Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. Female Speaker: Now, I've been involved
with this marvelous festival for more than a decade now,
every year of its existence, but it's not often that I'm asked
to introduce someone I've seen emerge
at the very dawn of her career.
I met Candice Millard more than ten years ago,
when she was a very young editor at National Geographic.
She was still very young by the way.
By then she knew that she wanted to be a writer,
but like every writer worth her salt, she was reading, reading,
reading, and largely concentrating on the writing
that was going on around her.
Fortunately, she was at work in an institution that fairly bubbles
with talent, the National Geographic is the publishing enterprise
that prizes clarity, gravity, and more than anything, color.
And an arresting imagine.
She emerged from it a vivid writer with an exceeded sharp eye.
Her first book "River of Doubt, was inspired by the historian,
James Chase, who simply mentioned in passing one day,
that he'd never seen a book
about President Teddy Roosevelt's heroine trip down the Amazon.
Fascinated by the few random shreds of evidence that she could find,
she threw herself into the research.
The result is a book that not only plums the wilds of a mighty river,
but sounds the depths of a singular American, bristling with adventure,
filled with vibrant evocations of nature,
informed by a resident humanity, "River of Doubt,"
gives us a Teddy Roosevelt, we've never known.
Now, with a similar acuity, Candice Millard offers up a moment
from the life of another American president,
"Destiny of the Republic focuses on James Garfield, a very different man
from Teddy Roosevelt, quieter more circumspect, not at all inclined
to adventure but a man who ended up nevertheless in the cross hairs
of an assasin, the book is about the shooting of James Garfield
about the doctors who failed them to save them from death about a tragedy
that ended up unifying the country.   Candice Millard is part biographer,
part historian, part adventure writer.
She is, if you'll allow me to distil her skills to a single phrase,
"a blood hound historian."
She's a writer intent on discovering new things
about historical figures we think we know all about.
Those new things have less to do with apices and responsibilities
than the human side of things.
If you haven't seen Candice's marvelous essay
in the Washington Post last Sunday
on how she came upon the very human said of these two Presidents,
I strongly urge you to look it
up online just Google Candice Millard writing life
and Washington Post, and you'll see a very different glimpse
into how a writer is shaped and made.
Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me special pleasure to introduce
to you a very talented writer about the interstices
of American history Candice Millard.
[applause] Candice Millard: Thank you.
Thank you very much.   Thank you for that introduction.
I have to say Maria Rann is one of my favorite writers,
so it's a great honor to be introduced by her,
and it's a great honor to be speaking here
at the National Book Festival, so thank you so much for coming.
At heart this book is not about politics or science
or even the shooting of a president.   It's about an extraordinary drama
that took place inside the White House over 80 days.
In the 130 years since Garfield's death,
the story of his assassination has been largely forgotten.
But even at the time, even though the entire nation,
the entire world was watching,
no one really understood what was happening.
What began as a shooting, became a bitter struggle over personal power
and ambition and results was the brutal death of one
of our most promising leaders at the hands of his own physicians.
This is an intimate heartbreaking story
of ignorance verses science greed verses heroism.
James Garfield, was not as he has been remembered to be,
just a bland bearded 19th century politician.
On the contrary he was one
of the most extraordinary men ever elected president.
Although, he was born into extreme desperate poverty,
he became a professor of literature, mathematical and ancient languages
by the time he was a sophomore in college.
By the time he was 26, he was university president.
He knew the entire [unintelligible] by heart in Latin.
While he was in congress, he wrote an original proof
of the Pathagarium Therom.
To me though, what is more impressive and even for inspiring
than Garfield's brilliance was his decency?
You know, I wrote a book about Theodore Roosevelt,
and I have great admiration for Theodore Roosevelt.
He was a fire brand, he was the hero,
he was the center of every drama.   That's not Garfield.
Garfield was the calmest wisest man in the room.
He was a good, kind, honest man who was just trying to do his best.
He was a real person not consumed by ego.
He was, sincerely, trying to do good things.
Even after 17 years in Congress and one
of the most ruthless vicious eras
of machine politics, Garfield never changed.
His friends used to marvel at his patience and forbearance even
in the face of the most brutal personal attacks.
Garfield was incapable of holding a grudge.
He used to shrug and say, "I'm a poor hater."
