Destiny of the Republic (50 page)

G
arfield’s body was returned to Washington on the same train that had brought him to Elberon just two weeks earlier. Thousands of people lined the tracks as the train, now swathed in black, passed by. The White House was also draped in mourning, as were the buildings through which a procession of some one hundred thousand mourners wound, waiting to see the president’s body as it lay in state in the Capitol rotunda.
(Illustration credit 2.13)

(Illustration credit 2.14)

W
hen news of Garfield’s death reached New York, reporters rushed to Arthur’s house, but his doorkeeper refused to disturb him. The vice president was “sitting alone in his room,” he said, “sobbing like a child.” A few hours later, at 2:15 a.m., Arthur was quietly sworn into office by a state judge in his own parlor.
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A
fter a trial that lasted more than two months, Guiteau was found guilty and sentenced to death. Twenty thousand people requested tickets to the execution. Two hundred and fifty invitations were issued. Guiteau was hanged on June 30, 1882, two days before the anniversary of Garfield’s shooting.
(Illustration credit 2.16)

H
ad it not been for her children, “life would have meant very little” to Lucretia after her husband’s death. When this photograph was taken of the former first lady with her grandchildren in 1906, she had already been a widow for a quarter of a century. Lucretia would live another twelve years, thirty-seven years longer than James.
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I
n the years following Garfield’s death, Bell continued to invent, helped to found the National Geographic Society, established a foundation for the deaf, and did what he could for those who needed him most. In 1887, he met Helen Keller and soon after helped her find her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Keller would remember her meeting with Bell as the “door through which I should pass from darkness into light.”
(Illustration credit 2.18)