Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

A few weeks after the inauguration, a fierce quarrel broke out over the distribution of federal patronage, splitting the Republican party into two factions. The angry irruptions of the newspapers on both sides, which would have passed with any normal mind for what they were worth, made a more serious impression on that of Charles J. Guiteau, a degenerate with a craving for self-advertisement; and, failing in his attempt to obtain an office for himself, he saw in the controversy an opportunity to pose as a hero by removing its cause. Garfield, as a graduate of Williams College, had arranged to attend the next commencement, and was in the railway station on the second of July, 1881, on the way to his train, when he was approached by Guiteau from behind and shot. He lingered, first in the White House and later at Elberon, New Jersey, whither he was taken after the weather became too sultry in Washington, till the nineteenth of September. The assassin was brought to trial at the winter term of the Supreme Court of the District, convicted of murder, and hanged.

On the evening of the day of Garfield’s death, the Vice-president, Chester A. Arthur, was sworn in at his home in New York City, in the presence of his son and a few personal friends, including Elihu Root. A more formal administration of the oath took place in the Vice-president’s room at the Capitol in Washington three days later, Chief Justice Waite officiating, with Associate Justices Harlan and Matthews, General Grant, and several Senators and Representatives as witnesses. After signing the oath, Arthur read a brief address and returned at once to his office.

Arthur was a widower, and his only daughter was still too young to take full charge of his household affairs, so his sister, Mrs. McElroy, presided at all his social functions. He was very fond of music, and the great operatic and concert stars were always sure of a warm welcome from him when they passed through Washington. The finest of his dinners was that which he gave for Christine Nilsson. As the company rose from the table and he offered his arm to escort her back to the east room, the Marine Band in the corridor, responding to a secret signal, began playing one of her favorite airs, and, with the spontaneous delight of a child, she fell to singing it, her voice soaring bird-like above the instruments as she walked. This surprise for Miss Nilsson was typical of the graceful things Arthur was fond of doing, and in which he set the pace for the members of his official family. Ex-president Grant and his wife, on their return from their tour of the world, dropped in upon Washington, as it chanced, just when a reception was about to be held at the White House. Arthur sent his carriage for them. Mrs. Frelinghuysen, wife of the Secretary of State, was on that occasion filling Mrs. McElroy’s accustomed station next to the President in the receiving line; but on the entrance of the distinguished guests she withdrew, gently pressing Mrs. Grant into her place as hostess of the evening.

As the first Democratic President since the war, Grover Cleveland of New York found a hard task laid out for him. He realized that he owed his election chiefly to the reform element in both the great parties, yet it was his own party that claimed him, and, having been out of power for a quarter-century, it was not over-modest in its demands. His efforts at tariff reduction stirred the protectionists to such activity in the next campaign that Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, a Republican and a grandson of “Old Tippecanoe,” was elected in November, 1888. When he entered office, Cleveland was a bachelor forty-eight years old. In June, 1886, he married Miss Frances Folsom, the daughter of a former law partner to whom he had been warmly attached. The wedding ceremony was performed in the White House, only a small party of friends attending. Mrs. Cleveland, who was young and of attractive presence, made friends for herself on every side and did much to soften the antagonisms which her husband’s course in office necessarily aroused.

The clerk of the weather seemed to have been storing his rain for weeks in order to let it all out upon Harrison’s inauguration, and the street pageant was a drenched and draggled affair. The civilities of the outgoing to the incoming President gave the day its one touch of cheerfulness. Cleveland sat on the rear seat of the open landau which bore them to the Capitol, the front seat being occupied by Senators Hoar and Cockrell, acting as a committee of escort. In order to enable Harrison to lift his hat to the people who cheered him from the sidewalk, Cleveland raised his own umbrella and held it over his companion. When Cockrell undertook to do the same for Hoar, his umbrella broke. Cleveland at once borrowed an umbrella of his Secretary of the Treasury in the next carriage, and, when Mr. Hoar demurred, reassured him with a laugh: “Don’t be alarmed, Senator; we’re honest, and I’ll see that it gets back!” As they drove down the Avenue, most of the applause, naturally, was for the President-elect; but once in a while a spectator would shout, “Good-by, Grover!” or something of the sort, and Cleveland would return the greeting with a smile and a nod. So much kindly feeling was manifested throughout the morning that Harrison, who was temperamentally the least effusive of men, was deeply touched; and he could not forbear referring in his inaugural address to the courtesy he had received at Cleveland’s hands, adding that he should endeavor to show like consideration to his successor four years later.

