Transcripts For CSPAN3 First Ladies Lucretia Garfield And Mary Arthur McElroy 20240622

Its only in recent years that a lot of scholarship has focused on the fact that their the fact of how rocky their marriage was, specifically in its early days. I think in the early years, james found her a bit distant and cold. As the years went by, she had a tremendous influence on him. James and lucretia spent a lot of time with their children. They felt that education was an emancipating factor. Mrs. Garfield adored her time at the exhibition, but she was specifically interested in the latest sciences and technologies of the day. After James Garfields death, a number of prominent citizens raised about 350,000 that was turned over to Lucretia Garfield. In todays dollars, it would equate to somewhere around 8 million. Her character was extremely exceedingly strong. She had a rectitude that was invulnerable. Host Lucretia Garfield was born in ohio in 1832. Her life spans antebellum america to the progressive era of the early 20th century. A supporter of womens rights and deeply interested in partisan politics, she and president James Garfield entered the white house on march 4, 1881 after a very close election. However, what plans she had as first lady were soon cut short by an assassins bullet. Good evening, and welcome to cspans series first ladies influence and image. Tonight, we will earn about Lucretia Garfield. After the assassination, the next person to come into the white house, Chester Arthur, did not have a first lady. Tell us understand this to help us understand this interesting peterperiod of American History we have carl anthony. , he is the author of americas first families. The circumstances of James Garfields election helped to seal the president s fate. Tell us the story of where the Party Politics were at the time. Guest so many of the large issues that had continued in postcivil war era were really in large mode put to rest. The Transcontinental Railroad by this time had been completed the troops had been removed from the south during reconstruction. A lot of focus was basically on power and money, and that struggle within the Republican Party for who would control the party, which meant who would control the positions that were appointed positions that were at the discretion of people at in power, ended up being a power struggle in the party between an ohiobased party, which is James Garfields party, and Rutherford Hayes was not only from the same part of ohio but the same kind of thinking, and what were called the stalwarts, which were new yorkbased. You see certain states really emerge throughout history Holding Onto Power within a particular party. In new york, that was headed by a man who became a United States senator. This was the struggle. You see then, of course, the person who ends up shooting president garfield, deranged Charles Guiteau, proudly screaming with the gun in his hand, i am a stalwart. Now arthur is president. Garfield was of the new york wing. Host garfield himself was a compromise candidate after many ballots at a republican convention. When they came to the white house, were they accepted . Guest they were largely accepted. And this is where lucretia played a vital role. A lot of it was a matter of cobbling together a cabinet where everybody would be happy that the new york wing would be happy, that garfield now as leader of the party in the country would be satisfied. The party and the country would be satisfied. You had Lucretia Garfield playing a little bit of an espionage role in the postelection, preinauguration where she goes to new york under the alias of mrs. Greenfield and is really there to deal with this guy she doesnt like roscoe conkling, and negotiating members of the cabinet of who would be appointed and who wouldnt. Host the actual vote was very close. One of the closest elections in history. Lucretia garfield after winning says this it is a terrible responsibility to come to him and me. Did she want to become first lady . Guest she did not want to become first lady for herself. She very strongly believed in her husband. They had really been through everything. They lost two children. They had marital problems. By the time he had run in 1880 they are very clear and very square on the same page in terms of their values. They both shared a lot of intellectual and literary pursuits. That was a mutual passion which during the tough times kept them together, but she was, at the time she got the news that he won the nomination, she was in an old bonnet, scrubbing the floor. She did not want to pose for photographs. She was very reluctant. She did, and of course, the first images we start to see in paraphernalia during the campaign. She wrote a private letter to some friends and said, the truth is, i do not want to go to that place, but i really believe that my husband is the right man to lead the country. Host we will be taking you to the garfields home in ohio. It is available for you to visit, run by the National Parks service. If you are ever in the state near cleveland, make a point of visiting it. We will show you as much as we can. There is what it looks like. That front porch became very famous because it was the first Front Porch Campaign. How did the Front Porch Campaign come about . Guest i do not know 100 of the details, except at the time where they lived, it was relatively rural. Groups of people really just coming to hear the candidate speak. That is sort of the whole thing with these Front Porch Campaigns. Interestingly enough, most of them took place, all of them took place in the midwest. Lincolns in springfield hardings and mckinleys in ohio just like garfield. Of course, for Lucretia Garfield, what was interesting was because it was technically the property of her private home, her being seen by the voters, the people coming in on horses and buggies to hear garfield speak didnt find anything at all unusual about the presence of his wife at what was a Campaign Rally because it was also her home. Host we are going to learn more about the Front Porch Campaign in this video. [video clip] this is the site of the nations very first front porch president ial campaign. James garfield would come out here and give speeches to people who had gathered here from the front part of the property. Lucretias role was more concentrated on the inside. Standing in the front hallway of the garfield home probably seems like a strange place to Start Talking about garfields widely hailed Front Porch Campaign of 1880. In fact, this was the part of the house where Lucretia Garfield spent a lot of her time during the 1880 campaign. James a. Garfield went to chicago to nominate someone else for president. He wasnt expecting to be a candidate. Lucretia garfield had no expectation that over the next five months somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 people would show up at her home and her property in ohio. When these people started to show up, that many people obviously unexpected, uninvited, started to cause a lot of damage to the outside of the property. They were traipsing all over the property, yanking things out of the ground to take home as souvenirs. Lucretia garfield was very concerned about what was on the outside of the property, not happening inside the family home. She spent a lot of time in this front hallway, keeping an eye on the front door, and she was the gatekeeper, making sure that no one she did not want in the house was able to get into the house. You see the front steps. James a. Garfields office was at the top of these steps. He would spend a lot of