Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20130521

and i will walk 500 more just to fall down at your door. we have to have that sort of passion that young people have. we need to combine that with patrick henry. when we do, when we do, when we combine that passion again, when we become the party who is, like a man coming over a hill singing, then we'll be a great national party again. thank you very much. [applause] [cheers and applause] [applause] >> thank you so much, senator paul, thank you so much. thank, also, obviously, to the chairman, to all of you for being here tonight. i'm going it ask you, you probably are not aware, it has just been brought to my attention that as we've. sitting here tonight doing what we need to do and celebrating our party, there's been a tragic occurrence of tornadoes in the state of oklahoma. a number of people lost their lives including a number of children, and i know you want to join me and the chairman in prayers and best wishes for those family, and i thank the chairman for bringing that to our attention as we move forward tonight. we only have one more task to do, and then you all get to go where you want to go tonight. our dinner committee chairman knows who all the winners are on the silent auction so just one moment for that. [applause] and i left my glasses at the table, so bear with me. i will say, though, before i get to the silent auction winners is that one of the items were the dinner plants so anybody who would like to purchase one of the plants, they are $5, and you just take the one you want and take it out to the table, and just pay your $5 there. only had eight people sign up, so there's plenty of them. there's the roses, which are victory roses, there's campnuelas and daisies, and somebody's offering me their glasses. okay. the hundred dollar gift certificate on the sun rider health product was won by sandra theme. [applause] the cupcake basket -- going to get those with the glasses, the cupcake glasses was by marishka. the soldiers hug bracelets was joan getline. >> we're going to leave this night. you can find it in its entirety on c-span.org. >> sec fair of state and john kerry and ambassador for international religious freedom released the state department report on abuses on religious freedom abred. the briefing is about 5 minutes. -- 25 minutes. >> well, thank you for being here today for the release of the 2012 international religious freedom report. i'm pleased to be here with our ambassador, sue son johnson cook, and i want to thank her and her entire cohort here for their terrific work in helping to put this together. she's doing -- they are # doing a superb job of the dancing religious freedom abroad. i want to acknowledge the hard work of a whole bunch of state department employees, both here in washington and a lot of posts around the world because all of them collect the information and do a lot of work throughout the year in order to be able to put this report together. this is not a one or two week affair. this is a long one-year process. op going. fifteen years ago, i was very proud to join my colleagues in the united states congress in passing the international religious freedom act, the law that mandates the preparation of this state department report. this report, as many of you know, shines light on the challenges that people faced as they seek nothing more than the basic religious freedom, the right to worship as they wish. it's release here today is a demonstration of the abiding commitment of the u.s. people and u.s. government to the advancement of freedom of religion worldwide. freedom of religion is a core american value. it's one that helped to create our country. it's been at the center of our national consciousness since the 1600s. when the pilgrims fled rebellious religious persecution and landed in my home state of massachusetts. in many of these folks settled in the city of salem, which takes its name from the words salem or shalom meaning peace. before long, even there, religious strife visited their home town. women were accused of witch cracht, and some were burped at the take. emerging differences between leaders in massachusetts led congregations to break away and found new settlements in what's become connecticut and rhode island, providence founded by people who wandered through the woods in the winter and came back on an expansz of water and named it providence for obvious reasons. we approach the issue, i do, mindful of the past, and of how, as americans, we have, at times, had to push, work, and struggle to fully live up to the promise of our founding. john winthrop, who also is my grandfather from ten generations back was born in england, but his passionate a faith and disagreements with the church inspired him to lead a ship full of religious disdense to come to america and seek freedom of worship. on the deck of the arebella, he said in a sermon deliveredded before they landed, for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us. they have been, and they remain there. through though we are, obviously, far from perfect, no place has ever welcomed so many different fates to worship so freely as here in the united states of america. it's something we can be extraordinarily proud of. freedom of religion is not an american invention. it's a universal value. it's in the constitution and end grained in every human heart. the freedom to process and practice one's faith, to believe or not to believe or to change one's beliefs, that is a birthright of every human being, and that's what we believe. rights are recognized under international law. the promotion of international religious freedom is a priority for president obama and a priority for me as secretary of state. i'm certain and continue to that religious freedom is an integral part of our global, diplomatic engagement. the release of this report is an important part of the efforts. this report is a clear-eyed objective look at the look of freedom around the world, and when necessary, yes, it does directly call out some of our close friends as well as some countries with whom we seek stronger ties. it does so in order to try to make progress even though we know that it may cause some discomfort. when countries undermine or attack religious freedom. they not only unjustly threaten those whom they target, but threaten the country's own stability, and we see that in so many places. attacks on religious freedom are a moral and strategic national security for the united states. it was formed by a broad spectrum of contributors, faith leaders, religious organizations, and journalists. some of these individuals showed immense bravely coming forward and sharing their observations, and their stories show that we, as an international community have a lot of work to do. the report chronicles discrimination and violence in countries ranging from the established democracies to end trenched dictatorships. it documents that governments around the globe continue to detain, imprison, torture, and even kill people for their religious beliefs. in too many places, governments are also failing to protect minorities from social discrimination and violence. the report identifies global problems of discrimination and violence against religious groups including buddhists, hindus, jews, christians, muslim, and zekes. one troubling trend identified in the report is the potential rise of anti-semitism, so, today, i'd like to announce that i've named ira foreman to the position of special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism. ira has long been a champion of fair treatment for all and worked extensively to combat intolerance. on top of that, he's also a great guy, and i look forward to supporting him in this vitally important mission, so welcome aboard, ira. lastly, another troubling trend is the increasing use of laws governing blasphemy. these laws are frequently used to repress dissent, harass political opponents, and to settle personal vendettas. laws such as these violate fundmental freedom of expression and religion, and we believe they ought to be repealed, and because we have defended others' rights of expression, we are also ensuring that we can express our own views and practice our own faith without fearing for our own safety or lives. that is why, as i traveled the world, i do press leaders to do more to safeguard freedom of belief and to promote religious tolerance. that is why i urge all countries, especially those identified in this report to take action now to safeguard this fundmental freedom. while this report underscores the challenges to religious freedom, it is also true that it is harder than ever to restrict human freedom. it is never. easier in all of human history for people to share their views, to find information, to connect with others, even to send messages of desperation that ask for help or that shed light on abuses that are taking place because of instant communication. while serious challenges to religious freedom remain, i also could not be more optimistic about the prospects for freedom around the world because there are great prospects for accountability around the world. i thank you very much. i want to turn the floor over to ambassador susan johnson cook who will explain further the -- what the elements of this report are. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. secretary, an honor to serve you. good morning. the 2012 international religious freedom report combines the factual rendering of the religious freedom around the world. it is essential for a stable, peaceful, and thriving society. the universal declaration of human rights enshrines thought, conscious, and religion. this is the standard against which we assess religious freedom and the international religious freedom report. this report seeks to advance religious freedom by signing a spotlight on abuses and violations. as secretary kerry said, when a country fails to provide equal protection of religious freedom for all, the ground work is laid for political instability and sectarian violence. when a government favors one's group or a set of belief and restricts the rights of others, some in society take that as approval to further target marginalized groups. as this report makes clear, much work remains to be done. secretary kerry just described some of the most troubling trend and, please, let me note some others. thousands of people around the world are jailed because of what they believe or don't believe. in iran, more than 116 in prison for teaching and expressing their faith, and many christians and sunnies are facing similar treatment. additionally, a christian pastor named sied abadini, and american and iranian citizen was sentenced to eight years in prison just for his beliefs. others detained on account for religious beliefs, some died due to torture of lack of medical treatment. we seek release of all individuals detained or em prisoned because of their beliefs. many governments fail to prosecute the perpetrators of crime promoted by religious animosity with a climate of impunity that fueled further discrimination and violence. in egypt, the government failed to appropriately investigate and prosecute perpetrators and did not effectively intervene when sectarian violence arose. in pakistan, religious minorities continued to end counter societal discrimination and violence and authorities frequently failed to arrest the perpetrator. as sectarian violence claims more lives each year in pakistan, over 200 shia killed in the first two months of this year alone. in nigeria, elements of the extremist sect claim the lives of christians and muslims. the government response is involved gross violations of human rights of the civilian population and deepened impunity. they have to condemn religious intolerance and bring to justice perpetrators of abuses. just last month, i traveled to china where i pressed government officials to uphold religious freedom for all and stop abusing the universal right. they restrict the practices of groups including discrimination betians, muslims, buddhist, and practitioners. in 2012, 883 tibet self-imlated to protest policy. the toal number now is over 100. we urge governments to protect the rights of all to hold, express, oar change their faith without fear. in syria, the government targeted faith groups as a threat,ing inning those as religious minorities. such targtses included killing, detention, and harassment. syria orthodox archbishop and greek orthodox archbishop were kidnapped april 22 by persons unknown and still remain missing. societal intolerance