Although Garfield took his presidency very seriously,
he had never had what he called presidential fever.
In fact, he never ran for any office.
People would ask him to run and he would,
but he wouldn't even campaign, and he always made it clear
that he was going to act on his own conscience and conventions,
and if people didn't agree with him, they shouldn't vote for him.
When Garfield went to the Republican Convention in 1880,
not only was he not a candidate, he didn't want to be one.
He had gone there to give a speech and he was kicking himself
because he wasn't prepared.
He wrote a letter home to his wife saying that he was just sick
about the fact that he hasn't written something beforehand
and now he wouldn't have time.
The convention was in this enormous hall in Chicago,
there were 15 thousand people there and the face to face
and the favorite to win by far was Ulysses S. Grant who was trying
for a third term in the presidency.
And the midst of the chaos and noise of this convention,
thousands of people Garfield got up to speak.
And that speech was so powerful and so eloquent and extemporaneous
that the hall slowly fell silent
and till all you could hear was Garfield's voice,
and the audience was just riveted.
They were spellbound, and at one point Garfield said,
"And so gentlemen, I ask you and so what do we want,"
and someone shouted, "We want Garfield,"
and the entire hall just went crazy
and when the balloting began delegates started casting their
ballots for Garfield and again he wasn't even a candidate.
He stood up and he tried to stop what was happening,
but the votes just kept coming and a trickle became a stream,
became a river, became a flood of votes
and before he knew it Garfield was the republican nominee
for the President of the United States.
What I found again and again and again while researching this book
but that was not only Garfield's life and his nomination
and his brief presidency filled with incredible stories
but the people surrounding him were equally unbelievable.
You just couldn't make them up.
First, of course, there is Charles Guiteau,
who is Garfield's would-be assassin.
He was a deeply, dangerously, delusional man but very intelligent
and incredibly articulate.
If you read most accounts Garfield's assassination Guiteau is described
as a disgruntled office seeker, but that isn't
that doesn't cover the smallest part of it.
Guiteau is a uniquely American character, he was a product
of this country at that time.
A time when there was a lot of playing the joints, there was no one
to really understand what he was up to and hold him to account for it.
Guiteau was a self made madman.
He was smart and scrappy, he was a clever opportunist
and he probably would have been very successful,
if he had not been insane.
Guiteau everything and he failed at everything.
He had tried law, he had tried evangelism,
he even tried a free love commune and he had failed even in that.
The women in the free love commune nicknamed him "Charles get out."
[laughter] But he survived on sheer audacity.
He traveled all over the country, never by train,
never buying a ticket, he took great pride in moving from boardinghouse
to boardinghouse, and slipping out when the rent was due,
and even when he, occasionally, worked as a bill collector,
he would just keep whatever he happened to collect.
After the republican convention, Guiteau became obsessed
with Garfield, and immediately after the election he began stalking him.
He went to the White House nearly every day,
at one point he even walked into the President's office while Garfield
was in it.
He sat on a bench outside of the White House just waiting
for Garfield to come out, day after day after day hour after hour.
He even attended a reception
and he introduced himself to Garfield's wife.
He shook her hand.
He handed her his business card, and he slowly pronounced his name
so she wouldn't forget him.   It's like a Hitchcock movie.
It was incredibly creepy and absolutely terrifying.
Finally, Guiteau had what he believed was a divine inspiration.
God wanted him to kill the president.
There was nothing personal.   He would later say, just god's will.
As strange and fascinating and nearly as dangerous
as Guiteau was Roscoe Conkling.   Conkling was a vain, preening,
brutally powerful machine politician,
who appointed himself Garfield's enemy.
Conkling used to wear canary yellow waistcoats.
He would write with lavender ink he had this great spit curl
in the middle of his forehead and he recoiled at the slightest touch.
In fact, his vanity was so outsized that he was famously ridiculed
for it on the floor of Congress by another Congressman.
But Conkling was no joke.   He was dangerously powerful.
As a senior Senator from New York,
he controlled the New York custom's house
which was the largest federal office in the United States
and controlled 70 percent of a countries custom's revenue.
Conkling tightly controlled patronage within each state
and he expected complete and unquestioning loyalty,
in fact his apartment in New York was known as the morgue.
