fig trees, banks of sweet peas, manicured gardens of cutting flowers, and wildly overgrown sections of native grasses with blackberry and honeysuckle.

In popular culture

Alcatraz Island appears often in media and popular culture, including films dating from 1962: The Book of Eli (2010), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Rock (1996), Murder in the First (1995), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), The Enforcer (1976), Point Blank (1967) , Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and J. J. Abrams’ 2012 television series Alcatraz.

It also was featured in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime, in the book Al Capone Does My Shirts, in the video game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 as a playable level, and in the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II in a downloadable zombie survival map called “Mob of the Dead”. It is also showcased as a playable racetrack in the 1997 arcade racing video game San Francisco Rush the Rock – Alcatraz Edition. Alcatraz has also been portrayed often as a safe haven or base of operations in many post-apocalyptic movies, such as The Book of Eli.

Alcatraz even appears in The Alchemyst and The Sorceress by author Michael Scott and is depicted as a prison for the immortal Perenelle Flamel.

Alcatraz is featured in the episode “Bird Mummy of Alcatraz” in the children’s program, Mummies Alive! and was also featured in a mission in the video game Watch Dogs 2. Alcatraz is also featured as a downloadable map in the video game The Escapists. Alcatraz is also featured in the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Zombie Level “Blood of the Dead”.

U.S. President #20: James Garfield (Part II)

Presidency, 1881

Cabinet and inauguration

Between his election and his inauguration, Garfield was occupied with assembling a cabinet that would establish peace between Conkling’s and Blaine’s warring factions. Blaine’s delegates had provided much of the support for Garfield’s nomination, and the Maine senator received the place of honor: Secretary of State. Blaine was not only the president’s closest advisor, he was obsessed with knowing all that took place in the White House, and was even said to have spies posted there in his absence. Garfield nominated William Windom of Minnesota as Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Hunt of Louisiana as Secretary of the Navy, Robert Todd Lincoln as Secretary of War, and Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa as Secretary of the Interior. New York was represented by Thomas Lemuel James as Postmaster General. Garfield appointed Pennsylvania’s Wayne MacVeagh, an adversary of Blaine’s, as Attorney General. Blaine tried to sabotage the appointment by convincing Garfield to name an opponent of MacVeagh, William E. Chandler, as Solicitor General under MacVeagh. Only Chandler’s rejection by the Senate forestalled MacVeagh’s resignation over the matter.

Distracted by cabinet maneuvering, Garfield’s inaugural address was not up to his typical oratorical standards. In one high point, Garfield emphasized the civil rights of African-Americans, saying “Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.” After discussing the gold standard, the need for education, and an unexpected denunciation of Mormon polygamy, the speech ended. The crowd applauded, but the speech, according to Peskin, “however sincerely intended, betrayed its hasty composition by the flatness of its tone and the conventionality of its subject matter.”

Garfield’s appointment of James infuriated Conkling, a factional opponent of the Postmaster General, who demanded a compensatory appointment for his faction, such as the position of Secretary of the Treasury. The resulting squabble occupied much of Garfield’s brief presidency. The feud with Conkling reached a climax when the president, at Blaine’s instigation, nominated Conkling’s enemy, Judge William H. Robertson, to be Collector of the Port of New York. This was one of the prize patronage positions below cabinet level, and was then held by Edwin A. Merritt. Conkling raised the time-honored principle of senatorial courtesy in an attempt to defeat the nomination, to no avail. Garfield, who believed the practice was corrupt, would not back down and threatened to withdraw all nominations unless Robertson was confirmed, intending to “settle the question whether the president is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States.” Ultimately, Conkling and his New York colleague, Senator Thomas C. Platt, resigned their Senate seats to seek vindication, but found only further humiliation when the New York legislature elected others in their places. Robertson was confirmed as Collector and Garfield’s victory was clear. To Blaine’s chagrin, the victorious Garfield returned to his goal of balancing the interests of party factions, and nominated a number of Conkling’s Stalwart friends to offices.

Supreme Court nomination

In 1880, President Hayes had nominated Stanley Matthews to the Supreme Court of the United States. The U.S. Senate declined to act on the Matthews nomination. In March 1881, Garfield re-nominated Matthews to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed Matthews to the high Court by a vote of 24-23. According to The New York Times, “opposition to Matthews’s Supreme Court appointment …stemmed from his prosecution in 1859 of a newspaper editor who had assisted two runaway slaves.” Because Matthews was “a professed abolitionist at the time, the case was later framed as political expediency triumphing over moral principle.” Matthews served on the Court until his death in 1889.

Reforms

Grant and Hayes had both advocated civil service reform, and by 1881, civil service reform associations had organized with renewed energy across the nation. Garfield sympathized with them, believing that the spoils system damaged the presidency and distracted from more important concerns. Some reformers were disappointed that Garfield had advocated limited tenure only to minor office seekers and had given appointments to his old friends, but many remained loyal and supported Garfield.

Corruption in the post office also cried out for reform. In April 1880, there had been a congressional investigation into corruption in the Post Office Department, in which profiteering rings allegedly stole millions of dollars, securing bogus mail contracts on star routes. After obtaining contracts with the lowest bid, costs to run the mail routes would be escalated and profits would be divided among ring members. That year, Hayes stopped the implementation of any new star route contracts. Shortly after taking office, Garfield received information from Attorney General MacVeagh and Postmaster General James of postal corruption by an alleged star route ringleader, Second Assistant Postmaster General Thomas J. Brady. Garfield demanded Brady’s resignation and ordered prosecutions that would end in trials for conspiracy. When told that his party, including his own campaign manager, Stephen W. Dorsey, was involved, Garfield directed MacVeagh and James to root out the corruption in the Post Office Department “to the bone”, regardless of where it might lead. Brady resigned and was eventually indicted for conspiracy. After two “star route” ring trials in 1882 and 1883, the jury found Brady not guilty.

Civil rights and education

Garfield believed that the key to improving the state of African American civil rights would be found in education aided by the federal government. During Reconstruction, freedmen had gained citizenship and suffrage that enabled them to participate in government, but Garfield believed their rights were being eroded by Southern white resistance and illiteracy, and was concerned that blacks would become America’s permanent “peasantry.” He answered by proposing a “universal” education system funded by the federal government. Congress and the northern white public, however, had lost interest in African-American rights, and federal funding for universal education did not find support in Congress during Garfield’s term. Garfield also worked to appoint several African Americans to prominent positions: Frederick Douglass, recorder of deeds in Washington; Robert Elliot, special agent to the Treasury; John M. Langston, Haitian minister; and Blanche K. Bruce, register to the Treasury. Garfield believed that Southern support for the Republican party could be gained by “commercial and industrial” interests rather than race issues and began to reverse Hayes’s policy of conciliating Southern Democrats. He appointed William H. Hunt, a carpetbagger Republican from Louisiana, as Secretary of the Navy. To break the hold of the resurgent Democratic Party in the Solid South, Garfield took patronage advice from Virginia Senator William Mahone of the biracial independent Readjuster Party, hoping to add the independents’ strength to the Republicans’ there.

Foreign policy and naval reform

Entering the presidency, Garfield had little foreign policy experience, so he leaned heavily on Blaine. Blaine, a former protectionist, now agreed with Garfield on the need to promote freer trade, especially within the Western Hemisphere. Their reasons were twofold: firstly, Garfield and Blaine believed that increasing trade with Latin America would be the best way to keep Great Britain from dominating the region. Secondly, by encouraging exports, they believed they could increase American prosperity. Garfield authorized Blaine to call for a Pan-American conference in 1882 to mediate disputes among the Latin American nations and to serve as a forum for talks on increasing trade. At the same time, they hoped to negotiate a peace in the War of the Pacific then being fought by Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Blaine favored a resolution that would not result in Peru yielding any territory, but Chile, which by 1881 had occupied the Peruvian capital, Lima, rejected any settlement that restored the previous status quo. Garfield sought to expand American influence in other areas, calling for renegotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to allow the United States to construct a canal through Panama without British involvement, as well as attempting to reduce British influence in the strategically located Kingdom of Hawaii. Garfield’s and Blaine’s plans for the United States’ involvement in the world stretched even beyond the Western Hemisphere, as he sought commercial treaties with Korea and Madagascar. Garfield also considered enhancing the United States’ military strength abroad, asking Navy Secretary Hunt to investigate the condition of the navy with an eye toward expansion and modernization. In the end, these ambitious plans came to nothing after Garfield was assassinated. Nine countries had accepted invitations to the Pan-American conference, but the invitations were withdrawn in April 1882 after Blaine resigned from the cabinet and Arthur, Garfield’s successor, canceled the conference. Naval reform continued under Arthur, if on a more modest scale than Garfield and Hunt had envisioned, ultimately ending in the construction of the Squadron of Evolution.

Administration and cabinet

The Garfield Cabinet

Assassination

Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. After eleven weeks of intensive care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.

Guiteau had followed various professions in his life, but in 1880 had determined to gain federal office by supporting what he expected would be the winning Republican ticket. He composed a speech, “Garfield vs. Hancock”, and got it printed by the Republican National Committee. One means of persuading the voters in that era was through orators expounding on the candidate’s merits, but with the Republicans seeking more famous men, Guiteau received few opportunities to speak. On one occasion, according to Kenneth D. Ackerman in his book about Garfield’s candidacy and assassination, Guiteau was unable to finish his speech due to nerves. Guiteau, who considered himself a Stalwart, deemed his contribution to Garfield’s victory sufficient to justify the position of consul in Paris, despite the fact that he spoke no French, nor any foreign language. Guiteau has since been described by one medical expert as possibly being a narcissistic schizophrenic; neuroscientist Kent Kiehl assessed him as being a clinical psychopath

One of President Garfield’s more wearying duties was seeing office seekers, and he saw Guiteau at least once. White House officials suggested to Guiteau that he approach Blaine, as the consulship was within the Department of State. Blaine also saw the public regularly, and Guiteau became a regular at these sessions. Blaine, who had no intention of giving Guiteau a position he was unqualified for and had not earned, simply stated that the deadlock in the Senate over Robertson’s nomination made it impossible to consider the Paris consulship, which required Senate confirmation. Once the New York senators had resigned, and Robertson had been confirmed as Collector, Guiteau pressed his claim, and Blaine told him he would not receive the position.

Guiteau came to believe he had lost the position because he was a Stalwart. The office-seeker decided that the only way to end the internecine warfare in the Republican Party was for Garfield to die—though he had nothing personal against the president. Arthur’s succession would restore peace, he felt, and lead to rewards for fellow Stalwarts, including Guiteau.

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was deemed a fluke due to the Civil War, and Garfield, like most people, saw no reason why the president should be guarded; Garfield’s movements and plans were often printed in the newspapers. Guiteau knew the president would leave Washington for a cooler climate on July 2, and made plans to kill him before then. He purchased a gun he thought would look good in a museum, and followed Garfield several times, but each time his plans were frustrated, or he lost his nerve. His opportunities dwindled to one—Garfield’s departure by train for New Jersey on the morning of July 2, 1881.

Guiteau concealed himself by the ladies’ waiting room at the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, from where Garfield was scheduled to depart. Most of Garfield’s cabinet planned to accompany him at least part of the way. Blaine, who was to remain in Washington, came to the station to see him off. The two men were deep in conversation and did not notice Guiteau before he took out his revolver and shot Garfield twice, once in the back and once in the arm. The time was 9:30 a.m. The assassin attempted to leave the station, but was quickly captured. As Blaine recognized him and Guiteau made no secret of why he had shot Garfield, the assassin’s motivation to benefit the Stalwarts reached many with the early news of the shooting, causing rage against that faction.

Treatment and death

Garfield was struck by two shots; one glanced off his arm while the other pierced his back, shattering a rib and embedding itself in his abdomen. “My God, what is this?” he exclaimed. Guiteau, as he was led away, stated, “I did it. I will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be President.”

Among those at the station was Robert Todd Lincoln, who was deeply upset, thinking back to when his father Abraham Lincoln was assassinated 16 years earlier. Garfield was taken on a mattress upstairs to a private office, where several doctors examined him, probing the wound with unwashed fingers. At his request, Garfield was taken back to the White House, and his wife, then in New Jersey, was sent for. Blaine sent word to Vice President Arthur in New York City, who received threats against his life because of his animosity toward Garfield and Guiteau’s statements.

Although Joseph Lister’s pioneering work in antisepsis was known to American doctors, with Lister himself having visited America in 1876, few of them had confidence in it, and none of his advocates were among Garfield’s treating physicians. The physician who took charge at the depot and then at the White House was Doctor Willard Bliss. A noted physician and surgeon, Bliss was an old friend of Garfield, and about a dozen doctors, led by Bliss, were soon probing the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. Garfield was given morphine for the pain, and asked Bliss to frankly tell him his chances, which Bliss put at one in a hundred. “Well, Doctor, we’ll take that chance.”

Over the next few days, Garfield made some improvement, as the nation viewed the news from the capital and prayed. Although he never stood again, he was able to sit up and write several times, and his recovery was viewed so positively that a steamer was fitted out as a seagoing hospital to aid with his convalescence. He was nourished on oatmeal porridge (which he detested) and milk from a cow on the White House lawn. When told that Indian chief Sitting Bull, a prisoner of the army, was starving, Garfield said, “Let him starve,” then, “Oh, no, send him my oatmeal.” X-radiation (or X-ray) usage, which likely would have helped the president’s physicians determine exactly where the bullet was lodged in his body, would not be invented for another fourteen years. Alexander Graham Bell tried to locate the bullet with a primitive metal detector. He was not successful, although the invention had been effective when tested on others. The problem was that Bliss limited the extent of its use on Garfield, taking control of the experiment and ensuring that he remained in charge. Because Bliss thought that the bullet rested in someplace that it did not, the detector was unable to locate it. Shortly after the first attempt, Bell returned for another test after enhancing the abilities of his invention. The test resulted in a noise around the area that Bliss believed to be where the bullet was lodged, despite the sound being different from what Bell heard in his previous tests. Bliss took this as confirmation that the bullet was where he declared it to be. Bliss wrote in a bulletin that the test was a success, and that it was “now unanimously agreed that the location of the ball has been ascertained with reasonable certainty, and that it lies, as heretofore stated, in the front wall of the abdomen, immediately over the groin, about five inches below and to the right of the navel.”

One means of keeping the president comfortable in Washington’s summer heat was one of the first successful air conditioning units: air that was propelled by fans over ice and then dried had reduced the temperature in the sickroom by 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius). Engineers from the navy, along with some scientists, worked together to develop this version of air conditioning in an attempt to help the president recover. There were some issues, such as it made excessive noise and immensely increased the humidity in Garfield’s room, but the engineers worked hard to find solutions for these problems in their efforts to ease Garfield’s suffering.

Beginning on July 23, Garfield took a turn for the worse. His temperature increased to 104 °F (40 °C); doctors, concerned by an abscess that had developed by the wound, operated and inserted a drainage tube. This initially seemed to help, and Garfield, in his bed, was able to hold a brief cabinet meeting on July 29, though members were under orders from Bliss to discuss nothing that might excite Garfield. Doctors probed the abscess, which went into Garfield’s body, hoping to find the bullet; they most likely only made the infections worse. Garfield performed only one state act in August, signing an extradition paper. By the end of the month, the president was much more feeble than he had been, and his weight had decreased from 210 pounds (95 kg) to 130 pounds (59 kg).

Garfield had long been anxious to escape hot, unhealthy Washington, and in early September the doctors agreed to move him to Elberon, part of Long Branch, New Jersey, where his wife had recovered earlier in the summer. He left the White House for the last time on September 5, traveling in a specially cushioned railway car; a spur line to the Francklyn Cottage, a seaside mansion given over to his use, was built in a night by volunteers. There, Garfield could see the ocean as officials and reporters maintained what became (after an initial rally) a death watch. Garfield’s personal secretary, Joe Stanley Brown, wrote 40 years later, “to this day I cannot hear the sound of the low slow roll of the Atlantic on the shore, the sound which filled my ears as I walked from my cottage to his bedside, without recalling again that ghastly tragedy.”

On September 18, Garfield asked Colonel A.F. Rockwell, a friend, if he would have a place in history. Rockwell assured him he would, and told Garfield he had much work still before him. But his response was, “No, my work is done.” The following day, Garfield, by then also suffering from pneumonia and heart pains, marveled that he could not pick up a glass despite feeling well, and went to sleep without discomfort. He awoke that evening around 10:15 p.m. complaining of great pain in his chest to his chief of staff and friend General David Swaim, who was watching him, as he placed his hand on his breast over his heart. The president then requested a drink of water from Swaim. After finishing his glass, Garfield said, “Oh Swaim, this terrible pain – press your hand on it.” As Swaim obligingly put his hand on Garfield’s chest, Garfield’s hands went up reflexively. Clutching his heart, he exclaimed, “Oh, Swaim, can’t you stop this? Oh, oh, Swaim!” Swaim ordered another attendant to send for Bliss, who found him unconscious. Despite efforts to revive him, Garfield never awoke, and he died at 10:30 p.m., aged 49. Learning from a reporter of Garfield’s death, Chester A. Arthur took the presidential oath of office administered by New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady.

According to some historians and medical experts, Garfield might have survived his wounds had the doctors attending him had at their disposal today’s medical research, knowledge, techniques, and equipment. Standard medical practice at the time dictated that priority be given to locating the path of the bullet. Several of his doctors inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, a common practice in the 1880s. Historians agree that massive infection was a significant factor in President Garfield’s demise. Biographer Peskin stated that medical malpractice did not contribute to Garfield’s death; the inevitable infection and blood poisoning that would ensue from a deep bullet wound resulted in damage to multiple organs and spinal bone fragmentation. Rutkow, a professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has argued that starvation also played a role. Rutkow suggests that “Garfield had such a nonlethal wound. In today’s world, he would have gone home in a matter of two or three days.” The conventional narrative regarding James A. Garfield’s post-shooting medical condition was challenged by Theodore Pappas and Shahrzad Joharifard in a 2013 article The American Journal of Surgery. They argued that Garfield died from a late rupture of a splenic artery pseudoaneurysm (that initially developed shortly after Guiteau’s shooting of Garfield, thus preventing Garfield from bleeding to death immediately after he was shot by Guiteau but instead allowing him to live for an additional 80 days). They also argued that the symptoms that Garfield suffered in the last couple of months of his life were actually caused by acute cholecystitis. Based on Garfield’s autopsy report, the authors speculate this condition developed as a result of his doctors accidentally puncturing his bladder in July 1881, three or four weeks after he was shot by Guiteau. Pappas and Joharifard say this caused the decline in Garfield’s condition that was visible starting from July 23, 1881.

Guiteau was indicted on October 14, 1881, for the murder of the president. Guiteau declared that he was not responsible for the death of Garfield. He admitted to the shooting but not the killing. In his defense, Guiteau wrote: “General Garfield died from malpractice. According to his own physicians, he was not fatally shot. The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant. They ought to be indicted for murdering James A. Garfield, and not me.” In a chaotic trial in which Guiteau often interrupted and argued, and in which his counsel used the insanity defense, the jury found him guilty on January 5, 1882, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. Guiteau might have had neurosyphilis, a disease that causes physiological mental impairment. He was executed on June 30, 1882.

Funeral, memorials and commemorations

Garfield’s funeral train left Long Branch on the same special track that brought him there, traveling over tracks blanketed with flowers and past houses adorned with flags. His body was transported to the Capitol and then continued on to Cleveland for burial. More than 70,000 citizens, some waiting over three hours, passed by Garfield’s coffin as his body lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda; later, on September 25, 1881, in Cleveland, more than 150,000—a number equal to the entire population of that city—likewise paid their respects. His body was temporarily interred in a vault in Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery until his permanent memorial was built.

Memorials to Garfield were erected across the country. On April 10, 1882, seven months after Garfield’s death, the U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp in his honor, the second stamp issued by the U.S. to honor an assassinated president. In 1884, sculptor Frank Happersberger completed a monument on the grounds of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. In 1887, the James A. Garfield Monument was dedicated in Washington. Another monument, in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, was erected in 1896. In Victoria, Australia, Cannibal Creek was renamed Garfield in his honor.

On May 19, 1890, Garfield’s body was permanently interred, with great solemnity and fanfare, in a mausoleum in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. Attending the dedication ceremonies were former President Hayes, President Benjamin Harrison, and future president William McKinley. Garfield’s Treasury Secretary, William Windom, also attended. Harrison said that Garfield was always a “student and instructor” and that his life works and death would “… continue to be instructive and inspiring incidents in American history.” Three panels on the monument display Garfield as a teacher, Union major general, and orator; another shows him taking the presidential oath, and a fifth shows his body lying in state at the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.

Garfield’s murder by a deranged office-seeker awakened public awareness of the need for civil service reform legislation. Senator George H. Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio, launched a reform effort that resulted in the Pendleton Act in January 1883. This act reversed the “spoils system” where office seekers paid up or gave political service to obtain or keep federally appointed positions. Under the act, appointments were awarded on merit and competitive examination. To ensure the reform was implemented, Congress and Arthur established and funded the Civil Service Commission. The Pendleton Act, however, covered only 10% of federal government workers. For Arthur, previously known for having been a “veteran spoilsman,” civil service reform became his most noteworthy achievement.