time in the office. At some point during the day, a lot of times he would come down the steps and go to the front door to stand out on the front porch, talk to people gathered out there, and eventually give speeches as part of his Front Porch Campaign. I like to imagine lucretia following behind him and locking the door as he went outside because she was so adamant that people not get inside the home. They had a young family they were very concerned about. They also had just finished a major renovation of the house. Lucretia had just gotten the house the way she wanted it. She did not want people coming in to cause the same kind of damage inside that she saw going on outside. We know that Lucretia Garfield was a very gracious host to people that did come into the home. She very often would greet them here in the front hallway and offer them what she called standing refreshment, which meant she was very gracious. She talked to them for a few moments with a cold glass of water or lemonade, but conspicuously no chair to sit in because she did not want them to overstay their welcome. [end video clip] host we have a phone line set aside for you to call in. We will get to call for a couple to those calls in a couple of minutes. You can also tweet us to use the hashtag firstladies. Heres a comment from our Facebook Page guest really great question. We have a lot of bits of evidence that cumulatively show us that Lucretia Garfield was perhaps the first first lady to really have a strong conscientiousness about being part of a historical tradition of first ladies. In her diary, to my knowledge, the only diary kept by a first lady, she records an incident where one of her guests comes in and tells her about the night of the fall of richmond and being with mary lincoln. She writes in her diary that these little sorts of stories are the kinds of things she begins to accumulate and feels that there are some ghosts of the house. We will talk more about her later life she has a sense of affinity, a strong sense of sorority with the first ladies who came after her. Host on twitter guest she thought of it as her home. In fact, later on when a well was being built in the back i cant remember, there was another structure she actually studied the engineering plans, and she was just incredibly interested in so much and absorbed things and taught herself. She would say things like, i have built a home on my own, i have done it all, and i know what is going on, and i can get the structure out back built quicker and less expensively than is being done right now. She later on changed what was essentially a farmhouse into a victorian mansion. Again, that is in the years of her widowhood. She had another beautiful home Still Standing in pasadena california. Host which was very forwardthinking for the time. Here is something that James Garfield thought about her as they were political partners. He said, she is unstampedable. There has not been one solitary instance of my public career when i suffered in the smallest degree for any remark she ever made. Tell us a bit more about that unstampedable character. Guest you know, it did not come easy. She was one of those people who spent a lot of time thinking. She always tried to be highly rational in her opinions, when she formed them, and in her concepts of people and ideas and subjects, whatever it might be current events, history. This was a little bit of a problem early on when they were courting and even in their marriage because a lot of people including her husband felt that she was not emotionally expressive. But when she had given something a lot of thought, and she was clear about how she felt, then she would express herself. Her letters, i might add, are beautiful. This is a real selfmotivated woman who realized that education was going to be the key to not only her success but her happiness. Host one of the very first decisions she had to make was about temperance and whether or not she and the president would follow the noalcohol policy set by the hayes. Will you tell us about that decision she made, the garfields made, and how significant it was politically . Host it ended up, true to what she said, not having a Significant Impact politically. But the threat was made to her by a woman who came and said you must continue the noalcohol policy of the hayeses. Lucretia garfield said, thanks, but no thanks. I sort of feel that by my doing this one little thing, by not serving alcohol to my guests, it will take on enormous importance in the press and give it far more attention than it needs. She herself drank wine. She writes about that in a letter to her husband. Then this woman threatens him, well, this is going to affect the Republican Party. Mrs. Garfield said politely, i dont think it really is. Host this decision and the pressure for it came around the arrival of the official portrait of lucy hayes. We talked about this picture in the last program. There was a big story about the money being raised to do this portrait. How much press attention was there on the arrival of this protr portrait and the ultimate decision the white house would make . The garfields would make . Guest it was presented to the white house as a fait accompli. The white house wasnt going to deny it. Nor did they think that it would be wise in terms of Public Relations to deny the portrait of their most immediate predecessor, the wife of their most immediate predecessor. The controversy as you know a percentage of money they were raising was being spent for the womens christian temperance union, other projects, so it had a slight taint of scandal. Host Kathy Robinson wants to know on twitter guest there was very little time for Lucretia Garfield to actually become popular in the sense of functioning as a first lady the way we think it. The inauguration was march 4. By the end of april, she has contracted malaria. By may, there is even a fear she might die in the white house. President garfield, just president for three months writes of how he was unable to work with fear that this was going to be, that something would happen to his wife. It is only after he is shot in july that the press really begins to focus on Lucretia Garfield and she becomes, not just a national, but an international heroine for her behavior, calmness, and control as the president is attempting recuperation. Host the first call is robert watching us in chicago. Caller good evening. I have one simple question. By the time garfield became president , his salary was 50,000. I was just wondering if mrs. Garfield received the balance of the salary after he passed on. Guest yes, she did. She also received his pension as a former member of congress, and she received, as susan mentioned, that large amount of public funds which were raised. She also received a president ial widows pension. She had quite a bit of income coming from several directions. Host next is a call from bill watching us in columbus, ohio. Caller i grew up in ohio where the garfield estate is. I passed it all the time, and i remember there being a log cabin on the property where he grew up. Is it still there . Guest that i do not know. Host have you visited the house . Caller surprisingly, i never did. And i lived there. Host that happens to many of us. When we have Historic Sites in our own communities. Thanks for calling. Sorry we couldnt answer your question. Talking about her involvement in the selection of the cabinet, we said earlier that she was deeply involved and interested in partisan politics. Very briefly, where did she develop that keen political sense and how did she use