coral reef. but over the years they have become so closely tied in with our cells and the symbiosis is so intricate now, that they can't exist for a second without the cells that they live with, in the cells of our body, and now our bodily cells cannot survive without them. and that's just the beginning, really, of the complexity of the thing we call a human being. ..

and now we are very excited to have her here to talk about her second book, her first book was the river of doubt about theodore roosevelt perilous journey down the amazon after his presidency and we are very very pleased that she is chosen to tackle another interesting presidential subject that being the assassination of president james a. garfield. i believe this is her third or fourth trip to the site between research and other thing she has done for us and with us and it it is really a great pleasure to welcome her here tonight. please make her feel welcome, candice millard. [applause] >> thank you, thank you for that introduction. thank you all for coming. it is a real pleasure to be here and it is a great honor to be able to speak at the james a. garfield national historic site. i also wanted to say a particular thank you to the garfield family as well, which has been incredibly kind and generous and helpful to me

throughout this whole process so thank you so much. at heart, this book is not about politics or science or even the shooting of a president. it is about an extraordinary drama that took place inside the white house for over more than two months. in a 130 years since garfield's death his story 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 an incredible struggle for power and ambition. the result 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 versus science, the greed versus heroism. james garfield was not, as he has often been remember to be, just a bland bearded 19th century politician. on the contrary. that is the wrong picture. i am not sure what went up but on the contrary. he was one of the most extraordinary man ever elected president. although he was born into desperate poverty, he became a professor of literature, mathematics and ancient languages and he was just a sophomore in college. by the time he was 26 years old, he was a college president. he knew the entire -- i heart in

latin. while he was in congress, he wrote an original proof of the pythagorean theory. to me though, what is more inspirational and more astonishing, even then garfield's brilliance was his decency. you know, i wrote a book about theodore roosevelt and i have great admiration for him. he was a firebrand. he was the hero, the center of every drama. that is not garfield. garfield was the columnist, wisest man in the room. he was a good, kind, honest man who was just trying his best. he was a real person, not consumed by ego and ambition, someone who was simply trying to do the right thing. 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 forbearance even in the face of the most brutal personal attacks, but garfield was incapable of holding a grudge. he used to just shrug and say, i am a -- hater. although garfield took his presidency very seriously, he had never had what he called presidential fever. in fact he never really ran for any office. people asked him to run and he did, but he would never even campaign. he always made it clear that he was going to follow his own conscience and convictions and if people didn't agree with him, they shouldn't vote for him. when garfield went to the republican convention in the summer of 1880, not only was he not a candidate, he didn't even 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 telling his wife that he was just sick about the fact that he hadn't written his speech before the convention and now he wouldn't have time. the convention was an enormous hall in chicago. there were 15,000 people there, and the favorite to win by far was ulysses s. grant. he was trying for his third term in the white house. in the midst of this chaos and noise, thousands of people, garfield got up to speak and his speech was so powerful and so eloquent, and again largely extemporaneous, that the hall slowly fell silent until the only thing you could hear was garfield's voice and everyone was just riveted. they were spellbound. and at one point, garfield said,

and so gentlemen i ask you, what do we want? someone shouted, we want garfield. and the entire hall just went crazy and when the balloting began, delegates began casting their ballots for garfield, even though again he wasn't even a candidate, and he stood up and he objected to the votes -- but the boats kept coming and he couldn't stop what was happening and what was a trickle became a stream, became a river and then finally a flood of votes and before garfield knew it, he was the republican nominee for president of the united states. what i found again and again and again while i was researching this book was that not only was garfield's life and nomination and brief presidency full of incredible stories, but the people who surrounded him were also unbelievable.