A marble statue of Garfield by Charles Niehaus was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol in Washington D.C., a gift from the State of Ohio in 1886.

On March 2, 2019, the National Park Service erected exhibit panels in Washington to mark the site of the assassination.

Garfield’s casket lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda

Garfield Memorial at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio

Garfield Monument, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco by Frank Happersberger

First Garfield postage stamp, 1882

Legacy and historical view

For a few years after his assassination, Garfield’s life story was seen as an exemplar of the American success story—that even the poorest boy might someday become President of the United States. Peskin noted that, “In mourning Garfield, Americans were not only honoring a president; they were paying tribute to a man whose life story embodied their own most cherished aspirations.” As the rivalry between Stalwarts and Half-Breeds faded from the scene in the late 1880s and after, so too did memories of Garfield. Beginning in 1882, the year after Garfield’s death, the U.S. Post Office began issuing postage stamps honoring the late president. Despite his short term as president, nine different issues were printed over the years. In the 1890s, Americans became disillusioned with politicians, and looked elsewhere for inspiration, focusing on industrialists, labor leaders, scientists, and others as their heroes. Increasingly, Garfield’s short time as president was forgotten.

The 20th century saw no revival for Garfield. Thomas Wolfe deemed the presidents of the Gilded Age, including Garfield, “lost Americans” whose “gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together.” The politicians of the Gilded Age faded from the public eye, their luster eclipsed by those who had influenced America outside of political office during that time: the robber barons, the inventors, those who had sought social reform, and others who had lived as America rapidly changed. Current events and more recent figures occupied America’s attention: according to Ackerman, “the busy Twentieth Century has made Garfield’s era seem remote and irrelevant, its leaders ridiculed for their very obscurity.”

Garfield’s biographers, and those who have studied his presidency, tend to think well of him, and that his presidency saw a promising start before its untimely end. Historian Justus D. Doenecke, while deeming Garfield a bit of an enigma, chronicles his achievements, “by winning a victory over the Stalwarts, he enhanced both the power and prestige of his office. As a man, he was intelligent, sensitive, and alert, and his knowledge of how government worked was unmatched.” Yet Doenecke criticizes Garfield’s dismissal of Merritt in Robertson’s favor, and wonders if the president was truly in command of the situation even after the latter’s confirmation. According to Caldwell, writing in 1931, “If Garfield lives in history, it will be partly on account of the charm of his personality—but also because in life and in death, he struck the first shrewd blows against a dangerous system of boss rule which seemed for a time about to engulf the politics of the nation. Perhaps if he had lived he could have done no more.” Rutkow writes, “James Abram Garfield’s presidency is reduced to a tantalizing ‘what if.'”

Peskin believes Garfield deserves more credit for his political career than he has received:

True, his accomplishments were neither bold nor heroic, but his was not an age that called for heroism. His stormy presidency was brief, and in some respects, unfortunate, but he did leave the office stronger than he found it. As a public man he had a hand in almost every issue of national importance for almost two decades, while as a party leader he, along with Blaine, forged the Republican Party into the instrument that would lead the United States into the twentieth century.

Notes

Church of Christ, Christian Church, and Disciples of Christ were names that were used interchangeably amongst members of a unified movement until the turn of the 20th century when they separated.

Biographer Allan Peskin speculated this may have been infectious hepatitis.

Until the ratification of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933, Congress convened annually in December.

In a July 1865 letter to Governor Jacob Dolson Cox, Garfield wrote that he felt “a strong sense of repugnance when I think of the negro being made our political equal and I would be glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way … but colonization has proved a hopeless failure everywhere.”

Garfield typically won two or three times his Democratic opponents’ votes.

In October 1883, the War of the Pacific was settled without American involvement, with the Treaty of Ancón.

The words vary in some sources

“Doctor” was his given name.

U.S. President #20: James Garfield (Part I)

James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881, until his death by assassination six and a half months later. He is the only sitting member of the United States House of Representatives to be elected to the presidency.

Garfield entered politics as a Republican in 1857. He served as a member of the Ohio State Senate from 1859 to 1861. Garfield opposed Confederate secession, served as a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. He was first elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio’s 19th district. Throughout Garfield’s congressional service after the war, he firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He initially agreed with Radical Republican views on Reconstruction, but later favored a moderate approach to civil rights enforcement for freedmen.

At the 1880 Republican National Convention, delegates chose Garfield, who had not sought the White House, as a compromise presidential nominee on the 36th ballot. In the 1880 presidential election, he conducted a low-key front porch campaign and narrowly defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield’s accomplishments as president included a resurgence of presidential authority against senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, purging corruption in the Post Office, and appointing a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He enhanced the powers of the presidency when he defied the powerful New York senator Roscoe Conkling by appointing William H. Robertson to the lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York, starting a fracas that ended with Robertson’s confirmation and Conkling’s resignation from the Senate. Garfield advocated agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African Americans. He also proposed substantial civil service reforms, which were passed by Congress in 1883 and signed into law by his successor, Chester A. Arthur, as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.

On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed and delusional office seeker, shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington D.C. The wound was not immediately fatal, but he died on September 19, 1881, from infections caused by his doctors. Guiteau was executed for Garfield’s murder in June 1882.

Childhood and early life

James Garfield was born the youngest of five children on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, Ohio. Orange Township had been in the Western Reserve until 1800, and like many who settled there, Garfield’s ancestors were from New England, his ancestor Edward Garfield immigrating from Hillmorton, Warwickshire, England, to Massachusetts around 1630. James’s father Abram had been born in Worcester, New York, and came to Ohio to woo his childhood sweetheart, Mehitabel Ballou, only to find her married. He instead wed her sister Eliza, who had been born in New Hampshire. James was named for an older brother who died in infancy.

In early 1833, Abram and Eliza Garfield joined the Church of Christ, a decision that shaped their youngest son’s life. Abram died later that year; James was raised in poverty in a household led by the strong-willed Eliza. He was her favorite child, and the two remained close for the rest of his life. Eliza Garfield remarried in 1842, but soon left her second husband, Warren Belden (or Alfred Belden), and a then scandalous divorce was awarded in 1850. James took his mother’s side and when Belden died in 1880, noted it in his diary with satisfaction. Garfield enjoyed his mother’s stories about his ancestry, especially his Welsh great-great-grandfathers and his ancestor who served as a knight of Caerffili Castle.

Poor and fatherless, Garfield was mocked by his fellow boys, and was very sensitive to slights throughout his life. He escaped by reading all the books he could find. He left home at age 16 in 1847. Rejected by the only ship in port in Cleveland, Garfield instead found work on a canal boat, responsible for managing the mules that pulled it. This labor was used to good effect by Horatio Alger, who wrote Garfield’s campaign biography in 1880.

After six weeks, illness forced Garfield to return home and, during his recuperation, his mother and a local education official got him to promise to postpone his return to the canals for a year and go to school. Accordingly, in 1848, he began at Geauga Seminary, in nearby Chester Township, Geauga County, Ohio. Garfield later said of his childhood, “I lament that I was born to poverty, and in this chaos of childhood, seventeen years passed before I caught any inspiration … a precious 17 years when a boy with a father and some wealth might have become fixed in manly ways.”

Education, marriage and early career

At Geauga Academy, which he attended from 1848 to 1850, Garfield learned academic subjects for which he had not previously had time. He shone as a student, and was especially interested in languages and elocution. He began to appreciate the power a speaker had over an audience, writing that the speaker’s platform “creates some excitement. I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.” Geauga was coeducational, and Garfield was attracted to one of his fellow students, Lucretia Rudolph, whom he later married. To support himself at Geauga, he worked as a carpenter’s assistant and a teacher. The need to go from town to town to find work as a teacher disgusted Garfield, and he thereafter developed a dislike of what he called “place-seeking”, which became, he said, “the law of my life.” In later years, he astounded his friends by letting positions pass that could have been his with a little politicking. Garfield had attended church more to please his mother than to worship God, but in his late teens underwent a religious awakening, and attended many camp meetings, at one of which he was born again on March 4, 1850, baptized into Christ by being submerged in the icy waters of the Chagrin River.

Lucretia Garfield in the 1870s

After leaving Geauga, Garfield worked for a year at various jobs, including teaching. Finding that some New Englanders worked their way through college, Garfield determined to do the same, and sought a school that could prepare him for the entrance examinations. From 1851 to 1854, he attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later named Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio, a school run by the Disciples. While there, he was most interested in the study of Greek and Latin, but was inclined to learn about and discuss any new thing he encountered. Securing a position on entry as janitor, he was hired to teach while still a student. Lucretia Rudolph also enrolled at the Institute, and Garfield wooed her while teaching her Greek. He developed a regular preaching circuit at neighboring churches, in some cases earning a gold dollar per service. By 1854, Garfield had learned all the Institute could teach him and was a full-time teacher. Garfield then enrolled at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as a third-year student, given credit for two years’ study at the Institute after passing a cursory examination. Garfield was impressed with the college president, Mark Hopkins, who had responded warmly to Garfield’s letter inquiring about admission. He said of Hopkins, “The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log with a student on the other.” Hopkins later said of Garfield in his student days, “There was a large general capacity applicable to any subject. There was no pretense of genius, or alternation of spasmodic effort, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions.” After his first term, Garfield was hired to teach penmanship to the students of nearby Pownal, Vermont, a post previously held by Chester A. Arthur.

Garfield graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams in August 1856 as salutatorian, giving an address at the commencement. His biographer Ira Rutkow writes that Garfield’s years at Williams gave Garfield the opportunity to know and respect those of different social backgrounds, and that despite his origin as an unsophisticated Westerner, he was liked and respected by socially conscious New Englanders. “In short”, Rutkow writes, “Garfield had an extensive and positive first experience with the world outside the Western Reserve of Ohio.”

On his return to Ohio, the degree from a prestigious Eastern school made Garfield a man of distinction. He returned to Hiram to teach at the Institute, and in 1857 was made its president. He did not see education as a field that would realize his full potential. At Williams, he had become more politically aware in the school’s intensely anti-slavery atmosphere, and began to consider politics as a career. In 1858, he married Lucretia; they had seven children, five of whom survived infancy. Soon after the wedding, he formally entered his name to read law (1859) at the office of attorney Albert Gallatin Riddle a Cleveland firm, although he did his studying in Hiram. He was admitted to the bar in 1861.

Local Republican leaders invited Garfield to enter politics upon the death of Cyrus Prentiss, the presumptive nominee for the local state senate seat. He was nominated at the party convention on the sixth ballot, and was elected, serving until 1861. Garfield’s major effort in the state senate was a bill providing for Ohio’s first geological survey to measure its mineral resources, but it failed.

Civil War

After Abraham Lincoln’s election as president, several Southern states announced their secession from the Union to form a new government, the Confederate States of America. Garfield read military texts while anxiously awaiting the war effort, which he regarded as a holy crusade against the Slave Power. In April 1861, the rebels bombarded Fort Sumter, one of South’s last federal outposts, beginning the Civil War. Although he had no military training, Garfield knew that his place was in the Union Army.

At Governor William Dennison’s request, Garfield deferred his military ambitions to remain in the legislature, where he helped appropriate the funds to raise and equip Ohio’s volunteer regiments. Afterward, the legislature adjourned and Garfield spent the spring and early summer on a speaking tour of northeastern Ohio, encouraging enlistment in the new regiments. Following a trip to Illinois to purchase muskets, Garfield returned to Ohio and, in August 1861, received a commission as a colonel in the 42nd Ohio Infantry regiment. The 42nd Ohio existed only on paper, so Garfield’s first task was to fill its ranks. He did so quickly, recruiting many of his neighbors and former students. The regiment traveled to Camp Chase, outside Columbus, Ohio, to complete training. In December, Garfield was ordered to bring the 42nd to Kentucky, where they joined the Army of the Ohio under Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell.

Buell’s command

Buell quickly assigned Garfield the task of driving Confederate forces out of eastern Kentucky, giving him the 18th Brigade for the campaign, which, besides his own 42nd, included the 40th Ohio Infantry, two Kentucky infantry regiments and two cavalry units. They departed Catlettsburg, Kentucky, in mid-December, advancing through the valley of the Big Sandy River. The march was uneventful until Union forces reached Paintsville, Kentucky, on January 6, 1862, where Garfield’s cavalry engaged the rebels at Jenny’s Creek. Confederate troops under Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall held the town in numbers roughly equal to Garfield’s own, but Garfield positioned his troops so as to deceive Marshall into believing the rebels were outnumbered. Marshall ordered his troops to withdraw to the forks of Middle Creek, on the road to Virginia; Garfield ordered his troops to pursue them. They attacked the rebel positions on January 9, 1862, in the Battle of Middle Creek, the only pitched battle Garfield personally commanded. At the fighting’s end, the Confederates withdrew from the field, and Garfield sent his troops to Prestonsburg to reprovision.

In recognition of his success, Garfield was promoted to brigadier general. After Marshall’s retreat, Garfield’s command was the sole remaining Union force in eastern Kentucky, and he announced that any men who had fought for the Confederacy would be granted amnesty if they returned to their homes and lived peaceably and remained loyal to the Union. The proclamation was surprisingly lenient, as Garfield now believed the war was a crusade for eradication of slavery. Following a brief skirmish at Pound Gap, the last rebel units in the area were outflanked and retreated to Virginia.

Garfield’s promotion gave him command of the 20th Brigade of the Army of the Ohio, which was ordered in early 1862 to join Major General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces as they advanced on Corinth, Mississippi. Before the 20th Brigade arrived, however, Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston surprised Grant’s men in their camps, driving them back. Garfield’s troops got word of the battle and advanced quickly, joining the rest of the army on the second day to drive the Confederates back across the field and into retreat. The action, later known as the Battle of Shiloh, was the bloodiest of the war to date; Garfield was exposed to fire for much of the day, but emerged uninjured. Major General Henry W. Halleck, Grant’s superior, took charge of the combined armies and advanced ponderously toward Corinth; when they arrived, the Confederates had fled.

That summer Garfield suffered from jaundice and significant weight loss. He was forced to return home, where his wife nursed him back to health. While he was home, Garfield’s friends worked to gain him the Republican nomination for Congress, but he refused to campaign with the delegates. He returned to military duty that autumn and went to Washington to await his next assignment. During this period of idleness, a rumor of an extramarital affair caused friction in the Garfields’ marriage until Lucretia eventually chose to overlook it. Garfield repeatedly received tentative assignments that were quickly withdrawn, to his frustration. In the meantime, he served on the court-martial of Fitz John Porter for his tardiness at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was convinced of Porter’s guilt, and voted with his fellow generals to convict. The trial lasted almost two months, from November 1862 to January 1863, and by its end, Garfield had procured an assignment as Chief of Staff to Major General William S. Rosecrans.

Generals’ chiefs of staff were usually more junior officers, but Garfield’s influence with Rosecrans was greater than usual, with duties extending beyond communication of orders to actual management of his Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans had a voracious appetite for conversation, especially when unable to sleep; in Garfield, he found “the first well read person in the Army” and the ideal candidate for discussions that ran deep into the night. The two became close despite Garfield’s being 12 years Rosecrans’s junior, and they discussed everything, especially religion; Rosecrans, who had converted from Methodism to Roman Catholicism, softened Garfield’s view of his faith. Garfield recommended that Rosecrans replace wing commanders Alexander McCook and Thomas Crittenden, whom he believed ineffective, but Rosecrans ignored the suggestion. With Rosecrans, Garfield devised the Tullahoma Campaign to pursue and trap Confederate General Braxton Bragg in Tullahoma. After initial Union success, Bragg retreated toward Chattanooga, where Rosecrans stalled and requested more troops and supplies. Garfield argued for an immediate advance, in line with demands from Halleck and Lincoln. After a council of war and lengthy deliberations, Rosecrans agreed to attack.

At the ensuing Battle of Chickamauga on September 19 and 20, 1863, confusion among the wing commanders over Rosecrans’s orders created a gap in the lines, resulting in a rout of the right flank. Rosecrans concluded that the battle was lost and fell back on Chattanooga to establish a defensive line. Garfield, however, thought that part of the army had held and, with Rosecrans’s approval, headed across Missionary Ridge to survey the scene. Garfield’s hunch was correct. His ride became legendary, while Rosecrans’s error reignited criticism about his leadership. While Rosecrans’s army had avoided disaster, they were stranded in Chattanooga, surrounded by Bragg’s army. Garfield sent a telegram to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton alerting Washington to the need for reinforcements to avoid annihilation, and Lincoln and Halleck delivered 20,000 troops by rail within nine days. In the meantime, Grant was promoted to command of the western armies, and quickly replaced Rosecrans with George H. Thomas. Garfield was ordered to report to Washington, where he was promoted to major general, a commission he resigned before taking a seat in the House of Representatives. According to historian Jean Edward Smith, Grant and Garfield had a “guarded relationship”, since Grant promoted Thomas, rather than Garfield, to command of the Army of the Cumberland after Rosecrans’s dismissal.

Congressional career

While serving in the Army in early 1862, Garfield was approached by friends about running for Congress from Ohio’s newly redrawn, heavily Republican 19th district. He was worried that he and other state-appointed generals would get obscure assignments, and running for Congress would allow him to resume his political career. The fact that the new Congress would not hold its first regular session until December 1863 allowed him to continue his war service for a time. Home on medical leave, he refused to campaign for the nomination, leaving that to political managers who secured it at the local convention in September 1862 on the eighth ballot. In October, he defeated D.B. Woods by a two-to-one margin in the general election for a seat in the 38th Congress.

Soon after his nomination, Garfield was ordered to report to War Secretary Edwin Stanton in Washington to discuss his military future. There, he met Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who befriended him, seeing him as a younger version of himself. The two agreed politically, and both were part of the Radical wing of the Republican Party. Once he took his seat in December 1863, Garfield was frustrated that Lincoln seemed reluctant to press the South hard. Many radicals, led in the House by Pennsylvania’s Thaddeus Stevens, wanted rebel-owned lands confiscated, but Lincoln threatened to veto any bill to do that on a widespread basis. In debate on the House floor, Garfield supported such legislation and, discussing England’s Glorious Revolution, hinted that Lincoln might be thrown out of office for resisting it. Garfield had supported Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and marveled that it was a “strange phenomenon in the world’s history, when a second-rate Illinois lawyer is the instrument to utter words which shall form an epoch memorable in all future ages.”

Garfield not only favored abolition of slavery, but believed that the leaders of the rebellion had forfeited their constitutional rights. He supported the confiscation of southern plantations and even exile or execution of rebellion leaders as a means to ensure a permanent end to slavery. Garfield felt Congress was obliged “to determine what legislation is necessary to secure equal justice to all loyal persons, without regard to color.” He was more supportive of Lincoln when Lincoln took action against slavery. Early in his tenure, he differed from his party on several issues; his was the solitary Republican vote to terminate the use of bounties in recruiting. Some financially able recruits had used the bounty system to buy their way out of service (called commutation), which Garfield considered reprehensible. Garfield gave a speech pointing out the flaws in the existing conscription law: that of 300,000 called upon to enlist, barely 10,000 had, the remainder claiming exemption or providing money or a substitute. Lincoln appeared before the Military Affairs committee on which Garfield served, demanding a more effective bill; even if it cost him reelection, Lincoln was confident he could win the war before his term expired. After many false starts, Garfield, with Lincoln’s support, procured the passage of a conscription bill that excluded commutation.

Under Chase’s influence, Garfield became a staunch proponent of a dollar backed by a gold standard, and was therefore a strong opponent of the “greenback”; he regretted very much, but understood, the necessity for suspension of payment in gold or silver during the Civil War. Garfield voted with the Radical Republicans in passing the Wade–Davis Bill, designed to give Congress more authority over Reconstruction, but it was defeated by Lincoln’s pocket veto.

Garfield did not consider Lincoln particularly worthy of reelection, but there seemed to be no viable alternative. “He will probably be the man, though I think we could do better”, he said. Garfield attended the party convention and promoted Rosecrans as Lincoln’s running mate, but delegates chose Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson. Lincoln and Garfield were reelected. By then, Chase had left the Cabinet and had been appointed Chief Justice, and his relations with Garfield became more distant.

Garfield took up the practice of law in 1865 as a means to improve his personal finances. His efforts took him to Wall Street where, the day after Lincoln’s assassination, a riotous crowd led him into an impromptu speech to calm it: “Fellow citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!” The speech, with no mention or praise of Lincoln, was, according to Garfield biographer Robert G. Caldwell, “quite as significant for what it did not contain as for what it did.” In the following years, Garfield had more praise for Lincoln; a year after Lincoln’s death, Garfield said, “Greatest among all these developments were the character and fame of Abraham Lincoln,” and in 1878 he called Lincoln “one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power.”

Reconstruction

Garfield was as firm a supporter of black suffrage as he had been of abolition, though he admitted that the idea of African Americans as whites’ political equals gave him “a strong feeling of repugnance.” President Johnson sought the rapid restoration of the Southern states during the months between his accession and the meeting of Congress in December 1865; Garfield hesitantly supported this policy as an experiment. Johnson, an old friend, sought Garfield’s backing, and their conversations led Garfield to assume that Johnson’s differences with Congress were not large. When Congress assembled in December (to Johnson’s chagrin without the elected representatives of the Southern states, who were excluded), Garfield urged conciliation on his colleagues, although he feared that Johnson, a former Democrat, might join other Democrats to gain political control. Garfield foresaw conflict even before February 1866, when Johnson vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau, charged with aiding the former slaves. By April, Garfield had concluded that Johnson was either “crazy or drunk with opium.”