against religious minorities is on the rise. too often, the intolerance finds expression in acts of violence, vandalism, and desecration. in iraq, extremists target religious ceremonies, leading people not to attend services out of fear for their safety. sectarian violence directed at muslims spread to central burma in march 2013 resulting in casualties, displacement, and the destruction of places of worship. antisemitic rhetoric persists in middle eastern media and appears in public discourse in europe, especially where antisemitic parties have seats in parliament. we continue to see violation attacks in jews in europe, and i look forward to working for the to the foreman introduced by secretary kerry, looking forward to working with him to combat this pernicious problem. antimuslim sentiments and discrimination are evident in places as diverse as europe and asia. we call on societies and governments to foster tolerance and hold perpetrators of violence accountable. we also partner with members of international communities to support religious freedom, to protect religious minorities, and to safeguard freedom of expression. we particularly advocate engaging women and youth on religious freedom as their voices are a positive force for change. violations of religious freedom easily capture the world's attention. by example, i want to highlight positive developments that fly under the media radar. although government's restrictions on religious freedom remain on vietnam, the government took a step forward by allowing large scale worship services with more than 100,000 participants. turkey, they loosened restrictions on religious attire allowing female students to wear head scarves in certain religious classes and in certain islamic schools. as you will see and read, the challenges are daunting, but we remain committed to working tirelessly to ensure religious freedom for all. i thank you, and i will be happy to take your questions. >> [inaudible] have you detected change in the behavior over years and how do they deal with allies like turkey, israel, saudi arabia in varying degrees? >> the first part of the question is in some cases there is change and process. as noted in the closing, there were certain countries specialically places where the friends are not increasing or doing well, and they are going downward. we look at the country's that, particular concern that you talk about, that continue to have egregious op going systematic acts, and so we use different tools, sometimes there's sanctions, sometimes put on the pcp list, and it depends what happens. we hope people take small steps for progress because what we ultimately want is religious freedom for all in every country. >> molly? >> thank you. hindus, baddists increasingly facing the attack in various countries of the world m do you know which other countries identified the countries, hindus and others facing and exercising their -- >> there's several. i refer you to the report. there's several countries. we don't highlight one particular one. is there a country you are concerned about? >> i have seen in media reports, pakistan, afghanistanings about hindus. do you know any other country where -- >> well, in those particular countries, we certainly are concernedded about religious minorities, hindus as well as others, and we press the government, urge the governments to allow religious freedom for all. >> can you tell us what's new and different from the previous report, and is there any countries you consider sangs them? >> this is a report for 2012. refer you to the report in terms of how they progressed. there's certain countries cited in the end of the remarks like vietnam who made progress, allowing large places of worship. i think each country has situations and their countries that are doing well. i had the opportunity to visit saudi arabia and china on the country's of particular concern list as well as ewe beck stan. we try to make small steps with governments that are not moving whatsoever, and, particularly, in saudi arabia, they don't allow nonislammic persons to have freedom of religion, and so each year is situational, and we progress, look at all 199 countries, and i think the report will speak for itself. >> do you see progress by the saudis? >> they don't allow any nonislammic persons to have religious freedom, so i don't see progress there. >> like less report? >> their report is very close to where it was last year, very much so. what happened was allowed a visit, and that's get ins. we want to continue to be engaged with them. >> yes, please. the issue of blasphemy. as a matter of fact, become an issue even in the place like egypt, for example, when the cop tic egyptians, muslim face charges of blasphemy. how do you recall the issue or even make a report of it? >> at all high levels, our government has been involved in egypt since you cited that, all high levels across government. we're concerned. we want to hold accountability for those who perpetratedded the violation, make sure there's protection of religious minorities bs especially coptic christians. egypts, dealing with the new constitution. there's not room for religion freedom as we see it now, but we press the government, and as i said, at all high levels, the government is intervening there. >> [inaudible] thank you. the president here in the white house, and the new prime minister will be there, and the two countries, i will follow one question, do you see any change, what method do you think this report will have for the president obama today in the u.s., and also as well as pakistan concern, as they said, the one who is very close to the religious people in pakistan. do you see any change under his negotiations since he's -- he will be the third time prime minister of pakistan? >> okay. let me just say, again, the report is from 2012. in burma, there was no improvement of religious freedom, and as long as there's no improvement of religious freedom, the sanctions will still remain in terms of religious freedom. in terms of pakistan, there's a new government, new leadership, and i think it remains to be seen how he will hand it l. as the question previously, you know, blasphemy is important to us, and there's many held in prison still as others about 20 others in prison because of the beliefs. we have to see what the new government will do. we encourage them and urge him to, again, hold accountable the perpetrators of violence and make sure that protection of religious minorities, and so that's going to be very important. human rights is a high priority for the administration. >> and on india, how much right have you taken concerned from various interthacial freedom commission because commission has or gained, once again, addressed and also is urging the state department that we just should not be with those that the chief minister, who is seeking to come to the u.s., but to -- the groups here including the commissioner, still against his rival in the u.s.. >> i thank you for the question. the united states commissioner and international religious freedom to whom you referred is an independent commission also mandated by congress, but an independent commission so that their references and suggestions are certainly taken into account when we do the reports, but in terms of what they designate, i refer you to the united states commission op international religious freedom. >> one last question. >> on tuesday, the senate finance committee looks into the irs targeting p conservative groups. witnesses include outgoing irs commissioner miller, treasury department inspector general, russell george, and former irs commissioner, and live coverage at 10 a.m. eastern on c-span3. on wednesday, the house oversight and government reform committee looks into the issue. .. >> in recent years, a lot of scholarships focus on the fact that how long they were married. in the early years, i think jane found her a little bit distant and cold, but as the years went by she had a tremendous influence on him. >> spent a lot of time with which i children and felt that education was an emancipating factor and that lead to the key to success. mrs. garfield adored her time, but she was specifically interested in the latest science and technology of the day. >> after james garfield's death, number of prominent citizens raced $350,000 that was turn over lucretia garfield. that would equate to $8 million in today's dollars. >> her character was exceedingly strong. she has a rectitude that wag invulnerable. >> lieu career which garfield was born in ohio in 183 2. her life spans antibell almost america. and a sporter of women's right, she and president garfield entered the white house on march 4, 1881, after a very close election. hough, what planses she had as first lady were cut short by an assassin's bullet. tonight we learn about lucretia garfield, and the next person to come into the white house, chester arthur, who did so without a first lady, and to help us understand this interesting period in american hoyt, carl anthony, the history yap at the national first lady's libraries. the circumstances of the garfields election helped to -- tell us the story of where the party politics were at that time. >> guest: well, so many of the large issues that had continued in knost civil war era were really in large measure put to rest. transcontinental railroad had been completed. troops were removed from the south. 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 of -- that were appointed positions that were at the discretion of people in power, ended up being a power struggle within the party between an ohio-based party, which is james garfield's party, was also rutherford hayes, and what were called the stalwarts, which were newark-based, and you see certain states really emerge throughout history with -- holding on to power within a particular party, and then in new york that was really headed by a man named roscoe conklin, who became a united states senator. so, this is the struggle and you see then, of course, the person who ends up shooting president garfield, deranged, but proudly screaming with the gun in his hand, i'm a stalwart. now arthur is president, and that was a lesson -- vice president arthur was a member of the new york party. >> garfield was a compromise candidate after many, many ballots at the convention. when they came to the white house were they accepted? >> guest: they were largely accepted. there was a lot of -- this where is lucretia played a vital role. a lot was 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 and the country, would be satisfied, and so you had lucretia garfield playing a kind of a little bit of an espionage role in the post election preinauguration where she goes to new york none the ailals of mrs. greenfield, and is really there to deal with this guy she doesn't like, roscoe conklin, in negotiating members of the cabinet. >> host: the actual vote was one of the closest elections in history, and garfield after winning said this: it is a terrible responsible to come to him and to me. so did she want to become first lady? she didn't really want to become first lady for herself. she very strongly believed in her husband, and they had really been through everything. they lost two children. they had marital troubles. and by the time he has run in 1880, they are very clear and very square on the same page in terms of their values, and they both shared a lot of intellectual and literary pursuits that was a mutual passion, which i think during the tough times kept them together. but she was at the time she got the news that he had won the nomination, she was scrubbing the floor and didn't want to pose for photographs. she is very reluctant, and she did, and of course, her image is the first that we start to see being used in paraphernalia during the campaign. she wrote a private letter to some friends and said, the truth, i really don't want to good to that place, but i really believe that my husband is the right man to lead the country. >> host: throughout this we'll be taking you to the garfield home, and it is available for you to visit under the national park service. so if you're near cleveland, make a point of visiting it. we'll show you as much as we can tonight. here's what it looks like right now. that front porch became famous we are looking at because it was the first front-porch campaign. how did that come about? >> guest: i don't know 100% of the details, except they at the time where they lived, it was relatively rural. and groups of people really just coming to hear the candidates