he just couldn't make them up. first of course is chalres guiteau. guiteau was a deeply, it dangerously delusional man but he was very intelligent and highly articulate. if you read nearly any other account of garfield's fascination, guiteau is described as a disgruntled office speaker but that doesn't cover the smallest part of it. he was a uniquely american character. he was the product of this country at that time, a time when there was a lot of play in the -- and 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 would probably have been very successful if he hadn't been

insane. guiteau had tried everything and he had failed at everything. he had tried law, evangelism, even a free love commune in the 1800's and he had failed even at that. the women in the commune nick named him charles get out. [laughter] but he survived on sheer audacity. he traveled all over the country by train, never bought a ticket. he took great pride in moving from boarding house to boarding house, slipping out when the rent was due. and even when he occasionally worked as a bill collector, he would just keep whatever he managed to collect. after the republican convention, guiteau became obsessed with garfield and immediately after the election, he began to stalk the president. he went to the white house nearly every day. at one point he even walked into the president's office while the president was in the senate.

he even attended a reception and introduced himself to garfield's wife. he shook her hand, he gave her his card and he slowly pronounced his name so she wouldn't forget him. it was like a hitchcock movie. it is incredibly creepy and absolutely terrifying. finally, guiteau had what he believed was a divine inspiration. god wanted him to kill the president. it was nothing personal he would later say, simply god's will. as strange and fascinating and nearly as dangerous as guiteau was, senator roscoe conkling and that is chester arthur. we skipped his picture. conkling was pretty vicious. conkling was a vain and preening brutally powerful machine politician who appointed himself garfield's enemy.

there is conkling. he wore a canary yellow waistcoat. he use lavender in. he had as you can see this great spit curl in the middle of his forehead and he would coil at the slightest touch. in fact his vanity was so outside that he was famously ridiculed for it by another congressman on the floor of congress. but conkling was no joke. he was dangerously powerful. as a senior senator from new york he controlled the new york customs house, which was the largest federal office in the united states and controlled 70% of the countries customs revenue. conkling tightly controlled patronage within his state and he expected complete and unquestioning loyalty. in fact, his apartment in new york was known as the morgue. conkling was in a rage when his candidate, former president grant, didn't get the nomination but he was apoplectic when he

realized that he couldn't control garfield. to conkling, the attempt on garfield's life was his ticket back into power. but for the first time in conkling's life, nothing turned out as he planned. chester arthur was garfield's vice president, but he was conkling's man, and politically he was completely conkling's creation. in fact the only other political office he had ever held was as the collector of the new york customs house, a position that conkling threw president grant had given to him. in that position he made as much money as the president and he never showed up for work before noon. arthur preferred a life of leisure. he liked old wine, late dinner parties and was nearly as preening as conkling and in fact even moved his birthdate back here to appear more youthful.

even within the republican party arthur's nomination was considered a ridiculous. after the election he went on vacations with conkling. he even lived with him for a time in d.c., and he took every opportunity to publicly criticize the president. and then suddenly everything changed. after garfield rashad arthur made a transformation so stunning and complete that no one could believe it. the entire country was horrified. the thought that chester arthur might be president, but unlike conkling arthur was sickened and grief stick and by the shootings. the last thing that he wanted was for garfield to die. he hid himself from public view. he refused even to go to washington for fear that it would look like he was waiting

in the wings and he cut himself off from conkling. finally come after turning his back on the man who had made him, arthur found moral strength in the most unlikely of places, the letters of a young invalid woman named julius and. sands believed in arthur when no one else did, when he didn't even believe in himself. after the shooting sand road to author, if there is spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine. faith in your better nature forces me to write to you, but not to ask you to resign. it is more difficult and more brave reform. and to everyone's amazement not least of all arthur's he did it. 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 julius sand. not only did he keep her letters, he wrote her back and he even went to visit her. one day after sunday dinner she was at her brother's house and a highly polished carriage pulled up in front of the house and to sand the's astonishment resident arthur stepped out. he had come to thank her in person for her help. the reason arthur became president was not because of his madness or even conkling's political maneuvering but the ambition, ignorance and dangerous arrogance of the man who assumed control of garfield's medical care, dr. willard bliss. that's right, his first name was doctor. his parents had named him doctor bliss was a well-known surgeon with a practice and in fact he