it to advise the president . Guest she started developing that once they moved to washington, d. C. , when he was a member of congress. They lost their first child, a girl, their last born, a little boy. They had a lot of tough times. During his service in the civil war, and when he came to washington, they were separated again. She was not going to put up with it. They decided to build a home in washington, and when she came to washington as a congressional wife, she began attending debates on capitol hill. She was there during the 1876 election dispute commission. Her husband belonged to a literary society, but this was really when her political education began, during the congressional years. She also put a room aside just for herself to paint and read in the house they built in washington, but politics really became i wouldnt say it was her primary interest, but one of several primary interests. She was interested in everything. The issue of the cabinet really circles around the controversial appointment of the secretary of state, james g. Blaine. Mrs. Garfield is really the advocate for him. In fact, blaine writes that the knowledge that mrs. Garfield wants me in the cabinet is just as important to me as knowing that you, the president , want me in the cabinet. Host heres the quote exactly that says something about her influence, at least on the president. Guest absolutely. I would also say partisanship and these splinter things within parties, she was not a policy person. She was not somebody who was looking at policy and saying you should support this or not support that. She was looking at members of the cabinet, who were supposed to be running the government but from a point of partisan political loyalty. Theres that saying, keep your friends close, your enemies closer. She was always looking at, how are these men going to potentially affect her husbands career . Host in the end, it seems they mixed the cabinet with half stalwarts and half the rest. Guest to a degree. By the time of garfields assassination, there is a sense of remorse. This guy that shot him did it openly out of political partisanship. It was sort of horrifying to people. It also involved Vice President arthur, who was sort of representative of the wing that the assassin claimed to be associated with. Host we should be specific about this. The brief tenure of this presidency, 186 days in total. Because of his lengthy decline we will tell that story later he was only functional for 121 days of that. This is a really brief time, not much time to establish opinions in the public at large. David murdock is asking on twitter guest absolutely. Political in the sense we do not have a record of him coming to her with legislative decisions. Host you mentioned earlier that Civil Service reform was becoming an important issue. People who saw the movie lincoln will see how patronage jobs were used to influence the president s policy. What was the bubbling controversy over patronage and what was the reform people wanted to employ . Guest you have this, with the garfield assassination and death, you have this man coming to the white house. Everybody was like, talk about a man who benefited from political patronage. Chester alan arthur was never elected to any political office. He was the collector of the port of new york. He had a high position in new york state during the civil war, but it was all political patronage. Roscoe conkling, the kingmaker of the stalwarts in new york thinks, now the doors will open and we will get all the political funds. President arthur says, no, im going to change my stripes, and we are going to be honest. Chester arthur is the man who initiates the first Civil Service reforms. Host we learned that Charles Guiteau was always described as a frustrated office seeker. It was also tied into his allegiance with the other faction of the gop. Arthurs faction of it. His example of coming to the office, to the white house, and looking for jobs. How did that process work in the 1880s . Guest it is extraordinary to think that not even 20 years after the assassination of president lincoln that there could be such lax security at the white house. As you and many viewers know the way the white house was set up at the time, there was the ground floor where there were no restored rooms, functioning as kitchens and places to keep china, and then there is the main floor. With the east room and green room and red room. Above that, there are three hallways the hallway that is at the furthest west end, where the family rooms were, in the middle section, and the east and where the president ial office is. Members of the public who had some vague connection from a senator or congressman, even if they did not, would be able to go up the stairs, check in with the doorkeeper, and wait in this hallway with spittoons, filled with cigar smoke, and hope to see the president s secretaries pressing their case, usually with letters of introduction claiming how great and wonderful they were and how they deserved some kind of minor federal position. Were not talking about people coming in there to be cabinet members or postmaster of this or paymaster of that. This is the kind of stuff a president was having to deal with while he was in his office, and the private secretaries were trying to do with it. Deal with it. These characters were always shifting around in the hallway. Guiteau was one of them. He never got to press his case. He took it personally. Host clearly. To the ultimate degree. The garfields brought to the white house a big and happy family. On our next visit to their home in ohio, we will learn more about the garfield family. [video clip] this is the parlor. This is the way it looked during james a. Garfields 1880 campaign. This was indeed both a formal parlor and a family room. James and lucretia spent a lot of time with their children. They had lost two children to infancy, elizaarabella and edward. Those children died before the family moved here. Their five children all had the benefit of having two very intelligent parents who strongly believed in education. They felt education was an emancipating factor and that led to the key to success. Their children also took dance lessons, piano lessons. We have mollys piano. It was a gift to her on her 13th birthday in 1880. She practiced piano more than the boys, and that was her reward. In the family parlor, you see a lot of books. Books were very oimpo important ot james and lucretia. Their children loved to read as well. Some of their favorite authors were dickens. And also william shakespeare. The family would sit by the fireplace and read to one another. That was one of their favorite activities. We are here in the family dining room. In the center of the table is this interesting art piece. It won an award at the philadelphia centennial. Mrs. Garfield absolutely adored her time at the exhibition. She visited all of the tents. She was interested in the latest sciences and technologies of the day. She would write pages and pages of what she saw at the site. She was very intelligent, she loved the sciences. Like most families, dinnertime was a very important time of the day. It was a time for them all to get together and talk about what they were doing. The garfields would use this time to educate the children. Sometimes garfield would bring a book to the table, words that were often mispronounced and quiz the children. They made everything an educational experience. [end video clip clip] host we learned about the kind of parents they were. Tell the story of how they met. Guest it is really quite