Transcripts For CSPAN3 First Ladies Lucretia Garfield And Mary Arthur McElroy 20240622

That were appointed position s, that were, you know, at the discretion of people in power, ended up being a power struggle within the party between an ohiobased party, which is James Garfields party also Rutherford Hayes was from the same not only the same part of ohio, but the same kind of thinking and what were called the stalwarts, which were new yorkbased. And, you know, you see certain states really emerge throughout history with holding on to power within a particular party. And then in new york, that was really headed by a man by the name of roscoe conkling, who became a United States senator. So this is the struggle, and you see then, of course, the person who ends up shooting president garfield, deranged, of course, Charles Guiteau, but proudly screaming with the gun in his hand, im a stalwart. Now arthur is president. And that was a reference to the fact that Vice President arthur elected with garfield was of the new york wing of the party. Swain well, garfield himself was a compromise candidate after many, many ballots at the republican convention. So when they came to the white house, were they accepted . Anthony they were largely accepted. There was a lot of but and this is where lucretia played a vital role. A lot was a matter of cobbling together a cabinet where everybody would be happy, that the new york wing would be happy, that garfield now, as leader of the party and the country, would be satisfied, and so you had Lucretia Garfield playing kind of a little bit of an espionage role in the postelection, preinauguration, where she goes to new york under the alias of mrs. Greenfield and is really there to deal with this guy she doesnt like roscoe conkling, in negotiating members of the cabinet of who would be appointed and who wouldnt. Swain the actual vote was very close, one of the closest elections in history, and crete garfield, after winning, said this it is a terrible responsibility to come to him and to me. So did she want to become first lady . Anthony she didnt really want to become first lady for herself. She very strongly believed in her husband, and, you know, they had really been through everything. You know, they lost two children. Theyd had marital troubles. And by the time he has run in 1880 they are very clear and very square on the same page in terms of their values, and they both shared a lot of intellectual and literary pursuits that was a mutual passion, which i think during the tough times kept them together. But she was, at the time she got the news that he had won the nomination, she was in an old bonnet scrubbing the floor. She didnt want to pose for photographs. She was very reluctant. And she did. And, of course, her image is the first that we start to see being used in paraphernalia sold during the campaign. She wrote a private letter to some friends and she said, you know, the truth is, i really dont want to go to that place but i really believe that my husband is the right man to lead the country. Swain well, throughout this program, well be taking you to the garfields home in mentor ohio, lawnfield, and it is available for you to visit, run by the National Park service. So if youre ever in that part of the state, near cleveland please make a point of visiting it. Were going to show you as much as we can tonight. And heres what it looks like right now. That front porch became very famous that were looking at on camera right now because it was the first Front Porch Campaign. How did the Front Porch Campaign come about . Anthony well, you know what . I dont know 100 percent of the details, except that they, at the time where they lived, it was relatively rural, and groups of people really just coming to hear the candidate speak. Swain so they came to him. Anthony they came to him. Swain it wasnt an orchestrated. Anthony yeah, and that is the sort of the whole thing that these these Front Porch Campaigns. And interestingly enough, all of them took place in the midwest. You know, lincolns in springfield, hardings and mckinleys in ohio, just like garfields. And, of course, for Lucretia Garfield, what was interesting was that because it was technically the property of her private home, she her being seen by the voters, by the people coming in on horse and buggies to hear garfield speak didnt find anything at all unusual about the presence of his wife at what was a campaign rally, because it was also her home. Swain were going to learn more about the Front Porch Campaign in this first video from the garfields home in mentor, ohio. begin video clip todd arrington, james a. Garfield National Historic site, chief this is the site of the nations very first front porch president ial campaign. So James Garfield would come out here, give a lot of speeches from the front porch to people that had gathered here in the front part of the property. Lucretias role, however, was more concentrated on the inside of the home. So standing in the front hallway here of the garfield home probably seems like kind of a strange place to Start Talking about james a. Garfields widely hailed Front Porch Campaign of 1880, but, in fact, this is the part of the house where Lucretia Garfield spent a lot of her time during the 1880 campaign. Now, of course, james a. Garfield went to chicago to nominate someone else for president. He wasnt expecting to be a candidate. So, of course, Lucretia Garfield had no expectation that over the next five months somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 people would show up at her home and at her property here in mentor, ohio. When these people started to show up here on the property that many people, obviously, unexpected, uninvited, started to cause a lot of damage to the outside of the property. They were traipsing all over the property, killing the crops, yanking things out of the ground to take home as souvenirs. And Lucretia Garfield was very very concerned that the same thing that was happening on the outside of the property not happen here on the inside of the family home. So she spent a lot of time in this front hallway basically keeping an eye on the front door. She was the gatekeeper, if you will, making sure that no one that she didnt want in the house was able to get into the house. You see the front steps here of the house. James a. Garfields office was actually at the top of these steps. He would spend a lot of time up in that office and at some point during the day a lot of times would come down these steps and then go right out the front door to stand on the front porch, talk to people that were gathered out there, and eventually give speeches as part of this Front Porch Campaign. And i kind of like to imagine lucretia basically kind of following right behind him and locking that door as he went outside, because she was so adamant that people not get inside the home. They, of course, had a young family that they were very concerned about. They also had just finished a major renovation to the house, and lucretia had really just kind of gotten the house exactly the way she wanted it, so she didnt want people coming and causing the same kind of damage inside that she saw going on, on the outside of the property. We know that Lucretia Garfield was a very gracious host to people that did come into the home that were invited in. She very often would greet them here in the front hallway and offer them during the campaign what she called standing refreshment, which basically meant she was very gracious. Shed talk to them for a few moments, offer them a cold glass of water or lemonade, but conspicuously no chair to sit in, because, of course, she didnt want them to overstay their welcome. end video clip swain one thing i want to tell you that is great about these programs is your involvement in it. We have a phone line set aside for you to call in, and well put the numbers on the screen. Were get to those calls in just a couple of minutes. And you can tweet us. Use the hashtag firstladies and were already having a great conversation with lots of historical questions on our facebook page. And heres one of those. R. J. Wilson writes, i visited the garfield house in ohio and saw that james admired and looked up to previous president