had been one of the doctors at abraham lincoln's bedside that he had far from a sterling reputation. he had enthusiastic he sold something which was supposed to cure cancer, syphilis, ulcers, chronic blood diseases, you name it. list had even been disgraced for taking bribes after he spends a small amount of time in prison. when robert todd lincoln who was garfield secretary of war, bliss saw and 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 the 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 a few surgeon he had handpicked to help him inserted unsterilized fingers and instruments and garfield back again and again, day after day, searching for bullets. 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 and the search, but this was 14 years before the invention of a medical x-ray. what happened next is nothing short of incredible. only the most brazen novelists would make it up. none other than alexander graham bell stepped forward to help. bell, a young restless genius had invented the telephone just

five years earlier when he was only 29 years old. 1881, the telephone had earned him some money and a lot of -- but he wanted nothing to do with the company that he grown up around it. he said it was hateful to him at all times and that it fettered him as an inventor. worse even than the business board the lawsuits against the telephone. there were 600 lawsuits against him, five of which went to the united united states supreme court. finally, bell had 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 years old. both his wife and his mother 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 literally woodwork himself to death. when he was working he wouldn't stop to eat or rest. his only respite was to play the piano deep into the night, but even then he played with such an intensity that his mother, who had taught him to play, called it a musical fever. when garfield was shot, bill turned his life upside down to help him. it sickened him to think of garfield's doctors blindly searching for the bullets. science he thought should be able to do better than that. bella band and everything he was doing and spends day and night inventing something called an induction balance which was basically a metal detector that he hooked up to the telephone receiver. and which he slowly ran over the president's body, listening for telltale 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. in fact, it went on to save countless lives before the invention of the medical x-ray. alexander graham bell was defeated by the arrogant ambition and ignorance of the presidents own doctors. as i began my research for this book, the question that come -- coming to me was how could this have happened? what i found was first of all, the presidency in 1881 was very different from the presidency today. first of all secret service. this is 16 years after the assassination of abraham lincoln and there is still no secret service protection for the presidency. garfield had only his 24-year-old private secretary and an aging policeman. not only was the president not protected from the public, but he was expected to interact with

them one-on-one, face-to-face, on a daily basis. you have to remember that this is the height of the foil system and many americans believe 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 speakers from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 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 it tiresome and even maddening he never considered them to be dangerous. he said that assassination can no more be guarded against then death by lightning and it is best not to worry about either.

he walked all around the city by himself all the time. in fact one night he left the white house, he walked down the street to the secretary of state's house, they walked along together through the streets of washington with guiteau following them the entire way, holding a loaded gun. in fact, by the time -- by that time guiteau had been stalking the president for weeks. he had even followed him to church and had considered shooting him in church. finally, he made his decision. the president he knew would be at the baltimore train station in washington d.c. on the morning of july 2, 1881 and guiteau would be waiting. the moment guiteau -- the moment garfield walked into the station that warning guiteau stepped out of the shadows and shot him twice. the first bullet hit the president in the arm and the second ripped through his back. by an incredible stroke of luck

however, guiteau didn't kill garfield. he only wanted him. the bullet that tore through his back didn't hit his spinal cord. it didn't hit any vital organs. today he was -- would spend two nights in a hospital. even if he had been left alone he almost certainly would have survived. fortunately for garfield in the nation, dr. bliss stepped in. ballistic advantage of the fear in the chaos that followed the shooting to assume control of garfield's medical care. but he was not only ambitious and arrogant, he adhered to the most traditional medical methods of the time. bliss gave garfield a gunshot victim, rich food and alcohol. he took great satisfaction in what he called the healthy issuing from from the presidents infected wound and he avoided any treatment he considered to be new and radical, including

antisepsis. the renowned producer john joseph lister had discovered antisepsis the prevention of infection destroying germs 16 years earlier. the death rate in his surgical ward had plummeted and he had traveled all around, begging doctors to sterilize their hands and their instruments, and warning them that if they didn't, they ran the very real risk of killing their patient. by 1881 and antisepsis was widely accepted in europe, but the most experienced and respected doctors in the united states still dismissed it as useless, even dangerous. some still 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 antisepsis required to kill them. they took great pride in what they called the good old