fascinating, so many minor chords in it. This sense of equality to it. Even though they were mid19thcentury people, both of them saw each other as equals. Lucretia garfield was the great granddaughter of a german immigrant. Her parents were very religious. They were members of the disciple of christ. Her father was one of the founders of the eclectic institute. They strongly believed in education of women. This is a fascinating phenomenon in ohio. You see this with all of the president s wives born and raised in ohio, equal education for women. Lucretia garfield went through grade school, went to the eclectic institute. She studied the classics, she learned how to speak greek and latin and french and german. She studied science, biology mathematics, history philosophy. Right away, if you can think of passion coming to the world of ideas, there was a passion struck between the two of them. James garfield came from a very poor family. He was orphaned. He never knew his father. He had been a canal boy, one of those young guys who would walk with the mules and pull the canal boats. Everything they got, they greatly appreciated. He felt that education was the answer. Their courtship he was her teacher at the eclectic institute. He then went to Williams College and they began a correspondence. That is where you begin in a funny way it is the world of ideas that begin to separate them and bring them together. Incidents that are occuring. Its not necessarily incidents that are occuring. They argued over ideas. One of those ideas with the fact there was another woman that she met at his graduation from Williams College. That became a point of contention. Secretary carter host we have a sense of that with a letter that she wrote to James Garfield about the relationship it was touch and go. Guest what is really interesting is even though she very much loved him, she also looked out for herself. She set a course. She is going to become a teacher and she determined that she would work and earn her own salary. She did not want to be a burden on her father. Or, if she never got married have to depend on anyone else. She not only becomes a teacher but an interest of art is born in her. She pursues this on her own, then she becomes an art teacher. She shifts the topics she teaches. This is all right before she gets married. He has another affair. The earlier one was a love situation before they were married. He has a fullblown affair with a woman in new york. That nearly does in the marriage. Host stanley is watching us in ohio. What is your question . Caller thank you for cspan. I really do like the president ial series. I visited the home here about six days ago and was really impressed with the furnishings in the home. Did mrs. Garfield furnish the home and build the library herself before the president died . Oir was or was it afterwards . Guest you know, in a word, yes. The interior, it was by her hand. Most importantly, in answering your question, she had built onto it after his death that fireproof safe, which is part of the house, specifically to house and protect and preserve his letters and papers. She had been planning on writing a biography about him herself and she never lived to do that. Later, those letters were published before being donated. I know in the show we have spoken about first ladies who burned papers. Lucretia garfield had such a sense of history, she kept papers. Even the ones that might prove embarrassing or personal that related to her marriage. She had a sense of herself and her husband beyond their own lives as historical figures. Lets hear James Garfields host lets hear James Garfields side of the story. He wrote to her they eventually do get married. The early days of their marriage, they were together for six weeks out of six years. His tenure in the civil war, followed by his election in congress. How does this marriage get to the point where they were functioning as a couple . Guest she moved to washington. Host and also the death of a child . Guest the first child died. It was a little girl. She gave birth seven times. Their last child died. I believe it was her physical presence. What is fascinating about her in building this house, she created a room for herself. Even though she was a devoted mother, there are a couple of letters where she says, it really gets on your nerves and it hurts your ego to think that your whole life after this education is being spent i cannot remember the word she uses. These little terrors are all that occupy your time. She began to develop her passion for art and painting, reading and writing. She was quite an essayist, none of it for publication, but she had this room. They also joined the burns literary society. Host david is listening from chicago. Caller president arthur knowing he was dying after he left the white house, burned his personal papers along with his white house papers. He got so little publicity on this action. Vs. Florence harding, who burned only a small part of president hardings papers, and is still being vilified today. Why the difference between the two . I am looking forward to your book on mckinley this spring. Guest thank you very much. President arthur, there are some indications that it was his son who may have had more of a hand in that. Arthur himself did feel very intensely about protecting his privacy. We will be talking a little bit about the arthurs. The issue was in terms of the hardings, the air of suspicion coming on the heels of the various political scandals. The action that mrs. Harding took suggested some kind of malfeasance and that was not the case. Host back to the story of Lucretia Garfield, we learned how often her husband was away leaving her with all of those children to raise on her own. She talks about the frustration of being the one who has to make the decisions. My darling, i cannot conceive of any possible reason why he should be such a trial to my life. Nor do i believe it possible for you to know what a wearying child he is. I cannot be patient with him anymore than i can submit to patience with some extreme physical torture. What he will ever become, i do not know. Im almost afraid to think of his future. It is horrible to be a man, but the driving misery of being a woman is almost as bad. To be half civilized with some aspirations for enlightenment and obliged to spend the largest part of the time the victim of young barbarians keeps one in perpetual torment. Host somehow they made it all work and brought all of those children to the white house. They had a very involved and active family. We have a photograph of the family in the white house. It was a brief tenure. What was family life like in the white house . Guest it was healthy, funny humorous, there was no ill sentiment. Nobody was trying to use them as examples of good living. The two older boys were to be going to college, but they were so close, they remained in the house and they studied there. There were two little boys who were kind of terrors. And a very beautiful openhearted daughter, molly, who kept a little diary when she was in the white house. It was a poignant document because it talks about her fathers assassination. Very sad. The grandmother was also there garfields mother. Lucretias father was still alive. He lived to be 95. But it was garfields mother who came to live there. She had raised her son to be president and even when mrs. Garfield was ill, some speculation about who should be whether she would be able to return as hostess, there were some suggestions that old mother garfield would come to the white house and take over. There