s, even had framed images of all the previous president s. Did lucretia feel that way . Or did she have others who inspired her . Anthony really great question because we have a lot of bits of evidence that cumulatively show us that Lucretia Garfield was perhaps the first first lady to really have a strong conscientiousness about being part of a historical tradition of first ladies. In her diary, to my knowledge, the only diary kept by a first lady, she records an incident where one of her guests comes in and tells her about the night of the fall of richmond and being with mary lincoln. And she writes in her diary that these little sorts of stories are the kinds of things she begins to accumulate and feels that theres some ghosts, so to speak, of the house, but and we will see when we will talk more about her later life, she has sort of an affinity, a real strong sense of sorority with many of the first ladies whod come after her. Swain regina crumkey asks on twitter, did lucretia consider this house her home or did she think of it as a Political Center . Anthony she thought of it as her home. In fact, later on, when a well was being built in the back, and i cant remember, there was another structure and she actually studied the engineering plans and she you know, she was just an incredibly interested in so much and, you know, just absorbed things and taught herself. And she said something like, i have built a home on my own. I have you know, i have done it all, and i know whats going on, and i can get this, you know, this structure out back built quicker and less expensively than is being done right now. So she later on changed what was essentially a farmhouse into a victorian mansion. But, again, thats in the years of her widowhood and, of course, had another home, a beautiful home Still Standing in pasadena, california. Swain which was very forwardthinking for the time. Well talk about that later on. Heres something that James Garfield thought about her as they were Political Partners in the white house. He said, she is unstampedable. Thats a great word unstampedable. There has not been one solitary instance of my public career when i suffered in the smallest degree for any remark she ever made. So tell us a bit more about that unstampedable character that she brought to this job. Anthony well, you know, it didnt come easy. She was one of those people who spent a lot of time thinking and she always tried to be highly rational in her opinions when she formed them and in her concepts of people and just ideas and subjects, whatever it might be, Current Events history. You know, she and this was a little bit of a problem early on when they were courting and then even in their marriage, because a lot of people, including her husband, felt that she was not emotionally expressive. But it was when she had given something a lot of thought and she was clear about how she felt, then she would express herself. And her letters, i might add are beautiful. I mean, you know, this this is a real selfmotivated woman who realized that education was going to be the key to not only her success, but her happiness. Swain well, one of the very first decisions that she had to make was about temperance and whether or not she and the president would follow the noalcohol policy set by the hayes, which we learned about last week. Will you tell us about that decision that she made and the garfields themselves made and how significant it was politically . Anthony well, it ended up, true to what she said, not having a very Significant Impact politically. But the threat was made to her by a woman who came and said you know, you must continue the noalcohol policy of the hayes. And Lucretia Garfield said, you know, thanks, but no thanks. I sort of feel that by my doing this one little thing, by not serving, you know, alcohol to my guests, it will take on enormous importance in the press and give it far more attention than it needs. She herself drank wine. She writes about that in a letter to her husband. And then this woman threatened said, well, you know, this is going to affect the Republican Party. And mrs. Garfield very politely sort of said, i dont think it really is. Swain well, this whole decision and the pressure for it came around the arrival of the official portrait of lucy hayes. Weve got a picture of it. We talked about it in the last program. There was a big story about the money being raised to create this portrait. How much press attention was there on the arrival of this portrait and the ultimate decision that the garfields would make . Anthony well, you know, it was sort of presented to the white house as a fait accompli. I mean, you know, the white house wasnt going to deny it nor did they think, of course, that it would be, you know, wise in terms of Public Relations to, you know, deny the portrait of their most immediate predecessor, the wife of their most immediate predecessor. But the controversy, as you know, was the fact that mrs. Hayes was herself upset because a percentage of the money that they claimed they were raising to get the portrait done was being spent for wctu, womans Christian Temperance Union other projects, and so, you know, it had a slight taint of scandal, odd as it sounds to say about a painting celebrating no drinking. Swain well, Cathy Robinson on twitter wants to know, how popular was lucretia in comparison to lucy hayes . Anthony there was very little time for Lucretia Garfield to actually become popular, in the sense of functioning as a first lady the way we think of. The inauguration was march 4th. By the end of april, shes contracted malaria. And so and by may, through early may, theres even a fear that she might die in the white house. And president garfield, you know, just president for three months, writes of how he was unable to work with fear that, you know, this was going to be a that something would happen to his wife. Its only after hes shot in july that the press really begins to focus on Lucretia Garfield, and she becomes not just a national, but an international heroine for her behavior and her calmness and her control as the president is attempting recuperation for two months. Swain first call is from robert watching us in chicago. Hi, robert, youre on. Robert good evening. I have one simple question to ask. By the time garfield became president , his salary was 50,000. I was just wondering if mrs. Garfield received the balance of the salary after he had passed on . Anthony yes, she did. She also received his pension as a former member of congress, and she received, as susan mentioned, that large amount of public funds that were raised. And she also received, you know, a president ial widows pension. So she had quite a bit of income coming from several directions. Swain next is a call from bill, watching us in columbus, ohio. Hi, bill. Bill hi. Swain your question, sir . Bill yes, i grew up in mentor ohio, where the garfield estate is, and i remember i passed it all the time, and i remember there being a log cabin on the property that purportedly he grew up in. Is it still there . Anthony that i dont know. Swain and what can you tell people about have you ever visited the place, bill . Bill im sorry . Swain have you visited the house, besides driving by . Bill you know, i surprisingly, i never did, and i lived there. Im amazed. Swain thats actually something that happens to so many of us when we have Historic Sites in our own communities not taking the time. But thanks for calling. Sorry we couldnt answer your question. Talking about her involvement in the selection of her cabinet, we said earlier that she was deeply involved and interested in partisan politics and had a keen political sense. Very briefly, where did she develop that keen political sense . And how did she use it to advise the president on his cabinet . Anthony she really started developing that once they actually moved to washington d. C. , when he was a member of congress. You know, theyd had as i said, they lost their first child, a girl. They lost their last born, a little boy. They had a lot of tough times. And when he served during the civil war. They came to washington, and they were separated again, and they she finally said, im just not going to put up with this. So they