surgical stink. they would not change or wash their surgical aprons because they believe that the more blood and that was on them the more experienced it showed. even though to try and processes had little success for reasons that today seem painfully clear, 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 the knife in their teeth and then use it. even alexander graham bell could not outrace infection that was coursing through garfield's body. the story however doesn't end there. garfield's death brought about tremendous changes, changes in medicine, and politics, in the fabric of our nation. as soon as garfield's autopsy was released, and the american people understood that their president didn't have to die and

they understood why he did. bliss was publicly disgraced and antisepsis was adopted across the country. americans turned their rage and their grief on the political system that would encourage 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 foil system. garfield also brought the countries together in a way that it not be seen since the civil war. lincoln's assassination had only deepened the divide but garfield had been the first president who was accepted by the south since the civil war. he was accepted as a leader of the whole country, north and south, immigrant and pioneer, freedmen and former slave owners. 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 really marked the end of the idealistic or perhaps naïve concept of the president alone beating with office speakers, personally making appointments at every level in government. it was obviously an unworkable system for many reasons. it was open to corruption. it was completely inefficient, and it was personally dangerous. it would never have worked as the united states grew into a major world power and it is good that it is 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 but 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 is surrounded by elaborate security. his contact with the public is carefully controlled and he operates in this bubble of secret service officers, high officials and the press. it is very unlikely that what happened to garfield could happen today, but by the same token even if we could find someone like garfield, we 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. it seems to be open only to people who are willing to sacrifice almost anything to become president. we have hopefully outgrown the day when a madman can just walk into the oval office and an incompetent dr. can seize control of the white house for nearly three months, murdering the president in the process. but we likely have also outgrown

the day when americans can recognize the promise of a fine, honest man, man with no financial report, 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] [applause] happy to take questions. >> if you are going to ask a question please approach the microphone and speak into the microphone please. thank you. >> marvelous presentation. were there any among garfield's

family, friends or subordinate to champions bill's machine over lister's methods and if so how did that play out? >> well, bell himself offered his help. he as i said quit the bell telephone company and he had opened a small laboratory in d.c.. as soon as the president was shot, he knew that he could help him and he offered his house. by that time, although everything was going great, the president is doing very well, yet become desperate so he accepted bell's help. and, interestingly, although as i said, really the most respected, most experienced doctors in the united states dismissed lister's methods. there were some young doctors who had been studying his methods in europe and watch this with growing horror but didn't feel that they could stand up to

these well-known doctors. there was i would probably say, i am by the way born and raised in ohioan but i've lived in kansas now, and there was a doctor from kansas who wrote to the creation of garfield's wife and told her, don't let them close to one. make sure they sterilize everything but that just never got through to bliss, who ran things exact we as he wished. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> hello. i don't mean to get you off the track but i am thinking that garfield played a very significant role in the 1876 election and the commission that actually elected the president and if i'm right about that could you tell me little bit about that? >> that was a very controversial election in which hayes was given the presidency. i'm not sure to be honest exactly how much of a role garfield played in that. but, it was interesting in that everyone was very very closely watching the election of 1880,

because of this and also because it was such a stunning nomination for garfield as -- at at the republican conviction -- convention so this the selection was closely watched by everyone except for garfield who was very happily here with his family, doing experience -- experience and was thrilled he was nasty campaign which was considered unseemly at that time. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. i find it very fascinating the three of our great presidents, lincoln garfield and mckinley were all kindly towards african-americans and all assassinated. our calendar this year is the same as 1881, and it was on this date on a thursday and tomorrow that garfield's body lay in state in the nation's capital. i would just thank you for coming here on this day to our hometown. thank you. [applause] >> my honor, thank you. [applause]