Conkling was enraged when his candidate's former President Grant
didn't get the nomination and he was apoplectic
when he realized he couldn't control Garfield.
To Conkling the attempt
on Garfield's life was his ticket back into power.
For the first time in Conkling life, however,
nothing turned out as he had planned.
Next, I'm going to talk to Chester Arthur.
Chester Arthur was Garfield's Vice President but he was Conkling's man.
Politically, he was completely Conkling's creation.
In fact the only every political office he had held besides vice
president of the United States was as a controller
of the New York Customs House, a position that Conkling
through President Grant had given to him.
In this position, he made as much money as the president.
He never showed up to work before noon.
Arthur preferred a life of leisure, he liked buying clothes old wine,
late dinner parties and he was even more preening than Conkling.
In fact he even moved birthdate back a year to appear more youthful.
Even within the public parties Arthur's nomination
to the vice presidency was considered a ridiculous burlesque
and after the election Arthur continued to make it clear
where his loyalties laid.
He went on vacations with Conkling, he even lived with him for a time,
and he took every opportunity to publically criticize the president,
and then, suddenly, everything changed.
After Garfield was shot, Arthur made a transformation that was
so stunning and complete that nobody could believe it.
The entire country was horrified at the thought
that Arthur might become President
but unlike Conkling Arthur was grief stricken and devastated
by the shooting, so the last thing he wanted was for Garfield to die.
He hid himself from public view.
He refused even to go to Washington for fear that it looked
like he was waiting in the wings,
and he cut himself off from Conkling.
Finally, after turning his back on a man
who had made him Arthur found moral strength
in the most unlikely of places.
In the letters of an involute young woman named Julia Sand.
Julia Sand believed in Arthur when no one else did,
when he didn't even believe in himself.
After the shootings, Sandra to Arthur, "if there is a spark
of tenability in you, now is the time to let it shine.
Fate in your better nature forces me to write to you,
but not to beg you to resign.
Do what is more difficult and more brave, reform,"
and to everyone's amazement not least of all his own Arthur did.
He changed dramatically and he tried
to be the president Garfield would have been had he lived.
He became an honest and respected leader
and he never forgot Julia Sand.
Not only did he keep her letters, but he wrote her back
and he even went to visit her.
After Sunday dinner, one day, Julia was at her brother's house
and this highly polished carriage pulls up and to her astonishment
out steps the President of the United States
who had come to thank her in person.   This wasn't real.
No one could believe it would happen.
The reason Arthur became president was not Guiteau's madness
or Conkling's political maneuverings, but the ambition,
arrogance, and ignorance of the man who assumed control
of Garfield's medical care.   Doctor Doctor Willard Bliss.
That's right his first name was Doctor.
His parents named him Doctor.
This was a well-known surgeon with a profitable practice.
In fact, he had been one of the doctors
at Abraham Lincoln's deathbed, but he had far
from a sterling reputation.
He had enthusiastically sold something called Cundurando [spelled
phonetically] which was supposed to cure cancer syphilis, ulcers,
chronic blood diseases, you name it.
Bliss had been disgraced for taking bribes
and he had even spent a brief time in prison.
When Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln who was Garfield's secretary
of War Secretary sent for Bliss, after the shooting,
Bliss saw this national tragedy a once
in a lifetime opportunity for fame and power.
He immediately took charge of the president's medical care,
even though no one had given him authority, he just took it.
He dismissed the other doctors And he completely isolated Garfield
in a sick room in the White House he wouldn't even let him see his
Secretary of State.   And what happened in that room,
inside the White House is nothing short of horrifying.
Bliss and the few surgeons he handpicked
to help him repeatedly inserted unsterilized fingers and instruments
in the president's back searching
for the Guiteau's bullet again and again day after day.
The last thing Bliss wanted was for Garfield to die.
He had too much at stake, but his own arrogance
and ignorance were slowly
and excruciatingly killing the president.
The only hope for Garfield was to find the bullet
and end the suffering but this was four years before the invention
of the medical X ray.
What happened next is nothing short of incredible,
only the most brazen novelist would make it up.
None other than Alexander Graham Bell stepped forward to help.
Bell a young restless genius had invented it had telephone five years
earlier when he was only 29.