decided to build a home here in washington. And when she came to washington as a congressional wife, she began attending debates on capitol hill. She was there during the 1876 election dispute commission. And she and her husband belonged to a literary society, but she really took this is really her political education began during those congressional years. And she also put a room, i should say, aside just for herself to paint and read in the house they built here in washington. But politics really became one of i wouldnt say it was her primary interest was one of several primary interests. I mean, she was interested in everything. The cabinet the issue of the cabinet really circles around the controversial appointment of the secretary of state, james g. Blaine, and she mrs. Garfield is really the advocate for him. And in fact, blaine himself writes to garfield that the knowledge that mrs. Garfield wants me in the cabinet is just as important to me as knowing that you, the president , want me in the cabinet. Swain yeah, and heres the quote exactly. I wish you would say to mrs. Garfield, said james blaine, that the knowledge that she desires me in your cabinet is more valuable to me than even the desire of the president elect himself. That says something about her influence, at least on the president. Anthony absolutely. And i would say also that, again, partisanship and these little splinter things within parties, she was not a policy person. She was not somebody who was looking at policy and saying you should support this or not support that. She was really looking at members of the cabinet who, of course, were supposed to be running the government, but from a point of partisan political loyalty. Were these people you know, theres that saying, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. She was always looking at, how were these men going to potentially affect her husbands career . Swain but in the end, it seems as though they decided to mix the cabinet with both halfbreeds and stalwarts and satisfied no one. Anthony thats yes. Well, to a degree. I mean, by the time, of course of garfields assassination, theres a great sense of remorse because this guy who shot him, you know, did it openly out of political partisanship. And it was sort of horrifying to people. And that also involved Vice President arthur, who was sort of representative of the wing that the assassin claimed to be associated with. Swain and we should be really specific about this. The brief tenure of this presidency, president garfield was in office 186 days in total. And because of his lengthy decline and well tell that story later, which is so interesting he was actually only functional for 121 days of that. So this is a really brief time not much time to establish opinions in the public at large. Now, you mentioned earlier well, lets answer this first. David murdock is asking on twitter, and it seems that youve just underscored how the answer would be yes, did james look to his wife for political guidance . Anthony absolutely, political in the sense of dealing with people and appointments, that sort of thing, not we dont have evidence because there is no record, really of him coming to her with weighty legislative decisions. Swain now, you mentioned earlier that Civil Service reform was becoming a very important issue. People who saw the movie lincoln will see how patronage jobs were used to help influence the president s policy program. So what was the bubbling controversy over patronage . And what was the reform that people wanted to employ . Anthony well, we get a little bit ahead of the story, because you have this with garfields assassination and death, you have this man come into the white house, everyone is like, oh, my gosh, this is the worst you know, talk about a man who has benefited from political patronage. Chester alan arthur has never been elected to any office. He was the collector of the port of new york. And, you know, he had a high position in new york state during the civil war quartermaster, but it was all political patronage. And roscoe conkling, who was sort of the kingmaker of the stalwarts in new york, thinks, aha, now the doors will open and well get all the political plums, and president arthur says, no, im going to change my stripes and were going to be honest. And Chester Arthur is the man who initiates the first Civil Service reform. Swain well, were going to learn that Charles Guiteau is always described as a frustrated officeseeker, but you told us earlier that it was also tied in with his big allegiance to the other faction of the gop arthurs faction of it. But his example of coming to the white house and looking for jobs, how did that process work in the 1880s . Anthony its extraordinary to think that even not 20 years after the assassination of president lincoln that there could be such relatively lax security at the white house, but as you know im sure many of the viewers know that the way the white house was set up at the time, there was the ground floor, where there were no really restored rooms yet. They were basically functioning as kitchen and sort of places to keep china and this sort of thing. Then theres that main floor, also familiar, the state floor. But then, you know, with the east room and the green room the red room, and the state dining room. The floor above that at the time was theres three sort of hallways. And the hallway thats at the furthest west end is where the family rooms were. The middle section and the east end were the president ial offices. And so people members, you know, of the public, who had some vague, you know, connection from a senator or a congressman, and even if they didnt, would be able to go up the stairs, you know, check in with the doorkeeper, and wait in this hallway with, you know spittoons and, you know, filled with cigar smoke, and hope to see one of the president s secretaries, pressing their case, usually with letters of introduction, claiming how, you know, great and wonderful they were, and how they deserved some kind of a minor federal position. I mean, were not talking about people coming in there to be cabinet members or postmaster of this or paymaster of that. So this is the kind of stuff that a president was sort of having to deal with while he was in his office or the private secretaries in the at the far end were trying to deal with and these guys these kinds of characters were always sort of you know, shifting around in the hallway. And guiteau was one of them. And he never got to press his case and he took it personally. Swain clearly. Anthony yes. Swain to the ultimate degree. The garfields brought to the white house a big and happy family. In our next visit to their home in mentor, ohio, well learn more about the garfield family. begin video clip mary lintern, james a. Garfield National Historic site park rang this is the parlor. This is the way it looked during james a. Garfields 1880 campaign. This was, indeed, both the formal parlor and family room; it served as both. James and lucretia spent a lot of time with their children. They both of course, adored their children very much. They had lost two children to infancy, Eliza Arabella and edward. Those children died before the family moved here. James and lucretias five children hal, jimmy, molly, irvin and abram all had the benefit of having two very intelligent parents who strongly believed in education. They felt that education was an emancipating factor and that that led to the key to success. Their children also took dance lessons, piano lessons. Over on the other side of the room, we have mollys piano, which was a gift to her on her 13th birthday in 1880. She, more than the boys, practiced the piano, and that was a reward. Here in the family parlor, like almost every room in the house you see a lot of books. Books are very important to james and lucretia, and their children loved to read as well. Some of their favorite authors were dickens, and theres several volumes of his works here, and also william shakespeare. The family would sit by the fireplace and read to one another oftentimes out loud in the evenings. That was one of their favorite activities. Where in the family dining room. And in the center of the table is this very interesting art