>> high. what do you think about garfield to quit being a general one of the civil war were still raging to go back into politics? what is your response about garfield as a politician? >> well garfield didn't want to. abraham lincoln asked him to come back. he needed him back in congress fighting the fight that lincoln had, and garfield understood that. it was difficult for him. you know, he loved his regiment which was, many of whom are made up from boys from the institute. so it was a difficult decision for him and he felt very passionately about the civil war, not only in keeping the country together but in bringing about abolition. he was a fierce abolitionist and what is our national hero because of his work in the civil war. thank you. >> thank you very much for an excellent presentation. toward the end of your presentation you said this in the last paragraph that

dr. bliss was murdering the president. you don't see any malice to him but utter incompetence? and one more question, just a little bit about your background. i'm curious to know how you got interested in the subject. >> i will address the bliss thing. you are absolutely right. the lasting bliss wanted was for garfield to die. in fact he wrote a letter to a friend on white house stationery saying, i can't afford to have him die underlining each word. he was desperate. he worked night and day. he lost his house, he lost his practice, but he was incredibly arrogant. he dismissed all the other doctors and he was woefully ignorant. he knew about antisepsis, and so you know, you have to judge them on that. your other question was how i got interested in this? to be honest, i didn't, even though i grew up in ohio it didn't know much about garfield

be on the fact that he had been assassinated and i wasn't necessarily interested in writing about another president but i was interested in science. and i was researching alexander graham bell and i stumbled upon the story of so they trying to save garfield after garfield was shot. i was done because first of all i'd never heard the story and secondly, i couldn't understand why bell, who really was at the height of his fame and his power, would turn his life upside down to do this. i mean, he had a family in boston, his wife and his children. his wife is pregnant and they had been planning on going to maine because it was incredibly hot and he had just left them and spend all of this time, night and day working on this. so it made me wonder, why would he do that and what was garfield like? when i started to research garfield, i was completely captivated, and i knew i had to tell the story.

>> hi candice. how are you? i want to follow in his same thing. i know that you are from a small town in ohio, and are a product of public education. how did you become a inspired to be a a right right or? >> that is a great question. you know, i didn't ever think i would be a writer. i was a reader. i was a voracious reader. i love to read and i thought it would probably teach, and i got an undergraduate masters degree in literature and thought i was going to go on to get mike ph.d. but to be honest i hated literary criticism. [laughter] and i realized that i really wanted to write, so really it was a process. it wasn't at all overnight. it was little by little. i had gotten my masters at baylor and i moved home, moved in with my parents, literally open the yellow pages calling every publisher in town looking for a job and had all of these little magazine jobs are going

work for a magazine for veterinarians and never even had a pet. [laughter] knew nothing, sort of figuring out and finally got my dream job when i was 28 years old, working at "national geographic." i was a researcher the first year but they have this terrific blind tests were a riding position on the magazine, and i applied along with 300 other people. i got the job and it was like the best thing that ever happened to me up to that point, and i did that for six years until i got the idea for my first book. it has been a journey but it has been wonderful. >> hi. wednesday doctor was working on garfield why didn't mrs. garfield tell the doctor to stop working on garfield? >> that is a wonderful question. you know, this was a time of chaos and confusion and fear,

and bliss came forward very confidently and in fact he wrote a letter to the other doctors saying, the president and i thank you for your helping concerned that your efforts won't be necessary any longer, even though garfield and lucretia had never given him that authority. to lucretia, even though most doctors knew about antisepsis, lucretia didn't and she didn't really understand what was happening but she did keep on her doctor. she had a female doctor which is very rare that time, dr. edson whom they called mrs. dr. edson because they were so uncomfortable with a woman doctor but dr. edson refused to go away when to bliss's great annoyance and they said a ride you can stay but not as a doctor but as a nurse. she stated she did what she could. >> waton are you from and can i find the book in the library by

now? >> that is a great question, thank you. originally i was born in marion ohioan i grew up in lexington, ohio which is very close to mansfield. and i think that it probably is in the library by knauss so thank you for asking. i hope you'll read it. >> what is it like to be an author and if you were going to write her next book, what is it going to be about? >> it is really really fun to be an author. i would recommend it highly. the best part for me was doing the research because you get to to do all these incredible things. when i wrote my first book, the river of doubt, it is about this unmapped river in the amazon the theater roosevelt went down and i got to go to that river. it is so incredibly remote. i hired a pilot and a small plane and i flew for hours over absolutely unbroken jungle from horizon to horizon, and i met this isolated group of men.