By 1881, the telephone had earned him some money and a lot of fame,
but he wanted nothing to do with the company that had grown up around it.
He said it was hateful to him at all times
and it feathered him as an inventor.
Worse than the business itself were the losses against it.
There were 600 lawsuits against the Bell telephone,
five of which made it to the United States Supreme Court.
Finally, Bell had enough.   He said he was sick of the telephone
and he quit the Bell Telephone company.
Bell just wanted to help people.
He had lost both of his brothers to tuberculosis before he was 24,
both his mother and his wife were deaf,
and he knew that he could make life better for people,
maybe even save lives, but he worked so hard that his parents
and his wife were terrified
that he would literally work himself to death.
When he was working, he wouldn't stop to eat, or rest.
His only rest was playing the piano deep into the night, but even then,
he played with such intensity that his mother who had taught him
When Garfield was shot, bell turned his life upside down to help him.
It sickens him to think
of Garfield's doctors blindly searching for the bullet.
Since he thought, should be able to do better than that,
Bell abandoned everything he was doing and he spent the day
and night inventing something called an induction balance.
It was, basically, a metal detector connected to a telephone receiver
which he slowly ran over the president's body listening
for a tale tale buzzing that would tell him
where the bullet was lodged.
In the end Bell and science were defeated,
but not because the invention didn't work it did work
to say countless lies for the invention of the medical X-ray.
Alexander Graham Bell was defeated by the President's own doctors.
As I began my research for this book, a question that kept coming
to me was, "How could this have happened."
What I found, first of all, was that the presidency
in 1881 was very different from the presidency today.
First of all Secret Service this was 16 years
after president Lincoln's assassination
and there's still no Secrets Service protection for the president
in fact Garfield had only an ageing police officer
and his 23 private secretary.
Not only was the president not protected from the public,
he was expected to interact from them one on one,
face to face on a daily basis.
You have to remember, this is the height of the spoiled system
and many Americans believed that they were entitled
to government jobs, even if they had no training or credentials for them.
More than that they insisted on making their case directly
to the President himself.
Garfield was forced to meet with office seekers from 1030 a.m.
to 130 p.m. every day, and the situation made him desperate.
He longed for time to work and think,
and he wondered why anyone would ever want to be President,
but while he found office seekers tiresome and even maddening,
he never considered them to be dangerous.
He said that fascination could no longer be guarded by death
than from lightening and it's best not to worry about either.
Garfield walked around the city by himself all the time.
In fact, one night he left the white house walked down the street
to his Secretary of State's house, they walked together alone
through the streets of Washington
with Guiteau following them the entire way holding a loaded gun.
In fact by this by that point good dell had been stalking the President
for weeks.
He had even followed him to his church
and considered shooting him there.   Finally, he made his decision.
The President he knew would be at the Baltimore Potomac police station
and that's where the national gallery of art stands today,
on the morning of July 2, 1881, and Guiteau would be waiting.
The moment Garfield stepped into the station that morning,
Guiteau stepped out of the shadows and shot him twice.
The first bullet went into his arm,
and the second ripped through his back.
By an incredible stroke of luck,
however Guiteau didn't kill Garfield, he only wounded him.
The bullet that tore through his back didn't hit his spinal cord
and it didn't hit any vital organs.
Today he would have spent a few nights in the hospital.
Even if he had just been left alone,
he almost certainly would have survived.
Unfortunately for Garfield and the nation, Doctor Bliss stepped in.
Bliss took advantage of the fear and the chaos that followed the shooting
to assume control of Garfield's medical care,
but he was not only ambition and arrogant he adhered
to the most traditional methods of the time.
Bliss gave Garfield a gunshot victim, rich foods and alcohol.
He took great satisfaction in what he called the healthy pus issuing
from the president's infective wounds, and he avoided any treatment
that he considered to be new and radical, including antiseptics.
The renowned and British surgeon Joseph Lister had discovered
and introduced antiseptics 16 years earlier and the death rate
in its own surgical ward had immediately plummeted.
He had traveled all around begging doctors to sterilize their hands
and instruments and warning them that if they didn't,
they ran a very real risk of killing their patients.
By 1881 antiseptics was wildly adopted in Europe
but the most experienced and respected doctors
in the United States still dismissed it as useless even dangerous.
