Lakefront for a gigantic display to end this day, a truly special day, our countrys birthday. As the last of the rockets red glare fades into the night sky this city looks forward to next year when it celebrates a day in old millwaukee and becomes again americas fourth of july capital. American history tv is featuring cspans original series, first ladies, influence and image, at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on sunday night throughout the rest of this year. Cspan produced the series in cooperation with the White House Historical association, through conversations with experts video tours of Historic Sites and questions from cspans audience, we tell the story of americas 45 first ladies. Now, Lucretia Garfield, on first ladies, influence and image eerie this is about 90 minutes. Its only in recent years that a lot of scholarship has focused on the fact that their marriage was in its early phases. 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. They spent a lot of time on their children. They thought that education was an emancipating factor. Mrs. Garfield adored her time at the exhibition, but she was specifically interested in the latest scientific technologies of the day. After James Garfields death, citizens raised hundreds of thousands of dollars that were turned over to Lucretia Garfield. In todays dollars, it would equate to somewhere around 8 million. Her character was extremely 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 first ladies influence and image. After the assassination, the next person to come into the white house, chester arthur, did not have a first lady. To help us understand, 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 power. It 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, Charles Guiteau, probably screaming with the gun in his hand, i am a stalwart. Now arthur is president. 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. 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. 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 with members of the cabinet of who would be appointed and who wouldnt. Host the actual vote was very close. 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 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 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 number 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 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 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 did 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. Host we have a phone line set aside for you to call in. We will get to call for 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 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 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 standing in pasadena california. Host which was very forward thinking. 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. 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. 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 live there. Host that happens to many of us. 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, dc 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 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 appointments of the secretary of state, james 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, not 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 and 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. His example of coming to the office, to the white house, and looking for jobs. How does 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. Guiteau was one of them. He never got to press his case. He took it personally. Host clearly. 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 Garfield 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. 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. We have mollys piano. In the family parlor, you see a lot of books. 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. This is an 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. We learned about the kind of parents they were. Tell the story of how they met. It is really quite fascinating, so many minor chords in it. This sense of equality to it. 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 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 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. He was her teacher at the eclectic institute. He went to Williams College and they began a correspondence. That is where you begin it is the world of ideas that begin to separate them and bring them together. 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. We have a sense of that with a letter that she wrote to James Garfield about the relationship it was touch and go. What is really interesting is even though she very much loved him, she also looked out for herself. 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. If she never got married, had to depend on anyone else. She not only becomes a teacher but an interest of art is born in her. She becomes an art teacher. This is all right before she gets married. He has another affair. He has a fullblown affair with a woman in new york. That nearly does in the marriage. Stanley is watching us in ohio. What is your question . 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 . You know, 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 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 . She moved to washington. 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. David is listening from chicago. President arthur burned his personal papers along with his white house papers. He got so little publicity on this action. Why the difference between the two . I am looking forward to your book on mckinley this spring. 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. 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. 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. It is horrible to be a man, but the driving misery of being a woman is almost as bad. To be half civilized and obliged to spend the largest part of the time the victim of young barbarians keeps one in perpetual torment. Somehow they made it all work and brought all of those children to the white house. 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 . 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. The grandmother was also there garfields mother. Garfields mother 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 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. A lot of first ladies have a cause of their own. 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. 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. 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 lists of artists and writers that she intended to invite to the white house. Next is thomas in new york. Hello, can you hear me . 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. 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 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. We have quite a collection here of the china that exists. It is a pretty impressive set, china painting was very popular. The very top row were handpainted by Lucretia Garfield. Mrs. Garfield was very up on the latest trends and style of the day and she had a very good eye for art. She taught painting for a while. Around the fireplace are handpainted tiles. She painted the two top corner tiles. The other tiles were painted by the children. James garfield said that his wife had faultless taste. She chose her furniture very carefully. Did she have the opportunity to host any events . 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. Guiteau is waiting for him at the railroad station and sees him escorting mrs. Garfield and he cannot bring himself to shoot the president. 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 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 with her grandmother. The president s daughter is with her mother. And guiteau shoots the president. Right away, he sees the wife of james blaine. 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 doctor, what will it take to make sure he is cured . And they say, a miracle. And she says, that is what will happen. This was july in washington d. C. She contracted malaria and it was a dangerous place for health in the summertime. How does this affect the care . They know he has a bullet. There is a rudimentary airconditioning system pumping cool air up from the ground floor. They do that specifically. 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 and had the wherewithal to put out this word that everything was fine. 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 it was pervading the white house. Cheering up the president. Then there were the technology of the day, you saw images of mrs. Garfield, her down in the kitchen preparing food for him. It was a little bit of hyperbole because it was a desperate situation. Alexander graham bell offered to bring in a newfangled magnetic electromagnetic machine to find the bullet. He was trying to trace a metal bullet. In fact, the machine saw the bed srpings. Is it true president garfield died not from the gunshot but from bacteria from dirty instruments used by the doctor . The bullet was dirty. He might have eventually died. It is a circumstantial situation. 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. The woman doctor received the same amount as the male doctors. Thank you, cspan, for the program. During that timeframe, would they have known the rockefellers and the vanderbilts . Chester arthur and his wife did. I would not doubt that she wouldve had contact with them. Thank you. Was there a big age difference between the president and mrs. Garfield . I do not recall. I think it was five years or less. The president was shot again july 2 and he lingered until september. The decision was made to move him to the jersey shore. The very place he had been headed to see her. That is where he dies, in her presence. She gets a letter from julia tyler. I wanted to emphasize that a sorority of president ial spouses. The funeral. Set the stage for this victorianera funeral. What says it all is the way the white house looked. 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 ohio. Jacqueline kennedy took that model and became very much involved in the planning of the funeral process. With that, the legacy. Lucretia garfield, we mentioned the papers she was preserving. She approved statues. She was really handson whenever it had anything to do with them. How did the children react to their fathers assassination . 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. The amazing thing is that there is a fund drive for the garfield family. Somewhere between 350,000 and 360,000 raised for the family. Extraordinary. Were people sending money from all over the place . 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. 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. Thank you for the series. 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. I do not know if he is the only president buried aboveground. Thank you for the recommendation. We are trying to interest people in learning more about american history