their grandparents and great grandparents had followed roosevelt's expedition and they remembered all the stories, so you get these incredible experiences. researching this book, you know what was interesting the different -- researching the river of doubt was difficult logistically, planning all the trips. this was difficult emotionally because i became very attached to garfield. i really cared about him, and it was difficult to see what was happening. i kept wanting to just yell over the span of 130 years, stopped. somebody stop these men, but reading his wife's diary, reading his children's diaries, you know seeing actually a section of garfield spine in the national house of medicine that we use use during the trial. there were also the remains of chalres guiteau in a drawer with their remains of john wilkes

booth. yeah. actually there is a jar, pieces of guiteau's brain which was sent around the country after he was executed to study to see if they could see any physical evidence of insanity. so, anyway it is a very interesting job and a real privilege to be able to do this. yes i am working on a next book. i can't get into the details about it because it is really early but it is going to be about winston churchill. thank you for your question. >> i remember hearing about the story of alexander graham bell and what he was doing and i heard that the thing that he did for the president actually did work but it went off all the time. seemed like the bold was all over the place but what they didn't realize, it worked because it was picking up the middle bedsprings underneath the president and that is why they had a hard time finding the bullet.

is their nature to that story? >> isn't that astonishing? yeah and he had actually asked them if the president -- because it was a very new and very rare thing at that time to have a mattress with metal springs in it, and they said no. and in fact he was on a bed with metal spring so obviously that will affect the metal detector. the other reason it didn't find the bullet was bliss believed and have publicly stated that the bullet was on the president's right side and he would only let bell run is over the president's right side in the bullet was on the left. >> wow. and the other one is, i was kind of curious about, the old clicée ignorance is bliss. is this word where it comes from? [laughter] >> i have that in the book actually. that is a very perceptive of you. in fact, after the autopsy results, and this disgrace,

newspapers in medical journals, everybody understands and one of the doctors proves that ignorance is bliss but it comes from a poem i think from the 1700's. [laughter] very apropos unfortunately. high. >> did you write any fiction books? >> no, i haven't written fiction. fiction and nonfiction writing is very different and i read a lot of fiction and i love it and i've gone to a lot of talks by fiction writers. i always marvel at myself because they will say, someone will say what is your process like? they say well i sort of let the story lead me and i kind of follow and my characters come in and to me that is a nightmare. i know exact lee -- my process is i spent three years writing a book in the fourth years doing

foundational research. the entire second year i spend going through that research in outlining and outlining and outlining is really important. it will help in his saves you a lot of pain, believe me. i work on structure for an entire year and only then do i start writing. throughout though i will find holes in my research and i will go back and do more. >> that is what my teacher says. [laughter] >> she is right, she is right. you can't skip the outline, sorry. [laughter] speier which is like to know what is the term clinical machine mean? >> well, so this is the time and machine politics are incredibly incredibly corrupt and power mongering. rosco conkling was sort of the pinnacle example of that kind of corruption. i'm sure you have heard of loss tweet, so that really -- in the gilded age and mark twain and

where that comes from. it was a time of rampant corruption bullying and the spoils system so you know, things obviously are not perfect now. >> when you are doing your research are you able to use the diaries and stuff like that and how do you go about obtaining that? is that out there for the public or did you get permission from the family or is it where the documents are? >> a lot of the garfield papers were found in a presidential papers at the library of congress and anybody can see them. you just need a driver's license and you go down a get a reader i.d. card that i will say that they are very very strict with their rules, which they obviously should be. these are national treasures, but for instance, i will give you a story here. you know i am a good person and i am very carefully following the rules but you are only