The conflict between the branches of government was the major issue of the 1866 campaign, with Johnson taking to the campaign trail in a Swing Around the Circle and Garfield facing opposition within his party in his home district. With the South still disenfranchised and Northern public opinion behind the Republicans, they gained a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. Garfield, having overcome his challengers at his district nominating convention, was easily reelected.

Garfield opposed the initial talk of impeaching Johnson when Congress convened in December 1866, but supported legislation to limit Johnson’s powers, such as the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted Johnson in removing presidential appointees. Distracted by committee duties, he rarely spoke about these bills, but was a loyal Republican vote against Johnson. Due to a court case, he was absent on the day in April 1868 when the House impeached Johnson, but soon gave a speech aligning himself with Thaddeus Stevens and others who sought Johnson’s removal. When the president was acquitted in trial before the Senate, Garfield was shocked, and blamed the outcome on the trial’s presiding officer, Chief Justice Chase, his onetime mentor.

By the time Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson in 1869, Garfield had moved away from the remaining radicals (Stevens, their leader, had died in 1868). He hailed the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 as a triumph, and he favored Georgia’s readmission to the Union as a matter of right, not politics. In 1871, Garfield opposed passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, saying, “I have never been more perplexed by a piece of legislation.” He was torn between his indignation at “these terrorists” and his concern for the freedoms endangered by the power the bill gave the president to enforce the act through suspension of habeas corpus.

Tariffs and finance

Throughout his political career, Garfield favored the gold standard and decried attempts to increase the money supply through the issuance of paper money not backed by gold, and later, through the free and unlimited coinage of silver. In 1865, he was placed on the House Ways and Means Committee, a long-awaited opportunity to focus on financial and economic issues. He reprised his opposition to the greenback, saying, “Any party which commits itself to paper money will go down amid the general disaster, covered with the curses of a ruined people.” In 1868 Garfield gave a two-hour speech on currency in the House, which was widely applauded as his best oratory to that point; in it he advocated a gradual resumption of specie payments, that is, the government paying out silver and gold, rather than paper money that could not be redeemed.

Tariffs had been raised to high levels during the Civil War. Afterward, Garfield, who made a close study of financial affairs, advocated moving toward free trade, though the standard Republican position was a protective tariff that would allow American industries to grow. This break with his party likely cost him his place on the Ways and Means Committee in 1867, and though Republicans held the majority in the House until 1875, Garfield remained off that committee. Garfield came to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee, but it was Ways and Means, with its influence over fiscal policy, that he really wanted to lead. Part of the reason he was denied a place on Ways and Means was the opposition of the influential Republican editor Horace Greeley.

In September 1870, Garfield, then chairman of the House Banking Committee, led an investigation into the Black Friday Gold Panic scandal. The investigation was thorough, but found no indictable offenses. Garfield blamed the easy availability of fiat money greenbacks for financing the speculation that led to the scandal.

Garfield was not at all enthused about President Grant’s reelection in 1872—until Greeley, who emerged as the candidate of the Democrats and Liberal Republicans, became the only serious alternative. Garfield said, “I would say Grant was not fit to be nominated and Greeley is not fit to be elected.” Both Grant and Garfield were overwhelmingly reelected.

The Crédit Mobilier of America scandal involved corruption in the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad, part of the transcontinental railroad that was completed in 1869. Union Pacific officers and directors secretly purchased control of the Crédit Mobilier of America company, then contracted with it to undertake construction of the railroad. The railroad paid the company’s grossly inflated invoices with federal funds appropriated to subsidize the project, and the company was allowed to purchase Union Pacific securities at par value, well below the market rate. Crédit Mobilier showed large profits and stock gains, and distributed substantial dividends. The high expenses meant that Congress was called upon to appropriate more funds. One of the railroad officials who controlled Crédit Mobilier was also a congressman, Oakes Ames of Massachusetts. He offered some of his colleagues the opportunity to buy Crédit Mobilier stock at par value, well below what it sold for on the market, and the railroad got its additional appropriations.

The story broke in July 1872, in the middle of the presidential campaign. Among those named were Vice President (and former House Speaker) Schuyler Colfax, Grant’s second-term running mate (Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson), Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine, and Garfield. Greeley had little luck taking advantage of the scandal. When Congress reconvened after the election, Blaine, seeking to clear his name, demanded a House investigation. Evidence before the special committee exonerated Blaine. Garfield had said in September 1872 that Ames had offered him stock but he had repeatedly refused it. Testifying before the committee in January, Ames said that he had offered Garfield ten shares of stock at par value, but that Garfield had never taken them or paid for them, though a year passed, from 1867 to 1868, before Garfield had finally refused. Appearing before the committee on January 14, 1873, Garfield confirmed much of this. Ames testified several weeks later that Garfield agreed to take the stock on credit, and that it was paid for by the company’s huge dividends. The two men differed over $300 that Garfield received and later paid back, with Garfield deeming it a loan and Ames a dividend.

Garfield’s biographers have been unwilling to exonerate him in Crédit Mobilier. Allan Peskin writes, “Did Garfield lie? Not exactly. Did he tell the truth? Not completely. Was he corrupted? Not really. Even Garfield’s enemies never claimed that his involvement … influenced his behavior.” Rutkow writes, “Garfield’s real offense was that he knowingly denied to the House investigating committee that he had agreed to accept the stock and that he had also received a dividend of $329.” Caldwell suggests that Garfield “told the truth [before the committee]”, but “certainly failed to tell the whole truth, clearly evading an answer to certain vital questions and thus giving the impression of worse faults than those of which he was guilty.” That Crédit Mobilier was a corrupt organization had been a secret badly kept, even mentioned on the floor of Congress, and editor Sam Bowles wrote at the time that Garfield, in his positions on committees dealing with finance, “had no more right to be ignorant in a matter of such grave importance as this, than the sentinel has to snore on his post.”

Another issue that caused Garfield trouble in his 1874 reelection bid was the so-called “Salary Grab” of 1873, which increased the compensation for members of Congress by 50%, retroactive to 1871. Garfield was responsible, as Appropriations Committee chairman, for shepherding the legislative appropriations bill through the House; during the debate in February 1873, Massachusetts Representative Benjamin Butler offered the increase as an amendment, and despite Garfield’s opposition, it passed the House and eventually became law. The law was very popular in the House, as almost half the members were lame ducks, but the public was outraged, and many of Garfield’s constituents blamed him, though he refused to accept the increase. In a bad year for Republicans, who lost control of the House for the first time since the Civil War, Garfield had his closest congressional election, winning with only 57% of the vote.

Minority leader; Hayes administration

With the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 1875, Garfield lost his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. The Democratic leadership in the House appointed Garfield as a Republican member of Ways and Means. With many of his leadership rivals defeated in the 1874 Democratic landslide, and Blaine elected to the Senate, Garfield was seen as the Republican floor leader and the likely Speaker should the party regain control of the chamber.

Garfield thought the land grants given to expanding railroads was an unjust practice. He also opposed some monopolistic practices by corporations, as well as the power sought by workers’ unions. Garfield supported the proposed establishment of the United States civil service as a means of ridding officials of the annoyance of aggressive office seekers. He especially wished to eliminate the common practice whereby government workers, in exchange for their positions, were forced to kick back a percentage of their wages as political contributions.

As the 1876 presidential election approached, Garfield was loyal to the candidacy of Senator Blaine, and fought for the former Speaker’s nomination at the 1876 Republican National Convention in Cincinnati. When it became clear, after six ballots, that Blaine could not prevail, the convention nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Although Garfield had supported Blaine, he had kept good relations with Hayes, and wholeheartedly supported the governor. Garfield had hoped to retire from politics after his term expired to devote himself full-time to the practice of law, but to help his party, he sought re-election, and won it easily that October. Any celebration was short lived, as Garfield’s youngest son, Neddie, fell ill with whooping cough shortly after the congressional election, and soon died.

When Hayes appeared to have lost the presidential election the following month to Democrat Samuel Tilden, the Republicans launched efforts to reverse the result in Southern states where they held the governorship: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. If Hayes won all three states, he would take the election by a single electoral vote. Grant asked Garfield to serve as a “neutral observer” in the recount in Louisiana. The observers soon recommended to the state electoral commissions that Hayes be declared the winner—Garfield recommended that the entire vote of West Feliciana Parish, which had given Tilden a sizable majority, be thrown out. The Republican governors of the three states certified that Hayes had won their states, to the outrage of Democrats, who had the state legislatures submit rival returns, and threatened to prevent the counting of the electoral vote—under the Constitution, Congress is the final arbiter of the election. Congress then passed a bill establishing the Electoral Commission, to determine the winner. Although he opposed the Commission, feeling that Congress should count the vote and proclaim Hayes victorious, Garfield was appointed to it over the objections of Democrats that he was too partisan. Hayes emerged the victor by a Commission vote of 8 to 7, with all eight votes being cast by Republican politicians or appointees of that party to the Supreme Court. As part of the deal whereby they recognized Hayes as president, Southern Democrats secured the removal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

Although a Senate seat would be disposed of by the Ohio General Assembly after the resignation of John Sherman to become Treasury Secretary, Hayes needed Garfield’s expertise to protect him from the agenda of a hostile Congress, and asked him not to seek it. Garfield, as the president’s key legislator, gained considerable prestige and respect for his role. When Congress debated what became the Bland–Allison Act, to have the government purchase large quantities of silver and strike it into fully legal tender dollar coins, Garfield fought against this deviation from the gold standard, but it was enacted over Hayes’s veto in February 1878.

Garfield during this time purchased the property in Mentor that reporters later dubbed Lawnfield, and from which he would conduct the first successful front porch campaign for the presidency.

U.S. Senate election, 1880

President Hayes suggested that Garfield run for governor in 1879, seeing that as a road that would likely put Garfield in the White House. Garfield preferred to seek election as a U.S. Senator. Rivals were spoken of for the seat, such as Secretary Sherman, but he had presidential ambitions (for which he sought Garfield’s support), and other candidates fell by the wayside. Garfield was elected to the Senate by the General Assembly in January 1880, though his term was not scheduled to commence until March 4, 1881. Garfield was never seated in the U.S. Senate.

Legal career and other activities

Garfield was one of three attorneys who argued for the petitioners in the landmark Supreme Court case Ex parte Milligan in 1866. His clients were pro-Confederate northern men who had been found guilty and sentenced to death by a military court for treasonous activities. The case turned on whether the defendants should instead have been tried by a civilian court, and resulted in a ruling that civilians could not be tried before military tribunals while the civil courts were operating. The oral argument was Garfield’s first court appearance. Jeremiah Black had taken him in as a junior partner a year before, and assigned the case to him in light of his highly regarded oratory skills. With the result, Garfield instantly achieved a reputation as a preeminent appellate lawyer.

During Grant’s first term, discontented with public service, Garfield pursued opportunities in the law, but declined a partnership offer when told his prospective partner was of “intemperate and licentious” reputation. In 1873, after the death of Chase, Garfield appealed to Grant to appoint Justice Noah H. Swayne as Chief Justice. Grant, however, appointed Morrison R. Waite.

In 1876, Garfield displayed his mathematical talent when he developed a trapezoid proof of the Pythagorean theorem. His finding was placed in the New England Journal of Education. Mathematics historian William Dunham wrote that Garfield’s trapezoid work was “really a very clever proof.”

After his conversion experience in 1850, religious inquiry was a high priority for Garfield. He read widely and moved beyond the narrowness of his early experience as a member of the Disciples of Christ. His new, broader perspective was rooted in his devotion to freedom of inquiry and his study of history. The intensity of Garfield’s religious thought was also shaped in part by his experience in combat and his interaction with voters.

Salem Romantic Tangles: A Days of Our Lives Fanfiction

Synopsis

After sharing a passionate night together, Shawn and Mimi start secreting seeing each other underneath everyone noses. Will they ever get caught? What will happen when Mimi finds out she is expecting triplets after beginning told she can never have kids. Will her and babies be in danger. Belle and Philip are still together until he sees what kind of person she really is and divorces her a eventually leads to a Philip/Stephanie and Max/Chelsea hookups. And a tangled Gabi/Stefan/Jake/Chloe/Gwen mess! Lots of Bella Bashing.

Cast

Mimi Lockhart: Farah Fath

Shawn Douglas: Jason Cook

Belle Black: Martha Madison

Philip Kiriakis: Jay Kenneth Johnson

Stephanie Johnson: Shelly Henning

Max Brady: Darin Brooks

Chelsea Brady: Rachel Melvins

Gabi Hernandez-DiMera: Camila Banus

Jake Lambert: Brandon Barash

Gwen Davies: Emily O’Brien

Chloe Lane: Nadia Bjorlin

Chapter 1

Shawn and Mimi start seeing each other secretly as Shawn’s ex, Belle Black Kiriakis, is unhappy with seeing Shawn and Mimi move on together. But a shocking discovery will complicate the Shawn/Mimi/Belle triangle…

Philip Kiriakis, unhappy with his wife’s, Belle, behavior toward Shawn’s flirtations with Mimi Lockhart, starts an online relationship with someone new, unaware that its’ really Stephanie Johnson, Steve and Kayla’s daughter.

Now that Gabi has been cleared of drugging Abigail DIMera, she continues her pursuit in proving Jake Lambert is really her not-so-dead husband, Stefan. But a tangled mess results when Jake is still drawn to his ex-girlfriend, Gwen Davies. And to complicate matters, Chloe Lane returns to Salem and is shocked to see Jake’s resemblance to Stefan DiMera.

And Max Brady and Chelsea Brady arrive in Salem with news of their own….

Old Feelings Are Hard to Let Go: A #Vina Romance

Synopsis

Nina has moved on with Jax Jacks, but when Valentin Cassadine arrives in Port Charles one weekend, will old feelings resurface for Nina and Valentin?

Cast

Nina Reeves: Michelle Stafford

Jasper “Jax” Jacks: Ingo Rademacher

Valentin Cassadine: James Patrick Stuart

Chapter 1

It’s been 2 months since Nina and Valentin went their separate ways after his secret came out about his part in Sasha Gilmore being her daughter. Nina has moved on with Jax Jacks and Valentin has left Port Charles heartbroken and attempting to move on.

Jax wanted to give Nina a special date for their 1 month anniversary. Nina had been working hard at Crimson and Jax wanted to give her a stress-free night on the town.

“Jax, where are you taking me?” a blindfolded Nina asked Jax as he led her to their destination.

“You’ll see real soon.” Jax promised.

Meanwhile, a reluctant Valentin had arrived in Port Charles after spending the last couple months in Greece at the Cassadine mansion courtesy of a not-so-dead Helena, who had invited Valentin to stay after his breakup with Nina. Valentin was back in Port Charles to oversee the takeover of ELQ as he had secretly acquired shares in the company and was attempting a takeover coups via Helena Cassadine.

Back at the park where Jax had taken Nina for their date where they spent their first moment after her split with Valentin…

“Oh, Jax, you remembered!” Nina said as Jax removed the blindfold.

“I wanted it to be a memorable night.” Jax told her as he moved in to kiss her.

“I love it!”

The two lovers kissed as someone came onto the scene spying their union…

“Who’s there?” Jax asked when he heard the rustling of leaves in the bushes.

Valentin stepped out of the shadows when Jax asked to reveal himself. But Nina’s ashen face gave Jax pause as he watched the two ex-spouses faces…

(Coming: A tense moment for Valentin and Nina.)

Romance and Adventure Circa 1900: A Buffy the Vampire Fanfiction

Synopsis

After the Scoobies and the potentials kick her out, Buffy and Spike will experience something strange. A demon kid will cast a spell sending them time traveling to the 18th century aka 1900’s (Spike’s past in the Boxer Rebellion China).

They will run into the Fanged Four and at first will manage to hide from them but then Angelus will find her. He’ll torture, rape, and turn her into a Vampire. She doesn’t have a soul but once they get back to the future, Spike will ask the Scoobies to give the Slayer her soul. Spike wants to kill both the past Angelus and the future Angel even the one with a soul. He wants revenge for Buffy and so will the Scoobies once they get them back to the future.

Chapter 1

The passion between Buffy and Spike was undeniable and the two were in the throes of embarking on the fateful kiss when the ground underneath them began to shake….

Buffy and Spike were knocked unconscious as the two would-be lovers fell to the ground…

Moments later, Spike awoke to a world he’d known previously before he became a vampire—the Boxer Rebellion in China.

He looked over to find Buffy still unconscious, but was beginning to come to…

“O, my head really hurts!” Buffy spoke out loud as Spike was by Buffy’s side.

“Buffy, are you OK?”

“Yes,” Buffy reassured him, as she looked around, their surroundings unfamiliar to her, “Where are we?”

“I think we time traveled to the past.” Spike told her.

“We’re in the past?” Buffy said shocked.

‘Yeah. The 1900s during the time of the Boxer Rebellion in China—before I became a vampire.” Spike told her.

“We’re in the time before you were a ‘vamp?” Buffy said curiously.

As Spike helped Buffy up, the Fanged Four come upon them.

(Coming: Angel finds Buffy and Spike and makes plans to thwart Buffy and Spike’s romance.)

Who’s Really Behind 2020

Sunnydale Lives: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fanfiction

Synopsis

Buffy is sent back in time where she is turned into a vampire. After feeding on human blood, she can never go back. A new slayer rises—Cordelia as she resumes her romance with Xander and Buffy is drawn into a love triangle with Angel and Spike. And Tara and Willow break up after Willow becomes too obsessed with black magic and Tara is drawn to Wesley.

Chapter 1

Willow frantically tries to find a spell to bring Buffy back from the past. But Tara was growing increasingly frustrated with Willow’s desire to save Buff from the Master’s plan. Why was it always about Buffy…Tara thought. Willow never had any time for her anymore. She was always trying to save Buffy.

Tara finished the last of her latte when Wesley showed up at the cafe she had come in. Her only solace away from Willow.

“Hey, Tara, why are you here alone?” Wesley said. “Where’s Willow?”

“Where isn’t Willow these days?!” Tara said bitterly.

“Problems already?” Wesley added.

Tara didn’t mean to, but she let it out in a rant to Wesley…

“Just Willow’s obsessive desire to save Buffy with black magic spells!”

“That bad?!” Wesley replied, letting Tara vent.

As Tara vented her frustrations out on a sympathetic Wesley, the two were growing closer.

(Coming: Buffy wakes up in the past as a vampire and takes her first taste of human blood.)