speak. >> host: they came to him. orchestrated -- >> guest: ways. that's the whole thing with the front porch campaigns, and most of them took place -- all of them took place in the midwest. lincoln in springfield, harding and mckinley in ohio, just like garfield, and for lucretia garfield, what was interesting is because it was technically the property of her priest -- her private home, her being seen by the voters and people coming in on horse and buggy to hear garfield speak, didn't 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're going to learn more about the front porch campaign in this first video from the garfield home in ohio. >> this is the sight of the nation's very first front porch presidential campaign. james garfield would come out and give speeches to people that gathered here on the front part of the property. lucretia's role was more concentrated on the inside of the home. so, standing in the front hallway here of the garfield home, probably seems like a strange place to start talking about james a. garfield's front porch campaign but this is the part of the house where lucretia spent a lot of her time. the he was not expecting to be a candidate, so lucretia garfield had no expectation that over the next five months somewhere between 17 and 20,000 people show up at her home and property. when these people started to show up on the property, that many people unexpected, uninvited, started to cause a lot of damage. they were traipsing all over the property, killing the crops, yanking things out of to the ground to take home as souvenirs and lucretia garfield was very concerned, the same this will that was happening on the outside of the property, not happen on the inside of the family home. so she spent a lot of anytime the hallway, making sure no one was able to get into the house. you see the front steps here of the house. a james a. garfield residents office was at the top of the steps. he would spend a lot of time in the office and at some point would come down these steps and go out the front door to stand on the front porch, talk to people gathered out there, and eventually give speeches as part of the front-porch campaign, and i like to think of her walking behind him and locking the door when he went outside because she was adamant about people not getting inside the home. they had a young family they were concerned about. they also had just finished a major renovation to the house and lucretia had just gotten the house exactly the way she wanted it, so she didn't want people coming in and causing the same kind of damage on the inside she saw hone outside of the probable. we know that lucretia garfield was a very gracious host to people that tide come into the home that were invited. she very often would greet them here in the front hallway and offer them during the campaign what she called standing refreshment, which meant she to them, offered them a cold glass of water or lemonade but no chair to sit in because she didn't want them to overstay their welcome. >> host: one thing that is great about these programses-under your involvement in it. we have the phone number for you to call in. you can also tweet us. use the hash tag first ladies, and we're already having a great conversation on our facebook page. here's one of those questions. r.j. wilson writes: i visited the garfield house in ohio and saw the james admired the previous presidents and has framed images of the previous pretted. did lucretia feel the same way? >> host: really great question. we have a lot of bits of evidence that cumulatively show us that lucretia garfield was perhaps the first lady to really have strong conscientiousness about being part of a historical tradition of first ladies. in her diary, to my knowledge, the only diary kept bay -- kept by a first lady, she records anens dent where a guest comes in and tells her about theneath of the fall of richmond and being with mary lincoln, and she writes in her diary that these little sorts of stories are the kind of things she accumulates and feels that there's some ghosts of the house, and we will talk more about her late are life, she has a sort of an an affinity, strong sense of sorority for many of the first ladies who come after here. >> host: did lucretia consider this house as her home or a political center? >> guest: she thought of it as her home. in fact, later on, when a well was being built in the back and -- i can't remember, another structure. she studied the engineering plans and she was just an incredibly interested in so much, and just absorbed things and taught herself, and she said something like, i have built a home on my own. i have done it all, and i know what's going on, and i can get this structure out back built quicker and less expensively than is being done right now. so, she later on changed what was essentially a farmhouse into a victorian mansion. and again, that's in the years of her widowhood, and of course had another home, a beautiful home still standing in pasadena, california. >> host: which was a very forward-thinking for the time. here's something that james garfield thought about her as they were political partners in the white house. he said, she is unstampedable. there's not been one solitary instance of my public career when i suffered in the smallest degree for any remark she ever made. so, tell us a bit more about that unstampedable character. >> guest: it didn't come easy. she was one of those people who spent a lot of time thinking, and she always tried to be highly rational in her opinions when she formed them, and in her concepts of people and just ideas and subjects, whatever it might be, current events, history. you know, she -- this is a little bit of a problem early on when they were courting and their marriage because a lot of people, including her husband, felt she was not emotional he expressive, but it was when she had given something a lot of thought and she was clear about how she felt, then she would express herself, and her letters, i might add, are beautiful. this is a real self-motivated 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 her husband would followed the no-alcohol policy set by the hayes, which we heard about last week. tell us about the decision she made and the garfields themselves made and how significant it was politically. >> guest: well, it ended up, true to what she said, not having a very significant impact politically. but the threat was made to her by a woman who came and said, you know, you must continue the no-alcohol policy of the hayes, and lucretia garfield said, thanks but no thanks. i sort of feel that by my doing just one little thing but 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. and then this woman threatened to -- well, this is going to affect the republican party, and mrs. garfield politely said, i don't think it is. >> host: the whole decision and the pressure for it came around the arrival of the official portrait of lucy hayes. we have a picture there was a big story about the money being raised to create this portrait. how much press attention was there on the arrival of this portrait and the ultimate decision that garfields would make? >> guest: well it was presented to the white house as a fait accompli. it was -- the white house wasn't going to deny it and nor did they think, of course, 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, but the controversy was the fact that -- mrs. hayes was herself upset because of a percentage of the money they claimed was raced to get the portrait done was being spent for w.c.t.u., women's christian temperance union, other projects so it had a slight taint of scandal. >> kathy robinson wants to know how popular lucretia garfield was. >> guest: there was not enough time for her to actually become popular in the sense of functioning as a first lady the way the welcome of. the install racing -- inauguration was march 4th. built the end of april she contracted malaria, and by may, through early may, there's even a fear she might die. in the white house. and president garfield -- president for three months, writes of how he was unable to work with fear that this was going to be a -- that something would happen to his wife. it's 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 and her calmness and control as the president is attempting recuperation for two months. >> oo this call is from robert in chicago. >> good evening. i have a one simple question to ask. 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 hug pension as doing his pension as a former member of congress, and she received, as susan mentioned, a large amount of public fund raised, and she also received a presidential widow's pension. so, she had quite a bit of income coming from several directions. >> host: next is a call from bill, watching thus columbus, ohio. hi, bill. >> caller: hi. >> host: you question, sir? >> caller: i grew up the area where the garfield estate is, and i remember there being a log cabin on the property that purportedly he grew up in. is it still there? >> guest: that i don't know. >> host: have you ever visited the place, bill? >> i'm sorry. >> host: have you visited the house? >> caller: surprisingly, never did, and i lived there. >> host: that's actually something that happens to so many of us who enwe have historic sites in our own communities. sorry we couldn't answer your question. talking about her involvement in the selection of her cab nat. he said earlier she was deeply involved and interested in partisan politics and had a keen political sense. where disled develop that sense and how did she use it to advise the president on his are cabinet. >> guest: she started that when they moved to wak when she was in congress. they lost their first girl, a their last born, a little boy. there were a lot of tough times and during his service during the civil war, and then came to washington and they were separated again, and she said, i'm not going to put up with this. so 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, and she -- and her husband belonged to a literary society and her political education began during the congressional years, and she also put a room aside just for herself to paint and read in the house they built here in washington. but politics really became one of -- i wouldn't say it was her primary interest -- one of several primary interests. she was interested in everything. the cabinet -- the issue of the cabinet circles around the controversial appointment of secretary of the state, james blaine, and she -- mrs. garfield is really the advocate for him, and in fact blaine himself writes to garfield 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: here's the quote: i wish you would say to mrs. garfield, said james blaine, that the knowledge that she desires me in your cabinet is more valuable to me than even the desire of the president elect himself. that dismiss something about her influence, at least on the president. >> guest: absolutely. and also, again, partisanship in these little 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 this. she was really looking at members of the cabinet who were, of course, supposed to be running the government, but from a point of partisan political loyalty. were these people -- there's that saying, keep your friends closure enemies closer. she was always looking at how were these men going to potentially affect her house's career? >> host: in the end, seems they decided to mix the cabinet with half stalwarts and -- and satisfied no one. >> guest: well to a degree. by the time, of course, of gar feel's assassination, there's a great sense of remorse because this guy, who shot him, did it openly out of political partisanship, and it was horrifying to people, and that also involved vice president arthur, who was sort of representative of the wing that the assassin claimed to be associated with. >> host: and we should be specific about this. the brief tenure of the presidency, 'r garfield was in office 186 days in total and because of his lengthy decline, and'll tell thatoer actually only functional for 121 days of that. so not much time to establish opinions and the pub at large. you mention earlier -- well, first, david murdoch is asking on twitter, you have just underscored how the answer would be yes: dim james look to his wife for political guidance? >> guest: absolutely. political in the sense of dealing with people and appointments, that sort of thing. him coming to her with legislative decisions. >> you mentioned earlier that civil service reform was becoming a very important