allowed to have one card at a time and it can have five bands on it at a time. you can only have one been on your desk at a time in one folder out of bed then so am i'm following all the rules. i open a folder and there is an envelope in the folder. it is not -- in the face of it is facing the table. so i opened it up and out comes all at this hair. i turn it and it says clipped from president garfield on his deathbed. it is like oh my god. [laughter] i'm trying to get it -- oh my career is over. they are going to kick me out. you never know what you are going to find. it is an adventure. >> thanks. >> hi. you mentioned lucretia garfield's letters and diaries. are those published? >> they are. garfield kept a diary for many years and lucretia's diary is that they back at the last

volume of garfield's diary and yes, there is this wonderful volume, letters between lucretia and james. you know, they only spend five months together during the first five years of their marriage because he was either gone fighting during the civil war or if he was in washington when he was in congress, she was here in ohio. so, and you know to her credit, she kept all of those letters. at the end of his life, garfield question if he would have much of a legacy because he had been president for such a brief time but lucretia understood who he was and she understood that he would. even though many of those letters are very painful because their early marriage was very difficult, she kept all of them and they are beautiful. as brilliant as he was, she was his equal intellectually, and i would highly recommend this book on their letters.

speier i thank you for a very enjoyable evening. >> thank you so much. >> i have one question. wondering, you talked about james garfield being a multifaceted, multitalented man. how do you rank him with the others? such as jefferson? >> you know to me personally, and i'm obviously biased, i think had he lived, and believe that he would have been one of our great presidents. it is impossible to know, because he was in office for such a short time. youyou know know, i'm a great admirer of jefferson, great admirer of lincoln, but i think that honestly i think garfield had a mind like jefferson and a heart like lincoln. >> i agree, thank you. >> i was wondering, is it hard to find the research on him? >> you know, it is like being a detective kind of, and so it is

really fun in that way. do just get to search and search and search, so when i began i just cast a very wide net so i looked everywhere and every place. you look in the obvious places like they came to minefield several times and we went to the college where he was a student and a teacher and a president, they went to the library of congress. but then i found little, like the new york bar, the library of the new york art has letters from guiteau that are just incredible. little universities have bits and pieces here and there and m it is like a treasure hunt. it is a lot of fun. any other questions? >> i just have one question to add to the thing about dr. bliss. was there any government action taken against him or prosecuted? did they ever investigate his ineptness? >> they didn't, you know and i

think the country was heartbroken and enraged and focusing on charles guiteau in his trial. he had an insanity defense and the country was terrified who is going to get off and sent to an asylum rather than being hanged. also bliss never admitted that he had done anything wrong. he in fact insisted that he had given the very best medical care to the president and in fact he handed congress a very expensive bill for his work and was outraged when congress refused to pay it. >> thank you. >> i have several small questions. first of all have you ever talked to the group out of hiram college about this? >> i have done research at hiram college. i haven't talked with any group there. i did quite a bit of research in their library. >> do you think this would make a good book for a movie? >> yes.

[laughter] [applause] >> i think it would make an excellent book for a movie. i can hardly wait to see it come out. my father was an ordained minister in the same church that garfield was, and i heard somebody say that he rode a horse from here over to the franklin christian church, which is a disciples of christ church. do you know if that is true? >> i don't know that story. i would love to hear it but i'm sorry, don't know what. >> that is what i've heard, anyway. thank you very much, an excellent talk. >> thank you very much. thank you everyone. i really enjoyed it. thank you so much. [applause]

>> can i make just one comment? >> go ahead, bob. [laughter] >> the senior member and as part of the country as a matter fact, i would trade some of those years but that is not going to work. i want to thank you for an absolutely extraordinary undertaking that you took gone and achieved in. you have humanized someone who was a ghost in the past too many people who didn't even know the ghost was there. there have been things written about him and about the family in the past, but nothing begins to compare with what you have done here. so, thank you very much. [applause] this event was hosted by the james a. garfield national historic site in mentor, ohio. for more information visit n ps