Some of them didn't even really believe
in germs they laughingly referred to them as invisible germs
and they certainly didn't want to go to all the trouble
that antiseptics required.
They took great pride in what they called the "good old surgical sink."
They wouldn't change or wash their surgical aprons
because they believe the more blood and pus incrusted on them,
the more experience it shows.
Even those that tried antiseptics had little success for reasons
that today seemed painfully apparent.
They would sterilize their knives.
But if they drop them during surgery, they would just pick them
up and continue using them.
If they needed both of their hands during surgery,
they would hold their knife in their teeth and then continue to use it.
Even Alexander Graham Bell could not outrace the infection
that was coursing through the President's body.
The story, however, doesn't end there.
Garfield's staff brought about tremendous changes.
Changes in medicine and politics and the fabric of our nation.
As soon as Garfield autopsy was released Americans,
understood that their president didn't have to die,
and they understood why he did.   Bliss was publically disgraced
and an antiseptic was adopted across the country.
Americans turned their rage and their grief on the political system
that had encouraged a madman like Guiteau.
Chester Arthur himself who owed his entire career
to patronage signed the Pendleton Act which was the beginning
of the end of the spoil system.
Garfield's death also brought the country together in a way
that had not been seen since the Civil War.
Lincoln's assassination had only deepened that divide
but Garfield's had been the first President since the civil war
to be accepted as the leader of the whole country, north and south,
immigrants and pioneer, freed man and former slave owner.
His death was their loss and their common grief brought them together.
Above all Garfield's death changed the presidency itself.
You could argue that this was really the marked the end of the idealistic
or naive concept of the President alone meeting with office speakers,
personally making appointments at every level of government.
It was obviously an unworkable system for a lot of reasons.
It was open to corruption.
It was completely inefficient, and it was personal dangerous.
It would have never had worked as the United States grew
into a major world power, and it's good that it's gone.
But at the same time, these changes also make it almost impossible
to ever again elect someone like Garfield.
The presidency today is not about a single person,
it's about a large complex institution.
The President may be our greatest political celebrity,
but his personal power is bounded by and filtered through many layers.
He's surrounded by elaborate security.
His contact with the public his careful controlled, and he operates
in a bubble of Secret Service offices high officials
and the press.
It's very unlikely that what happened
to Garfield could happen today, but by the same token,
even we could find someone like Garfield,
we probably couldn't elect him.
The presidency is too big and too distant for Americans to be able
to choose someone who isn't even trying to be elected.
We have, hopefully, outgrown the day when a madman could just walk
into the Oval Office and when an incompetent doctor could seize
control of the White House for nearly three months.
But we have likely also outgrown the day
when Americans could recognize the promise of a fine honest man,
a man with no financial support, no political machine, nothing
but the strength of his own words and ideas, and in a shining moment
of democracy, make him our leader.   Thank you.
[applause] I'm happy to take questions.
Male Speaker: How did the relationship
between Ulysses S. Grant and James Garfield change
from the republican presidential convention
and through the assassination of James Garfield, the how public
or private a role did Grant play in the early days
of the Garfield administration?
Candice Millard: Grant I think Grant was highly unhappy with the result
of the Republican convention, and he seemed to resent Garfield.
In fact Garfield talked in his diary about the fact that, you know,
Grant was staying in a place in New Jersey
and Garfield's wife had been very sick with malaria,
and she was there recovering and Grant you know never came
to see them, there was no sort of interaction
between them besides the, you know, curt tip of his hat, you know,
so Conkling was very close to Grant and they and Conkling, of course,
had been furious with the results of the convention
and so it did affect Garfield and Grant's relationship.
I'm sorry.
Yes? Male Speaker: Can you tell us more about Garfield the man?
I understand he was quite the academic?
Candice Millard: He was.   He was really a brilliant man.
He was a classicist.
He so to, because he was very poor to pay for his first year
of college, he was the school's janitor and carpenter,
and as I said, by his second year they promoted him to literature
to professor of mathematics and ancient languages, you know,
he was just a brilliant classicist and absolutely devoted to education.
In fact he had to have been involved in helping
to establish the first Department of Education which was very small
at that time and very different from today, but it was one of the things
that he was most devoted to,
and he was always an incredibly veracious reader.