piece. Its called the barge of venus, and it actually won an award at the philadelphia centennial. Mrs. Garfield absolutely adored her time at the exhibition. She visited all the tents, the art tents, the science tents, the technology tents, but shes specifically interested in the latest sciences and technologies of the day, and she would write pages and pages of what she saw at the site. So a lot of people think of mrs. Garfield as this very artistic lady. She was also very, very intelligent, loved the sciences. Like most families, dinnertime was a very important time of the day. It was a time for them all to get together and talk about what they were all doing. The garfields also would use this time, again, to educate the children. They would play games with the children. Sometimes garfield would bring a book to the table, words that were oftentimes mispronounced or misspelled, and quiz the children. James and lucretia made everything an educational experience. end video clip swain so in that we learn about the kind of parents they were, but tell the story of how they met. Anthony well, its really quite fascinating, because, again, there are so many modern chords and it. Theres this sense of equality to them. And even though they were, you you know, Lucretia Garfield was the greatgranddaughter of a german immigrant. Her parents were very religious. They were members of the disciple of christ. Her father was one of the founders of the eclectic institute, and they very strongly believed in education of women. And this is kind of a fascinating phenomenon in ohio. You see this with all of the president s wives, born and raised in ohio, equal education for women, and theyre all highly educated. And Lucretia Garfield went through grade school, but then went to the eclectic institute. She studied the classics. She learned how to speak greek and latin. She learned how to speak french and german. She studied science, biology mathematics, history philosophy. And right away, there was if you can think of passion coming through the world of ideas there was a real passion struck between the two of them. James garfield came from a very poor family. He was orphaned, you know, never knew his father and, you know, had been a canal boy. One of the one of those young guys who would, you know, walk the mules along, that would pull the canal boats. And so, you know, everything they got, i think they, you know, greatly appreciated. And, again, he felt like she did, education was the answer. So their courtship he was a he was her teacher at the eclectic institute. He then went to Williams College, and they began a correspondence. And thats really where you begin, in a funny way, its the world of ideas that begin to separate them and bring them together. Its not necessarily incidents that are occurring. Its that they sort of argue over ideas. But one of those ideas was the fact that there was another woman that he that she met at his graduation from Williams College, and that, you know, became a point of contention between the two of them. Swain well, we have a sense of that with a letter that lucretia wrote to James Garfield about their relationship. Heres what she writes jamie, i should not blame my heart if it lost all faith in you. I shall not be forever telling you i love you when there is evidently no more desire for it on your part than present manifestations indicate. So it was touchandgo there for a while. Anthony it was touchandgo. But whats really interested about lucretia is, even though she very much loves him, she has also looked out for herself. She set a course, and shes going to become a teacher. And she determined that she would work and earn her own salary. She didnt want to be a burden on her father or, if she never got married, you know, have to depend on anyone else. And she not only becomes a teacher, but an interest in art is born in her, and she pursues this on her own and then becomes an art teacher. She sort of shifts the topics that she teaches, and this is all right before she gets married. He has another affair. I mean, the earlier one was just a love situation before they were married. He has a fullblown affair with a woman by the name of Lucia Calhoun in new york, and that, you know, really nearly does in the marriage. Swain stanley is watching us in mingo junction, ohio. Whats your question, stanley . Stanley yes, thank you for cspan. I really do like the president ial series that youre doing. I visited the home here about six days ago and was really impressed with the furnishings in the home. Did mrs. Garfield furnish that home and build that library herself before the president died or was it afterwards . Anthony you know, in a word yes. The way it looks, the interiors was by her hand, but most importantly, in answering your question, is that she had built onto it after his death that fireproof safe which is now part of the house, specifically to house and protect and preserve his letters and papers, because she actually had been planning on writing a biography about him herself. She never lived to do that, but later those letters were published before being donated to the library of congress. And i had one important thing that just struck me, because i know in the show so often theyve spoken about weve spoken about first ladies who burned papers. Lucretia garfield had such a sense of history that she kept papers, even the ones that might prove embarrassing or personal that related to her marriage. So, you know, she had a sense of herself and her husband beyond their own lives as historical figures. Swain lets hear James Garfields side of the story with the back and forth of their relationships. He wrote to her, i hear pray used to be still ready to bear with me if at any future moment my heart should for a time go down again into the deeps. Well, they eventually do get married, but in the early days of their marriage, i saw a statistic that she estimated they were together for six weeks out of six years. Anthony yes. Swain his tenure in the civil war, followed by his election to congress and moving to washington, how did this marriage eventually get to the point where they were functioning as a couple . Anthony she moved to washington. Swain and also the death of the child . Anthony and the well, it was the first child died, it was a little girl, and then they she gave birth seven times, and then their last child, a little boy, died. And so they through that, it brought them to together, but really i believe it was her physical presence in coming to washington, with the family, and they built a house on no longer standing here on 13th street, but as i think i mentioned, what i think is fascinating about her, in building this house, she created a room for herself, because even though she was a devoted mother, there is a couple of letters whe says, you know, it really gets, you know, on your nerves and it hurts your ego sometimes to think that your whole life after this education is being spent you know, i cant remember the word she used, it was sort of funny, like these little terrors, you know are all that occupy her time. So she really began to develop her passion for art and painting, for reading and for writing. She was quite an essayist, none of it for publication, but she had this room in their place in washington. And they also, of course, join the burns literary society. Swain david is listening in chicago, and youre up next david. Go ahead. David thank you. Mr. Anthony, president arthur, knowing that he was dying from brights disease after he left the white house, you just mentioned this, burned his personal papers, along with his white house papers. And yet he got so little publicity on this action versus Florence Harding, who burned only a small fraction of president hardings papers and is still being vilified today. Why the difference between the two . And i just wanted to say thank you. I really enjoyed your book on mrs. Harding and mrs. Taft, and im looking forward to your book on ida mckinley this spring, and great blog. Thank you. Anthony thank you very much. Thank you. President arthur theres some indication that it was actually his son, alan or it was pronounced alan arthur may have had more of a hand in that. Arthur himself did feel very