Pearl of Great Price: Moses–Chapter 6

(November-December 1830)
Adams’s Seed keep a book of remembrance–His righteous posterity preach repentance–God reveals Himself to Enoch–Enoch preaches the gospel–The plan of salvation was revealed to Adam–He received baptism and the priesthood.
1 And Adam hearkened unto the voice of God, and called upon his sons to repent.
2 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bare a son, and he called his name Seth. And Adam glorified the name of God; for he said: God hath appointed me another seed, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
3 And God revealed himself unto Seth, and he rebelled not, but offered an acceptable sacrifice, like unto his brother Abel. And to him also was born a son, and he called his name Enos.
4 And t hen began these men to call upon the name of the Lord, and the Lord blessed them;
5 And a book of remembrance was kept, in the which was recorded, in the language of Adam, for it was given unto as many called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration;
6 And by them their children were taught to read and write, having a language which was pure and undefiled.
7 Now this same Priesthood, which was in the beginning, shall be in the end of the world also.
8 Now this prophecy Adam spake, as he was moved upon by the Holy Ghost, and a genealogy was kept of the children of God. And this was the book of the generations of Adam, saying: In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
9 In the image of his own body, male and female, created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created and became living souls in the land upon the footstool of God.
10 And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image, and called his name Seth.
11 And the days of Adam, after he had begotten Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat many sons and daughters.
12 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.
13 Seth lived one hundred and five years, and begat Enos, and prophesied in all his days, and taught his son Enos in the ways of God; wherefore Enos prophesied also.
14 And Seth lived, after he begat Enos, eight hundred and seven years, and begat many sons and daughters.
15 And the children of men were numerous upon all the face of the land. And in those days Satan had great dominion among men, and raged in their hearts; and from thenceforth came wars and bloodshed; and a man’s hand was against his own brother, in administering death, because of secret works, seeking for power.
16 All the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.
17 And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan. And Enos and the residue of the people of God came out from the land, which was called Shulon, and dwelt in a land of promise, which he called after his own son, whom he had named Cainan.
18 And Enos lived, after he begat Cainan, eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat many sons and daughters. And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years, and he died.
19 And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel; and Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years, and he died.
20 And Mahalaleel lived sixty-five years, and begat Jared; and Mahalaleel lived, after he begat Jared, eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred and ninety-five years, and he died.
21 And Jared lived one hundred and sixty-two years, and begat Enoch; and Jared lived, after he begat Enoch, eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Jared taught Enoch in all the ways of God.
22 And this is the genealogy of the sons of Adam, who was the son of God, with whom God, himself, conversed.
23 And they were preachers of righteousness, and spake and prophesied, and called upon men, everywhere, to repent; and faith was taught unto the children of men.
24 And it came to pass that all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years, and he died.
25 And Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begat Methuselah.
26 And it came to pass that Enoch journeyed in the land, among the people; and as he journeyed, the Spirit of God descended out of heaven, and abode upon him.
27 And he heard a voice from heaven, saying: Enoch, my son, prophesy unto this people, and say unto them–Repent, for thus saith the Lord: I am angry with this people, and my fierce anger is kindled against them; for their hearts have waxed hard, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes cannot see afar off;
28 And for these many generations, ever since the day that I created them, have they gone astray, and have denied me, and have sought their own counsels in the dark; and in their own abominations have they devised murder, and have not kept the commandments, which I gave unto their father, Adam.
29 Wherefore, they have foresworn themselves, and, by their oaths, they have brought upon themselves death; and a hell I have prepared for them, if they repent not;
30 And this is a decree, which I have set forth int he beginning of the world, from my own mouth, from the foundation thereof, and by the mouths of my servants, thy fathers, have I decreed it, even as it shall be forth in the world, unto the ends thereof.
31 And when Enoch had heard these words, he bowed himself to the earth, before the Lord, and spake before the Lord, saying: Why is it that I have found favor in thy sight, and am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech; wherefore am I thy servant?
32 And the Lord said unto Enoch: Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled, and I will give thee utterance, for all flesh is in my hands, and I will do as seemeth me good.
33 Say unto this people: Choose ye this day, to serve the Lord God who made you.
34 Behold my Spirit is upon you, wherefore all thy words will I justify; and the mountains shall flee before you, and the rivers shall turn from their course; and thou shalt abide in me, and I in you; therefore walk with me.
35 And the Lord spake unto Enoch, and said unto him: Anoint thine eyes with clay, and wash them, and thou shalt see. And he did so.
36 And he beheld the spirits that God had created; and he beheld also things which were not visible to the natural eye; and from thenceforth came the saying abroad in the land: A seer hath the Lord raised up unto his people.
37 And it came to pass that Enoch went forth in the land, among the people, standing upon the hills and the high spaces, and cried with a loud voice, testifying against their works; and all men were offended because of him.
38 And they came forth to hear him, upon the high places, saying unto the tent-keepers: Tarry ye here and keep the tents, while we go yonder to behold the seer, for he prophesieth, and there is a strange thing in the land; a wild man hath come among us.
39 And it came to pass when they heard him, no man laid hands on him; for fear came on all them t hat heard him; for he walked with God.
40 And there came a man unto him, whose name was Mahijah, and said unto him: Tell us plainly who thou art, and from whence thou comest?
41 And he said unto them: I came out from the land of Cainan, the land of my fathers, a land of righteousness unto this day. And my father taught me in all the ways of God.
42 And it came to pass, as I journeyed fromt he land of Cainan, by the sea east, I beheld a vision; and lo, the heavens I saw, and the Lord spake with me, and gave me commandment; wherefore, for this cause, to keep the commandment, I speak forth these words.
43 And Enoch continued his speech, saying: The Lord whcih spake with me, the same is the God of heaven, and he is my God, and your God, and ye are my brethren, and why counsel ye yourselves, and deny the God of heaven?
44 The heavens he made; the earth is his footstool; and the foundation thereoff is his. Behold, he laid it, an host of men hath he brought in upon the face thereoff.
45 And death hath come upon our fathers; nevertheless we know them, and cannot deny, and even the first of all we know, even Adam.
46 For a book of remembrance we have written among us, according to the pattern given by the finger of God; and it is given in our own language.
47 And as Enoch spake forth the words of God, the people trembled, and could not stand in his presence.
48 And he said unto them; Because that Adam fell, we are, and by his fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe.
49 Behold Satan hath come among the children of men, and tempteth them to worship him; and men have become carnal, sensual, and devilish, and are shut out from the presence of God.
50 But God hath made known unto our fathers that all men must repent.
51 And he called upon our father Adam by his own voice, saying: I am God; I made the world, and men before they were in the flesh.
52 And he also said unto him: If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe, and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized, even in water, in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth, which is Jesus Christ, the only name which shall be given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come unto the children of men, ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all things in his name, and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given you.
53 And our father Adam spake unto the Lord, and said: Why is it that men must repent and be baptized in water? And the Lord said unto Adam: Behold I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden.
54 Hence came the saying abroad among the people, that the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt, wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children, for they are whole from the foundation of the world.
55 And the Lord spake unto Adam, saying: Inasmuch as thy children are conceived in sin, even so when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good.
56 And it is given unto them to know good from evil; wherefore they are agents unto themselves, and I have given unto you another law and commandment.
57 Wherefore teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence; for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge, who shall come in the meridian of time.
58 Therefore I give unto you a commandment, to teach these things freely unto your children, saying:
59 That by reason of transgression cometh the fall, which fall bringeth death, and inasmuch as ye were born into the world by water, and blood, and the spirit, which I have made; and so became of dust a living soul, even so ye must be born again into the kingdom of heaven, of water, and of the Spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine Only Begotten; that ye might be sanctified from all sin, and enjoy the words of eternal life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come, even immortal glory;
60 For by the water ye keep the commandment; by the Spirit ye are justified, and by the blood ye are sanctified;
61 Therefore it is given to abide in you; the record of heaven; the Comforter; the peaceable things of immortal glory; the truth of all things; that which quickeneth all things, which maketh alive all things; that which knoweth all things, and hath all power according to wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment.
62 And now, behold, I say unto you: This is the plan of salvation unto all men, through the blood of mine Only Begotten, who shall come in the meridian of time.
63 And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, and things which are spiritual; things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.
64 And it came to pass, when the Lord had spoken with Adam, our father, that Adam cried unto the Lord, and he was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord, and was carried down into the water, and was laid under the water, and was brought forth out of the water.
65 And thus he was baptized, and the Spirit of God descended upon him, and thus he was born of the Spirit, and became quickened in the inner man.
66 And he heard a voice out of heaven, saying: Thou art baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost. This is the record of the Father, and the Son, from henceforth and forever;
67 And thou art after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity.
68 Behold, thou art one in e, a son of God; and thus may all become my sons. Amen.

Doctrine & Covenants: Section 9

Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet to Oliver Cowdery, at Harmony, Pennsylvania, April 1829. Oliver is admonished to be patient and is urged to be content to write, for the time being, at the dictation of the translator, rather than to attempt to translate.
1-6, Other ancient recorded are yet to be translated; 7-14, The Book of Mormon is translated by study and by spiritual confirmation.
1 Behold, I say unto you, my son, that because you did not translate according to that which you desired of me, and did commerce again to write for my servant, Joseph Smith, Jun., even so I would have finished this record, which I have entrusted unto him.
2 And then, behold, other records have I, that I will give unto you power that you may assist to translate.
3 Be patient, my son, for it is wisdom in me, and it is not expedient that you should translate at this present time.
4 Behold, the work which you are called to do is to write for my servant Joseph.
5 And, behold, it is because that you did not continue as you commenced, when you began to translate, that I have taken away this privilege from you.
6 Do not murmur, my son, for it is wisdom in me that I have dealt with you after this manner.
7 Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.
8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.
9 But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.
10 Now, if you had known this you could have translated; nevertheless, it is not expedient that you should translate now.
11 Behold, it was expedient when you commenced; but you feared, and the tie is past, and it is not expedient now;
12 For, do you not behold that I have given unto my servant Joseph sufficient strength, whereby it is made up? And neither of you have I condemned.
13 Do this thing which I have commanded you, and you shall prosper. Be faithful, and yield to no temptation.
14 Stand fast in the work wherewith I have called you, and a hair of your head shall not be lost, and you shall be lifted up at the last day. Amen.

1 Nephi: Chapter 19

Nephi makes plates of ore and records the history of his people–The God of Israel will come six hundred years from the time Lehi left Jerusalem–Nephi tells of His sufferings and crucifixion–The Jews will be despised and scattered until the latter days, when they will return unto the Lord. About 588-570 B.C.
1 And it came to pass that the Lord commanded me, wherefore I did make plates of ore that I might engraven upon them the record of my people. And upon the plates which I made I did engraven the record of my father, and also our journeyings in the wilderness, and the prophecies of my father; and also many of mine own prophecies have I engraven upon them.
2 And I knew not at the time when I made them that I should be commanded of the Lord to make these plates; wherefore, the record of my father, and the genealogy of his fathers, and the more part of all our proceedings in the wilderness are engraven upon those first plates of which I have spoken; wherefore, the things which transpired before I made these plates are, of the truth, more particularly made mention upon the first plates.
3 And after I had made these plates by way of commandment, I, Nephi, received a commandment that the ministry and the prophecies, the more plain and precious parts of them, should be written upon these plates; and that the things which were written should be kept for the instruction of my people, who should possess the land, and also for other wise purposes, which purposes are known unto the Lord.
4 Wherefore, I, Nephi, did make a record upon the other plates, which gives an account, or which gives a greater account of the wars and contentions and destructions of my people. And this have I done, and commanded my people what they should do after I was gone; and that these plates should be handed down from one generation to another, or from one generation to another, or from one prophet to another, until further commandments of the Lord.
5 And an account of my making these plates shall be given hereafter; and then, behold, I proceed according to that which I have spoken; and this I do that the more sacred things may be kept for the knowledge of my people.
6 Nevertheless, I do not write anything upon the plates save it be that I think it be sacred. And now, if I do err, even did they err of old; not that I would excuse myself because of other men, but because of the weakness which is in me, according to the flesh, I would excuse myself.
7 For the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to the body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet. Yea, even the very God of Israel do men trample under their feet; I say, trample under their feet but I would speak in other words–they set him at naught, and hearken not to the voice of his counsels.
8 And behold he cometh, according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem.
9 And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourage him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him, and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his longsuffering towards the children of men.
10 And the God of our fathers, who were led out of Egypt, out of bondage, and also were preserved in the wilderness by him, yea, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man, into the hands of wicked men, to be lifted up, according to the words of Zenock, and to be crucified, according to the words of Neum, and to be buried in a sepulchre, according to the words of Zenos, which he spake concerning the three days of darkness, which should be a sign given of his death unto those who should inhapbit the isles of the sea, more especially given unto those who are of the house of Israel.
11 For thus spake the prophet: The Lord God surely shall visit all the house of Israel at that day, some with his voice, because of their righteousness, unto their great joy and salvation, and others with the thunderings and the lightnings of his power, by tempest, by fire, and by smoke, and vapor of darkness, and by the opening of the earth, and by mountains which shall be carried up.
12 And all these things must surely come, saith the prophet Zenos. And the rocks of the earth must rend; and because of the groanings of the earth, many of the kings of the isles of the sea shall be wrought upon by the Spirit of God, to exclaim: The God of nature suffers.
13 And as for those who are at Jerusalem, saith the prophet, they shall be scourged by all people, because they crucify the God of Israel, and turn their hearts aside, rejecting signs and wonders, and the power and glory of the God of Israel.
14 And because they turn their hearts aside, saith the prophet, and have despised the Holy One of Israel, they shall wander in the flesh, and perish, and become a hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations.
15 Nevertheless, when that day cometh, saith the prophet, that they no more turn aside their hearts against the Holy One of Israel, then will he remember the covenants which he made to their fathers.
16 Yea, then will remember the isles of the sea; yea, and all the people who are of the house of Israel, will I gather in, saith the Lord, according to the words of the prophet Zenos, from the four quarters of the earth.
17 Yea, and all the earth shall see the salvation of the Lord, saith the prophet; every nation, kindred, tongue and people shall be blessed.
18 And I, Nephi, have written these things unto my people, that perhaps I might persuade them that they would remember the Lord their Redeemer.
19 Wherefore, I speak unto all the house of Israel, if it so be that they should obtain these things.
20 For behold, I have workings in the spirit, which doth weary me even that all my joints are weak, for those who are at Jerusalem; for had not the Lord been merciful, to show unto me concerning them, even as he had prophets of old, I should have perished also.
21 And he surely did show unto the prophets of old all things concerning them; and also he did show unto many concerning us; wherefore, it must needs be that we know concerning them for they are written upon the plates of brass.
22 Now it came to pass that I, Nephi, did teach my brethren these things; and it came to pass that I did read many things to them, which were engraven upon the plates of brass, that they might know concerning the doings of the Lord in other lands, among people of ol.
23 And I did read many things unto them which were written in the books of Moses; but that I might more fully persuade them to believe in the Lord their Redeemer I did read unto them that which was written by the prophet Isaiah; for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning.
24 Wherefore I spake unto them, saying: Hear ye the words of the prophet, ye who are a remnant of the house of Israel, a branch of the house of Israel, a branch who have been broken off; hear ye the words of the prophet, which were written unto all the house of Israel, and liken them unto yourselves, that ye may have hope as well as your brethren from whom ye have been broken off; for after this manner has the prophet written.

Matthew: Chapter 28

1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and other Mary to see the sepulchre.
2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.
3 His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:
4 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.
6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.
7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.
9 And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.
10 Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.
11 Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done.
12 And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers,
13 Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.
14 And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you.
15 So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.
16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.
18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing the in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Genesis: Chapter 28

1 And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.
2 Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother’s brother.
3 And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people;
4 And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham.
5 And Isaac sent away Jacob: and he went to Padan-aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.
6 When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;
7 And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-aram;
8 And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father;
9 Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.
10 And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran.
11 And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.
12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
13 And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest,to thee will I give it, and to they seed;
14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
15 And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
16 And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.
17 And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
18 And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.
19 And he called the name of that place Beth-el: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.
20 And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on,
21 So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the LORD be my God:
22 And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.

Proverbs 29: 1

Proverbs 29: 1–He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.

Proverbs 21: 17–He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.

Proverbs 23: 20–Be not among winbibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:

Proverbs 23: 31-35–Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

Romans 14: 21–It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

1 Corinthians 6: 10–Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

John 2: 1-12–And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This is the beginning of miracles did Jesus of Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him. After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days.

Devotion: Who Do We Listen To?

Morning Prayer
Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; ~1 Peter 1: 13
Inspiration
How quickly do we expect things these days? With so much information quickly at our fingertips, it is easy to forget that eternity awaits us. We must not waste our time on Earth. Study, stay sharp, stay focused on what is important: living a life in the name of Jesus.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, help me realize the impertinence of my worldly existence. I ask that You instill a faithful mind in me, helping me avoid the many instantly gratifying pleasures that are offered to me. I ask all of this in Your holy name. Amen.
Who Do we Listen To?
By Frances Taylor
Proudly Proclaim the Good News! To encourage doing the right thing is looked upon as not “being with it.” ~Matthew 10: 27-28
Why do we listen to people who just want to lure us away from God? King Joash had reigned since he was seven years old, having been protected as an infant and saved because of the actions of Jehoida, the priest of Yahweh. Now he was dead, and the king is no longer listening to the voice of God! Do you have children? I know that mine were better at listening to me as young children than they did as teenagers when the thought that I was old and just not understanding of their world! As adults, they listen better! But, we are often teenagers when we listen to God’s words to us. As children in faith, we are more attuned to God’s voice because we have made a decision to follow him. King Joash had even raised money to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and had gold and silver melted to allow them to have sacred vessels needed for worship. Now? We can become jaded by the world and think that the world knows more about life than God! I have often referred to the Bible as “God’s instruction manual.” If you have ever tried to put something together, you know what I mean! We have choices to make. we can get out the instructions, follow them and come up with the finished product that is just what we were looking for. Or, we can put aside the instructions; work for hours trying to figure out how to do it; have some pieces left over, and have a product that doesn’t work the way it should. Often that means that we need to take it apart and start over. In that, we are better off than Joash, who would find Judah and Jerusalem devastated by that army of Syria and killed by his own servants. We will not lose our lives by not following instructions when putting together a piece of furniture, but if we ignore God’s instruction book we may lose eternal life.
Prayer: Loving and forgiving God, Just as you gave King Joash opportunities to repent and listen to you, you give us the same. You send people into our lives to remind us of what is important. Help us to listen and follow your “Instructions.” Amen.

Marie Antoinette (Part II)