are some suggestions that that idea did not go over too well. Host joey on twitter asks, a lot of first ladies have a cause of their own. Did mrs. Garfield, in her brief time in d. C. , have a cause . In fact, it became restoring the white house. Guest really interesting. There is one suggestion, and it is written in a letter by one of the first people in the United States, a woman, who was both blind and deaf, who had achieved Higher Education and was in touch with mrs. Garfield. There was some suggestion that mrs. Garfield was interested in working with people who were sightimpaired or hearingimpaired and developing educational outlets for them. But the one project we know about is going to the library of congress to do research on the history of the white house. With the idea of not necessary ily restoring the house but bringing a sense of history. The people at this point, 80 years the white house has been standing, and all of the families have lived there. Back to the adamses. Now you are having one and two and three generations worth of stories. She has a sense of history and the history of the house. In her papers is a fascinating list of artists and writers that she intended to invite to the white house. Host next is thomas in new york. Caller hello, can you hear me . Can you hear me . Host yes, your question. I am sorry, but you have to turn the tv volume down. We will move on to one quick video which talks about her artistic ability and things like the white house china. [video clip] here in the family dining room, we have the family china which is the china they used at the white house. I will take one out. It has the g monogram on it. The garfields were not rich people. They did not purchase a specific set for the purpose of the white house. They brought their best stuff with them. They would have used this china at home and at the white house. This would have been their formal dinnerware. The white house probably has several pieces of the china. We have quite a collection here of the china that exists. It is a pretty impressive set, china painting was very popular. A popular hobby for ladies. The very top row were handpainted by lucretia we believe. Mrs. Garfield was very up on the latest trends and style of the day and she had a very good eye for art. And beauty. She taught painting for a while. Around the fireplace are handpainted tiles. That was a family project done in 1880. We believe she painted the two top corner tiles. The other tiles were painted by the children. And at least one family friend. James a. Garfield said that his wife had faultless taste. You can see she chose her wallpaper, colors, and furniture very carefully. Host did she have the opportunity to host any events . Guest she hosted a regular reception and it is fascinating that at one of those, a man by the name of Charles Guiteau, who would shoot the president two months later, met her and reported having a very pleasant conversation with her and liking her. Of course, she gets malaria. There is fear that she might die. As she is recovering, it is thought she would do better at the jersey shore. With the salt air. Guiteau, ready to shoot the president , is waiting for him at the railroad station and sees him escorting mrs. Garfield and he cannot bring himself to shoot the president. Host that is in june. I want to pause for dramatic effect. Just a short while later, he gets a second chance. The president is on his way tell us the story of the assassination. Guest the president is on his way to new jersey to join his wife and he is then going to go up to massachusetts. Two of the boys are back in ohio ohio with their grandmother. Molly, the president s daughter is with her mother. And guiteau shoots the president. Right away, he sees harriet blaine, the wife of james blaine, who Lucretia Garfield was so in favor of having. He tells her to wire lucretia. She is overwhelmed at first and she almost faints. She has to be held up by men on either side of her. She composes herself and says to the doctors, what will it take to make sure he is cured . And they say, a miracle. And she says, without any sentiment, that is what will happen. Host this was july in washington, d. C. It had not drained the swamp. She contracted malaria and it was a dangerous place for health in the summertime. How does this affect the care . Guest i could almost say what care . They know he has a bullet in him. Its beastly hot. There is a rudimentary airconditioning system pumping cool air up from the ground floor. Host they do that specifically because they are asking for help from the public. Guest ideas for inventions, but all kinds of kooky recipes and potions are being sent to mrs. Garfield. Mrs. Garfield was fantastic in that she was able to compartmentalize her personal fears and the care and wear on her emotionally and had the wherewithal to put out this word that everything was fine. That the president was in charge. This was a very important thing. She asked that everything written about him be sent to her for review. Vice president arthur made no rumblings about assuming any president ial duties. He respected her. You begin to see generated first in the country and then around the world the most amazing articles about this womans courage, this womans intelligence, her fortitude, how her strength and calm, and how it was pervading the white house. Cheering up the president. The patient. Then there were the technology of the day permitted pen sketches, so you saw images of mrs. Garfield, her down in the kitchen preparing food for him. So, it was a little bit of hyperbole because it was a desperate situation. As wed spoken about earlier Alexander Graham bell offered to bring in a newfangled magnetic electromagnetic machine to find the bullet. And asked that any metal strings in the bed be removed, and they werent. Host he was trying to trace a metal bullet. In fact, the machine saw the bed springs. Asking, is it true president garfield died not from the gunshot but from bacteria from dirty instruments used by the doctors . Guest a little bit yes, but the bullet was dirty. It was a foreign object in him. He might have eventually died. It is a circumstantial situation. There was also ignorance at the time. I will say he had one woman doctor. After the federal government paid the doctors, they paid the woman doctor half the amount and mrs. Garfield wrote a letter and was outraged. She used the word discrimination, and the woman doctor received the same amount as the male doctors. Caller thank you, cspan, for the program. My question is, during that timeframe, would they have known the rockefellers and the vanderbilts . Guest Chester Arthur and his wife did. The garfields really did not at the time in later years mrs. Garfield was well known and well respected. I would not doubt that she wouldve had contact with them. Caller thank you. Was there a big age difference between the president and mrs. Garfield . Guest i do not recall. I think it was five years or less. I dont remember their specific birth dates. Host but not large. The president was shot again july 2 and he lingered until september. The decision was made to move him to the jersey shore. Guest to the very place he had been headed to see her. That is where he dies, in her presence. Whats interesting is that, among the many letters she received, she gets a letter from former first lady julia tyler. She says, i wanted to emphasize she used the word sister in talking about an almost sorority of president ial spouses. Host the funeral. 