in the 1884 campaign, someone published what was believed to be a version of the mullican letters andlet, and he never quite resolved that. >> we'll involve some of our viewers. first call from roger, watching us in atlanta. you are on air. >> caller: hi, how are you tonight? >> great. thank you. >> caller: i finished reading the recent biography of speaker reid. from two people powerful in the republican party, they seemed very distant. is that true or just a feature of the biography? >> no, i think are you correct. you are mentioning thomas bracket reed, born in portland in 1839. so just a little younger than blaine. went to boden college and spent 9d his entire public life as a congressman. he rose to be speaker, like blaine was also speaker from 1869 to '75. reed served in the 1890s. i think corruption was never a question in relation to reed. reed was a very -- totally honest, forthright individual, person of great integrity, and i think in addition to that, reed is as scribed as a towering figure in the history of the development of the congress, considered by many to be one of

. >> essentially, a short time before the mullican letters were .t few months of his life, he was truly ill. >> had braves disease. >> he was also relentlessly ambitious, and i read somewhere that there was no one who yearnedor hungered for the presidency more than james blaine. >> throughout his career, charges of corruption from days promoting the railroad lobbied in congress stuck with him. another political cartoons, the tattooed james g. blaine, which refers to on the tattooed man, many of the charges against him. will you tell us more about that episode, why it was so significant? >> this comes from puck, the election in 1884. actually a tremendously powerful image in that election, in that -- it -- it is recognized as maybe one of the factors that helped defeat blaine. essentially, blaine is shown -- in the midst of that crowd are his running mate -- >> does history really record whether or not, in fact, he was corrupt? >> well, think i actually the mulligan letters, the accusation, as opposed to being his defense, and he tried very hard to m

the mullican letters involved a very questionable stock deals involving one of the railroads, and thatuded the picture for him in 1876. >> the nomination went to? >> james a. garfield. blaine recognized this was happening at the convention. actually. i'm sorry, '76 it went to hayes. >> rutherford b. hayes. >> that's right. >> '80 was garfield. >> he ran again in 1880. were the half breeds and stalwarts still active in the party by then? >> i'm not so sure they had those terms anymore, that they were thinking along the same lines. there were still, of course, divisions within the party. >> that year james garfield did get the nomination thanks to blaine in many ways. >> yes. >> and can you explain why? >> well because blaine, although he very much wanted that nomination, came to understand that that was not going to happen. >> i think it was 36. >> something like that. so he threw his votes to garfield in order to get the election. >> james garfield was struck by an assassin's bull let. >> they were nearby. they were walking arm in arm. they were very good friends. i remember something