French Revolution before Varennes (1789–91)
The situation escalated on 20 June as the Third Estate, which had been joined by several members of the clergy and radical nobility, found the door to its appointed meeting place closed by order of the king. It thus met at the tennis court in Versailles and took the Tennis Court Oath not to separate before it had given a constitution to the nation.
On 11 July at Marie Antoinette’s urging Necker was dismissed and replaced by Breteuil, the queen’s choice to crush the Revolution with mercenary Swiss troops under the command of one of her favorites, Pierre Victor, baron de Besenval de Brünstatt. At the news, Paris was besieged by riots that culminated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July. On 15 July Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was named commander-in-chief of the newly formed Garde nationale.
In the days following the storming of the Bastille, for fear of assassination, and ordered by the king, the emigration of members of the high aristocracy began on 17 July with the departure of the comte d’Artois, the Condés, cousins of the king, and the unpopular Polignacs. Marie Antoinette, whose life was as much in danger, remained with the king, whose power was gradually being taken away by the National Constituent Assembly.
The abolition of feudal privileges by the National Constituent Assembly on 4 August 1789 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (La Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen), drafted by Lafayette with the help of Thomas Jefferson and adopted on 26 August, paved the way to a Constitutional Monarchy (4 September 1791 – 21 September 1792). Despite these dramatic changes, life at the court continued, while the situation in Paris was becoming critical because of bread shortages in September. On 5 October, a crowd from Paris descended upon Versailles and forced the royal family to move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, where they lived under a form of house arrest under the watch of Lafayette’s Garde Nationale, while the Comte de Provence and his wife were allowed to reside in the Petit Luxembourg, where they remained until they went into exile on 20 June 1791.
Marie Antoinette continued to perform charitable functions and attend religious ceremonies, but dedicated most of her time to her children. She also played an important political, albeit not public, role between 1789 and 1791 when she had a complex set of relationships with several key actors of the early period of the French Revolution. One of the most important was Necker, the Prime Minister of Finances (Premier ministre des finances). Despite her dislike of him, she played a decisive role in his return to the office. She blamed him for his support of the Revolution and did not regret his resignation in 1790.
Lafayette, one of the former military leaders in the American War of Independence (1775–83), served as the warden of the royal family in his position as commander-in-chief of the Garde Nationale. Despite his dislike of the queen—he detested her as much as she detested him and at one time had even threatened to send her to a convent—he was persuaded by the mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, to work and collaborate with her, and allowed her to see Fersen a number of times. He even went as far as exiling the Duke of Orléans, who was accused by the queen of fomenting trouble. His relationship with the king was more cordial. As a liberal aristocrat, he did not want the fall of the monarchy but rather the establishment of a liberal one, similar to that of the United Kingdom, based on cooperation between the king and the people, as was to be defined in the Constitution of 1791.
Despite her attempts to remain out of the public eye, Marie Antoinette was falsely accused in the libelles of having an affair with Lafayette, whom she loathed, and, as was published in Le Godmiché Royal (“The Royal Dildo”), and of having a sexual relationship with the English baroness Lady Sophie Farrell of Bournemouth, a well-known lesbian of the time. Publication of such calumnies continued to the end, climaxing at her trial with an accusation of incest with her son. There is no evidence to support the accusations.
Mirabeau
A significant achievement of Marie Antoinette in that period was the establishment of an alliance with Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, the most important lawmaker in the assembly. Like Lafayette, Mirabeau was a liberal aristocrat. He had joined the Third estate and was not against the monarchy, but wanted to reconcile it with the Revolution. He also wanted to be a minister and was not immune to corruption. On the advice of Mercy, Marie Antoinette opened secret negotiations with him and both agreed to meet privately at the château de Saint-Cloud on 3 July 1790, where the royal family was allowed to spend the summer, free of the radical elements who watched their every move in Paris. At the meeting, Mirabeau was much impressed by the queen, and remarked in a letter to Auguste Marie Raymond d’Arenberg, Comte de la Marck, that she was the only person the king had by him: La Reine est le seul homme que le Roi ait auprès de Lui. An agreement was reached turning Mirabeau into one of her political allies: Marie Antoinette promised to pay him 6000 livres per month and one million if he succeeded in his mission to restore the king’s authority.
The only time the royal couple returned to Paris in that period was on 14 July to attend the Fête de la Fédération, an official ceremony held at the Champ de Mars in commemoration of the fall of the Bastille one year earlier. At least 300,000 persons participated from all over France, including 18,000 national guards, with Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, celebrating a mass at the autel de la Patrie (“altar of the fatherland”). The king was greeted at the event with loud cheers of “Long live the king!”, especially when he took the oath to protect the nation and to enforce the laws voted by the Constitutional Assembly. There were even cheers for the queen, particularly when she presented the Dauphin to the public.
Mirabeau sincerely wanted to reconcile the queen with the people, and she was happy to see him restoring much of the king’s powers, such as his authority over foreign policy, and the right to declare war. Over the objections of Lafayette and his allies, the king was given a suspensive veto allowing him to veto any laws for a period of four years. With time, Mirabeau would support the queen, even more, going as far as to suggest that Louis XVI “adjourn” to Rouen or Compiègne. This leverage with the Assembly ended with the death of Mirabeau in April 1791, despite the attempt of several moderate leaders of the Revolution to contact the queen to establish some basis of cooperation with her.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
In March 1791 Pope Pius VI had condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, reluctantly signed by Louis XVI, which reduced the number of bishops from 132 to 93, imposed the election of bishops and all members of the clergy by departmental or district assemblies of electors, and reduced the Pope’s authority over the Church. Religion played an important role in the life of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, both raised in the Roman Catholic faith. The queen’s political ideas and her belief in the absolute power of monarchs were based on France’s long-established tradition of the divine right of kings.[citation needed] On 18 April, as the royal family prepared to leave for Saint-Cloud to attend Easter mass celebrated by a refractory priest, a crowd, soon joined by the Garde Nationale (disobeying Lafayette’s orders), prevented their departure from Paris, prompting Marie Antoinette to declare to Lafayette that she and her family were no longer free. This incident fortified her in her determination to leave Paris for personal and political reasons, not alone, but with her family. Even the king, who had been hesitant, accepted his wife’s decision to flee with the help of foreign powers and counter-revolutionary forces. Fersen and Breteuil, who represented her in the courts of Europe, were put in charge of the escape plan, while Marie Antoinette continued her negotiations with some of the moderate leaders of the French Revolution.
Flight, arrest at Varennes and return to Paris (21–25 June 1791)
There had been several plots designed to help the royal family escape, which the queen had rejected because she would not leave without the king, or which had ceased to be viable because of the king’s indecision. Once Louis XVI finally did commit to a plan, its poor execution was the cause of its failure. In an elaborate attempt known as the Flight to Varennes to reach the royalist stronghold of Montmédy, some members of the royal family were to pose as the servants of an imaginary “Mme de Korff”, a wealthy Russian baroness, a role played by Louise-Élisabeth de Croÿ de Tourzel, governess of the royal children.
After many delays, the escape was ultimately attempted on 21 June 1791, but the entire family was arrested less than twenty-four hours later at Varennes and taken back to Paris within a week. The escape attempt destroyed much of the remaining support of the population for the king.
Upon learning of the capture of the royal family, the National Constituent Assembly sent three representatives, Antoine Barnave, Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve and Charles César de Fay de La Tour-Maubourg to Varennes to escort Marie Antoinette and her family back to Paris. On the way to the capital they were jeered and insulted by the people as never before. The prestige of the French monarchy had never been at such a low level. During the trip, Barnave, the representative of the moderate party in the Assembly, protected Marie Antoinette from the crowds, and even Pétion took pity on the royal family. Brought safely back to Paris, they were met with total silence by the crowd. Thanks to Barnave, the royal couple was not brought to trial and was publicly exonerated of any crime in relation with the attempted escape.
Marie Antoinette’s first Lady of the Bedchamber, Mme Campan, wrote about what happened to the queen’s hair on the night of 21–22 June, “…in a single night, it had turned white as that of a seventy-year old woman.” (En une seule nuit ils étaient devenus blancs comme ceux d’une femme de soixante-dix ans.)
Radicalization of the Revolution after Varennes (1791–92)
After their return from Varennes and until the storming of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792, the queen, her family and entourage were held under tight surveillance by the Garde Nationale in the Tuileries, where the royal couple was guarded night and day. Four guards accompanied the queen wherever she went, and her bedroom door had to be left open at night. Her health also began to deteriorate, thus further reducing her physical activities.
On 17 July 1791, with the support of Barnave and his friends, Lafayette’s Garde Nationale opened fire on the crowd that had assembled on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition demanding the deposition of the king. The estimated number of those killed varies between 12 and 50. Lafayette’s reputation never recovered from the event and, on 8 October, he resigned as commander of the Garde Nationale. Their enmity continuing, Marie Antoinette played a decisive role in defeating him in his aims to become the mayor of Paris in November 1791.
As her correspondence shows, while Barnave was taking great political risks in the belief that the queen was his political ally and had managed, despite her unpopularity, to secure a moderate majority ready to work with her, Marie Antoinette was not considered sincere in her cooperation with the moderate leaders of the French Revolution, which ultimately ended any chance to establish a moderate government. Moreover, the view that the unpopular queen was controlling the king further degraded the royal couple’s standing with the people, which the Jacobins successfully exploited after their return from Varennes to advance their radical agenda to abolish the monarchy. This situation lasted until the spring of 1792.
Marie Antoinette continued to hope that the military coalition of European kingdoms would succeed in crushing the Revolution. She counted most on the support of her Austrian family. After the death of her brother Joseph in 1790, his successor, Leopold, was willing to support her to a limited degree. Upon Leopold’s death in 1792, his son, Francis, a conservative ruler, was ready to support the cause of the French royal couple more vigorously because he feared the consequences of the French Revolution and its ideas for the monarchies of Europe, particularly, for Austria’s influence in the continent.
Barnave had advised the queen to call back Mercy, who had played such an important role in her life before the Revolution, but Mercy had been appointed to another foreign diplomatic position[where?] and could not return to France. At the end of 1791, ignoring the danger she faced, the Princesse de Lamballe, who was in London, returned to the Tuileries. As to Fersen, despite the strong restriction imposed on the queen, he was able to see her a final time in February 1792.
Leopold’s and Francis II’s strong action on behalf of Marie Antoinette led to France’s declaration of war on Austria on 20 April 1792. This resulted in the queen being viewed as an enemy, although she was personally against Austrian claims to French territories on European soil. That summer, the situation was compounded by multiple defeats of the French armies by the Austrians, in part because Marie Antoinette passed on military secrets to them. In addition, at the insistence of his wife, Louis XVI vetoed several measures that would have further restricted his power, earning the royal couple the nicknames “Monsieur Veto” and “Madame Veto”, nicknames then prominently featured in different contexts, including La Carmagnole.
Barnave remained the most important advisor and supporter of the queen, who was willing to work with him as long as he met her demands, which he did to a large extent. Barnave and the moderates comprised about 260 lawmakers in the new Legislative Assembly; the radicals numbered around 136, and the rest around 350. Initially, the majority was with Barnave, but the queen’s policies led to the radicalization of the Assembly and the moderates lost control of the legislative process. The moderate government collapsed in April 1792 to be replaced by a radical majority headed by the Girondins. The Assembly then passed a series of laws concerning the Church, the aristocracy, and the formation of new national guard units; all were vetoed by Louis XVI. While Barnave’s faction had dropped to 120 members, the new Girondin majority controlled the legislative assembly with 330 members. The two strongest members of that government were Jean Marie Roland, who was minister of interior, and General Dumouriez, the minister of foreign affairs. Dumouriez sympathized with the royal couple and wanted to save them but he was rebuffed by the queen.
Marie Antoinette’s actions in refusing to collaborate with the Girondins, in power between April and June 1792, led them to denounce the treason of the Austrian comity, a direct allusion to the queen. After Madame Roland sent a letter to the king denouncing the queen’s role in these matters, urged by the queen, Louis XVI disbanded the government, thus losing his majority in the Assembly. Dumouriez resigned and refused a post in any new government. At this point, the tide against royal authority intensified in the population and political parties, while Marie Antoinette encouraged the king to veto the new laws voted by the Legislative Assembly in 1792. In August 1791, the Declaration of Pillnitz threatened an invasion of France. This led in turn to a French declaration of war in April 1792, which led to the French Revolutionary Wars and to the events of August 1792, which ended the monarchy.
On 20 June 1792, “a mob of terrifying aspect” broke into the Tuileries, made the king wear the bonnet rouge (red Phrygian cap) to show his loyalty to the Republic, insulted Marie Antoinette, accusing her of betraying France, and threatened her life. In consequence, the queen asked Fersen to urge the foreign powers to carry out their plans to invade France and to issue a manifesto in which they threatened to destroy Paris if anything happened to the royal family. The Brunswick Manifesto, issued on 25 July 1792, triggered the events of 10 August when the approach of an armed mob on its way to the Tuileries Palace forced the royal family to seek refuge at the Legislative Assembly. Ninety minutes later, the palace was invaded by the mob, who massacred the Swiss Guards. On 13 August the royal family was imprisoned in the tower of the Temple in the Marais under conditions considerably harsher than those of their previous confinement in the Tuileries.
A week later, several of the royal family’s attendants, among them the Princesse de Lamballe, were taken for interrogation by the Paris Commune. Transferred to the La Force prison, after a rapid judgment, Marie Louise de Lamballe was savagely killed on 3 September. Her head was affixed on a pike and paraded through the city to the Temple for the queen to see. Marie Antoinette was prevented from seeing it, but fainted upon learning of it.
On 21 September 1792, the fall of the monarchy was officially declared and the National Convention became the governing body of the French Republic. The royal family name was downgraded to the non-royal “Capets”. Preparations began for the trial of the king in a court of law.
Louis XVI’s trial and execution
Charged with undermining the First French Republic, Louis XVI was separated from his family and tried in December. He was found guilty by the Convention, led by the Jacobins who rejected the idea of keeping him as a hostage. On 15 January 1793, by a majority of one vote, that of Philippe Égalité, he was condemned to death by guillotine and executed on 21 January 1793.
The queen, now called “Widow Capet”, plunged into deep mourning. She still hoped her son Louis-Charles, whom the exiled Comte de Provence, Louis XVI’s brother, had recognized as Louis XVI’s successor, would one day rule France. The royalists and the refractory clergy, including those preparing the insurrection in Vendée, supported Marie Antoinette and the return to the monarchy. Throughout her imprisonment and up to her execution, Marie Antoinette could count on the sympathy of conservative factions and social-religious groups which had turned against the Revolution, and also on wealthy individuals ready to bribe republican officials to facilitate her escape; These plots all failed. While imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, Marie Antoinette, her children, and Élisabeth were insulted, some of the guards going as far as blowing smoke in the ex-queen’s face. Strict security measures were taken to assure that Marie Antoinette was not able to communicate with the outside world. Despite these measures, several of her guards were open to bribery and a line of communication was kept with the outside world.
After Louis’ execution, Marie Antoinette’s fate became a central question of the National Convention. While some advocated her death, others proposed exchanging her for French prisoners of war or for a ransom from the Holy Roman Emperor. Thomas Paine advocated exile to America. In April 1793, during the Reign of Terror, a Committee of Public Safety dominated by Robespierre was formed, and men such as Jacques Hébert began to call for Marie-Antoinette’s trial. By the end of May, the Girondins had been chased from power. Calls were also made to “retrain” the eight-year-old Louis XVII, to make him pliant to revolutionary ideas. To carry this out, Louis Charles was separated from his mother on 3 July after a struggle during which his mother fought in vain to retain her son, who was handed over to Antoine Simon, a cobbler and representative of the Paris Commune. Until her removal from the Temple, Marie Antoinette spent hours trying to catch a glimpse of her son, who, within weeks, had been made to turn against her, accusing his mother of wrongdoing.
Conciergerie
On the night of 1 August, at 1:00 in the morning, Marie Antoinette was transferred from the Temple to an isolated cell in the Conciergerie as ‘Prisoner n° 280’. Leaving the tower she bumped her head against the lintel of a door, which prompted one of her guards to ask her if she was hurt, to which she answered, “No! Nothing now can hurt me.” This was the most difficult period of her captivity. She was under constant surveillance, with no privacy. The “Carnation Plot” (Le complot de l’œillet), an attempt to help her escape at the end of August, was foiled due to the inability to corrupt all the guards. She was attended by Rosalie Lamorlière, who took care of her as much as she could. At least once she received a visit by a Catholic priest.
Trial and execution (14–16 October 1793)
Marie Antoinette was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on 14 October 1793. Some historians believe the outcome of the trial had been decided in advance by the Committee of Public Safety around the time the Carnation Plot (fr) was uncovered. She and her lawyers were given less than one day to prepare her defense. Among the accusations, many previously published in the libelles, were: orchestrating orgies in Versailles, sending millions of livres of treasury money to Austria, planning the massacre of the gardes françaises (National Guards) in 1792, declaring her son to be the new king of France, and incest, a charge made by her son Louis Charles, pressured into doing so by the radical Jacques Hébert who controlled him. This last accusation drew an emotional response from Marie Antoinette, who refused to respond to this charge, instead of appealing to all mothers present in the room; their reaction comforted her since these women were not otherwise sympathetic to her.
Early on 16 October, Marie Antoinette was declared guilty of the three main charges against her: depletion of the national treasury, conspiracy against the internal and external security of the State, and high treason because of her intelligence activities in the interest of the enemy; the latter charge alone was enough to condemn her to death. At worst, she and her lawyers had expected life imprisonment. In the hours left to her, she composed a letter to her sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth, affirming her clear conscience, her Catholic faith, and her love and concern for her children. The letter did not reach Élisabeth. Her will was part of the collection of papers of Robespierre found under his bed and were published by Edme-Bonaventure Courtois.
Preparing for her execution, she had to change clothes in front of her guards. She put on a plain white dress, white being the color worn by widowed queens of France. Her hair was shorn, her hands bound painfully behind her back and she was put on a rope leash. Unlike her husband, who had been taken to his execution in a carriage (carrosse), she had to sit in an open cart (charrette) for the hour it took to convey her from the Conciergerie via the rue Saint-Honoré thoroughfare to reach the guillotine erected in the Place de la Révolution (the present-day Place de la Concorde). She maintained her composure, despite the insults of the jeering crowd. A constitutional priest was assigned to her to hear her final confession. He sat by her in the cart, but she ignored him all the way to the scaffold.
Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12:15 p.m. on 16 October 1793. Her last words are recorded as, “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès” or “Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose”, after accidentally stepping on her executioner’s shoe. Her head was one of which Marie Tussaud was employed to make death masks. Her body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the Madeleine cemetery located close by in rue d’Anjou. Because its capacity was exhausted the cemetery was closed the following year, on 25 March 1794.
Both Marie Antoinette’s and Louis XVI’s bodies were exhumed on 18 January 1815, during the Bourbon Restoration, when the Comte de Provence ascended the newly reestablished throne as Louis XVIII, King of France and of Navarre. Christian burial of the royal remains took place three days later, on 21 January, in the necropolis of French kings at the Basilica of St Denis.
Legacy
For many revolutionary figures, Marie Antoinette was the symbol of what was wrong with the old regime in France. The onus of having caused the financial difficulties of the nation was placed on her shoulders by the revolutionary tribunal, and under the new republican ideas of what it meant to be a member of a nation, her Austrian descent and continued correspondence with the competing nation made her a traitor. The people of France saw her death as a necessary step toward completing the revolution. Furthermore, her execution was seen as a sign that the revolution had done its work.
Marie-Antoinette is also known for her taste for fine things, and her commissions from famous craftsmen, such as Jean-Henri Riesener, suggest more about her enduring legacy as a woman of taste and patronage. For instance, a writing table attributed to Riesener, now located at Waddesdon Manor, bears witness to Marie-Antoinette’s desire to escape the oppressive formality of court life, when she decided to move the table from the Queen’s boudoir de la Meridienne at Versailles to her humble interior, the Petit Trianon. Her favorite objects filled her small, private chateau and reveal aspects of Marie-Antoinette’s character that have been obscured by satirical political prints, such as those in Les Tableaux de la Révolution.
Long after her death, Marie Antoinette remains a major historical figure linked with conservatism, the Catholic Church, wealth, and fashion. She has been the subject of a number of books, films, and other media. Politically engaged authors have deemed her the quintessential representative of class conflict, western aristocracy and absolutism. Some of her contemporaries, such as Thomas Jefferson, attributed to her the start of the French Revolution.
In popular culture
The phrase “Let them eat cake” is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but there is no evidence that she ever uttered it, and it is now generally regarded as a journalistic cliché. This phrase originally appeared in Book VI of the first part of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s autobiographical work Les Confessions, finished in 1767 and published in 1782: “Enfin Je me rappelai le pis-aller d’une grande Princesse à qui l’on disait que les paysans n’avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit: Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (“Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: ‘Let them eat brioche'”). Rousseau ascribes these words to a “great princess”, but the purported writing date precedes Marie Antoinette’s arrival in France. Some think that he invented it altogether.
In the United States, expressions of gratitude to France for its help in the American Revolution included naming a city Marietta, Ohio in 1788. Her life has been the subject of many films, such as the 2006 film Marie Antoinette.
Children
Children of Marie Antoinette
In addition to her biological children, Marie Antoinette adopted four children: “Armand” Francois-Michel Gagné (c. 1771–1792), a poor orphan adopted in 1776; Jean Amilcar (c. 1781–1793), a Senegalese slave boy given to the queen as a present by Chevalier de Boufflers in 1787, but whom she instead had freed, baptized, adopted and placed in a pension; Ernestine Lambriquet (1778–1813), daughter of two servants at the palace, who was raised as the playmate of her daughter and whom she adopted after the death of her mother in 1788; and finally “Zoe” Jeanne Louise Victoire (born in 1787), who was adopted in 1790 along with her two older sisters when her parents, an usher and his wife in service of the king, had died. Of these, only Armand, Ernestine, and Zoe actually lived with the royal family: Jean Amilcar, along with the elder siblings of Zoe and Armand who were also formally foster children of the royal couple, simply lived at the queen’s expense until her imprisonment, which proved fatal for at least Amilcar, as he was evicted from the boarding school when the fee was no longer paid, and reportedly starved to death on the street. Armand and Zoe had a position which was more similar to that of Ernestine; Armand lived at court with the king and queen until he left them at the outbreak of the revolution because of his republican sympathies, and Zoe was chosen to be the playmate of the Dauphin, just as Ernestine had once been selected as the playmate of Marie-Therese, and sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes in 1791.

Marie Antoinette (Part I)