issue. people who saw the movie lincoln will see how passionates were used to help the president's policy program. what was the bubble controversy and the reform people wanted to employ? >> roscoe conklin, who was the kingmaker of the stalwarts in new york saying, ah-ha, now the doors will open and we'll get all the political plumbs and president arthur says, no. i'm going to change my stripes and we're going to be honest and chester arthur is the man who initiates the first civil service reform. >> host: well, always described as a frustrated office seeker but you told us earlier it was also tied in with his big allegiance to the other fraction of the g.o.p. but his example of coming to the white house and looking for a job, how did that process work in the 1880s? >> guest: it's extraordinary to think that even not 20 years after the assassination of president lincoln there could be such relatively lax security at the white house, but as -- i'm sure many viewers know that the way the white house was set up at the time, there was the ground floor, where there were no really restored rooms yet. they were basically functioning at kitchen and sort of places to keep china and this sort of thing. then there's that main floor, the state floor, and then with the east room and the green room, the red room, and the state typing room. the floor above that at the time was -- there's three hallways, and the hallway that is at the furthest west end where the family rooms were. the middle section and the east end were the presidential offices, and so people -- members of the public, who had some vague connection from a senator or congressman, and even if they didn't, would be able to go up the stairs, you know, check in with the doorkeeper, and wait in this hallway with spitoons and filled with cigar smoke and hoping to see one of the secretaries pressing their case and claim hogue wonderful they were and how they deserved some kind of a minor federal position. we're not talking about people coming in there to be cabinet members. postmaster of this or pay master of that. so, this is the kind of stuff that a president was sort of having to deal with while he was in his office or the private secretaries at the far end were trying to deal with, and these guys were always shifting around and the hallway. and gito was one of them and he never got to press his case, and he took it personally. >> host: clearly. the ultimate -- the bustle brought to white house big and happy family. in the next visit to their home we learn more about the garfield family. >> this is the way it looked during james a. garfield's 1880 campaign. this was both the formal parlor and family room, second as both. james and lucretia spent a lot of time with their children, they both adored their children very much. they had lost two children to infancy, air bella and edward. they died before they moved here. lucretia's five children, all had the benefit of having two very intelligent parents who strongly believed in education. they felt that education was an emancipating factor and was the key to success. their children took band lessons, piano lessons, we have molly's piano, which was a gift to her on her 13th birthday in 1880. she more than the boys, practiced the piano and that was a reward. here in the family parlor, like almost every room in the house, you see a lot of books. books are very important to james and lucretia and their children loved to read. their favorite authors were dickens, and also williams shakes spear. the family would reed to one another, often outloud in the evening. here in the family dining room and in the center of the table is this very interesting art piece. it's called the barge, and it actually won an award at the philadelphia centennial. mrs. garfield absolutely adored her time at the exhibition. she visited the science and technology and art and was interested in the latest science and technology for the day, and she would write pages and pages of what she saw at the site. so a lot of people think of mrs. garfield as very artist click, and also very, very intelligent. loved the sciences. like most families, dinnertime was a very important time of the day and a time for them all to get together and talk about what they were all doing. the garfields also would use this team, again, to educate the children. they played games with the children. sometimes garfield would bring a book to the table, words were mispronounced and misexpelled quiz the children. james and lucretia made everything an educational experience. >> host: now we learn about the kind of parents they were. but tell the story how they met. >> guest: it's really quite fascinating. there's so many modern cords in it. there's the sense of equality to them. and even though they were mid-19th century people, both of them, i think, very much 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 church of christ. her father was one of the founders of the election tick institute, and they strongly believed in the education of women and this is a fascinating phenomenon in ohio. you see this with all of the presidents wives, equal education for women and they were all highly educated, and lucretia garfield went through grade school and the went to the institute. she learned how to speak greek and latin and french and german. she studied science, biology, mathematics, history, philosophy, and right away, there was, if you can think of passion, coming through the world of ideas, there was a real passion between the two of them. james garfield came from a poor family. he was or fanned, never knew his father, and had been a canal boy. one of those young guys who would walk the mules along that would pull the canal boats, and so everything they got, i think they greatly appreciated, and he felt like education was the answer. so, the courtship -- he was her teacher, at the institute. he then went to williams college and they began a correspondens, and that is really where you begin in a -- the world of ideas separate them and brick them together. it's not necessarily incidents that are occurring. they argue over ideas. but one of those ideas was the fact that there was another woman that he -- that she met at his graduation, from williams college, and that became a point of contention between them. >> host: we have a sense of that with a letter that lucretia wrote to james garfield about their relationship. here's what she writes: jamie, shy not blame my heart if it lost all faith in you. i shall not be forever telling you i love you when there is evidently no more tee sire for it on your part than present manifestations indicate. so it was touch and go there. >> guest: it was. she -- but what is really interested about lucretia, even though she very much loved him, she has also looked out for herself. she set a course and is going become a teacher, and she determined that she would work and earn her own salary. she at any time want to -- she didn't want to be a burden on her father or have to depend on anyone else, and she not only becomes a teacher but an interest in art is born in her, and she per sues this and then becomes an art teacher. she sort of shifts the topics she teaches and this is all right before she gets married. he has another affair, and the earlier one was just a love situation before they were married. he has a full-blown affair with a woman named lucia calhoun in new york and that nearly does in the marriage. >> host: sandy, what's your question? >> thank you for c-span. i really do like the presidential series you're doing. i visited the home here about six days ago. and was really impressed with the furnishings in the home. did mrs. garfield furnish that home and build that library herself before the president died or was it afterwards? >> guest: you know, in a word, yes, the way it works, the interior was by her hand, but most importantly, in answering your question, is that she had built on to it, after his death, that fireproof safe which is now part of the house, specifically to house and protect and preserve his letters and papers, because she actually had been planning on writing a biography about him herself. she never lived to do that. but later those letters were published before being donated to the library of congress. and i was -- i had one important thing that just struck me because i know in the show we have spoken about first ladies to burned papers. lucretia garfield had such a sense of history that she kept papers. even the ones that might proof embarrassing or personal that related to her marriage. so, you know, she had a sense of herself and her husband beyond their own lives as historical figures. >> host: what is james garfield's side of the story with the become and forth of center relationship? he wrote to her: i hear pray you should be still ready to bear with me if at any future time my heart should go down again into the deeps. they eventually do get married, but the early days of the marriage, saw a statistic that she estimated they were together for six weeks out of six years. >> guest: yes. >> host: hix his tenure in the civil war, then his election to congress and moving to washington. how did the marriage get to the point they were functioning as a possible. >> guest: she moved to wasegoose the death of the child? >> guest: the first child died, a little girl, and then she gave birth seven times, and then their last child, little boy, died. and so true that it brought them to together but really i believe it was her physical presence, coming to washington, with the family, and they built a husband -- no longer standing -- here on 13th street because i think it mentioned what is fascinating about them, in building this house, she created a room for herself because even though she was a devoted measure, there's a couple of letters where he says, it really gets on your nerves and hurts you ego sometimes to think that your whole life of this education is being spent -- i can't remember the word, like these little terrorists, all but occupy her time. so she really began to develop her passion for art and painting, for reading and for writing. she was quite an essayist. none for publication but she had this room in their place in washington, and they also, of course, joined the burns literary society. >> host: david in chicago, you're up next. >> caller: mr. anthony, president arthur, knowing he was dying from brights disease after he left the white house, burns his permanent personal papers and his white house papers. yet he got so little publicity on this action, verse president harding, and is still being vilified today. why the difference between the two? and i want to say thank you. enjoyed your book on mrs. harding and mrs. taft and i'm looking forward to your book on ida mckinley, and great blog. >> guest: atvery much. president arthur -- there is some indication his son, allan, arthur, may have had more of a hand in that. arthur himself did feel very intensely about protecting his, privacy, his family life, and we'll talk about the are thursday but i won't get too far into that. i think also the issue was, in terms of the hardings, was just the air of suspicion coming on the heels of the political scandals, and the action that mrs. harding took, while it might have been well intentioned to, chev said, protect warren's memory, the suggestion of it at that particular time, as the scandals were breaking, suggests some kind of mall fees sense but wasn't the case. >> host: back to the story of lucretia garfield. we learned how often her husband was away. leaving her with the children to raise on her own, and next we're going to see a letter that she wrote that talks not frustration of being the one that has to make all the decisions in the family. >> my darling, i cannot conceive of any possible reason why you should be such a trial to my life, nor do i believe it was possible for you to know what a very worrying child he is. i cannot be patient with him any more than i can submit with patient to some extreme physical torture. what he will ever become i don't know and i'm almost afraid to think of his future. it's horrible to be map but the grinding misery of being a woman between upper and every milestone of household cares and training children is almost as bad. to be half civilized whiff some as separations of enlightenment and obliged to spend the largest part of the time the victims of young barbarians keeps one in perpetual -- >> somehow hey made it work. we have a photograph of the family in the white house. it was brief tenure, but what was family life like