250,000 people came. Set the stage for this victorianera funeral. Guest what says it all is the way the white house looked. Photographs show it trimmed in the most intricate patterns of black mourning crepe. Mrs. Garfield was strong throughout. She did not break down, unlike mary lincoln, who was unable to emotionally withstand the public display of this. Mrs. Garfield began designing and working with the ideas of what his tomb would be like in cleveland, ohio. Host which for other first ladies in future years who had husbands assassinated Jacqueline Kennedy took that model and became very much involved in the planning of the funeral process. Adn the and the memorial. Guest with that, the legacy. Lucretia garfield, we mentioned the papers she was preserving. She approved statues. Busts of him. She was really handson whenever it had anything to do with them. With him. Host how did the children react to their fathers assassination . How old were they when it happened . Guest i do not remember the ages and they were not all there when he died. Two of the boys were young. There were two other boys, collegeage. Molly, i think, was 13 or 14. There were two younger boys. Host the amazing thing is that there is a fund drive for the garfield family. Somewhere between 350,000 and 360,000 in 1880 dollars was raised for the family. It would be like 8 million today. Guest extraordinary. Host were people sending money from all over the place . Guest it started from a newspaper. She really captured peoples imaginations. It was a brief moment in our history. It was so different from the way people reacted to mary lincoln. Because of mrs. Garfields being awarded almost immediately by congress a president ial widows pension of 5,000 a year, that also benefited the other surviving president ial widows. Sarah polk, julia tyler, and mrs. Lincoln. True to form, mrs. Lincolns reaction was, i am sure somebody is going to put the kibosh on that and i will not ever get my money. Julia tyler wrote an anonymous letter to the press, this is wonderful, but i think it should be double that amount. Caller thank you for the series. We love it. I grew far from where garfield was the presidnet president of the university. We were watching cbs one morning. Who was the only president buried aboveground . They said garfield. We took the car and we drove up there. There is his monument. It has steel bars. It has the American Flag draped over it. A beautiful bronze statue upstairs, it is a beautiful place. Host thanks for the recommendation. I do not know that he is the that is one of the things we are china do. Interest people and get out on the road and seeing some of these things as your interest begins to wax. So, another video. In this we learn about how she began to preserve her husbands memory. [video clip] she came back and started to make her and her familys life here on this property. She started to make a lot of changes to the property. To stop using the downstairs bedroom. Started using the upstairs bedroom a lot more frequently. She converted the downstairs kitchen into an open Reception Room and have the kitchen moved into the back part of the house. Most significantly was the construction of the president ial library. She started to make a lot of changes to the property. I am standing in the room that he used as an office for the years that he was living here in the house. Lucretia garfield called this the general snuggery. This room looks pretty much how it did. She did make a few minor changes in here, in memorium is carved in the wood. It does have an interesting double meaning. It was also the title of james and lucretias favorite poem. He became a firsttime member of the house of representatives. The first born child, eliza died. She was only two or three. This was very tragic and it brought them much closer together than they have been. Two weeks or so after the daughters death, he told lucretia that he had been not reading this poem, in memorial by alfred lord tennyson. It should bring him as much comfort as it did to him. When Lucretia Garfield had it carved in the wood in his office after his death, she was of knowledge and not only his tragic death at a young age, only 49 when he was assassinated, but also the love of literature with the tennyson poem. Host later on, we will come back to the years after the white house with Lucretia Garfield. With the assassination of her husband in september, Chester Arthur, the political opponent on the opposite side of the Republican Party, suddenly found himself president. He found himself without a wife and a Vice President. What was the transition like . Guest the focus really remained for so long in september and well into october, november Chester Arthur lived his permanent home in new york city on lexington avenue. He, himself, was still in a state of very deep mourning, because his wife, ellen, died in january 1880. She came from a powerful family. She knew Dolly Madison when she was a little girl. They went to st. Johns church on lafayette square. When she was 510, she knew Dolly Madison. Her father was a very famous naval commandants who took a ship on a commercial ship that went down. It was an act of bravery because he made sure that all the passengers on board got off a first. His widow and his daughter their only child, then living in new york city were given all sorts of honors and awards, a monument to him at Annapolis Naval academy. Alan arthur is really interesting. She does not become first lady but she influences the administration. Very similar to racial jackson the way that she was the ghost Rachel Jackson the way that she was the ghost the memory of her. Chester arthur made several appointments, four we know of, specifically of people who had known his wife. One was a cousin in the office of the attorney general made assistant attorney general. Another was in the treasury. It was very controversial that he named the superintendent of the naval academy, he appointed a friend of theirs, a childhood friend of his wifes. He created a political problem in the senate, like the prerogative of appointing mayors, is ceremonial role played out in the white house, but are for insisted in making that appointment because it was a friend of his and alans. Ellens. He kept her picture on the wall, fresh flowers, he had a stainedglass window put in at st. Johns church so he could see it from his bedroom window in the white house. There was some remorse, perhaps, because he was quite married to his career and his political advancement and mrs. Arthur was an accomplished singer who died of pneumonia while he was in albany on political business. He comes in without a wife without a Vice President and his 10yearold daughters living with his sister in albany. The press at the time began speculating in a series of articles who would be the lady of the white house. Host the man was wealthy, very stylish. He lived quite a life in new york city. He had this tragedy of being a widower. You could see there would be a press line that the it press would be very interested in. Guest it was a little unseemly because there are a lot of wealthy women or women who wanted to be wealthy who began flirtatiously appearing where ever president arthur was. He had no interest whatsoever in remarrying. He really became depressed. He basically said, im not going to have a first lady. No one will take the role of my wife. He starts having the social events once the social season begins again, when Congress Comes back in the session, and it is like first lady for a day. He has these events were a cabinet wife, a senate wife, none of it is really quite working and the following year 1883, new