Marie Antoinette (/ˌæntwəˈnɛt, ˌɒ̃t-/, French: [maʁi ɑ̃twanɛt]; born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.
Marie Antoinette’s position at court improved when, after eight years of marriage, she started having children. She became increasingly unpopular among the people, however, with the French libelles accusing her of being profligate, promiscuous, harboring sympathies for France’s perceived enemies—particularly her native Austria—and her children of being illegitimate. The false accusations of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her reputation further. During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker.
Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789. June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition had disastrous effects on French popular opinion. On 10 August 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on 13 August. On 21 September 1792, the monarchy was abolished. Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793. Marie Antoinette’s trial began on 14 October 1793, and two days later she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution.
Early life (1755–70)
Maria Antonia was born on 2 November 1755 at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. She was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg Empire, and her husband Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. Her godparents were Joseph I and Mariana Victoria, King and Queen of Portugal; Archduke Joseph and Archduchess Maria Anna acted as proxies for their newborn sister. Maria Antonia was born on All Souls Day, a Catholic day of mourning, and during her childhood her birthday was instead celebrated the day before, on All Saint’s Day, due to the connotations of the date. Shortly after her birth she was placed under the care of the governess of the imperial children, Countess von Brandeis. Maria Antonia was raised together with her sister, Maria Carolina, who was three years older, and with whom she had a lifelong close relationship. Maria Antonia had a difficult but ultimately loving relationship with her mother, who referred to her as “the little Madame Antoine”.
Maria Antonia spent her formative years between the Hofburg Palace and Schönbrunn, the imperial summer residence in Vienna, where on 13 October 1762, when she was seven, she met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two months her junior and a child prodigy. Despite the private tutoring she received, the results of her schooling were less than satisfactory. At the age of 10 she could not write correctly in German or in any language commonly used at court, such as French or Italian, and conversations with her were stilted.
Under the teaching of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Maria Antonia developed into a good musician. She learned to play the harp, the harpsichord and the flute. She sang during the family’s evening gatherings, as she had a beautiful voice. She also excelled at dancing, had “exquisite” poise, and loved dolls.
Dauphine of France (1770–74)
Following the Seven Years’ War and the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, Empress Maria Theresa decided to end hostilities with her longtime enemy, King Louis XV of France. Their common desire to destroy the ambitions of Prussia and Great Britain and to secure a definitive peace between their respective countries led them to seal their alliance with a marriage: on 7 February 1770, Louis XV formally requested the hand of Maria Antonia for his eldest surviving grandson and heir, Louis-Auguste, duc de Berry and Dauphin of France.
Maria Antonia formally renounced her rights to Habsburg domains, and on 19 April she was married by proxy to the Dauphin of France at the Augustinian Church in Vienna, with her brother Archduke Ferdinand standing in for the Dauphin. On 14 May she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compiègne. Upon her arrival in France, she adopted the French version of her name: Marie Antoinette. A further ceremonial wedding took place on 16 May 1770 in the Palace of Versailles and, after the festivities, the day ended with the ritual bedding. The couple’s longtime failure to consummate the marriage plagued the reputations of both Louis-Auguste and Marie Antoinette for the next seven years.
The initial reaction to the marriage between Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste was mixed. On the one hand, the Dauphine was beautiful, personable, and well-liked by the common people. Her first official appearance in Paris on 8 June 1773 was a resounding success. On the other hand, those opposed to the alliance with Austria had a difficult relationship with Marie Antoinette, as did others who disliked her for more personal or petty reasons.
Madame du Barry proved a troublesome foe to the new dauphine. She was Louis XV’s mistress and had considerable political influence over him. In 1770 she was instrumental in ousting Étienne François, Duc de Choiseul, who had helped orchestrate the Franco-Austrian alliance and Marie Antoinette’s marriage, and in exiling his sister, the duchess de Gramont, one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting. Marie Antoinette was persuaded by her husband’s aunts to refuse to acknowledge du Barry, which some saw as a political blunder that jeopardized Austria’s interests at the French court. Marie Antoinette’s mother and the Austrian ambassador to France, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, who sent the Empress secret reports on Marie Antoinette’s behavior, pressured Marie Antoinette to speak to Madame du Barry, which she grudgingly agreed to do on New Year’s Day 1772. She merely commented to her, “There are a lot of people at Versailles today”, but it was enough for Madame du Barry, who was satisfied with this recognition, and the crisis passed. Two days after the death of Louis XV in 1774, Louis XVI exiled du Barry to the Abbaye de Pont-aux-Dames in Meaux, pleasing both his wife and aunts. Two and a half years later, at the end of October 1776, Madame du Barry’s exile ended and she was allowed to return to her beloved château at Louveciennes, but she was never permitted to return to Versailles.
Queen of France and Navarre (1774–91)
Early years (1774–78)
Upon the death of Louis XV on 10 May 1774, the Dauphin ascended the throne as King Louis XVI of France and Navarre with Marie Antoinette as his Queen. At the outset, the new queen had limited political influence with her husband, who, with the support of his two most important ministers, Chief Minister Maurepas and Foreign Minister Vergennes, blocked several of her candidates from assuming important positions, including Choiseul. The queen did play a decisive role in the disgrace and exile of the most powerful of Louis XV’s ministers, the duc d’Aiguillon.
On 24 May 1774, two weeks after the death of Louis XV, the king gifted his wife the Petit Trianon, a small château on the grounds of Versailles that had been built by Louis XV for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Louis XVI allowed Marie Antoinette to renovate it to suit her own tastes; soon rumors circulated that she had plastered the walls with gold and diamonds.
The queen spent heavily on fashion, luxuries, and gambling, though the country was facing a grave financial crisis and the population was suffering. Rose Bertin created dresses for her, and hairstyles such as poufs, up to three feet (90 cm) high, and the panache (a spray of feather plumes). She and her court also adopted the English fashion of dresses made of indienne (a material banned in France from 1686 until 1759 to protect local French woolen and silk industries), percale and muslin. By the time of the Flour War of 1775, a series of riots (due to the high price of flour and bread) had damaged her reputation among the general public. Eventually, Marie Antoinette’s reputation was no better than that of the favorites of previous kings. Many French people were beginning to blame her for the degrading economic situation, suggesting the country’s inability to pay off its debt was the result of her wasting the crown’s money. In her correspondence, Marie Antoinette’s mother, Maria Theresa, expressed concern over her daughter’s spending habits, citing the civil unrest it was beginning to cause.
As early as 1774, Marie Antoinette had begun to befriend some of her male admirers, such as the baron de Besenval, the duc de Coigny, and Count Valentin Esterházy, and also formed deep friendships with various ladies at court. Most noted was Marie-Louise, Princesse de Lamballe, related to the royal family through her marriage into the Penthièvre family. On 19 September 1774 she appointed her superintendent of her household, an appointment she soon transferred to her new favorite, the duchesse de Polignac.
In 1774, she took under her patronage her former music teacher, the German opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, who remained in France until 1779.
Motherhood, changes at court, intervention in politics (1778–81)
Amidst the atmosphere of a wave of libelles, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II came to France incognito, using the name Comte de Falkenstein, for a six-week visit during which he toured Paris extensively and was a guest at Versailles. He met his sister and her husband on 18 April 1777 at the château de la Muette, and spoke frankly to his brother-in-law, curious as to why the royal marriage had not been consummated, arriving at the conclusion that no obstacle to the couple’s conjugal relations existed save the queen’s lack of interest and the king’s unwillingness to exert himself. In a letter to his brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Joseph II described them as “a couple of complete blunderers.” He disclosed to Leopold that the inexperienced—then still only 22-year-old—Louis XVI had confided in him the course of action he had been undertaking in their marital bed; saying Louis XVI “introduces the member,” but then “stays there without moving for about two minutes,” withdraws without having completed the act and “bids goodnight.”
Suggestions that Louis suffered from phimosis, which was relieved by circumcision, have been discredited. Nevertheless, following Joseph’s intervention, the marriage was finally consummated in August 1777. Eight months later, in April 1778, it was suspected that the queen was pregnant, which was officially announced on 16 May. Marie Antoinette’s daughter, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, Madame Royale, was born at Versailles on 19 December 1778. The child’s paternity was contested in the libelles, as were all her children’s.
In the middle of the queen’s pregnancy two events occurred which had a profound impact on her later life: the return of her friend, the Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen to Versailles for two years, and her brother’s claim to the throne of Bavaria, contested by the Habsburg monarchy and Prussia. Marie Antoinette pleaded with her husband for the French to intercede on behalf of Austria. The Peace of Teschen, signed on 13 May 1779, ended the brief conflict, with the queen imposing French mediation at her mother’s insistence and Austria’s gaining a territory of at least 100,000 inhabitants—a strong retreat from the early French position which was hostile towards Austria. This gave the impression, partially justified, that the queen had sided with Austria against France.
Marie Antoinette en chemise, portrait of the queen in a “muslin” dress (by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783). This controversial portrait was considered by her critics to show improperly informal attire for a queen, whereas a similar portrait in formal dress did not create controversy.
Meanwhile, the queen began to institute changes in court customs. Some of them met with the disapproval of the older generation, such as the abandonment of heavy make-up and the popular wide-hooped panniers. The new fashion called for a simpler feminine look, typified first by the rustic robe à la polonaise style and later by the gaulle, a layered muslin dress Marie Antoinette wore in a 1783 Vigée-Le Brun portrait. In 1780 she began to participate in amateur plays and musicals in a theatre built for her by Richard Mique at the Petit Trianon.
Repayment of the French debt remained a difficult problem, further exacerbated by Vergennes and also by Marie Antoinette’s prodding[citation needed] Louis XVI to involve France in Great Britain’s war with its North American colonies. The primary motive for the queen’s involvement in political affairs in this period may arguably have more to do with court factionalism than any true interest on her part in politics themselves, but she played an important role in aiding the American Revolution by securing Austrian and Russian support for France, which resulted in the establishment of a neutral league that stopped Great Britain’s attack, and by weighing indecisively for the nomination of Philippe Henri, marquis de Ségur as Minister of War and Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix, marquis de Castries as Secretary of the Navy in 1780, who helped George Washington to defeat the British in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783.
In 1783, the queen played a decisive role in the nomination of Charles Alexandre de Calonne, a close friend of the Polignacs, as Controller-General of Finances, and of the baron de Breteuil as the Minister of the Royal Household, making him perhaps the strongest and most conservative minister of the reign. The result of these two nominations was that Marie Antoinette’s influence became paramount in government, and the new ministers rejected any major change to the structure of the old regime. More than that, the decree by de Ségur, the minister of war, requiring four quarterings of nobility as a condition for the appointment of officers, blocked the access of commoners to important positions in the armed forces, challenging the concept of equality, one of the main grievances and causes of the French Revolution.
Marie Antoinette’s second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage early in July 1779, as confirmed by letters between the queen and her mother, although some historians believed that she may have experienced bleeding related to an irregular menstrual cycle, which she mistook for a lost pregnancy. Her third pregnancy was affirmed in March 1781, and on 22 October she gave birth to Louis Joseph Xavier François, Dauphin of France.
Empress Maria Theresa died on 29 November 1780 in Vienna. Marie Antoinette feared that the death of her mother would jeopardize the Franco-Austrian alliance (as well as, ultimately, herself), but her brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, wrote to her that he had no intention of breaking the alliance.
A second visit from Joseph II, which took place in July 1781 to reaffirm the Franco-Austrian alliance and also to see his sister, was tainted by false rumors that Marie Antoinette was sending money to him from the French treasury.
Declining popularity (1782–85)
Despite the general celebration over the birth of the Dauphin, Marie Antoinette’s political influence, such as it was, did greatly benefit Austria. During the Kettle War, in which her brother Joseph attempted to open the Scheldt River for naval passage, Marie Antoinette succeeded in obliging Vergennes to pay huge financial compensation to Austria. Finally, the queen was able to obtain her brother’s support against Great Britain in the American Revolution and she neutralized French hostility to his alliance with Russia.
In 1782, after the governess of the royal children, the princesse de Guéméné, went bankrupt and resigned, Marie Antoinette appointed her favorite, the duchesse de Polignac, to the position. This decision met with disapproval from the court as the duchess was considered to be of too modest a birth to occupy such an exalted position. On the other hand, both the king and the queen trusted Mme de Polignac completely, gave her a thirteen-room apartment in Versailles and paid her well. The entire Polignac family benefited greatly from royal favor in titles and positions, but its sudden wealth and lavish lifestyle outraged most aristocratic families, who resented the Polignacs’ dominance at court, and also fueled the increasing popular disapproval of Marie Antoinette, mostly in Paris. De Mercy wrote to the Empress: “It is almost unexampled that in so short a time, the royal favor should have brought such overwhelming advantages to a family”.
In June 1783, Marie Antoinette’s new pregnancy was announced, but on the night of 1–2 November, her 28th birthday, she suffered a miscarriage.
Count Axel von Fersen, after his return from America in June 1783, was accepted into the queen’s private society. There were and still claim that the two were romantically involved, but since most of their correspondence has been lost or destroyed, there is no conclusive evidence. In 2016, the Telegraph’s Henry Samuel announced that researchers at France’s Research Centre for the Conservation of Collections (CRCC), “using cutting-edge x-ray and different infrared scanners,” had deciphered a letter from her that proved the affair.
Around this time, pamphlets describing farcical sexual deviance including the Queen and her friends in the court were growing in popularity around the country. The Portefeuille d’un talon rouge was one of the earliest, including the Queen and a variety of other nobles in a political statement decrying the immoral practices of the court. As time went on, these came to focus more and more on the Queen. They described amorous encounters with a wide range of figures, from the Duchess de Polignac to Louis XV. As these attacks increased, they were connected with the public’s dislike of her association with the rival nation of Austria. It was publicly suggested that her supposed behavior was learned at the court of the rival nation, particularly lesbianism, which was known as the “German vice”. Her mother again expressed concern for the safety of her daughter, and she began to use Austria’s ambassador to France, comte de Mercy, to provide information on Marie Antoinette’s safety and movements.
In 1783, the queen was busy with the creation of her “hamlet”, a rustic retreat built by her favored architect, Richard Mique, according to the designs of the painter Hubert Robert. Its creation, however, caused another uproar when its cost became widely known. However, the hamlet was not an eccentricity of Marie Antoinette’s. It was en vogue at the time for nobles to have recreations of small villages on their properties. In fact, the design was copied from that of the prince de Condé. It was also significantly smaller and less intricate than many other nobles’. Around this time she accumulated a library of 5000 books. Those on music, often dedicated to her, were the most read, though she also liked to read history. She sponsored the arts, in particular music, and also supported some scientific endeavors, encouraging and witnessing the first launch of a Montgolfière, a hot air balloon.
On 27 April 1784, Beaumarchais’s play The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Paris. Initially banned by the king due to its negative portrayal of the nobility, the play was finally allowed to be publicly performed because of the queen’s support and its overwhelming popularity at court, where secret readings of it had been given by Marie Antoinette. The play was a disaster for the image of the monarchy and aristocracy. It inspired Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, which premiered in Vienna on 1 May 1786.
On 24 October 1784, putting the baron de Breteuil in charge of its acquisition, Louis XVI bought the Château de Saint-Cloud from the duc d’Orléans in the name of his wife, which she wanted due to their expanding family. She wanted to be able to own her own property. One that was actually hers, to then have the authority to bequeath it to “whichever of my children I wish”; choosing the child she thought could use it rather than it going through patriarchal inheritance laws or whims. It was proposed that the cost could be covered by other sales, such as that of the château Trompette in Bordeaux. This was unpopular, particularly with those factions of the nobility who disliked the queen, but also with a growing percentage of the population, who disapproved of a Queen of France independently owning a private residence. The purchase of Saint-Cloud thus damaged the public’s image of the queen even further. The château’s high price, almost 6 million livres, plus the substantial extra cost of redecorating, ensured that much less money was going towards repaying France’s substantial debt.
On 27 March 1785, Marie Antoinette gave birth to a second son, Louis Charles, who bore the title of duc de Normandie. The fact that the birth occurred exactly nine months after Fersen’s return did not escape the attention of many, leading to doubt as to the parentage of the child and to a noticeable decline of the queen’s reputation in public opinion. The majority of Marie Antoinette’s and Louis XVII’s biographers believe that the young prince was the biological son of Louis XVI, including Stefan Zweig and Antonia Fraser, who believe that Fersen and Marie Antoinette were indeed romantically involved. Fraser has also noted that the birthdate matches up perfectly with a known conjugal visit from the King. Courtiers at Versailles noted in their diaries that the date of the child’s conception in fact corresponded perfectly with a period when the king and the queen had spent much time together, but these details were ignored amid attacks on the queen’s character. These suspicions of illegitimacy, along with the continued publication of the libelles and never-ending cavalcades of court intrigues, the actions of Joseph II in the Kettle War, the purchase of Saint-Cloud, and the Affair of the Diamond Necklace combined to turn popular opinion sharply against the queen, and the image of a licentious, spendthrift, empty-headed foreign queen was quickly taking root in the French psyche.
A second daughter, her last child, Marie Sophie Hélène Béatrix, Madame Sophie, was born on 9 July 1786 and lived only eleven months until 19 June 1787.
Marie Antoinette’s four live-born children were:
Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, Madame Royale (19 December 1778 – 19 October 1851)
Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, Dauphin (22 October 1781 – 4 June 1789)
Louis-Charles, Dauphin after the death of his elder brother, future titular king Louis XVII of France (27 March 1785 – 8 June 1795)
Sophie-Hélène-Béatrix, died in infancy (9 July 1786 – 19 June 1787)
Prelude to the Revolution: scandals and the failure of reforms (1786–89)
Diamond necklace scandal
Marie Antoinette began to abandon her more carefree activities to become increasingly involved in politics in her role as Queen of France. By publicly showing her attention to the education and care of her children, the queen sought to improve the dissolute image she had acquired in 1785 from the “Diamond Necklace Affair”, in which public opinion had falsely accused her of criminal participation in defrauding the jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge of the price of an expensive diamond necklace they had originally created for Madame du Barry. The main actors in the scandal were Cardinal de Rohan, prince de Rohan-Guéméné, Great Almoner of France, and Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, Comtesse de La Motte, a descendant of an illegitimate child of Henry II of France of the House of Valois. Marie Antoinette had profoundly disliked Rohan since the time he had been the French ambassador to Vienna when she was a child. Despite his high clerical position at the Court, she never addressed a word to him. Others involved were Nicole Lequay, alias Baronne d’Oliva, a prostitute who happened to look like Marie Antoinette; Rétaux de Villette, a forger; Alessandro Cagliostro, an Italian adventurer; and the Comte de La Motte, Jeanne de Valois’ husband. Mme de La Motte tricked Rohan into buying the necklace as a gift to Marie Antoinette, for him to gain the queen’s favor.
When the affair was discovered, those involved (except de La Motte and Rétaux de Villette, who both managed to flee) were arrested, tried, convicted, and either imprisoned or exiled. Mme de La Motte was sentenced for life to confinement in the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, which also served as a prison for women. Judged by the Parlement, Rohan was found innocent of any wrongdoing and allowed to leave the Bastille. Marie Antoinette, who had insisted on the arrest of the Cardinal, was dealt a heavy personal blow, as was the monarchy, and despite the fact that the guilty parties were tried and convicted, the affair proved to be extremely damaging to her reputation, which never recovered from it.
Failure of political and financial reforms
Suffering from an acute case of depression, the king began to seek the advice of his wife. In her new role and with increasing political power, the queen tried to improve the awkward situation brewing between the assembly and the king. This change of the queen’s position signaled the end of the Polignacs’ influence and their impact on the finances of the Crown.
Continuing deterioration of the financial situation despite cutbacks to the royal retinue and court expenses ultimately forced the king, the queen and the Minister of Finance, Calonne, at the urging of Vergennes, to call a session of the Assembly of Notables, after a hiatus of 160 years. The assembly was held for the purpose of initiating necessary financial reforms, but the Parlement refused to cooperate. The first meeting took place on 22 February 1787, nine days after the death of Vergennes on 13 February. Marie Antoinette did not attend the meeting and her absence resulted in accusations that the queen was trying to undermine its purpose. The Assembly was a failure. It did not pass any reforms and, instead, fell into a pattern of defying the king. On the urging of the queen, Louis XVI dismissed Calonne on 8 April 1787.
On 1 May 1787, Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse and one of the queen’s political allies, was appointed by the king at her urging to replace Calonne, first as Controller-General of Finances and then as Prime Minister. He began to institute more cutbacks at court while trying to restore the royal absolute power weakened by parliament. Brienne was unable to improve the financial situation, and since he was the queen’s ally, this failure adversely affected her political position. The continued poor financial climate of the country resulted in the 25 May dissolution of the Assembly of Notables because of its inability to function, and the lack of solutions was blamed on the queen.
France’s financial problems were the result of a combination of factors: several expensive wars; a large royal family whose expenditures were paid for by the state; and an unwillingness on the part of most members of the privileged classes, aristocracy, and clergy, to help defray the costs of the government out of their own pockets by relinquishing some of their financial privileges. As a result of the public perception that she had single-handedly ruined the national finances, Marie Antoinette was given the nickname of “Madame Déficit” in the summer of 1787. While the sole fault for the financial crisis did not lie with her, Marie Antoinette was the biggest obstacle to any major reform effort. She had played a decisive role in the disgrace of the reformer ministers of finance, Turgot (in 1776), and Jacques Necker (first dismissal in 1781). If the secret expenses of the queen were taken into account, court expenses were much higher than the official estimate of 7% of the state budget.
The queen attempted to fight back with propaganda portraying her as a caring mother, most notably in the painting by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun exhibited at the Royal Académie Salon de Paris in August 1787, showing her with her children. Around the same time, Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy escaped from prison and fled to London, where she published damaging slander concerning her supposed amorous affair with the queen.
The political situation in 1787 worsened when, at Marie Antoinette’s urging, the Parlement was exiled to Troyes on 15 August. It further deteriorated when Louis XVI tried to use a lit de justice on 11 November to impose legislation. The new Duc d’Orléans publicly protested the king’s actions, and was subsequently exiled to his estate at Villers-Cotterêts. The May Edicts issued on 8 May 1788 were also opposed by the public and parliament. Finally, on 8 August, Louis XVI announced his intention to bring back the Estates General, the traditional elected legislature of the country, which had not been convened since 1614.
While from late 1787 up to his death in June 1789, Marie Antoinette’s primary concern was the continued deterioration of the health of the Dauphin, who suffered from tuberculosis, she was directly involved in the exile of the Parlement, the May Edicts, and the announcement regarding the Estates-General. She did participate in the King Council, the first queen to do this in over 175 years (since Marie de’ Medici had been named Chef du Conseil du Roi, between 1614 and 1617), and she was making the major decisions behind the scene and in the Royal Council.
Marie Antoinette was instrumental in the reinstatement of Jacques Necker as Finance Minister on 26 August, a popular move, even though she herself was worried that it would go against her if Necker proved unsuccessful in reforming the country’s finances. She accepted Necker’s proposition to double the representation of the Third Estate (tiers état) in an attempt to check the power of the aristocracy.
On the eve of the opening of the Estates-General, the queen attended the mass celebrating its return. As soon as it opened on 5 May 1789, the fracture between the democratic Third Estate (consisting of bourgeois and radical aristocrats) and the conservative nobility of the Second Estate widened, and Marie Antoinette knew that her rival, the Duc d’Orléans, who had given money and bread to the people during the winter, would be acclaimed by the crowd, much to her detriment.
The death of the Dauphin on 4 June, which deeply affected his parents, was virtually ignored by the French people, who were instead preparing for the next meeting of the Estates-General and hoping for a resolution to the bread crisis. As the Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly and took the Tennis Court Oath, and as people either spread or believed rumors that the queen wished to bathe in their blood, Marie Antoinette went into mourning for her eldest son. Her role was decisive in urging the king to remain firm and not concede to popular demands for reforms. In addition, she showed her determination to use force to crush the forthcoming revolution.