in the white house for these people? >> guest: it was healthy. it was funny. it was humorous. and there was no sort of sentiment. there was -- even though it was the victorian age, nobody was trying to use them as examples of good living and that sort of thing. they were just a very close family. now, the two older boys were to be going to college but they were so close that they actually remained in the house and they studied there. there were two little boys who were kind of terrorists. abraham and irwin, and then a very beautiful, just a very open-hearted daughter, molly, who kept a little diary when she was in the white house, and it's a very poignant document because it talk busy her father's assassination. very sad. the grandmother was also there garfield's mother, lucretia's father was still alive. but it was garfield's mother who came to live there, and i think she was sort of -- broth the thought that she had raised her son to be president, and even when mr. gar feel was el and there was speculation whether she would be able to return, certain of suggested that maybe old mrs. gar feel, mother garfield, they called her, would come to the white house and take over and -- there's some suggestion within the family that really didn't -- the idea didn't go over too well. >> host: shelly asks: a lot of first ladies had a cause of their own. did mrs. garfield have cause? her cause became restoring the white house. >> guest: really interesting. there's one suggestion and it's 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. so there's some suggestion that mrs. garfield was interested in perhaps working with people who were sight impaired or hearing impaired, and potentially developing educational outlets for them, but the one part we know about from her diary is going the library of congress to do research on the history of the white house, with the idea of not necessarily history quickly restoring the house but bringing a sense of history there. the people at this point, you know, 80 years the white house has been standing, and all these families back to adamss had lived there now you're having one and two and three generations worth of stories she is starting to hear and she has a sense of history and the history of the house. i might also really quickly add 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 greece, new york. you're on, thomas. >> hello. can you hear me? >> host: yes. >> caller: can you hear me? >> host: yes, you question. >> caller: yeah, can you hear me. >> host: thomas, i'm sorry you have to turn the tv volume down. we'll move on to one of video which talks about her artistic ability and also some of the decisions she made about things like the white house china. let's watch. >> here in the family dining room at the farm we have the family's china, which was actually the champion -- the china they used at the white house. i'll just pick one up. it is a -- it has the month gram -- g monogram on it. they garfields were not rich people and did not purchase a specific set for the white house, so they brought this stuff with them. they used it at home and also at the white house. so this was their formal dinner ware. the white house has several pieces of the china but as you can see we have quite a collection here of the china that still exists. so it's a pretty impressive set. china painting was very popular in the 19th century, very popular hobby for ladies. the very top row were hand-painted by lucretia, we believe. mrs. garfield was up on the latest trends and styles of the day, and she had a very good eye for art and beauty. she'll taught painting for a while. around the fire place are hand-painted tiles. that was a family project done in 1880. mrs. garfield, we believe, painted the two top corner tiles. the other tiles were paint bid the children and at least one family friend. james a. garfield, just looking around the home you can see she chose her way wall papers, colors, furniture, very carefully. >> and gene on twitter asks us, did lucretia have the opportunity to host any event test white house? we saw her china. >> guest: she hosted a regular reception, and it's fascinating that at one of those, a man named charles giteau who would shoot the president two months later, met her and recorded having a very pleasant conversation with her and really liking her, and then, of course, she gets malaria, this fear she might die, as she is recovering, it's thought she would do better at the jersey shore, to -- with the salt air, and guitau ready to shoot the president, and is waiting at the railroad station and see is him escorting-miles-an-hour garfield and can't bring himself to shoot the president. >> that's in june. june. >> host: i want to pause for dramatic effect here because just a short while later, july 2, 1881, he gets a second chance. tell us the story of the assassination. >> guest: well, the president is on his way to new jersey to join his wife. and he is then going to go up to' williams' college in massachusetts. two of the boys are in ohio with their grandmother. molly is with her mother, and guiteau shoots the president. right away he sees harriet blaine the wife of james blaine who lucretia gar feel was in favor of having and he tells her to immediately wire ete and mrs. garfield comes down and almost faints, and has to be held up by two men on either side of her, and composes herself, and says to the doctors, what will it take to make sure he is cured? they said a miracle. he said, without any sentiment, well, then, that's what will happen. it will be a miracle. >> this was july in washington. she contracted malaria because washington still hat nod drained its swamps and was a muggy, hot, dangerous place for health in the summertime. so, here is this mortally wounded president taken back through a lot, damp white -- a , damp white house. how does this affect his care? >> guest: i can almost say, what care? he is -- they know he has a bullet in him. it's beastly hot. there's a rudimentary air conditioning kind of system and they're trying to pump cool air up from the ground floor. >> host: they do bat thaws they're helping the public for inventions to cool the president's chamber. >> guest: and with that also kinds of cooky recipes and possessions and things like this were being sent to mrs. garfield. now, mrs. gar feel was fax in that she was able to compartmental lies what were her personal fears and the real care and wear on her, emotionally, from the possible of losing her husband, and then the where with to put out this word that everything was fine, the president was in charge. this was very important. she seemed to. -- everything written about him and sent to her for review. vice president arthur made no rumblings about assuming any presidential duties. he respected her. and so you began to see generated, first in the country and then roped the world, the most amazing articles about this woman's courage, this woman's intelligence, her fortitude, her strength, her calm and how it was pervading the white house, and cheering up the president, the patient. then there were the technology of the day permitted the pen sketches, so you began to see visual images of mrs. garfield. with their daughter at his bedside or down in the kitchen, preparing food for him. so, it was a little bit of hyperbole because it was desperate situation, and as we had spoken about earlier, alexander graham bell offered to bring in a new fangled magnetic machine to try and find the bullet in him and ask that any metal springs in the bed be removed, and they weren't. so, --y so he was trying too trace a metal bullet and the machine saw all the bed sprin d. >> guest: that's correct jayce it true that president garfield died not from the gunshot but from bacteria from dirty instruments used by the doctor? >> guest: well, it's a little bit yes but also the bullet was dirty, a foreign object in him, so it did -- he might have eventually died. it's just a circumstantial situation. of course, also ignorance at the time. i will say he had one woman doctor, and after the federal government had paid those doctors, they paid that woman doctor half the amount. and mrs. garfield wrote a letter and was outraged and called it -- used the word discrimination, and the woman doctor received the same amount aft the male doctors. >> host: hi la lorraine, you're on. >> caller: thank you, c-span for the program. my question is, during that time frame would they have known the rockefellers and the vanderbilts? >> guest: that -- the arthur -- chester arthur and his wife did, right after them. but the garfields did not at the time they were in the white house in later years mrs. garfield was quite well respected and well known in the country, and i wouldn't doubt that she would have had contact with them. >> host: and next up is kerry, from new mexico. how, kerry. >> caller: huh. thank you. was there a big age difference between the president and mrs. garfield? >> guest: i don't recall. i just -- i think it was five years or less but i don't remember the specific birth dates. the pratt when is shot july 2nd and lingers until sims. the decision is made to move him to the jersey shore. >> guest: the very place he had been headed to see her and join her, and that is where he do is. in her presence. and what is really interesting is that among the many, many letters she received, she gets one from a former first lady, julia tyler, who not only sends a telegram, as does former first lady sara polk, but mrs. tyler writes her a letter and says, i wanted to emphasize that you and -- she used the word -- a sister -- in talking about this sort of idea of a sort of almost sorority of presidential spouses. >> host: and the funeral. 250,000 people came. set the stage for us on this victorian era funeral and what it was like. >> guest: well, to me, one of the -- what says it all is the way the white house itself looked. there were photographs that show it trimmed in the most intricate patterns of black mourning crepe, and mrs. garfield was strong throughout it. she did not break down. unlike mary lincoln, and peggy taylor, who were enable to emotionally withstand the whole public display of this. mrs. garfield was seen. she also, in a very practical way, began designing and working with the ideas of what his tomb would be like in cleveland, ohio. >> host: which for other first ladies and later years, also have husbands fall by assassins bullets, jacqueline kennedy, thinking about ida mckinley, took the model and became very much involved in the planning of the funeral process and on the memorial. >> guest: yes. and then with that, the legacy of what their husbands would be like. lucretia garfield, we mentioned the papers she was preserving but she approved statues, busts of him. she was really hands on whenever it had anything to do with him. >> host: cynthia wants to know how did their children reaction react to their father's assassination and how old? i do not remember the ages. they were not all there when he died. as i mentioned, two of the boys were young. and two of the other -- there were to older boys, college age. molly was 13 or 14 years old and then there were the two younger boys. >> host: now, there's a fund drive for the garfield family, and we used the figure before but somewhere between $360,000 in $1,880 was raid for the family. liepght $8 million today. >> guest: extraordinary. >> host: and internationally? were people sending -- >> guest: she really captured people's imagination. it was a brief moment in our history, but so defendant to the way people reacted from mary lincoln. i should mention because of this -- not only that but then being awarded almost immediately by congress a presidential widow's pension of $5,000 a year, that also benefited the other surviving presidential widows, sara polk, julia tyler, and mary lincoln, and true to form, mrs. lincoln's reaction was, i'm sure some somebody is going to but the kibosh on that and i won't if got my money, and julia tyler wrote an anonymous letter to the press saying, this is wonderful but i think it should be double that amount. >> host: scott in garfield heights, ohio. >> caller: thanks for the series. me and my son loved it. i grew up not far from there. we were watching cbs sunday morning one morning and they had a trivia question, saying who is the only president buried above ground? we didn't know and then they said, garfield, at lakeview cemetery, so we got in the car and drove up there. there's his monument and it sits up, you walk down and you look in and it's got like bars and casket