years day, his sister from albany comes down. There is an indication that he nearly had a terminal illness and he wanted to be close to his daughter. They came down from new york. At the time, she was being taken care of by her aunt, mary arthur, nicknamed molly. Host so that is the same person. On twitter guest she lived in the white house with her brother. Host how protective were they of the little girl . Guest part of the reason arthur kept her away from the white house for nearly one year making sure that she lived either at her home, his home in new york city, and he was having that remodeled, so she went to live with an aunt and there were two other girls, jessie and may, who came to live with their mother in the white house. Host what is your question . Caller if president garfield had been shot in our modern times with our technology, do you think he would have been saved . Guest i would just venture a guess to say yes. The simple removal of a bullet he would be able to detect where it was in the system. Host arthur may have been severely depressed by the loss of his wife, but they entertained lavishly in the white house and he undertook an amazing redecoration of the white house that was done by louis tiffany. If you think of a tiffany lamp with all the colors, think about that in the white house. What did it look like when it was done . The elephant in the room, the thing you could not ignore, was this wall of tiffany glass. It was put up in what is the main hall, the central hall of the state floor. You come in from the main entrance, the North Entrance of the white house into technically the lobby, the entrance, and today you see white columns and it opens up and the doors to the blue room immediately, the red room, the green room, but in those days the draft was so bad and people were complaining, he put up this wall of garish victorian tiffany glass. That is garish by our tastes, but it was high style at the time. Guest it did not even last 20 years. Teddy roosevelts famous words were, smash that wall to bits. Host it was not preserved . Guest no. Host this was a busy time in the country. We have a few highlights of the administration and some of the issues that the are from administration was dealing with, with out a vicepresident in office, the chinese exclusion act, the president ial veto of the carriage of passengers at sea bill, the river and harbor act, and pendleton Civil Service reform act. We talked earlier about Civil Service reform being the key issue of the time. What happened with that . Guest just like social security, to some degree civil rights, things come in increments and descended of being the first major piece of legislation that started to make the first Real Prevention of the spoils system of basically the political system. Remember, federal employees could be fired. People who work in the treasury building. We think of those people today as career bureaucrats are people working as federal employees they could all be fired and whoever was in power would then appoint whoever they wanted. It was not only unfair but it was inefficient. Arthur really takes those first steps and he puts the first efforts in in terms of building a modern u. S. Navy. While the chinese exclusion act was really an awful thing in terms of just about right active bigotry, are for have supported something that was far less stressed than what passed. Less strict that what passed. There was a worse proposal out there. Arthur gets a bad rap sometimes. Host did arthur keep garfields cabinet . Who was his most important advisor . Guest i do not recall. He did initially through the new year, but i cannot recall specifically the individual members of his cabinet that continued on. When you speak of the garfield administration, you are really talking more about the our for arthur administration. Host rachel on facebook what measures were taken to ensure the safety after the assassination . Guest none. There are guards at the front door, but it still had this sort of lazy, old Hotel Quality to it. Even with arthurs redecoration there was one reason why he was very protective of his daughter. In is not done so the 1886 new years day reception, two months before he leaves, that he allows his daughter to publicly appear. Host in alaska, welcome to the conversation. Caller thank you. This is a great show. I heard something many years ago and i dont know if its true. Garfield had the ability to take lee sands from each hand and simultaneously write the same thing in greek and latin. Is this true . Guest from all i have learned that was true. He was ambidextrous. Host were of the styles as progressive as chester . Were they as progressive in their style . Guest alan arthur was. She was very fashionable, very rich largely for the wealth of her mother, and very ambitious. There are a lot of stories about how she really got behind she really did not like that politics kept him away from home so often, but on the other hand, she was a very socially ambitious woman and ambitious for the career. Even though she was a selling was a southerner and one of her very close first cousins, because she was an only child, she was very close to her double cousins, her parents siblings who had married, so double cousins. During the civil war, Chester Arthur was able to secure the release of Union Presence of one of her cousins, but she went to abraham lincolns 1865 inaugural. She attended the white house wedding of nelly grant. She knew the parents of Theodore Roosevelt in new york city. She bought at the best stores. They took summers in cooperstown, n. Y. , and in newport. Molly arthur was a little bit more, i would not use the term pedestrian, but she was just not interested. Host last question on the arthur administration, on mary arthur, the sister, she had a very strong opinion on womens suffrage. How influential was she in this nonofficial white house hostess role . Guest it really showed us that the country had come to expect a female presence, whether it was a wife, sister, daughter. She really walk the fine line. She made public appearances, sometimes on around, sometimes only with him. I think he almost was kind of ambivalent about how public a role she should take. Her support of the antisuffrage movement occurred after the white house. There was some coverage of it. I will add that she was also a great advocate of civil rights. In her home in albany, she not only welcomed as a dinner guest but as an overnight guest and booker t. Washington. Host we have 12 minutes left. As arthur finishes three years lucretia is establishing herself as a widow and enormous the popular first lady. How did she do that . People are curious about her moved to pasadena, calif. Guest she could not take the cold winters in colorado anymore. She maintained a home in washington as a president ial widow. Host at the house should continue to work on. Guest there were times when she would lease the house or property because it was just more feasible. Her brother was the manager of the house, but california in the 1880s, there was a real opening up as a sort of a promised land, sunshine, and a lot of california was settled by wealthy midwesterners. She went out to pasadena in 1900 and she was distantly related to two famous architects, green and green, known for the california craftsman style architecture. She had a great interest in architecture so she worked rate closely with them in designing this extraordinary craftsman manchin which is Still Standing as a private home and it really became a kind of a showplace. She was even in one of the carriages for the