U.S. President #19: Rutherford B. Hayes (Part II)

Presidency (1877–1881)
Inauguration
Because March 4, 1877, was a Sunday, Hayes took the oath of office privately on Saturday, March 3, in the Red Room of the White House, the first president to do so in the Executive Mansion. He took the oath publicly on March 5 on the East Portico of the United States Capitol. In his inaugural address, Hayes attempted to soothe the passions of the past few months, saying that “he serves his party best who serves his country best”. He pledged to support “wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government” in the South, as well as reform of the civil service and a full return to the gold standard. Despite his message of conciliation, many Democrats never considered Hayes’s election legitimate and referred to him as “Rutherfraud” or “His Fraudulency” for the next four years.
The South and the end of Reconstruction
Hayes had firmly supported Republican Reconstruction policies throughout his career, but the first major act of his presidency was an end to Reconstruction and the return of the South to “home rule”. Even without the conditions of the Wormley’s Hotel agreement, Hayes would have been hard-pressed to continue his predecessors’ policies. The House of Representatives in the 45th Congress was controlled by a majority of Democrats, and they refused to appropriate enough funds for the army to continue to garrison the South. Even among Republicans, devotion to continued military Reconstruction was fading in the face of persistent Southern insurgency and violence. Only two states were still under Reconstruction’s sway when Hayes assumed the presidency and, without troops to enforce the voting rights laws, these soon fell to Democratic control.
Hayes’s later attempts to protect the rights of southern blacks were ineffective, as were his attempts to rebuild Republican strength in the South. He did, however, defeat Congress’s efforts to curtail federal power to monitor federal elections. Democrats in Congress passed an army appropriation bill in 1879 with a rider that repealed the Enforcement Acts, which had been used to suppress the Ku Klux Klan. Chapters had flourished across the South and it had been one of the insurgent groups that attacked and suppressed freedmen. Those Acts, passed during Reconstruction, made it a crime to prevent someone from voting because of his race. Other paramilitary groups, such as the Red Shirts in the Carolinas, however, had intimidated freedmen and suppressed the vote. Hayes was determined to preserve the law protecting black voters, and vetoed the appropriation.
The Democrats did not have enough votes to override the veto, but they passed a new bill with the same rider. Hayes vetoed that bill too, and the process was repeated three times more. Finally, Hayes signed an appropriation without the offensive rider, but Congress refused to pass another bill to fund federal marshals, who were vital to the enforcement of the Enforcement Acts. The election laws remained in effect, but the funds to enforce them were curtailed for the time being.
Hayes tried to reconcile the social mores of the South with the recently passed civil rights laws by distributing patronage among southern Democrats. “My task was to wipe out the color line, to abolish sectionalism, to end the war and bring peace,” he wrote in his diary. “To do this, I was ready to resort to unusual measures and to risk my own standing and reputation within my party and the country.” All his efforts were in vain; Hayes failed to persuade the South to accept legal racial equality or to convince Congress to appropriate funds to enforce the civil rights laws.
Civil service reform
Hayes took office determined to reform the system of civil service appointments, which had been based on the spoils system since Andrew Jackson’s presidency. Instead of giving federal jobs to political supporters, Hayes wished to award them by merit according to an examination that all applicants would take. Hayes’s call for reform immediately brought him into conflict with the Stalwart, or pro-spoils, branch of the Republican party. Senators of both parties were accustomed to being consulted about political appointments and turned against Hayes. Foremost among his enemies was New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, who fought Hayes’s reform efforts at every turn.
To show his commitment to reform, Hayes appointed one of the best-known advocates of reform, Carl Schurz, to be Secretary of the Interior and asked Schurz and Secretary of State William M. Evarts to lead a special cabinet committee charged with drawing up new rules for federal appointments. Treasury Secretary John Sherman ordered John Jay to investigate the New York Custom House, which was stacked with Conkling’s spoilsmen. Jay’s report suggested that the New York Custom House was so overstaffed with political appointees that 20% of the employees were expendable.
Although he could not convince Congress to prohibit the spoils system, Hayes issued an executive order that forbade federal office holders from being required to make campaign contributions or otherwise taking part in party politics. Chester A. Arthur, the Collector of the Port of New York, and his subordinates Alonzo B. Cornell and George H. Sharpe, all Conkling supporters, refused to obey the order. In September 1877, Hayes demanded the their resignations, which they refused to give. He submitted appointments of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., L. Bradford Prince, and Edwin Merritt—all supporters of Evarts, Conkling’s New York rival—to the Senate for confirmation as their replacements. The Senate’s Commerce Committee, chaired by Conkling, voted unanimously to reject the nominees. The full Senate rejected Roosevelt and Prince by a vote of 31–25, and confirmed Merritt only because Sharpe’s term had expired.
Hayes was forced to wait until July 1878, when he fired Arthur and Cornell during a Congressional recess and replaced them with recess appointments of Merritt and Silas W. Burt, respectively. Conkling opposed confirmation of the appointees when the Senate reconvened in February 1879, but Merritt was approved by a vote of 31–25 and Burt by 31–19, giving Hayes his most significant civil service reform victory.
For the remainder of his term, Hayes pressed Congress to enact permanent reform legislation and fund the United States Civil Service Commission, even using his last annual message to Congress in 1880 to appeal for reform. Reform legislation did not pass during Hayes’s presidency, but his advocacy provided “a significant precedent as well as the political impetus for the Pendleton Act of 1883,” which was signed into law by President Chester Arthur. Hayes allowed some exceptions to the ban on assessments, permitting George Congdon Gorham, secretary of the Republican Congressional Committee, to solicit campaign contributions from federal officeholders during the Congressional elections of 1878. In 1880, Hayes quickly forced Secretary of Navy Richard W. Thompson to resign after Thompson accepted a $25,000 salary for a nominal job offered by French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps to promote a French canal in Panama.
Hayes also dealt with corruption in the postal service. In 1880, Schurz and Senator John A. Logan asked Hayes to shut down the “star route” rings, a system of corrupt contract profiteering in the Postal Service, and to fire Second Assistant Postmaster-General Thomas J. Brady, the alleged ringleader. Hayes stopped granting new star route contracts but let existing contracts continue to be enforced. Democrats accused him of delaying proper investigation so as not to damage Republicans’ chances in the 1880 elections but did not press the issue in their campaign literature, as members of both parties were implicated in the corruption. Historian Hans L. Trefousse later wrote that Hayes “hardly knew the chief suspect [Brady] and certainly had no connection with the [star route] corruption.” Although Hayes and the Congress both investigated the contracts and found no compelling evidence of wrongdoing, Brady and others were indicted for conspiracy in 1882. After two trials, the defendants were acquitted in 1883.
Great Railroad Strike
In his first year in office, Hayes was faced with the United States’ largest labor uprising to date, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. To make up for financial losses suffered since the panic of 1873, the major railroads had cut their employees’ wages several times in 1877. In July of that year, workers at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad walked off the job in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to protest their reduction in pay. The strike quickly spread to workers of the New York Central, Erie, and Pennsylvania railroads, with the strikers soon numbering in the thousands. Fearing a riot, Governor Henry M. Mathews asked Hayes to send federal troops to Martinsburg, and Hayes did so, but when the troops arrived there was no riot, only a peaceful protest. In Baltimore, however, a riot did erupt on July 20, and Hayes ordered the troops at Fort McHenry to assist the governor in suppressing it.
Pittsburgh exploded into riots next, but Hayes was reluctant to send in troops without the governor’s request. Other discontented citizens joined the railroad workers in rioting. After a few days, Hayes resolved to send in troops to protect federal property wherever it appeared to be threatened and gave Major General Winfield Scott Hancock overall command of the situation, marking the first use of federal troops to break a strike against a private company. The riots spread further, to Chicago and St. Louis, where strikers shut down railroad facilities.
By July 29, the riots had ended and federal troops returned to their barracks. No federal troops had killed any of the strikers, or been killed themselves, but clashes between state militia troops and strikers resulted in deaths on both sides. The railroads were victorious in the short term, as the workers returned to their jobs and some wage cuts remained in effect. But the public blamed the railroads for the strikes and violence, and they were compelled to improve working conditions and make no further cuts. Business leaders praised Hayes, but his own opinion was more equivocal; as he recorded in his diary:
“The strikes have been put down by force; but now for the real remedy. Can’t something [be] done by education of strikers, by judicious control of capitalists, by wise general policy to end or diminish the evil? The railroad strikers, as a rule, are good men, sober, intelligent, and industrious.”
Currency debate
Hayes confronted two issues regarding the currency, the first of which was the coinage of silver, and its relation to gold. In 1873, the Coinage Act of 1873 stopped the coinage of silver for all coins worth a dollar or more, effectively tying the dollar to the value of gold. As a result, the money supply contracted and the effects of the Panic of 1873 grew worse, making it more expensive for debtors to pay debts they had contracted when currency was less valuable. Farmers and laborers, especially, clamored for the return of coinage in both metals, believing the increased money supply would restore wages and property values. Democratic Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri proposed a bill to require the United States to coin as much silver as miners could sell the government, thus increasing the money supply and aiding debtors. William B. Allison, a Republican from Iowa, offered an amendment in the Senate limiting the coinage to two to four million dollars per month, and the resulting Bland–Allison Act passed both houses of Congress in 1878. Hayes feared the Act would cause inflation that would be ruinous to business, effectively impairing contracts that were based on the gold dollar, as the silver dollar proposed in the bill would have an intrinsic value of 90 to 92 percent of the existing gold dollar. He also believed that inflating the currency was dishonest, saying, “[e]xpediency and justice both demand an honest currency.” He vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode his veto, the only time it did so during his presidency.
The second issue concerned United States Notes (commonly called greenbacks), a form of fiat currency first issued during the Civil War. The government accepted these notes as valid for payment of taxes and tariffs, but unlike ordinary dollars, they were not redeemable in gold. The Specie Payment Resumption Act of 1875 required the treasury to redeem any outstanding greenbacks in gold, thus retiring them from circulation and restoring a single, gold-backed currency. Sherman agreed with Hayes’s favorable opinion of the Act, and stockpiled gold in preparation for the exchange of greenbacks for gold. But once the public was confident that they could redeem greenbacks for specie (gold), few did so; when the Act took effect in 1879, only $130,000 of the outstanding $346,000,000 in greenbacks were actually redeemed. Together with the Bland–Allison Act, the successful specie resumption effected a workable compromise between inflationists and hard money men and, as the world economy began to improve, agitation for more greenbacks and silver coinage quieted down for the rest of Hayes’s presidency.
Foreign policy
Most of Hayes’s foreign-policy concerns involved Latin America. In 1878, following the Paraguayan War, he arbitrated a territorial dispute between Argentina and Paraguay. Hayes awarded the disputed land in the Gran Chaco region to Paraguay, and the Paraguayans honored him by renaming a city (Villa Hayes) and a department (Presidente Hayes) in his honor. Hayes became concerned over the plans of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, then part of Colombia. Worried about a repetition of French adventurism in Mexico, Hayes interpreted the Monroe Doctrine firmly. In a message to Congress, Hayes explained his opinion on the canal: “The policy of this country is a canal under American control … The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to any European power or any combination of European powers.”
The Mexican border also drew Hayes’s attention. Throughout the 1870s, “lawless bands” often crossed the border on raids into Texas. Three months after taking office, Hayes granted the Army the power to pursue bandits, even if it required crossing into Mexican territory. Mexican president Porfirio Díaz protested the order and sent troops to the border. The situation calmed as Díaz and Hayes agreed to jointly pursue bandits and Hayes agreed not to allow Mexican revolutionaries to raise armies in the United States. The violence along the border decreased, and in 1880 Hayes revoked the order allowing pursuit into Mexico.
Outside the Western hemisphere, Hayes’s biggest foreign-policy concern dealt with China. In 1868 the Senate had ratified the Burlingame Treaty with China, allowing an unrestricted flow of Chinese immigrants into the United States. As the economy soured after the Panic of 1873, Chinese immigrants were blamed in the American West for depressing workmen’s wages. During the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, anti-Chinese riots broke out in San Francisco, and a third party, the Workingman’s Party, formed with an emphasis on stopping Chinese immigration. In response, Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act in 1879, abrogating the 1868 treaty. Hayes vetoed the bill, believing that the United States should not abrogate treaties without negotiation. The veto drew praise from eastern liberals, but Hayes was bitterly denounced in the West. In the subsequent furor, Democrats in the House of Representatives attempted to impeach him, but narrowly failed when Republicans prevented a quorum by refusing to vote. After the veto, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward suggested that the countries work together to reduce immigration, and he and James Burrill Angell negotiated with the Chinese to do so. Congress passed a new law to that effect, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, after Hayes had left office.
Indian policy
Interior Secretary Carl Schurz carried out Hayes’s American Indian policy, beginning with preventing the War Department from taking over the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Hayes and Schurz carried out a policy that included assimilation into white culture, educational training, and dividing Indian land into individual household allotments. Hayes believed his policies would lead to self-sufficiency and peace between Indians and whites. The allotment system under the Dawes Act, later signed by President Cleveland in 1887, was favored by liberal reformers at the time, including Schurz, but instead proved detrimental to American Indians. They lost much of their land through sales of what the government classified as “surplus lands”, and more to unscrupulous white speculators who tried to get the Indians to sell their allotments. Hayes and Schurz reformed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reduce fraud and gave Indians responsibility for policing their reservations, but they were generally understaffed.
Hayes dealt with several conflicts with Indian tribes. The Nez Perce, led by Chief Joseph, began an uprising in June 1877 when Major General Oliver O. Howard ordered them to move to a reservation. Howard’s men defeated the Nez Perce in battle, and the tribe began a 1,700-mile retreat to Canada. In October, after a decisive battle at Bear Paw, Montana, Chief Joseph surrendered and William T. Sherman ordered the tribe transported to Indian Territory in Kansas, where they were forced to remain until 1885. The Nez Perce war was not the last conflict in the West, as the Bannock rose up in spring 1878 in Idaho and raided nearby settlements before being defeated by Howard’s army in July. War with the Ute tribe broke out in Colorado in 1879 when some Ute killed Indian agent Nathan Meeker, who had been attempting to convert them to Christianity. The subsequent White River War ended when Schurz negotiated peace with the Ute and prevented white settlers from taking revenge for Meeker’s death.
Hayes also became involved in resolving the removal of the Ponca tribe from Nebraska to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) because of a misunderstanding during the Grant administration. The tribe’s problems came to Hayes’s attention after its chief, Standing Bear, filed a lawsuit to contest Schurz’s demand that they stay in Indian Territory. Overruling Schurz, Hayes set up a commission in 1880 that ruled the Ponca were free to return to their home territory in Nebraska or stay on their reservation in Indian Territory. The Ponca were awarded compensation for their land rights, which had been previously granted to the Sioux. In a message to Congress in February 1881, Hayes insisted he would “give to these injured people that measure of redress which is required alike by justice and by humanity.”
Great Western Tour of 1880
In 1880, Hayes embarked on a 71-day tour of the American West, becoming the second sitting president to travel west of the Rocky Mountains. (Hayes’s immediate predecessor, Ulysses Grant, visited Utah in 1875.) Hayes’s traveling party included his wife and William T. Sherman, who helped organize the trip. Hayes began his trip in September 1880, departing from Chicago on the transcontinental railroad. He journeyed across the continent, ultimately arriving in California, stopping first in Wyoming and then Utah and Nevada, reaching Sacramento and San Francisco. By railroad and stagecoach, the party traveled north to Oregon, arriving in Portland, and from there to Vancouver, Washington. Going by steamship, they visited Seattle, and then returned to San Francisco. Hayes then toured several southwestern states before returning to Ohio in November, in time to cast a vote in the 1880 presidential election.
Hayes’s White House
Hayes and his wife Lucy were known for their policy of keeping an alcohol-free White House, giving rise to her nickname “Lemonade Lucy.” The first reception at the Hayes White House included wine, but Hayes was dismayed at drunken behavior at receptions hosted by ambassadors around Washington, leading him to follow his wife’s temperance leanings. Alcohol was not served again in the Hayes White House. Critics charged Hayes with parsimony, but Hayes spent more money (which came out of his personal budget) after the ban, ordering that any savings from eliminating alcohol be used on more lavish entertainment. His temperance policy also paid political dividends, strengthening his support among Protestant ministers. Although Secretary Evarts quipped that at the White House dinners, “water flowed like wine,” the policy was a success in convincing prohibitionists to vote Republican.
Administration and Cabinet
The Hayes Cabinet
Judicial appointments
Hayes appointed two Associate Justices to the Supreme Court. The first vacancy occurred when David Davis resigned to enter the Senate during the election controversy of 1876. On taking office, Hayes appointed John Marshall Harlan to the seat. A former candidate for governor of Kentucky, Harlan had been Benjamin Bristow’s campaign manager at the 1876 Republican convention, and Hayes had earlier considered him for attorney general. Hayes submitted the nomination in October 1877, but it aroused some dissent in the Senate because of Harlan’s limited experience in public office. Harlan was nonetheless confirmed and served on the court for 34 years, voting (usually in the minority) for aggressive enforcement of the civil rights laws. In 1880, a second seat became vacant upon the resignation of Justice William Strong. Hayes nominated William Burnham Woods, a carpetbagger Republican circuit court judge from Alabama. Woods served six years on the Court, ultimately proving a disappointment to Hayes as he interpreted the Constitution in a manner more similar to that of Southern Democrats than to Hayes’s own preferences.
Hayes unsuccessfully attempted to fill a third vacancy in 1881. Justice Noah Haynes Swayne resigned with the expectation that Hayes would fill his seat by appointing Stanley Matthews, a friend of both men. Many senators objected to the appointment, believing that Matthews was too close to corporate and railroad interests, especially those of Jay Gould, and the Senate adjourned without voting on the nomination. The following year, when James A. Garfield entered the White House, he resubmitted Matthews’s nomination to the Senate, which this time confirmed Matthews by one vote, 24 to 23. Matthews served for eight years until his death in 1889. His opinion in Yick Wo v. Hopkins in 1886 advanced his and Hayes’s views on the protection of ethnic minorities’ rights.
Later life and death
Hayes declined to seek re-election in 1880, keeping his pledge that he would not run for a second term. He was gratified with the election of fellow Ohio Republican James A. Garfield to succeed him, and consulted with him on appointments for the next administration. After Garfield’s inauguration, Hayes and his family returned to Spiegel Grove. In 1881, he was elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. He served as commander-in-chief (national president) of the Loyal Legion from 1888 until his death in 1893. Although he remained a loyal Republican, Hayes was not too disappointed in Grover Cleveland’s election to the presidency in 1884, approving of the New York Democrat’s views on civil service reform. He was also pleased at the progress of the political career of William McKinley, his army comrade and political protégé.
Hayes became an advocate for educational charities, advocating federal education subsidies for all children. He believed that education was the best way to heal the rifts in American society and allow individuals to improve themselves. Hayes was appointed to the Board of Trustees of The Ohio State University, the school he helped found during his time as governor of Ohio, in 1887. He emphasized the need for vocational, as well as academic, education: “I preach the gospel of work,” he wrote, “I believe in skilled labor as a part of education.” He urged Congress, unsuccessfully, to pass a bill written by Senator Henry W. Blair that would have allowed federal aid for education for the first time. Hayes gave a speech in 1889 encouraging black students to apply for scholarships from the Slater Fund, one of the charities with which he was affiliated. One such student, W. E. B. Du Bois, received a scholarship in 1892. Hayes also advocated better prison conditions.
In retirement, Hayes was troubled by the disparity between the rich and the poor, saying in an 1886 speech that “free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.” The following year, Hayes recorded his thoughts on that subject in his diary:
In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. It is not yet time to debate about the remedy. The previous question is as to the danger—the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found. Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for his remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property.
Hayes was greatly saddened by his wife’s death in 1889. When she died, he wrote, “the soul had left [Spiegel Grove]”. After Lucy’s death, Hayes’s daughter Fanny became his traveling companion, and he enjoyed visits from his grandchildren. In 1890, he chaired the Lake Mohonk Conference on the Negro Question, a gathering of reformers that met in upstate New York to discuss racial issues. Hayes died of complications of a heart attack at his home on January 17, 1893, at the age of 70. His last words were “I know that I’m going where Lucy is.” President-elect Cleveland and Ohio Governor William McKinley led the funeral procession that followed Hayes’s body until Hayes was interred in Oakwood Cemetery.
Legacy and honors
Following the donation of his home to the state of Ohio for the Spiegel Grove State Park, he was reinterred there in 1915. The next year the Hayes Commemorative Library and Museum, the country’s first presidential library, opened on the site, funded by contributions from the state of Ohio and Hayes’s family.
An 1878 dispute between Argentina and Paraguay that Hayes had arbitrated and decided in favor of Paraguay, giving Paraguay 60% of its current territory, later led to the naming of a province in the region after him: Presidente Hayes Department (capital: Villa Hayes); an official holiday: Laudo Hayes Firm Day, the anniversary of the decision, celebrated in Presidente Hayes province; a local soccer team: Club Presidente Hayes (also known as “Los Yanquis”), based in the national capital, Asuncion; a postage stamp, the design of which was chosen in a contest run by the U.S. Embassy; and even a young girl’s wish: a girl who came out of a coma got her fondest wish—a trip to the Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio.
Also named for Hayes is Hayes County, Nebraska.
Hayes was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1890.
Rutherford B. Hayes High School in Hayes’s hometown of Delaware, Ohio, was named in his honor.
Hayes Hall, built in 1893, at the Ohio State University is also named in his honor. It is the campus’s oldest remaining building, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 1970, due to its front facade, which remains virtually untouched from its original appearance. Hayes knew the building would be named in his honor, but he did not live to see it completed.
Notes
Herron’s daughter, Helen, later married William Howard Taft.
His first two sons, Joseph and George, had died in infancy.
He was named after Hayes’s friend, Manning Force.
The elector, John W. Watts, was disqualified because he held “an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States”, in violation of Article II, section 1, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
At the time of the 1876 election only three states, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, still had Republican governments. In Florida the Democrats won the governor’s election and controlled the state house, leaving South Carolina and Louisiana as the only states in which the Republican regimes was supported by Federal troops.
Hayes’s predecessor, President Ulysses S. Grant, appointed the first Civil Service Commission in 1871, but it dissolved in 1874.
Charles K. Graham filled Merritt’s former position