intensely about protecting his privacy, his family life. And were going to be talking a little bit about the arthurs but so i wont get too far into that. But i think also the issue was in terms of the hardings, was just the air of suspicion coming on the heels of the various scandals, the political scandals, and so the action that mrs. Harding took, while it might have been well intentioned to, as she said, protect warrens memory, the suggestion of it at that particular time, after those as those scandals were breaking, you know, suggested some kind of malfeasance that wasnt the case in the arthurs. Swain back to the story of Lucretia Garfield, we learned about how often her husband was away, leaving her with all those children to raise on her own. And next were going to see a letter that she wrote that talks about the frustration of being the one that has to make all the decisions in the family. Mary lintern my darling, i cannot conceive of any possible reason why he should be such a trial to my life, nor do i believe it was possible for you to know what a very worrying child he is. I cannot be patient with him any more than i could submit with patience to some extreme physical torture. What he will ever become i dont know, and im almost afraid to think of his future. It is horrible to be a man, but the grinding misery of being a woman between the upper and nether milestone of household cares and training children, is almost as bad. To be halfcivilized with some aspirations for enlightenment and obliged to spend the largest part of the time the victim of young barbarians keeps one in perpetual ferment. Swain somehow they made it all work and brought all those children to the white house, where they had a very involved and active family. Weve got a photograph of the family in the white house. It was a brief tenure, as weve said so many times, but what was family life like in the white house for these people . Anthony it was healthy. It was funny. It was humorous. And there was no sort of, you know, treacly sentiment. There was even though it was the victorian age, you know, nobody was trying to use them as examples of, you know, good living and that sort of thing. They were just a very close family. Now, the two older boys were to be going to college, but they were so close that they actually remained in the house and they studied there. There were two little boys who were kind of terrors, abram and irwin, and then a very beautiful just a very openhearted daughter, molly, who kept a little diary when she was in the white house, and its a very poignant document because it talks about her fathers assassination. Very sad. The grandmother was also there garfields mother. Lucretias father was actually still alive. He lived until 95. But it was garfields mother who came to live there. And, you know, i think it was you know, she was sort of sort of, of the thought that you know, she had raised her son to be president. And even when mrs. Garfield was ill and there was some speculation about whether shed be able to return as hostess there were sort of suggestions in the press that maybe old mrs. Garfield, mother garfield, they called her, would come to the white house and take over. And, you know, theres some suggestion within the family that really didnt the idea didnt go over too well. Swain joey on twitter asks, a lot of first ladies had a cause of their own. Did mrs. Garfield in her brief time in d. C. Have a cause . Well, in fact, her cause became restoring the white house. Anthony really interesting. Two well, theres one suggestion, and its written in a letter by one of the first people in the United States, a woman, who was both blind and deaf, who had achieved higher education, and was in touch with mrs. Garfield. So theres some suggestion that mrs. Garfield was interested in perhaps working with people who were sightimpaired or hearingimpaired and potentially developing educational, you know, outlets for them. But the one project we know about, again, from her diary is going to the library of congress to do research on the history of the white house, with the idea of not necessarily historically restoring the house, but bringing a sense of history there. Again, the people now at this point, you know, 80 years, the white house has been standing, and these all these families back to the adamses had lived there. And so now youre having one and two and three generations worth of stories that shes starting to hear, and she really has a sense of history and the history of the house. I might also really quickly add, in her papers is a fascinating list of artists and writers that she intended to invite to the white house. Swain next is thomas in greece, new york. Youre on, thomas. Thomas hello. Can you hear me . Swain yes. Thomas yeah, can you hear me . Swain yes, thomas, we can. Your question . Thomas yeah, yeah, can you hear me . Swain all right, thomas, im sorry, but you have to turn that tv volume down. So we will move on to one other quick video which talks about her artistic ability and also some of the decisions she made about things like the white house china. Lets watch. Mary lintern here in the family dining room at the mentor farm we have the familys china, which was actually the china that they used at the white house. And ill just take one out. Its a tableau lamoche, and it has the g monogram on it. Now, the garfields were not rich people, and they did not purchase a specific set for the purpose of the white house, so they just brought their best stuff with them. They would have used this china at home and also at the white house, so this would have been their formal dinnerware. The white house probably has several pieces of the china, but as you can see, we have quite a collection here of the china that still exists, so it was a pretty impressive set. China painting was very popular in the 19th century; it was a very popular hobby for ladies. The very top row of garfields china were handpainted by lucretia, we believe. Mrs. Garfield was very up on the latest trends and styles of the day, and she had a very good eye for art and beauty. She taught painting for a while. Around the fire place are handpainted tiles. That was a family project done in 1880. Mrs. Garfield, we believe, painted the two top corner tiles. The other tiles were painted by the children and at least one family friend. James a. Garfield once said that his wife had faultless tastes. And just looking around the home, you could see that she chose her wallpapers, her colors, her furnitures very carefully. Swain and g. Robinson on twitter asks us, did lucretia have the opportunity to host any events at the white house . We saw her china. Anthony she hosted regular receptions, and its fascinating that at one of those, a man by the name of Charles Guiteau, who would shoot the president two months later, met her and recorded having a very pleasant conversation with her and really liking her. And then, of course, she gets malaria, theres fear that she might die. As shes recovering its thought that she would do better at the jersey shore, to with the salt air. And guiteau, again, ready to shoot the president , comes in is waiting for him at the railroad station, and he sees him escorting mrs. Garfield and he cant bring himself to shoot the president. Swain thats in june. Anthony in june. Swain and so i want to pause for dramatic effect here because just a short while later, july 2, 1881, he gets a second chance. Tell us that story of the assassination. Anthony well, the president is on his way to elberon, new jersey, to join his wife. And he is then going to go up to Williams College in massachusetts. Two of the boys are back in ohio with their grandmother. Molly, the president s daughter is with her mother. And guiteau shoots the president. He right away, he sees harriet blaine, the wife of james blaine, who Lucretia Garfield was so strongly in favor of having, and he tells her to please immediately immediately wire crete. And mrs. Garfield comes down, shes overwhelmed, of course, at first. She almost faints and has to be, you know, held up by two men on either side of her and composes herself and says to the doctors, what will it take to make sure hes cured . And they said a miracle. And she said, without any