of garfield and his wife with the american flag draped over it, and just a real beautiful bronze statue of him upstairs, and i just highly recommend it. it's a beautiful place. >> host: thanks for the recommendation... most significantly was the construction of the presidential memorial library in 1986. so she started to make a lot of changes to the property. i think just as important as the changes made to the property, one but she didn't make. i am standing in the room that president garfield used as he was alive and living here in the house. his wife lovingly call this the general snobbery. it looks like a dead when she came back to the home and really found that it was the day that he walked out of become president of the united states. most the most significant changes is right here over the white house. this carving into the wood. this has a very special meaning in memory of james carville. but it does have an interesting meaning. it was also a part of their favorite poem. in 1863, james carville went washington and became a first-time member of the u.s. house of representatives. on december 1, 1863, their first daughter was allies. they had nicknamed "trot", she died. this is tragic for them. about the much closer together than they had ever been. they had written impassioned letters to each other, just about two weeks or so after the daughters that. he told his wife, lucretia garfield, that he had been reading the poem written by alfred lloyd tennyson and it was offering him great comfort as he tried to do deal with the death of their daughter. he suggested that lucretia garfield read the poem as well. he hoped it would bring as much comfort to her is to have brought to talked to him. any kind of suggestion that this became part of their history. and it did. one lucretia garfield had an in memoriam verse carved in her husband's office, she acknowledged not only the tragic death at a young age of her husband, only 49 years old, but also this love of literature that they had and the very special relationship that they had in memoriam for their daughter. >> later on we will come back to the years after the white house for lucretia garfield. but with the assassination of her husband and his death in september, the man who was really a political opponent, is on the opposite side of the republican party and it was an effort to unite the party that had them both on the ticket. he suddenly found himself resident. he was a man without a wife come he was a widower. he was also transitioning. what was the state of the country after the assassination? >> the focus really remains and remained for so long in september and october and november -- a remained upon president garfield and his family. arthur lived his permanent home in lexington avenue. he himself was still in a state of very deep mourning, very deeply depressed. his wife had only died in january of 1880. so wasn't yet two years where he had lost his wife richie had come from a very powerful family. she grew up in washington dc. she knew dolly madison when she was a little girl. they went to st. john's church on lafayette square. for about five years, she was five and 10 years old, she knew dolly madison. her father was a naval commodore that took central american ship on a commercial truck and it went down. it was a great act of drapery. all the passengers got off and his widow and his daughter, ellen, the only child, there was a monument to him in annapolis. a naval academy. and alan arthur is a real interesting character. she doesn't become first lady, but she influences the administration. very similar to rachel jackson the way that she was a ghost, the memory of her. chester arthur made several appointments for appointments that we know of, people that had known his wife, some were cousins, one was the assistant treasury. it was very interesting that he named what was called a superintendent of the naval academy and it was someone who had been a childhood friend of his wife. many of the local problem with the senate, which like the prerogative of sort of a ceremonial role that played out in the white house. that arthur insisted on that because it was someone who was a friend of himself and ellen. he kept pictures on the wall, stained stained-glass window was put in that st. john's church so he can tear from his window, his bedroom window in the white house. and there was some remorse, perhaps. because he had gotten -- he was quite married to his career and political advancement, and mrs. arthur died of pneumonia while he was out doing political business. so you have him without a wife, without a vice president, his 10-year-old daughter is living with his sister, molly, up in albany. it serves as a loose end. and half of the time he begins to speculate who will be lady of the white house. >> when you look at the man, he was very stylish. he had a very good life in new york city. he had this tragedy of being illiterate. so you can see a storyline that developed. >> absolutely. and it got a little -- there were a lot of wealthy women or women who wanted to be wealthy who began to sort of, they began to flirtatiously appear wherever president arthur dead, and he had no interest whatsoever in remarrying. he really became depressed and he function, he basically said that i'm not going to have this. nobody is going to take the role of my wife. and so the social events, once this begins again, congress comes back into session and sort of like, you know, he has these events where senator wise, none of it is really quite working. and the following year, 1883, new year's day, his sister comes out from albany. there is an indication that he knew that he had a terminal illness, he wanted to be close to his little daughter, his daughter came from new york and at the time, he was helping to take care of the ants. >> so references to mary ellen and molly. and becky robinson asked on twitter, did he live in the white house? >> yes, she lived in the white house with her brother. >> how protective where they of the little girl? are extremely protective or in fact, part of the reason arthur kept her away from the white house for nearly a year, making sure that she was either at her home, which is his home in new york city, and he was having that remodeled, so she went to live with her aunt and there were two other girls that the daughters offended. the girls came to live with their mother in the white house. two chris is watching us in hartford, connecticut. what is your question. >> two my question is about president garfield, if he had been with modern medical technology, would he have survived? >> well, not being a medical historian, i wouldn't want to take too much on a red yes in the sense that the removal of this bullet, that one would have to day, maybe he could've been saved. >> may have been severely depressed by the loss of his wife. but they entertained lavishly in the white house and he undertook an amazing decoration of the white house that was done by louis tiffany, and anyone who thinks of a tiffany lamp with all the glass and colors, would it look like when it was done? >> the thing you cannot ignore, it was this wall of tiffany glass. this wall was put up in what is the main hall, the central hall and so you come in from the main entrance, the north entrance of the white house and today, you will see how it opens up and the red room, the green room, in those days, the draft is so bad, people were complaining about that. these people are putting up this garish, victorian, you know, tiffany glass. >> back then it was high style at the time? >> you know, it lasted like 20 years. >> was observed? >> it was not. >> it was also a very busy time during this time in the country. their there are some highlights of some of the issues that the arthur administration was dealing with. again, without a vice president. in 1882, the president vetoed the carriage of passengers and there was a harvard act and most important 1883 and we talked about this being the key issue of the time and what happened with that. >> well, it was the first that. just sort of like social security, or a certain degree of civil rights, you know, things come in increments. you don't come he ended up having the first piece of major legislation that started to make the real prevention of the system of the political system. federal employees could be fired. those who worked in the treasury building, those who, we think of today, as greer bureaucrats or people working could all be fired. whoever was in power would then appoint them. this includes parts of u.s. navy. while the chinese exclusionary act was really an awful thing in terms of, you know, just outright acts of bigotry, arthur had reported something that was far less strict than which path and there was a worse proposal out there. therefore, i think arthur gets a bad rap at times we met a couple of questions for you, did arthur keep the cabin and who is the most important advisor? >> i do not recall. meaning 1882 and i can't recall specifically the individual -- when he speak of the garfield and administration, you're talking more about the arthur and ration. >> so what measures were taken to ensure the family safety after the assassination? >> none. >> there were guards at the front door, but it still has its sort of lazy, you know, old quality to it. there was one reason why he was very protective of his daughter. it wasn't until the 1886 reception, he allows his daughter to publicly appear. >> ryan, welcome to the conversations two thank you very much for taking my call. this is a great show. i have heard something many years ago, and i don't know if it's true, but garfield had this ability to simultaneously write the same thing in greek and latin. >> that the town. >> okay, we'll so the style progression. >> what did he say? >> were elinor molly progressive in their own style? >> certainly ellen was. allen was very fashionable. very rich, largely through the wealth of her mother and very ambitious. there is a lot of stories about how, you know, how she really got behind and she really didn't like the politics kept him away from home so often, but on the other hand, she was very usually ambitious person in her career. in fact, even though she was a southerner, even though one for very of her very close first cousins, because she was an only child, so she was very close to what was part of this, her parents, siblings, they had married each other, so she had double cousins. during the civil war, arthur was able to secure the release from union prisons one of her cousins, but she went to abraham lincoln's 1865 inaugural. and she attended a white house wedding of nellie grant areas and she knew the parents of theodore roosevelt and new york city. so they took summers in new york and newport. and probably arthur was -- i wouldn't use the word pedestrian, but she was just -- she was not interested. >> mary had a very strong opinion against women's suffrage. how influential was she in this nonofficial white house hopeful? >> it's a very interesting situation because it really showed us that the country had come to expect a presence, whether it was a wife or sister or daughter red and she really walked ein line. she made public appearances, sometimes on her own, sometimes only with him. i think he almost was ambivalent about how public of a role she should take. the anti-suffrage movement occurred after the white house. i will add that she was also a great advocate of civil rights. and in her home in albany, she not only had a dinner guest, but an overnight guest in washington. >> we have 12 minutes left. as the administration finishes out its three years, lucretia garfield is establishing herself as a widow and enormously popular first lady. how does she do that? >> we saw a lot of people talk about her move to pasadena, california. >> they couldn't take the winter in ohio anymore. she also maintained a home in washington as a presidential widow. >> but there were times that she needed to have this, california was the 1880s, 1890s, really sort of opening up this promised land of sunshine, a lot of california was settled by wealthy midwesterners. she went out to pasadena she was related to two famous architects who are sort of known for what is called the california coastal style of architecture. so she was very close and work very closely to design this extraordinary art and craft mansion ,-com,-com ma which is still standing in a private home. it really became kind of a showplace. it included the participation in the early pasadena rose bowl parade. chad in early life in california