You know reports would be talking about going to his house
and finding books and papers everywhere even
in the bathroom there were just piles and piles of books.
Male Speaker: As you've just pointed out, Garfield,
was an intellectually brilliant, he was a polymath wonderfully read,
eloquent, a good writer, brilliant writer, even,
and one of the very very few genuine intellectuals,
who has ever been elected President of the United States.
Today, I mean, we seem very often to have been erased to the bottom
or at least many inspiring candidates seem to fall
over each other proclaiming how unintellectual you are and seem
to take pride in their absence of articulateness.
And what do you think has changed in this country,
a country which in 1880, was happy to elect a man like Garfield
with his broad intellectual range and today in a country
which nominally is filled with people on paper
who are far better educated who seem to dislike it in our candidates?
It's a good question, and it's difficult to talk
to today's situation since I'm always looking in the past.
But what I think what drew people to Garfield at that time is that,
because he had come from such poverty
because his parents had been pioneers, you know?
He had lost his father before he was two years old.
It was in very desperate circumstances and he had risen
through the ranks, not with an overt ambition, but through a love
of learning and an understanding of who he was and his own beliefs,
and I think that appealed to many people, especially,
at that time because, you know, I think to them he was one of them
and showed so much promise and so much hope for hem them
and their children around their grandchildren
and I think that's part of what made him so appealing.
Male Speaker: Excuse me, the period between Lincoln
and Theodore Roosevelt in terms
of the American presidency is not one that's very highly regarded
by either of historians of the general public and the power
of the presidency was generally in eclipse.
I'm sure you must have speculated, or at least personally,
if not in the book, about what might have been if Garfield had survived
to serve out his full term or perhaps even a second term.
Could he have made any really positive contributions
to American life as President?
Candice Millard: of course it's impossible to say with any certainty
because he, you know, had only been in office
for four months before he was shot,
but I think what was what gave Garfield a particular and kind
of rare power is that he was his own man because he had never hungered
for the presidency as so many men around him at that time did
and still do he never, you know he wasn't beholding to anyone, you know
and he again he understood who he was and he abided by that
and he didn't change all those years in Congress.
So, I think that gave him an unusual kind of power and calmness and he,
you know we think of the vicious fighting today but at
that time you know it was even more viscous and there was fighting even
within the Republican Party you know that were two warring factions
and Chester Arthur his own Vice President had had part
of the opposite faction
and amazingly Garfield defeated Conkling the head
of the [unintelligible] arguably the most powerful and corrupt man
in the country and you know in just a few months in power and so
until you have to believe that someone with that kind of character
and with that sort of personal power because he was his own man,
you know would have made a difference
in the country at that time.
Male Speaker: Could you talk more about Guiteau's trial?
The little I know of it, it started with him saying,
"I didn't kill the president, I merely just shot him."
Candice Millard: That's right, you know, "Your Honor,
I shot the President, but the doctors I killed him which is true.
So Guiteau had an insanity defense which had been used before,
it was early and it was obviously one of the best known
and most controversial sanity defenses at that time, and, frankly,
if anyone deserved to be guilty in reason of intent it was Guitaeu.
He had been in pain for a long time.
His family knew it had tried to have him institutionalized,
but he lived this very peripatetic and salutary life
to where he would just slip away, but the country was
so grief stricken and so enraged that they were determined
to see him hanged and he was.
Male Speaker: Is there a particular staff member who was vital
for Chester Arthur's transformation?
Did he have a Chief of Staff or a personal secretary
who helped him along that path?
Candice Millard: You know Chester Arthur, as I was saying,
made this incredible transformation and found a kind
of moral strength I think he didn't know he had through incredibly
through the letters of this young woman,
Julia Stands who was an involute, and a shut in and, you know,
I quote from her letters in the book, but I could have gone on
and on and on quoting from her.
She was incredibly eloquent, and they're just beautiful letters
and I think she showed him that he could be much more than he was
and he and he changed, you know.
Yes? Male Speaker: A lot of Americans aren't familiar
with Garfield, popularly one colleague
at work thought I was coming to hear someone
who had written a book about a cartoon cat.
[laughter] Candice Millard: That's very unfortunate, I know.
Male Speaker: What prompted you,
what inspired you to write this book?