sentiment, well, then, thats what will happen. It will be a miracle. Swain this was july in washington, d. C. Now, she contracted malaria, because washington still had not drained its swamps and was a muggy, hot, dangerous place for health in the summertime. So here is this mortally wounded president taken back to a hot, damp white house. How does this affect his care . Anthony well, i could almost say, what care . I mean, you know, he is they know hes got a bullet in him. You know, its beastly hot. Theres a rudimentary sort of air conditioning kind of system to try and pump cool air up from the ground floor. Swain and they do that specifically because theyre asking help from the public on inventions that could help cool the president s chamber. Anthony yes. And with that, not only did ideas for inventions come, but all kinds of kooky recipes and potions and things like this were being sent to mrs. Garfield. Now, mrs. Garfield was fantastic in that she was able to compartmentalize what were her very personal fears and the real care and the wear on her emotionally from the possibility of losing her husband, and then the wherewithal to sort of put out this word that everything was fine, that the president was in charge. And this was a very important thing. She was seemed to ask that everything written about him be be sent to her for review. Vice president arthur made no rumblings about assuming any president ial duties. He kind of respected her. And so you began to see generated first in the country and then around the world the most amazing articles about this womans courage, this womans intelligence, her fortitude, her strength, her calm, and how it was pervading the white house, and cheering up, so to speak the president , the patient. Then there were the technology of the day permitted the pen sketches, so you began to actually see visual images of mrs. Garfield, you know, with their daughter at his bedside or her down in the kitchen, you know, preparing food for him. So, you know, it was a little bit of hyperbole, because, of course, it was, in fact, a desperate situation. And as we had spoken about earlier, Alexander Graham bell offered to bring in sort of a newfangled magnetic electromagnetic machine to try and find the bullet and asked that any metal springs in the bed be removed, and they werent. So. Swain so he was trying to trace a metal bullet and, in fact, the machine saw all the bed springs. Anthony thats correct. Swain and it didnt help. Pam tapscott is asking, is it true that president garfield died not from the gunshot, but from bacteria from dirty instruments used by the doctors . Anthony well, you know, its a little bit yes, but also, you know, the bullet was dirty. It was a foreign object that was in him, and so it did, of course he might have eventually died. Its just a circumstantial situation. Of course, its also ignorance at the time. I will say he had one woman doctor, dr. Susan edson, and after the federal government had paid those doctors, they paid that woman doctor half the amount. And mrs. Garfield wrote a letter and was outraged and called it used the word discrimination. And the woman doctor received the same amount as the male doctors. Swain lorraine watching in tallahassee, hi, lorraine, youre on. Lorraine hi. My question is and thank you, cspan, for the program my question is, during that timeframe, would they have known the rockefellers and, like, the vanderbilts of those days . Anthony that you know, the arthurs Chester Arthur and his wife did, right after them but the garfields really did not at the time theyre in the white house. In later years, mrs. Garfield, you know, was quite well respected and well known in the country, and i wouldnt doubt that she would have had contact with them. Swain and next up is kerry watching us in las cruces, new mexico. Hi, kerry. Kerry hi, thank you. Was there a big age difference between the president and mrs. Garfield . Anthony i dont recall. I just i think it was five years or less, but i dont remember their specific birth dates. Swain but not a large. Anthony not a large at all, no. Swain so the president was shot, again, july 2nd, and he lingered until september. The decision is made at some point to move him to the jersey shore. Anthony yes, to the very place where she had been where he had been headed to see her and join her, and that is where he dies in her presence. And whats very interesting is that, among the many, many letters that she receives, she gets one from a former first lady, julia tyler, who not only sends a telegram, as does former first lady sarah polk, but then mrs. Tyler writes her a letter and says, you know, i felt i wanted to emphasize that you and she used the word a sister in talking about this sort of idea of a sort of almost sorority of president ial spouses. Swain and the funeral, 250,000 people came. Set the stage for us on this Victorian Era high Victorian Era funeral and what it was like. Anthony well, to me, the one of the what says it all is the way the white house itself looked. There were photographs that show it trimmed in the most intricate patterns of black mourning crape, and mrs. Garfield was strong throughout it. There was she did not break down, unlike mary lincoln and peggy taylor, who were unable to emotionally withstand the whole public display of this. Mrs. Garfield was seen. She also, in a very practical way, began designing and working with the ideas of what his tomb would be like in cleveland, ohio. Swain which for other first ladies in later years also have husbands felled by assassins bullets thinking of jacqueline kennedy, thinking about ida mckinley also took that model and became very much involved in the planning of the funeral process and on the memorial. Anthony yes. And then, with that, in that same thought, the legacy of what their husbands would be like. She Lucretia Garfield, we mentioned the papers that she was preserving, but, you know, she approved statues, busts of him you know, she was really handson whenever it had anything to do with him. Swain cynthia saber on facebook wants to know, how did their children react to the fathers assassination . And how old were they when it happened . Anthony gosh, i dont remember the ages, and they were not all there when he died. As i mentioned, two of the boys were young, and two of the other there were two older boys college age. Molly i think was about 13 or 14 years old, and then there were the two younger boys. Swain now, the amazing thing is that theres a fund drive for the garfield family. And we used this figure before but somewhere between 350,000 360,000 in 1880 dollars was raid for this family. Would have been like 8 million today . Anthony its extraordinary, yeah. Swain and did it come internationally . Were people sending money from all over the place . Anthony it was a financier by the name of cyrus field who started this in the newspapers and it really caught on. You know, she really captured peoples imagination. We forget it now. It was a brief moment in our history, but it was so different from the way people reacted to mary lincoln. But, in fact, i should mention that because of mrs. Garfield getting and then not only that, but then being awarded almost immediately by congress a president ial widows pension of 5,000 a year, that alsoe other surviving president ial widows sarah polk, julia tyler, and mary lincoln and true to form, you know, mrs. Lincolns reaction was, im sure somebody is going to put the kibosh on that and i wont ever get my money, and julia tyler wrote an anonymous letter to the press saying, you know, this is wonderful, but i think it should be double that amount. Swain scott in garfield heights, ohio. Scott hi, cspan. Thanks for the series. Me and my son, keith, really love it. I grew up not far from garrettsville which is next hiram, where garfield was the president of the university. We were watching cbs sunday morning one morning, and they had a trivia question, saying who is the only president buried above ground . Well, i mean, we didnt know and then they said garfield at lake view cemetery, so we inaudible in the car and we drove up there. Theres his, you know, monument, and it sits up, and its inaudible and you walk down, and you look in, and its got like sealed