that you made the point many times that she was interesting person. one of our viewers says that he always struck me not just because of the air-conditioning, but the silver and ebony teapot that she bought and there was this teapot, which is fantastically modern for 1881. what irritates? >> i would just say along those lines, she was an advocate for suffrage. it was something she believed then. should i would make a lot more controversy than need be. but her daughter also affirmed that her mother truly believed in equality of the genders. and you also see her when the former president in 1912 came, he is mounting an appearance in los angeles. she comes out of an. >> figure for joining us. good evening. >> thank you to booktv, one of the best books i ever read was destiny of the republic. in that book, so many facts, and tension. summit, and tension were abraham lincoln's son, ted, and involvement that he had with three presidential assassinations. you showed an artist sketch of the railroad car that carried president garfield to the house where he passed away. wondering if you could tell the story of how that car got there. lastly, there is a park in that area, i believe it is called the presidents park, maybe we have to make up the presidents now that president obama visited under different circumstances. why did so many presidents go to the jersey shore? to well, it was fashionable and in order to do this, they had to lay extra tracks that go right up to the house. >> you mention all the presidents, and during the years of the arthur administration, these are the first ladies who were alive, julia tyler, circle, mary lincoln, julia grant, lucy hayes and lucretia garfield. today, we see a bonding process of political parties among women who serve in the white house. is that happening at this point? we could credit molly mcelroy for bringing them together. she invited to the white house julie entirely and harriet lane to publicly receive with her as a cohost. because of the issues with mrs. lincoln along with mrs. garfield, and with molly mcelroy, leading the role role of first lady whose sister, rose, will be attending now, there was a lot of talk about these two sisters sort of passing it on. at the same time, the very first book is written on the history of first ladies, and it is a collective out of me. and it is called ladies of the white house and her name just escape me. it's a very famous book. it came out in many editions? >> she outlived her husband by 37 years. we talked about how she spent much of her time to preserve her husband's history. we are going to return one last time the house in ohio and learn a bit more about how she did that in a if he was supposed to walk into the house right now, he would not recognize this room. after his death, which we should garfield started to make changes to the property. this room was converted from the kitchen into the open reception room. the most significant change is that she made after his death were the construction of the first presidential memorial library. if you get to the top of the steps come before we get into the memorial library, we converse to the memorial landing. it is here with that we find one of the most favorite portraits of her husband. it was done by a good friend of the garfield and it shows them during the american civil war. this is the room that she came up with in her mind. a place to memorialize her husband, to keep the memory alive for herself, and all over, these are books that belonged to them. this is a beautiful piece that was actually completely unsolicited by someone in italy. it is a beautiful moral piece surrounded by flowers. this is one of mrs. grunfeld's favorites. we have a very beautiful marble bust. as was also an italian sculpture given to her in 1883, about two years after her husband's death, and then we have what she called the memory room. this is a room that she had constructed along with the library in 1885 and 1886 in which he stored the official papers and documents. it was in this room that she had his papers organize and then bound up and stored to keep them poor prosperity. very interesting items in here. most significantly as this one on the shelf. this includes him lying in state in the capitol building. mrs. garfield was part of the british delegation from queen victoria along with a handwritten note specifically from the queen. something that is really interesting about this room is that the fact that the garfield used it a lot. it wasn't one of those beautiful rooms or you can actually go into her touch anything. nec where she spent a lot of time writing letters and you can see here that she did use stationery and shaq leaves out the rest of her life is the kind of the node a lifelong morning for her husband. here in front of old large windows on a happier note, two of the children actually got married in 1888. there was a double wedding ceremony where harry garfield and molly garfield, both of them married their perspective fianée right here in front of the windows and let her. >> okay, she made it into the new century and she died in 1918 at the ripe old age of 85 years old. how does she live his post-white house years? >> well, her tenure was so brief and we can say that she was the first to be self-conscious and not not to destroy the papers and she was the first to keep a diary of her white house days and she might best be thought of as a former first lady in a the sense in terms of her career. i think there was a rivalry between her and jacqueline kennedy in terms of committing to the legacy and also not allowing the lives of their children to be weighed down by the greeks. >> you're looking at some photos of families. you know if any of the families have been part of this? >> well, it was part of his cabinet. she died at the beginning, a year into world war i, and she was actually doing work as a volunteer in pasadena when she died. there is some suggestion. >> on that note we will say thank you. talking about the historical career, focusing on the first lady, how did you get interested, and whitey think it's interesting for people to learn about this? >> because they have a natural influence on the thinking of their husbands. sometimes their ability to see the larger picture, that they themselves cannot. you know, they were always just sort of written off as manikins or clothing who have nice dishes. in fact, their intelligence and effort and conscientiousness helped their husbands reach the presidency. >> one of the books, 1789 to 1961, is available wherever you buy your books, each week we are working with historical sites and also with the white house historical association, who are our partners in the series all year long. we have the ir but the book that they have had for many years from a special edition of it, those of you who want to read the biographies come you can find it on the website. >> did you for being with us tonight. this is our first ladies program on the arthur demonstration. >> ♪ ♪ single mother. ♪ [music playing] ♪ ♪ >> while visiting washington in 1885, emirates proposal was received from the president of the united state to wipe grover cleveland. a little over a year later, the couple married in the white house blue room and became president and first lady that were the only ones to be married at the white house. next monday on our series of first ladies, we will get a close look at the life of francis cleveland. that begins at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span3, and c-span radio. >> we have more about the first ladies come including a special section, welcome to the white house. produced by the white house historical association. includes the tenure of each of the first ladies. and a special audition of the book, first ladies of the united states of america, are sending a biography and record of each first lady. includes michele obama and the role of first lady throughout history. now available for the price of 1295 plus shipping. at c-span.org/parks. >> c-span is created by america's cable company in 1979. brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> coming up tonight on c-span2, the senate judiciary committee continues to work on the immigration bill proposed by the bipartisan group of eight. and breaking national security. after that, a forum examines the challenges kind implementing deportable care act or it. >> on monday, the senate judiciary committee continued the markup of the immigration else sponsored by the bipartisan group of eight. the chairman, patrick leahy, says he wants to finish work on the bill on wednesday, but the debate would continue on thursday and friday of next area. >> senator grassley, senator feinstein, senator schumer, first, i would like to thank the mayor of the senate side of capitol hill, senator schumer, who dug us out of the dungeon and the room that we met in last week, i appreciate being in this room. chuck, i thank you very much. >> senators wyden and klobuchar and congressman brady, graciously consenting that they have consented to let us have it. >> i want to thank all of you for doing this. i will be brief with the amendments of the spell. it was -- these numbers are worth thinking about. i remember some of the accounts. we have had four days that many have held with the immigration control act of 1980 ex, that kind the committee considered twice as many in being able to meet up this month. members have proceedings as i found a policy that i began a number of years ago. all of our proceedings proceed on live online webcast. and c-span has covered it. the committee has voted to accept 67 amendments offered by senators from both sides of the aisle. so i think the senators for their cooperation of getting us where we are today, completing two of the four titles, and i would like to complete work on these titles today, the immigrant visa provision in tomorrow and wednesday, the fundamental provisions of citizenship. thinking of the debate we have had and what was completed on wednesday night. of course, continuing thursday and friday. i asked which senators have filed for amendments, because we are making progress and many senators have told me that they do not intend to offer all of the amendment said they have filed. and i appreciate comments that we have received from people before and against the bill, and i thank them for the transparency that we have there. especially knowing we are scheduled today and we will break for lunch from 1230 to 130, and then we will break from 5:00 o'clock to 6:00 o'clock because we had one or two votes with senator grassley. then we will come back at 6:00 o'clock and continue this evening. >> yes, first of all, i find no fault with your schedule for the week. when you do get started, i don't have a statement to make, but i do have some questions to ask on this part of it and the law enforcement part of it, and i asked his questions for information purposes and not for argumentative purposes. and if we can get answers to our questions, i think we can move along very quickly. >> did you wish to ask them questions? >> whenever you want to. >> okay see that it would be to the group of eight or anyone else. >> okay, feel free, why don't you go ahead and ask questions. section 3405, it provides for protections for certain persons in the united states and allows the secretaries to designate specific groups of individuals. this provision appears to grant blanket relief to any stateless person was in the united states, even though the date of physical presence is not identified. so in regard to that, i have three questions. and does the administration support this provision? >> okay, secondly. how many of the stateless people in the world are going to be eligible? [inaudible conversations] >> and it's my understanding that the number eligible in the group was 10,000. >> given that this provision has serious implications for unlimited power to the secretary, can one of the bill sponsors described who would be designated the bill were to pass as written? >> mr. chairman, under the current language of the bill, we have strong security measures for refugees and u.s. citizenship and immigration services within dhs have made sure that there are no exceptions. each must pass extensive biographic security checks and law enforcement intelligence checks, the department of state and other agencies must be included. so we have had additions to the security requirements for this category and class of people who may be considered. >> okay. >> this becomes difficult. it is easier to point to folks that might come into