U.S. President #19: Rutherford B. Hayes (Part I)

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor of Ohio. A lawyer and staunch abolitionist, he had defended refugee slaves in court proceedings during the antebellum years.
The Republican Party nominated Hayes as its candidate for the presidency in 1876, where he won through the Compromise of 1877 that officially ended Reconstruction by leaving the South to govern itself. In office he withdrew military troops from the South, ending Army support for Republican state governments in the South and for the efforts of African-American freedmen to establish their families as free citizens. Hayes promoted civil-service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War of 1861–65 and the Reconstruction Era of 1865–77.
An attorney in Ohio, Hayes served as city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861. When the Civil War began, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. He earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to the rank of brevet major general. After the war, he served in Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for governor of Ohio and was elected to two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872. Later he served a third two-year term, from 1876 to 1877.
In 1876 the Electoral College made Hayes president in one of the most contentious elections in U.S. history. He lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, but won an intensely disputed electoral-college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him 20 contested electoral votes. There resulted the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes’s election on the condition that he withdraw remaining U.S. troops protecting Republican officeholders in the South, thus officially ending the Reconstruction era.
Hayes believed in meritocratic government and in equal treatment without regard to wealth, social standing or race. He ordered federal troops to guard federal buildings and in doing so restored order during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Hayes implemented modest civil-service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland–Allison Act (1878), which put silver money into circulation and raised nominal prices, insisting that maintenance of the gold standard was essential to economic recovery. Hayes’s policy toward Western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887.
Hayes kept his pledge not to run for reelection, retired to his home in Ohio, and became an advocate of social and educational reform. Biographer Ari Hoogenboom said Hayes’s greatest achievement was to restore popular faith in the presidency and to reverse the deterioration of executive power that had set in after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Supporters have praised his commitment to civil-service reform and to the defense of civil rights, but historians and scholars generally rank Hayes as an average or slightly below-average president.
Family and early life
Childhood and family history
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822, to Rutherford Hayes, Jr. and Sophia Birchard. Hayes’s father, a Vermont storekeeper, had taken the family to Ohio in 1817. He died ten weeks before Rutherford’s birth. Sophia took charge of the family, raising Hayes and his sister, Fanny, the only two of the four children to survive to adulthood. She never remarried, and Sophia’s younger brother, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family for a time. He was always close to Hayes and became a father figure to him, contributing to his early education.
Through each of his parents, Hayes was descended from New England colonists. His earliest immigrant ancestor came to Connecticut from Scotland in 1625. Hayes’s great-grandfather Ezekiel Hayes was a militia captain in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, but Ezekiel’s son (Hayes’s grandfather, also named Rutherford) left his Branford home during the war for the relative peace of Vermont. His mother’s ancestors migrated to Vermont at a similar time. Most of his close relatives outside Ohio continued to live there. John Noyes, an uncle by marriage, had been his father’s business partner in Vermont and was later elected to Congress. His first cousin, Mary Jane Mead, was the mother of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead. John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, was also a first cousin.
Education and early law career
Hayes attended the common schools in Delaware, Ohio, and enrolled in 1836 at the Methodist Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio. He did well at Norwalk, and the next year transferred to the Webb School, a preparatory school in Middletown, Connecticut, where he studied Latin and Ancient Greek. Returning to Ohio, he attended Kenyon College in Gambier in 1838. He enjoyed his time at Kenyon, and was successful scholastically; while there, he joined several student societies and became interested in Whig politics. He graduated with highest honors in 1842 and addressed the class as its valedictorian.
After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843. Graduating with an LL.B, he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and opened his own law office in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont). Business was slow at first, but he gradually attracted clients and also represented his uncle Sardis in real estate litigation. In 1847, Hayes became ill with what his doctor thought was tuberculosis. Thinking a change in climate would help, he considered enlisting in the Mexican–American War, but on his doctor’s advice instead visited family in New England. Returning from there, Hayes and his uncle Sardis made a long journey to Texas, where Hayes visited with Guy M. Bryan, a Kenyon classmate and distant relative. Business remained meager on his return to Lower Sandusky, and Hayes decided to move to Cincinnati.
Cincinnati law practice and marriage
Hayes moved to Cincinnati in 1850, and opened a law office with John W. Herron, a lawyer from Chillicothe. Herron later joined a more established firm and Hayes formed a new partnership with William K. Rogers and Richard M. Corwine. He found business better in Cincinnati, and enjoyed its social attractions, joining the Cincinnati Literary Society and the Odd Fellows Club. He also attended the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati but did not become a member.
Hayes courted his future wife, Lucy Webb, during his time there. His mother had encouraged him to get to know Lucy years earlier, but Hayes had believed she was too young and focused his attention on other women. Four years later, Hayes began to spend more time with Lucy. They became engaged in 1851 and married on December 30, 1852, at Lucy’s mother’s house. Over the next five years, Lucy gave birth to three sons: Birchard Austin (1853), Webb Cook (1856), and Rutherford Platt (1858). A Methodist, Lucy was a teetotaler and abolitionist. She influenced her husband’s views on those issues, though he never formally joined her church.
Hayes had begun his law practice dealing primarily with commercial issues but won greater prominence in Cincinnati as a criminal defense attorney, defending several people accused of murder. In one case, he used a form of the insanity defense that saved the accused from the gallows; she was instead confined to a mental institution. Hayes also defended slaves who had escaped and been accused under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. As Cincinnati was just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state, it was a destination for escaping slaves and many such cases were tried in its courts. A staunch abolitionist, Hayes found his work on behalf of fugitive slaves personally gratifying as well as politically useful, as it raised his profile in the newly formed Republican Party.
His political reputation rose with his professional plaudits. Hayes declined a Republican nomination for a judgeship in 1856. Two years later, some Republicans proposed Hayes to fill a vacancy on the bench and he considered accepting the appointment until the office of city solicitor also became vacant. The city council elected Hayes city solicitor to fill the vacancy, and voters elected him to a full two-year term in April 1859 with a larger majority than other Republicans on the ticket.
Civil War
As the Southern states quickly began to secede after Lincoln’s election to the presidency in 1860, Hayes was lukewarm about civil war to restore the Union. Considering that the two sides might be irreconcilable, he suggested that the Union “[l]et them go.” Though Ohio had voted for Lincoln in 1860, Cincinnati voters turned against the Republican party after secession. Its residents included many from the South, and they voted for the Democrats and Know-Nothings, who combined to sweep the city elections in April 1861, ejecting Hayes from the city solicitor’s office.
Returning to private practice, Hayes formed a very brief law partnership with Leopold Markbreit, lasting three days before the war began. After the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Hayes resolved his doubts and joined a volunteer company composed of his Literary Society friends. That June, Governor William Dennison appointed several of the officers of the volunteer company to positions in the 23rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Hayes was promoted to major, and his friend and college classmate Stanley Matthews was appointed lieutenant colonel. Joining the regiment as a private was another future president, William McKinley.
After a month of training, Hayes and the 23rd Ohio set out for western Virginia in July 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division. They did not meet the enemy until September, when the regiment encountered Confederates at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia and drove them back. In November, Hayes was promoted to lieutenant colonel (Matthews having been promoted to colonel of another regiment) and led his troops deeper into western Virginia, where they entered winter quarters. The division resumed its advance the following spring, and Hayes led several raids against the rebel forces, on one of which he sustained a minor injury to his knee. That September, Hayes’s regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope’s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Hayes and his troops did not arrive in time for the battle, but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, which was advancing into Maryland. Marching north, the 23rd was the lead regiment encountering the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14. Hayes led a charge against an entrenched position and was shot through his left arm, fracturing the bone. He had one of his men tie a handkerchief above the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding, and continued to lead his men in the battle. While resting, he ordered his men to meet a flanking attack, but instead his entire command moved backward, leaving Hayes lying in between the lines.
Eventually, his men brought Hayes back behind their lines, and he was taken to hospital. The regiment continued on to Antietam, but Hayes was out of action for the rest of the campaign. In October, he was promoted to colonel and assigned to command of the first brigade of the Kanawha Division as a brevet brigadier general.
Army of the Shenandoah
The division spent the following winter and spring near Charleston, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), out of contact with the enemy. Hayes saw little action until July 1863, when the division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan’s cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island. Returning to Charleston for the rest of the summer, Hayes spent the fall encouraging the men of the 23rd Ohio to reenlist, and many did. In 1864, the Army command structure in West Virginia was reorganized, and Hayes’s division was assigned to George Crook’s Army of West Virginia. Advancing into southwestern Virginia, they destroyed Confederate salt and lead mines there. On May 9, they engaged Confederate troops at Cloyd’s Mountain, where Hayes and his men charged the enemy entrenchments and drove the rebels from the field. Following the rout, the Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies and again successfully skirmished with the enemy.
Hayes and his brigade moved to the Shenandoah Valley for the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Crook’s corps was attached to Major General David Hunter’s Army of the Shenandoah and soon back in contact with Confederate forces, capturing Lexington, Virginia on June 11. They continued south toward Lynchburg, tearing up railroad track as they advanced, but Hunter believed the troops at Lynchburg were too powerful, and Hayes and his brigade returned to West Virginia. Hayes thought Hunter lacked aggression, writing in a letter home that “General Crook would have taken Lynchburg.” Before the army could make another attempt, Confederate General Jubal Early’s raid into Maryland forced their recall to the north. Early’s army surprised them at Kernstown on July 24, where Hayes was slightly wounded by a bullet to the shoulder. He also had a horse shot out from under him, and the army was defeated. Retreating to Maryland, the army was reorganized again, with Major General Philip Sheridan replacing Hunter. By August, Early was retreating up the valley, with Sheridan in pursuit. Hayes’s troops fended off a Confederate assault at Berryville and advanced to Opequon Creek, where they broke the enemy lines and pursued them farther south. They followed up the victory with another at Fisher’s Hill on September 22, and one more at Cedar Creek on October 19. At Cedar Creek, Hayes sprained his ankle after being thrown from a horse and was struck in the head by a spent round, which did not cause serious damage. His leadership and bravery drew his superiors’ attention, with Ulysses S. Grant later writing of Hayes, “[h]is conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry as well as the display of qualities of a higher order than that of mere personal daring.”
Cedar Creek marked the end of the campaign. Hayes was promoted to brigadier general in October 1864 and brevetted major general. Around this time, Hayes learned of the birth of his fourth son, George Crook Hayes. The army went into winter quarters once more, and in spring 1865 the war quickly came to a close with Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Hayes visited Washington, D.C. that May and observed the Grand Review of the Armies, after which he and the 23rd Ohio returned to their home state to be mustered out of the service.
Post-war politics
While serving in the Army of the Shenandoah in 1864, Hayes was nominated by Republicans for the House of Representatives from Ohio’s 2nd congressional district. Asked by friends in Cincinnati to leave the army to campaign, he refused, saying that an “officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped.” Instead, Hayes wrote several letters to the voters explaining his political positions and was elected by a 2,400-vote majority over the incumbent, Democrat Alexander Long.
When the 39th Congress assembled in December 1865, Hayes was sworn in as a part of a large Republican majority. Hayes identified with the party’s moderate wing, but was willing to vote with the radicals for the sake of party unity. The major legislative effort of the Congress was the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, for which Hayes voted and which passed both houses of Congress in June 1866. Hayes’s beliefs were in line with his fellow Republicans on Reconstruction issues: that the South should be restored to the Union, but not without adequate protections for freedmen and other black southerners. President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded to office following Lincoln’s assassination, to the contrary wanted to readmit the seceded states quickly without first ensuring that they adopted laws protecting the newly freed slaves’ civil rights; he also granted pardons to many of the leading former Confederates. Hayes, along with congressional Republicans, disagreed. They worked to reject Johnson’s vision of Reconstruction and to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Reelected in 1866, Hayes returned to the lame-duck session to vote for the Tenure of Office Act, which ensured that Johnson could not remove administration officials without the Senate’s consent. He also unsuccessfully pressed for a civil service reform bill that attracted the votes of many reform-minded Republicans. Hayes continued to vote with the majority in the 40th Congress on the Reconstruction Acts, but resigned in July 1867 to run for governor of Ohio.
Governor of Ohio
A popular Congressman and former Army officer, Hayes was considered by Ohio Republicans to be an excellent standard-bearer for the 1867 election campaign. His political views were more moderate than the Republican party’s platform, although he agreed with the proposed amendment to the Ohio state constitution that would guarantee suffrage to black male Ohioans. Hayes’s opponent, Allen G. Thurman, made the proposed amendment the centerpiece of the campaign and opposed black suffrage. Both men campaigned vigorously, making speeches across the state, mostly focusing on the suffrage question. The election was mostly a disappointment to Republicans, as the amendment failed to pass and Democrats gained a majority in the state legislature. Hayes thought at first that he, too, had lost, but the final tally showed that he had won the election by 2,983 votes of 484,603 votes cast.
As a Republican governor with a Democratic legislature, Hayes had a limited role in governing, especially since Ohio’s governor had no veto power. Despite these constraints, he oversaw the establishment of a school for deaf-mutes and a reform school for girls. He endorsed the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and urged his conviction, which failed by one vote in the United States Senate. Nominated for a second term in 1869, Hayes campaigned again for equal rights for black Ohioans and sought to associate his Democratic opponent, George H. Pendleton, with disunion and Confederate sympathies. Hayes was reelected with an increased majority, and the Republicans took the legislature, ensuring Ohio’s ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed black (male) suffrage. With a Republican legislature, Hayes’s second term was more enjoyable. Suffrage was expanded and a state Agricultural and Mechanical College (later to become The Ohio State University) established. He also proposed a reduction in state taxes and reform of the state prison system. Choosing not to seek reelection, Hayes looked forward to retiring from politics in 1872.
Private life and return to politics
As Hayes prepared to leave office, several delegations of reform-minded Republicans urged him to run for United States Senate against the incumbent Republican, John Sherman. Hayes declined, preferring to preserve party unity and retire to private life. He especially looked forward to spending time with his children, two of whom (daughter Fanny and son Scott) had been born in the past five years. Initially, Hayes tried to promote railway extensions to his hometown, Fremont. He also managed some real estate he had acquired in Duluth, Minnesota. Not entirely removed from politics, Hayes held out some hope of a cabinet appointment, but was disappointed to receive only an appointment as assistant U.S. treasurer at Cincinnati, which he turned down. He agreed to be nominated for his old House seat in 1872 but was not disappointed when he lost the election to Henry B. Banning, a fellow Kenyon College alumnus.
In 1873, Lucy gave birth to another son, Manning Force Hayes. That same year, the Panic of 1873 hurt business prospects across the nation, including Hayes’s. His uncle Sardis Birchard died that year, and the Hayes family moved into Spiegel Grove, the grand house Birchard had built with them in mind. That year Hayes announced his uncle’s bequest of $50,000 in assets to endow a public library for Fremont, to be called the Birchard Library. It opened in 1874 on Front Street, and a new building was completed and opened in 1878 in Fort Stephenson State Park. (This site was per the terms of the bequest.) Hayes served as chairman of the library’s board of trustees until his death.
Hayes hoped to stay out of politics in order to pay off the debts he had incurred during the Panic, but when the Republican state convention nominated him for governor in 1875, he accepted. His campaign against Democratic nominee William Allen focused primarily on Protestant fears about the possibility of state aid to Catholic schools. Hayes was against such funding and, while not known to be personally anti-Catholic, he allowed anti-Catholic fervor to contribute to the enthusiasm for his candidacy. The campaign was a success, and on 12 October 1875 Hayes was returned to the governorship by a 5,544-vote majority. The first person to earn a third term as governor of Ohio, Hayes reduced the state debt, reestablished the Board of Charities, and repealed the Geghan Bill, which had allowed for the appointment of Catholic priests to schools and penitentiaries.
Election of 1876
Hayes’s success in Ohio immediately elevated him to the top ranks of Republican politicians under consideration for the presidency in 1876. The Ohio delegation to the 1876 Republican National Convention was united behind him, and Senator John Sherman did all in his power to get Hayes the nomination. In June 1876, the convention assembled with James G. Blaine of Maine as the favorite. Blaine started with a significant lead in the delegate count, but could not muster a majority. As he failed to gain votes, the delegates looked elsewhere for a nominee and settled on Hayes on the seventh ballot. The convention selected Representative William A. Wheeler from New York for vice president, a man about whom Hayes had recently asked, “I am ashamed to say: who is Wheeler?”
The Democratic nominee was Samuel J. Tilden, the governor of New York. Tilden was considered a formidable adversary who, like Hayes, had a reputation for honesty. Also like Hayes, Tilden was a hard-money man and supported civil service reform. In accordance with the custom of the time, the campaign was conducted by surrogates, with Hayes and Tilden remaining in their respective hometowns. The poor economic conditions made the party in power unpopular and made Hayes suspect he would lose the election. Both candidates concentrated on the swing states of New York and Indiana, as well as the three southern states—Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida—where Reconstruction Republican governments still barely ruled, amid recurring political violence, including widespread efforts to suppress freedman voting. The Republicans emphasized the danger of letting Democrats run the nation so soon after southern Democrats had provoked the Civil War and, to a lesser extent, the danger a Democratic administration would pose to the recently won civil rights of southern blacks. Democrats, for their part, trumpeted Tilden’s record of reform and contrasted it with the corruption of the incumbent Grant administration.
As the returns were tallied on election day, it was clear that the race was close: Democrats had carried most of the South, as well as New York, Indiana, Connecticut, and New Jersey. In the Northeast, an increasing number of immigrants and their descendants voted Democratic. Although Tilden won the popular vote and claimed 184 electoral votes, Republican leaders challenged the results and charged Democrats with fraud and voter suppression of blacks (who would otherwise have voted Republican) in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Republicans realized that if they held the three disputed unredeemed southern states together with some of the western states, they would emerge with an electoral college majority.
Disputed electoral votes
On November 11, three days after election day, Tilden appeared to have won 184 electoral votes, one short of a majority. Hayes appeared to have 166, with the 19 votes of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina still in doubt. Republicans and Democrats each claimed victory in the three latter states, but the results in those states were rendered uncertain because of fraud by both parties. To further complicate matters, one of the three electors from Oregon (a state Hayes had won) was disqualified, reducing Hayes’s total to 165, and raising the disputed votes to 20. If Hayes was not awarded all 20 disputed votes, Tilden would be elected president.
There was considerable debate about which person or house of Congress was authorized to decide between the competing slates of electors, with the Republican Senate and the Democratic House each claiming priority. By January 1877, with the question still unresolved, Congress and President Grant agreed to submit the matter to a bipartisan Electoral Commission, which would be authorized to determine the fate of the disputed electoral votes. The Commission was to be made up of five representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. To ensure partisan balance, there would be seven Democrats and seven Republicans, with Justice David Davis, an independent respected by both parties, as the 15th member. The balance was upset when Democrats in the Illinois legislature elected Davis to the Senate, hoping to sway his vote. Davis disappointed Democrats by refusing to serve on the Commission because of his election to the Senate. As all the remaining Justices were Republicans, Justice Joseph P. Bradley, believed to be the most independent-minded of them, was selected to take Davis’s place on the Commission. The Commission met in February and the eight Republicans voted to award all 20 electoral votes to Hayes. Democrats, outraged by the result, attempted a filibuster to prevent Congress from accepting the Commission’s findings.
As inauguration day neared, Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders met at Wormley’s Hotel in Washington to negotiate a compromise. Republicans promised concessions in exchange for Democratic acquiescence to the Committee’s decision. The main concession Hayes promised was the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and an acceptance of the election of Democratic governments in the remaining “unredeemed” southern states. The Democrats agreed, and on March 2, the filibuster was ended. Hayes was elected, but Reconstruction was finished, and freedmen were left at the mercy of white Democrats who did not intend to preserve their rights. On April 3, Hayes ordered Secretary of War George W. McCrary to withdraw federal troops stationed at the South Carolina State House to their barracks. On April 20, he ordered McCrary to send the federal troops stationed at New Orleans’s St. Louis Hotel to Jackson Barracks.

Days of Our Lives One Shot: Lani’s Surprise Visitor

A/N: This is a AMCOnline/DOOL crossover one shot when Sal Stowers played AMC’s Cassandra Foster.

Lani Price is in her father’s home getting ready for her wedding to Eli Grant.
There is a knock on the door and Lani goes over to answer it…
“Hello, who are you?” Lani says.
But they don’t answer her as they whisk the bride-to-be away in a van in her wedding dress.
“Where are you taking me?” Lani asks as the man gags her to shut her up.
Meanwhile, a nervous Eli is waiting at the altar for his bride as guest usher inside the church for their day.
But as the music ends, all eyes are cast on the entrance to the chapel…as the bride fails to show up…
“I don’t get it?” Eli says to Abe. “Did Lani get cold feet again?”
“I don’t think so. Lani was excited for the ceremony the last time I checked on her before the ceremony.” Abe muses confused.
In the basement of a dilapidated home, a bound and gag Lani is thrown into a group of women…
“Cassandra?” a woman says to Lani. “You’re back?!”
“Who the hell is Cassandra?” Lani asks the woman. “My name is Lani and today was supposed to be my wedding day!”