bars and inaudible caskets of garfield and his wife with the American Flag draped over it, and just a real beautiful bronze statue of him upstairs, and i just highly recommend it. Its a beautiful place. Swain well, thanks for the recommendation. I dont know that hes the only president buried the adamses are buried above ground. Anthony yeah, mckinley. Swain and mckinley and. Anthony you know. Swain we can and grant. Anthony and harding. I mean most of them are. Swain but thanks for the recommendation. Thats one of the things were trying to do is interest people in learning more about American History and getting out on the road and seeing some of this, as your interest begins to wax. So another view. And this is returning to the mentor, ohio, home of the garfields. And in this well learn about how lucretia began to preserve her husbands memory. Todd arrington well, after James Garfields death, Lucretia Garfield came back here to mentor, ohio, started to make her life and her familys life again here in this house and on this property. And she started to make a lot of changes to the property eventually. For example, the summer bedroom, she stopped using that, turned it into other things, started using the upstairs bedroom a lot more frequently. She converted the downstairs kitchen into an open Reception Room and had the kitchen moved into the back part of the house. Most significantly, of course, was the construction of the president ial Memorial Library in 1885 and 86. So she started to make a lot of changes to the property. But i think just as important as the changes that she made to the property are the ones that she didnt make. And im standing now in the room that james a. Garfield used as an office for the years that he was alive and living here in the house. Lucretia garfield sort of lovingly called this the generals snuggery. So this room today really does pretty much look like it did when Lucretia Garfield came back to the home and really found the room in the condition that it was in the day James Garfield walked out to go become president of the United States. She did make a few minor changes in here, the most significant of those is right here over the fireplace. You see the words in memoriam carved into the wood. This, of course, has, you know a very special meaning to her in memory of James Garfield, in memoriam refers to that. However, it does have kind of an interesting double meaning, in that in memoriam was also the title of james and Lucretia Garfields favorite poem. In late 1863, james a. Garfield went to washington, became a firsttime member of the u. S. House of representatives. On december 1, 1863, their firstborn child, a daughter named eliza, who they lovingly had nicknamed trot, died. She was only two or three years old. This was, of course, very tragic for them and really kind of brought them much closer together than they had ever been up to that point since they had been married. But James Garfield wrote this very sort of compassionate impassioned letter to his wife from washington, d. C. , just about two weeks or so after the daughters death. And he told lucretia in the letter that hed been reading this poem in memoriam written by alfred, lord tennyson, and that it was offering him great comfort as he tried to do deal with the death of their daughter. And he suggested that lucretia read the poem, as well. He hoped it would bring as much comfort to her as it had brought to him. And he kind of suggested that this really become sort of their poem. And it did. So when Lucretia Garfield had in memoriam carved into the wood here in her husbands office after his death, she really was kind of acknowledging not only his tragic death at a very young age, only 49 when he was assassinated, but also this love of literature that they had and this very special relationship they had with the tennyson poem, in memoriam. Swain and later on in our program, well come back to the years after the white house for Lucretia Garfield. But with the assassination of her husband and his death in september, Chester Arthur, the man who was really a political opponent he was in the opposite side of the Republican Party and it was an effort to unite the party that had them both on the ticket suddenly found himself president. He was a man without a wife. He was a widower and also he had no Vice President , so what was the transition like . And what was the state of the country after the assassination . Anthony well, of course, the focus really remained for so long september and well into october, november, on president garfield and his family. Chester arthur lived his permanent home was in new york city on lexington avenue. And he himself was still in a state of very deep mourning, very deeply depressed, because his wife, ellen, Ellen Herndon arthur, had died only in january of 1880. So it wasnt yet two years that he had lost his wife. She had come from a very powerful wellconnected virginia family. She grew up in washington, d. C. She knew Dolley Madison when she was a little girl. They went to st. Johns church on lafayette square. And for about five years between the time she was 5 and 10 years old, she knew Dolley Madison. Her father was a very famous naval commodore who took a commercial ship, the central america, on a commercial trip. It went down, but it was a great act of bravery, because he made sure that all of the passengers who were onboard got off first. And so his widow and his daughter, ellen, who was an only child, then living in new york city, were given all sorts of honors, awards. It was a place a monument to him at Annapolis Naval academy. And ellen arthur is a really interesting you know, she doesnt become first lady, but she influences the administration, very similar to rachel jackson, the way sort of the ghost, the memory of her. Chester arthur made several appointments for at least that we know of specifically of people who had known his wife. One was a cousin in the the office of the attorney general was made assistant attorney general. Another, i think, was treasury. But it was very controversial that he named the sort of you know, what were called superintendent of the Naval Academy for he appointed a friend of theirs, somebody who had been a childhood friend of his wifes. And then he kind of created a political problem with the senate, which liked the prerogative of appointing the role of sort of before washington, d. C. , had mayors and it was kind of a ceremonial role that played out in the white house but arthur insisted on making that appointment, because it was somebody who was a friend of his and ellens. So he kept her picture on the wall, fresh flowers. He had a stainedglass window put in at st. Johns church so he could see it from his window, in the bedroom window in the white house. And there was some remorse perhaps, because, you know, he had gotten very he was quite married to his career and his political advancement, and mrs. Arthur, who was an accomplished singer, died of pneumonia while he was out up in albany on political business. So you have them coming without a wife, without a Vice President. His 10yearold daughter is living with his sister, molly, up in albany. Theres its sort of sort of a loose end. And the press at the time begins speculating in a series of articles who will be lady of the white house. Swain well, you look at the man, and he was wealthy. He was very stylish. He lived quite a life in new york city. And he had this tragedy of being a widower, so you can see that there would be a storyline developed that the press would be very interested in. Anthony absolutely. And it got a little, you know i dont know what the right word is it was a little unseemly because there were a lot of wealthy women or women who wanted to be wealthy who began you know, sort of flirtatiously appearing wherever president arthur did. And, you know, he no interest whatsoever in remarrying. I mean, he really became depressed. And he functioned he basically said, im not going to have a first lady. Nobody is going to take the role of my wife. And so he starts sort of having these things, these social events once the social season begins again, once Congress Comes back into session, and its sort of like, you know first lady for a day kind of thing. I