What was it that sparked your interest in Garfield?
Candice Millard: well I you know, I too did not know really anything
about James Garfield beyond the fact that he had been assassinated,
and I wasn't necessarily interested in writing about another president,
I was interested in science.
I was researching Alexander Graham Bell, and I just kind
of stumbled upon this story about him trying
to help save Garfield's life,
and it really surprised me I had never heard his story before
and I couldn't understand why Bell, who was really at the height
of his fame and power, again this is only five years
after he invented the telephone, would turn his life upside
down to try to help Garfield,
and he just dropped everything he was doing he had a family in Boston,
you know, a wife, two children, his wife was pregnant,
and he just worked night and day in this laboratory
and it made we wonder what Garfield was like
and the more research I did the more astonished I was,
and I just knew I had to tell the story.
Yea? Male Speaker: I really enjoyed the "River of Doubt."
Candice Millard: Thank you.   Male Speaker: It was a great read.
Cancice Millard: Thank you.   [applause] Thank you very much.
Male Speaker: If you could go back in time,
this may not be a really fair question, but if you could go back
in time and have a beer with Roosevelt or Garfield,
who would you have a beer with and why?
Candice Millard: That's a great question.
That would be a very difficult decision because they are
such different men, and Theodore Roosevelt was so exciting
and had all this adventurous life.
You know, I hate to say it, but think I would choose Garfield.
My sister is here and she can tell you that we come from a family
of four girls, and we have the most incredible father
and just a good kind honest man and for all these years,
I was working on this book Garfield reminded me of my father,
and then he was, you know such an incredible intellectual,
so I think I would have to choose him.
[applause] Hi there.
As an inspiring journalist and a pretty big fan of history,
I'm wondering about the unique challenges that come
with when you're writing a book that's primarily about people
who lived a long time ago and are no longer,
you can't like go interview Teddy Roosevelt today, so the difficulty
in writing about the past and being able to make those characters come
to life, even though you can't ask them questions directly
about their experience and things like that.
Candice Millard: That's a great question, and you know I would say,
you know if you want to go into writing, to me,
one of the things I've learned is that the important part
of writing really is finding the right idea and one of the aspects
of finding the right idea if it's nonfiction, has to be you have
to have a lot of primary sources to work with
and with this story I had a wealth of sources.
For instance, Guiteau, you know, I am in his mind, you know,
I because of his particular brand of madness, because he was delusional,
he was thrilled after the shooting and prison, he said,
was the happiest time of his life because he had reporters coming
to him listening to him and he gave every interview he could.
He wrote an autobiography that was published in the New York Herald.
The trial transcript is nearly 3 thousand pages long, and again,
because they were so worried that he would be found not guilty
because of insanity and not executed they went through every aspect
of his life from his childhood, the freelove commune,
and he just describes not only what he did, but what he was thinking
when he had divine inspiration and all of it so I know everything
and Garfield, you know, he was only President for six months,
but he had been in Congress for 17 years and so
when our wonderful Library of Congress,
and the President papers has a wealth of information,
and you never know what you are going to find.
I'll tell you a quick story, I you know the Library of Congress
and the president papers, if any of you have worked there,
they're very very strict, as they should be.
I mean these are our national treasures.
But you can only have one cart at a time it could only have five boxes
on it and you can only have one box on your table and one folder out of
that box and one item out of that folder.
So I'm you know a good person, I'm carefully following the rules
and I open this folder and I find this envelope and the front
of the envelope is facing the table, and it's not sealed
or anything I don't know what's in it, so I open it
and all this hair spills out on the table, and I turn it over,
and it says, "Clipped
from President's Garfield's head on his deathbed."
And so I'm dying and trying
to desperately you know get it back in my career is over.
They're never going to let me back in, but at the same time,
I was terrified also very moving to see,
you know these things bring these people to life.
You remember that this was not only a President,
this was a husband this was a father,
you know the first thing Garfield the morning he was shot is he went
in his son's room he was playing with him, doing somersaults,
you know he, was singing to them,
and it and it's not only it's not only a national tragedy it was a
personal tragedy as well.   Female Speaker: Thank you so much.
Candice Millard: Thank you.   Thank you everybody.
[applause] This has been a presentation
of the library of congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.   [end of transcript]