.gov/jaga. what qualities in a candidate would incentivize voters to hire or fire them? >> it is not exactly the way i approach the question in a book because it is really up to the voters. floaters a variety of different characteristics and they consider important. the characteristic voters find most important and candidates is party i.d., that is the prime and mary determinant. the second characteristics and congressional is prior experience. so when we look at voters behavior empirically, those are the two factors that voters consider most strongly when deciding who they want to hire

or fire. >> in your book, you compare competitive elections with the structure of you know corporations, that when an employee is not performing, they should be fired. what is the disconnect between competitive elections and that system that you discuss in your book? >> so the disconnect is there are actually a lot of different definitions of a competitive election. one of the things i talk about quite a bit in the book is the fact that the conflicting definitions of what a competitive election is over example too closely associated definitions of a competitive election our elections in which the final vote tallies for the candidates are close and elections about which we are uncertain about the results. they are related but different definition so if we talk about uncertainty for example, what does that mean? well it is an election as a way to hire or fire somebody and you have an incumbent running for office that essentially what is happening is there is an

employee whose contract is up for renewal. do we renew that employs contractor not? that is literally what an election of cop edition is. let's think about what it is to have the competitive election. the competitive election is an election about which we aren't certain and there is some random element then essentially competitive element in the case of an incumbent is tossing a going to decide whether not to fire an employee. that is not a good idea. if you want the strong company, what you do is retain the employees were doing a good job, deterministically and fired the employees are doing a bad job. deterministically. what you don't do is flip a coin but that is what a competitive election is if we go with a definition of uncertainty. there are other definitions of a competitive election which run into other problems but the basic issue is if you think about elections as an employment mechanism most of the definitions of a competitive election don't really make a lot of substantive sense. >> what suggestions do you make

in your book to improved ease system? >> essentially the argument in the book is that if you want a healthy company, what you do is pose a credible threats to fire employees who did not do a good job but the purpose of doing that is to get employees an incentive to do a good job. as a result they don't get fired. if you still have to fire people that mean something went wrong so the argument i made in the book is that election should operate in a way such that there is a deterministic threat to fire and competency to do a bad job in that thread causes them to behave in such a way as to avoid being fired. that is how i think you a troll system should operate and what that does is avoid most definitions of the competitive election because if that happens, then we will not observe elections that are close or marginal. we will not observance or collections. will not observe a lot of turnover of elected officials.

so the important thing that i say in the book is an incredible threat but as always the case with a threat is you have to carry out the threat is something went wrong. >> so how do you suggest that you pose the credible threat for a candidate to take the election process more seriously or at least their political performance? >> that is the voters responsibility. there's nothing we can do to force voters to pose that incredible threat. we can play around with the election a lot to some degree but all smiley if voters are not willing to to pose the threat there is nothing we can do in a policy sense to pose that thread. to post -- force voters. is the responsibility of voters just as it is the responsibility of employers to post that thread to employees and if employers do not pose the threat there is nothing you can do structurally to create that thread. >> so who is the audience that you would like to read your book? >> there are a couple of audiences. a large part of the audiences

scholars, people who study elections in a variety of different ways but the book is also targeted to some degree at political pundits because there is a common argument in politics among pundits that we need more competitive elections and i don't think these arguments are very well thought out or gup are the problem with these arguments is that they come from the belief that elections are analogous to markets. elections are like markets. when the competition in markets and therefore we need competitive elections. i don't think that analogy holds. think it is for useful to think of elections has employment mechanisms which is what they are. so, essentially the audience for the book, the people i'm hoping that will read it are the people who make these kinds of arguments about the need for competition in a democracy and the idea that elections are comparable to the markets which i think they are not. >> with the campaigns in 2012 what changes would you like to see in in the election process? >> i am not sure that there are

any major policy changes that i would like to see because i am not convinced that any major policy changes would have a dramatic affect on the credibility of the threats to fire incumbents. again, the credibility of that threat depends on the capability and willingness of voters to oppose it and carry it out. if they are not willing to do so then there is nothing we can do by changing the electoral law to create that threats. so as far as policy, i have some counterintuitive arguments about election law and how election law should be designed, but ultimately none of those policies will work if voters are unwilling to pose the credible threat to fire and competency do a bad job. >> thank you.