this, those who have -- those who we know, someone in the audience even, i hope i pronounced it correctly. she is a woman from the former soviet union that is stateless. the country she lived and has virtually disappeared. she literally has no home or place to go. she is stateless at this point through no fault of her own. >> negron now refugees? section 3403 allows the president and grant permanent legal status to an entire class of aliens that are classified as refugees are currently commonly undergo specialized individualized assessment. what is the bill expand the law and is matter? the current system that we bring in over 75,000 people per year, it is inadequate. >> first let me say that it does not expand this status, but every single person has to go through the review. what you refer to was the senators will offering each year as part of the appropriations process and the lautenberg amendment. what frank has done, and i think done well, is to say that rather than proving up, for example, in every case, going back in history, discriminating against, we are going to accept the premise with people in the soviet union and those in egypt, those were someone who is an evangelical christian enron today. so instead us saying every person person can come through the score, they have to prove up the premise that his classes being discriminated against in the country. that we establish there are certain known examples of discrimination, which we can refer to by reference in each case. >> as my staff reminded me, still every single person is object too expensive security checks that i have described earlier. >> let me move on to interior enforcement. this involves new judges, staff, attorneys, and support staff. basically the proposition, making these decisions way ahead of time through this legislation and maybe not knowing exactly what is needed right now. and this is the premise. the bill mandates a hiring at least 75 immigration court judges over the next three years, as well as at least one staff attorney or law clerk or one legal assistant for each immigration judge. in addition, the bill mandates a hiring of the least 30 staff attorneys, including the necessary additional support staff for the next three years. as i indicated, that is a lot of new attorneys. i know that these are mandatory hirings of new judges and attorneys, and etc., and it provides for no downward discretion with respect to the hirings. the reality is that we don't know whether the immigration court caseload will increase or decrease under this bill. it is a sickly with a massive new rpi program. two questions, why is this a mandatory hiring of new judges and etc. and not an circumstances, based onersonnel demonstrated needs. that is the only two questions. >> thank you, senator, let me just a that i know you have been sensitive to this when it comes to the article three courts caseload. and i want you to consider what we are facing now when it comes to the immigration courts. there are currently 259 immigration judges in this country sitting and 58 different immigration court locations. the caseload for each of these judges have increased radically over the last several years. 186,000 cases are pending in the immigration courts as of the end of 2008. by 2012 it was up to 26,000 from 186 to 326,000. a 75% increase and his warriors. 1200 is the average per immigration judge. let me tell you what it comes down to. the average processing time nationwide is about four months, 123 days. and more than three years in cases where the individual is not attained great when we are detaining a person, questioning their status, and i have been to some of these detention centers, it has cost us over $100 per day as taxpayers to detain them. so please slow down the court process, we are building up the backlog of detention. i might add that the reason why we are moving forward on this is because we cannot realistically into people that we are going to move you through a process that could involve millions of people in this country without expanding those who will stand in judgment of important questions and we will raise some of those questions today, criminal backgrounds. if i am applying for this status, is there something in my background which disqualifies me? there is going to have to be a resolution, and we want to make sure that it's done on a timely basis. that's the reason why we've done the. >> your answer brings up this. since we are legalizing so many people under this legislation, wouldn't caseload go down? >> if we expand, there may be 11 or 12 million undocumented in this country. i cannot tell you how many were here, which is the cutoff date, nor how many people will exercise the right we create under this law to enter into the process. some say they don't wish to do that. even some return to the country of origin and weight tenures they are. anything that's a better outcome. we really can't predict with certainty. but we can say, i think with some liability, that the numbers involved in this are going to be dramatically impacted and increased. we also have 3500 new border patrol. >> with order enforcement, as we do a better job order, those dirty 500 our customs people. >> but let me -- i think i know your answers. >> okay. what i have learned is what i would like to do. so i want to make sure that the gang of eight knows that we are not wanting to have a debate, if we could. >> i'm not done yet. >> okay. as soon as your questions have been answered, we will go to the amendment and this is violence against women and the authorization and victims of domestic violence. >> then we will take up more here. >> the bill establishes the right here for people, undocumented who are in removal proceedings, the bill requires the attorney general to appoint counsel for a company of minors, anyone who has any type of immigrant disability, those who have been particularly vulnerable, it is a language from the bill, not only that, but the bill would give them the ability to appoint counsel for immigration proceedings at the taxpayers expense, even though there is a provision in the bill that funding for this would be appropriated from the comprehensive immigration trust fund that much of those monies and that trust fund is actually taxpayers dollars. immigration law has always even immigrants a right to obtain counsel, but not at the taxpayer expense. why are we doing this and giving them an unreviewable power for immigrants, including dangerous criminal people here illegally and why should the american taxpayers have but the bill for lawyers for people here undocumented? >> mr. chairman. >> i have visited one of these facilities in illinois. there is a roomful of individuals. the whole question was being decided as to whether they were in the united states as a legal status. i asked the 40 or 50 men in this room how many of you have an attorney. none of them dead. they had no legal counsel, no representation. with this bill that we are presenting, it doesn't change that. nor does it require us to provide counsel each of them, except that we believe that the secretary has the authority now and we spotlight to specific instances and i would like to give you an example why we do this. first, we are talking about unaccompanied children. senator franken told a hearing about an 8-year-old boy was told by an immigration judge they have the right to cross examine governor's witness, an 8-year-old boy. sadly, those with mental illnesses in this process, they never always understand what they are going through. there is an example of a u.s. citizen with a severely mental illness, deported from this country because he didn't understand the fact that he just had to explain that he wasn't american. we are taking those extreme cases. unaccompanied children and people with sawyer is mental illness and then that our legal process in this country will give them a chance to have someone explain to them what is going on and represent them. >> what about the people that don't fall into that extreme case? >> well, there is discretion under the law. but we do not go into those civic area, we do not err legal counsel in every case we met okay, let's go on. the board of immigration appeals. the bill would are the board of appeals to issue a written opinion that would have to address all of these arguments raised by the parties. why is it necessary to address all of these arguments raised by the parties, even though those that have no relevance to the final history may burden or create technical reasons for it judicial review. >> mr. chairman, we have an amendment on this, i believe. a minimum 42. it would remove two provisions in the board of immigration appeals and apply it to the body responsible for reviewing court removal proceedings. one provision that you start with your amendment states that in reviewing immigration court decisions on the board of immigration appeals must issue a written opinion. that is the heart of the question that you're asking. they may provide guidance to the immigration courts and they don't have to relitigate these matters over and over again. the opinions are less likely to be appealed because it's in writing. it is about 3% currently. so when they are issuing decisions, we are creating this. >> my last is state and local resources. one of the reasons that it is part of public interest and is considered here in this committee, they are enforcing existing law, but a million people have entered this country because the federal government did not stop them from entering and taking action to remove. this is not an accident. it was not complied with, action and choices were taking action in stemming the flow and delivering the presence of 11 million as the numbers do. enforcement of laws has been lax. the state has been transported to control their own borders. states have become portable against people who are here illegally. and they have crime victimization, their budget attempt to provide social services and they aren't forcing things more effectively. yet time and again, the federal government has denied them the opportunity and try to stop them. there are two questions. what would enable the state to control their own borders on the federal government doesn't. that is a very basic question. if the federal government isn't doing their job, they have the right to be protected. >> mr. chairman, responding, i listened to your argument. >> i know that the end of the day you will consider that possibility, even supporting a possibility. the system is broken down on so badly in our country. that is why we try to put this together. so i hope you will join us in that regard. what you raise is a constitutional question. we try to create an immigration system that will work. we do recognize that the very questions that you have raised, our initial plan, a comprehensive plan, if it does not achieve that, the dates play an a large role with ample federal resources to get the job done. we're going to work closely with the government as well as other law enforcement officials. >> are there any other questions? >> one question. is this bill do anything to enhance cooperation between states and the federal government? >> most definitely. the creation of this commission to work with the federal government for border enforcement and providing a substantial amount of resources three things need work. we are going to try to, i think, we are going to make it even safer. in each instance, work with governors and the states to get the job done. >> the very valid and important questions. do the american people want security at the border? we have always said that one of the watchwords of art for close all is a gang of eight. but the border is secure, they will be fair and common sense to future immigration and i would say this to my colleagues, we are very mindful of that. one of the complaints is that the federal government is not doing its job. they much prefer to have the federal government doing this. this is the most robust attempt of the federal government to do its job at the border and with others who come to this country or stay in this country illegally, as senator durbin mentioned, we have a failsafe. after five years, with more money that has been spent on the border, much more money has been spent in the past. very good guidelines, everything else. if they don't succeed come in the state led by state elected officials will come make their proposals. .. today the 12,000 members of just published a statement today saying yet like the i.c.e. counsel

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