And four years later Providence gave him the chance, which he improved as far as in him lay. In the meantime he had passed through many sad experiences. Factional divisions, almost as serious as those that culminated in the assassination of Garfield, had broken up his party. His Secretary of State, Mr. Blaine, had parted company with him on the eve of the meeting of the Republican National Convention of 1892, become his rival for the Presidential nomination, and died the following winter. Two of Blaine’s sons and one of his daughters had already died. Mr. Windom, Secretary of the Treasury, had fallen dead at a public banquet, just after finishing a memorable speech in defense of the administration. General Tracy, Secretary of the Navy, had lost his wife and daughter in a fire which destroyed their Washington home. The wife of the President’s secretary, Mr. Halford, had died; and to crown his load of sorrows, Mr. Harrison lost his own wife and her father almost at the time of his defeat for reëlection.

On the other hand, he had enjoyed the presence in the White House of his daughter, Mrs. McKee, with her two children, one of whom, a bright little boy named in his honor, was his special favorite and playfellow out of office hours. The south garden was the scene of many of their frolics, which recalled the legends about John Adams and his juvenile tyrant. One incident will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it. “Baby McKee,” as Benjamin junior was commonly called, used to drive a goat before his little wagon. This amusement was confined, as a rule, to occasions when the President could be near at hand to watch proceedings, for the goat was an erratic brute. One day it caught the President napping and started at full gallop for an open gate. Mr. Harrison, suddenly awakened to the situation, dashed after. The goat succeeded in pulling the wagon through the narrow aperture without a collision, but, once in the street, bolted straight for a trench in which workmen were laying a pipe. By a succession of mighty leaps, such as probably no dignitary of his rank had ever made before, Mr. Harrison contrived to get in front of the animal, seize it by the bit, and swing it around in the nick of time to prevent its jumping the excavation and tumbling wagon and boy into the mud at the bottom. The President was puffing hard as he returned triumphantly to the White House, dragging the reluctant goat by the headstall, under a running fire of complaints from his grandson for spoiling the morning ride.

When Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland came back in 1893, they brought with them their infant daughter Ruth, and open gates in the south garden of the White House became at once a thing of the past; for the garden was the child’s only playground, and an epidemic of kidnapping had recently broken out. For further security, and in order to have one place where his domestic hours would be free from business interruptions, the President rented the small estate known as Woodley, in one of the northwestern suburbs. Here he lived during the greater part of the year, driving in daily to his work and spending a night in Washington now and then if necessary. By that time the official encroachments on the family space of the White House had reached a point where either the building must be enlarged or a separate dwelling provided for the President. A scheme of enlargement had been broached in Harrison’s term, but the plans drawn under Mrs. Harrison’s direction changed the shape of the old mansion in too many essential features to win the approval of the architects consulted, and the matter was dropped. The Clevelands, by living at Woodley, escaped some of the cramping the Harrisons had suffered, and the McKinleys, who came in next, got along pretty well because they had no children.

As Senator La Follette once said, McKinley never had a fair chance as President to show what was in him: his first term was broken into by the Spanish War, and his second was cut off almost at its beginning by assassination. He was sweet-natured and a born manager of men, and no one who ever filled the Presidential chair left behind him a more fragrant memory. As his murder occurred in Buffalo, and Czolgosz, who killed him, was tried and put to death there, the episode serves our present purpose only in leading up to the accession of Theodore Roosevelt of New York, the Vice-president, who was recalled from a summer vacation in the mountains to take the head of the state. His inauguration was of the simplest sort, at the house of a friend in Buffalo, where some members of the McKinley Cabinet and a few other gentlemen met to witness the administration of the oath.

His first few months in the White House convinced the new President that something must be done without delay to relieve the building, which had become not only inconvenient but dangerous. For several years, when repairs had been found necessary, they had been made by temporary patchwork, with little reference to their effect on anything else; not a few of the floor timbers subject to most strain were badly rotted, and others stood in so perilous relations to the lighting apparatus that only by a miracle had the house escaped destruction by fire. Fortunately Congress had begun to show some interest in a long-mooted project for bringing the city back to the plan laid out by L’Enfant; and a generous appropriation was procured for making over the White House to resemble as nearly as practicable the President’s Palace built by Hoban. All the latter half of 1902 was given to this work. The office was moved out of the main building and planted in a little house of its own on the same spot where Jefferson used to have his workroom, at the extremity of the western terrace. The eastern terrace, of which nothing but the buried foundations remained, was rebuilt, and so arranged as to afford an entrance for guests at the larger receptions.