vips in the early pasadena rose parade. She had a very full life in california. Host you made the point that she was interested in so much. One of our viewers on Facebook Says what do you think of her taste . Guest im not the best to ask about taste, but along those lines she was also an advocate for womens suffrage. She did not come out publicly, just let the issue of temperance. She thought it would make much more controversy than need be, but her daughter also said that her mother truly believed in equality of the genders. You also see her when former president Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 is mounting a campaign against the incumbent president , she supports the roosevelt. She comes out at an appearance in los angeles. Host tawney in pleasantville, n. Y. Caller one of the books i ever read was destiny of the republic, and there were some money facts, but the three that are brought to my attention tonight where abraham lincolns son tads involvement in three president ial assassinations, not necessarily involved but being in the area. You showed an artists sketch that carried garfield to the house where he passed away. Im wondering if you can tell the story of how the car got there. Lastly, there is a part in the area, seven president s park, and they might have to make it 8 president s part now that president obama have visited. Why have so many president s gone to the jersey shore . Guest it was fashionable. The salt air was thought to be recuperative period in order to reach of the house, they have to lay an exit track so the strength to go right up to the house. Guest he mentioned all the president s. During the years of the carter administration, these are the first ladies who were brought alive tyler, polk, lane lincoln, lucy hayes, and Lucretia Garfield. We see a bonding across Political Parties among women who served in the white house. Was that happening at this time . Guest we could credit good old Molly Mcelroy, who is she is credited for everything, she invited them to publicly receive with her as cohosts. Mrs. Lincoln and tyler were in the news. With Molly Mcelroy leaving the role of first lady and handing it over to cleveland, a bachelor of the time, whose sister would be assuming the role, theres a lot of press about these two sisters. At the same time, in conjunction with all of this, the very first book is written on the history of first ladies and it is a collective biography called ladies of the white house by her name escapes me. It is a very famous book. Host lucretia outlived her husband by many years. We will return one last time to the house in ohio and learn more about the house. [video clip] if james a. Garfield were to walk in this house, he would not recognize it. This was actually the kitchen. After his death, lucretia made major changes. This was changed into the open Reception Room. The most significant change she made with the construction of the very first president ial memorial library. As begin to the top of the steps here before we go into the memorial library, we come first to the memorial landing and we find one of her favorite portraits of her husband. This was done by a good friend of the garfield and it shows james a. Garfield as a Major General during the american civil war. This is the room Lucretia Garfield came up with to really memorialize her husband, keep his memory alive for herself for their children, and for the country. All over the room, you see books that belonged to james a. Garfield. This is a beautiful piece that was sent to mrs. Garfield completely unsolicited by someone in italy. Its a beautiful memorial piece with an image of James Garfield surrounded by flowers. It is all actually made with small stones cracked together and was one of her favorite pieces. We have a very beautiful marble bust of james a. Garfield of this was also sculpted by an italian and given to her around 1883, two years after his death. Here we have what lucretia called the memory room. She has constructed along with the library in 18851886 where she is stored his official documents and papers. She had them down and stored it really to keep them for posterity. Been a lot of very interesting items. Most significantly but is the wreath on the shelf. It was lying on his casket while he was laying in the Capitol Building in washington, d. C. It was sent to mrs. Garfield the of the british delegation from Queen Victoria along with a nice hand written note of sympathy from the queen. The garfields used this room a lot. It was not one of those beautiful rooms that you could not go into more touch anything. You see lucretias writing desk year. She spent a lot of time here. She used a black border stationery. She used it for the rest of her life to denote a lifelong morning for a husband. Here, in front of the large windows, two of the garfield children were married in 1888. Harry garfield, the oldest son and molly, the only surviving garfield daughter both married their respective fiances in a double wedding ceremony right here in front of the windows of the library. Host Lucretia Garfield made it into the new century. She died in 1918 at the ripe old age of 85. How did she live those postwhite house years . How should she be in the pantheon of first ladies . Guest her tenure was so brief. She was the first to be selfconscious and often not destroy the papers and keep a diary of a white house days. She is best thought of as a former first lady in terms of her career. There are a lot of similarities between her and Jaclyn Kennedy in terms of committing to the legacy of their husbands and yet, also, not allowing the lives of the lives of their children to be weighed down by grief. Guest we are looking at some photographs of a large family. You know if any other family members went into politics . Guest one of his sons was in the order roosevelts cabinet and another was in woodrow wilsons. She died one year into world war i, and she was doing work as a volunteer with the red cross in pasadena when she died. There is some suggestion that she decided to go from republican to progressive despite the democratic because president wilson give her son a job in the cabinet. Host on that note, we say thank you. You have spent your historical career focusing on the first ladys as we closed here, how did you get interested . Why you think its interesting for people to learn about first ladies . Guest they have a natural influence on the sinking of their husbands. Their intelligence, their wisdom, and sometimes their ability to see the larger picture that their husbands themselves cannot was, for so many years, neglected. There were always written off as mannequins for clothing. Their intelligence, efforts, and conscientiousness help their husbands the presidency. Host first ladies, the saga of president s and their power. As we close, i say this every week. Were working with the Historical Society and thank you to those in the garfield home in ohio, but also the White House Historical association, who have been a partner for us. We have a biography but that have printed and we have a special edition for those who want to read more. You can find it on our website. Thank you for being with us for first ladies on the garfield administration. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] American History tv is featuring cspans original series first of ladies. Next week we look at francis. This is American History tv on cspan 3. Coming up next, about the for and to story and historian talks about lillian carter. He talks about her work as a peace corps volunteer in india at the age of