mean, he has these events where its a cabinet wife, its a senate wife, its none of its really quite working. And the following year, 1883 new years day, his sister from albany comes down. Now, part of that somebody mentioned brights disease. Theres an indication that he knew he had a terminal illness. He wanted to be close again to his little daughter, so his daughter, nell, came down from new york and, at the time, was being taken care of by her aunt, Mary Arthur Mcelroy. Swain nicknamed molly. Anthony molly. Swain so well hear references to mary arthur and molly, and thats the same person. And Becky Robinson asks on twitter did Mary Arthur Mcelroy live in the white house with her brother . Or did she keep house elsewhere in d. C. . Anthony she lived in the white house with her brother. Swain and how protective were they of the little girl . Anthony extremely protective. In fact, part of the whole reason arthur kept her away from the white house for nearly a year, making sure she lived either at her home, which was his home, in new york city. Then he was having that remodeled, so then she went to live with her aunt. And there were two other girls Molly Mcelroys daughters, jessie and may, a little older than their cousin, but these girls came to live with their mother in the white house. Swain chris is watching us in whats your question . Chris hi, my question is, if president garfield had been shot in recent times with our modern medical technology, do you think he would have survived . Anthony you know, not being a medical historian, i wouldnt want to say too much on that except to just venture a guess by saying yes, in the sense that the simple removal of a bullet one would be today able to detect where that was in his system. Swain now, he may have he, Chester Arthur, chet arthur, may have been severely depressed by his loss of his wife and the assassination of the president but they entertained lavishly in the white house and he undertook an amazing redecoration of the white house that was done by louis tiffany. And anybody at home who thinks of a tiffany lamp, with all the glass and all the colors, think of that applied to the white house, as we know it. What did it look like when it was done . Anthony well, you know, the thing you cannot ignore, the elephant in the room, so to speak, was this wall of tiffany glass. This wall was put up in what is the main hall, the central hall of the state floor. So you come in from the main entrance, the North Entrance of the white house into technically the lobby, the entrance lobby, and today youll see white columns and itll open up and the doors to the blue room immediately, the red room, the green room. But in those days, the draft was so bad, so people were sort of complaining about that. Arthur put up this wall of garish victorian, you know, tiffany glass. Swain now, thats garish by 2013 tastes, but it was high style at the time, wasnt it . Anthony it was high style. But, you know, i looked into this. It didnt last but 20 years. You know, Teddy Roosevelts famous words were, smash that wall to bits. Swain and was it preserved . Anthony it was not. Swain it really was smashed to bits . Anthony it was i dont know if it was smashed to bits, but thats what roosevelt said. Swain wow. Anthony yeah. Swain but it was also a very busy time in the country, this period. And we have just a couple of the highlights of the administration, of some of the issues that the Arthur Administration was dealing with, again, without a Vice President in office. 1882, the chinese exclusion act, then the vice then the president vetoes the socalled carriage of passengers at sea bill. There was the river and harbors acts. And most importantly, 1883 pendleton Civil Service reform act, and we talked earlier about Civil Service reform being the key issue of the time, so what happened with that in this administration . Anthony well, it was a first step. And, you know, just sort of like Social Security or, you know certain degree of to some degree, civil rights, you know things come in increments. And so arthurs, you know, support of that and you know, ended up being the very first major piece of legislation that started to, you know, make the first Real Prevention of the spoil system, of basically the political system. Remember, federal employees could be fired. People who, you know, worked in the treasury building, people who, you know, we think of today as career, you know, bureaucrats or, you know, people working as federal employees could all be fired. And whoever was in power would then, you know, appoint who it was, you know, whoever they wanted. It was not only unfair, it was inefficient. And so arthur really takes the first steps. He also, i should say, puts the first, you know, efforts in, in terms of building up a modern u. S. Navy. And while the chinese exclusionary act was really an awful thing in terms of, you know, just outright act of bigotry, arthur had supported something that was far less strict than which passed. I mean, there were there was a worse proposal out there. And so, you know, arthur i think gets a bad rap sometimes. Swain a couple quick questions. Dave murdock, twitter. Did arthur keep garfields cabinet . And who was his most important adviser . Anthony i do not recall he did initially through the new year, meaning 1882, but i cant recall specifically the individual members of his cabinet that continued on. Of course, when you speak of the garfield administration, youre really talking more about the Arthur Administration. Swain Rachel Davidson schmoyer on facebook, what measures were taken to ensure the arthur familys safety after the assassination . Anthony none. Swain none . Anthony none. There were no there were guards at the front door. But it still had the sort of lazy, you know, sort of old Hotel Quality to it. I mean, even with arthurs restoration i wont say restore redecoration, it was one reason why he was very protective of his daughter. In fact, it isnt until the 1886 new years day reception this is two months before he leaves that he allows his daughter to publicly appear. Swain brian watching us in ketchikan, alaska. Welcome to the conversation. Brian hi, thank you very much. This is a great show. I heard something many years ago, and i dont know if its true, but garfield had this ability to take a pen in each hand, one in the right, one in the left, and simultaneously write the same thing in greek and latin. Is this true . Anthony from all i have learned, yes, that was true. Swain wow, what a talent. Anthony ambidextrous. Swain so were ellen or marys style as progressive as chester . Anthony say was ellen. Swain ellen or molly as progressive in their own style as chester . Anthony certainly ellen was. Ellen arthur was very fashionable, very rich, largely through the wealth of her mother, and very ambitious. Theres a lot of stories about how, you know, she really got behind i mean, she really didnt like that politics kept him away from the home so often, but on the other hand, she was a very socially ambitious and ambitious for his career. In fact, even though she was a southerner and even though one of her very close First Cousins because she was an only child, so she was very, very close to what were double cousins, you know, her her parents, siblings had married each other, so she had double cousins. And during the civil war Chester Arthur was able to secure the release from Union Prisons of one of her cousins. But she went to abraham lincolns 1865 inaugural. She attended the white house wedding of nellie grant. She knew the parents of Theodore Roosevelt in new york city. So she bought at the best stores. They took summers in, you know cooperstown, new york, and newport. Molly arthur was a little bit more i would not use the word pedestrian, but she was not interested in being stylish. Swain last question on the Arthur Administration and Mary Arthur Mcelroy, the sister. She had a very strong opinion against womens suffrage. How influential was she in this nonofficial white house hostess role to. Anthony its very interesting situation, because it really showed us that the country had come to expect a female presence, whether it was a wife or a sister or a daughter, and she was really walked a fine line, because she didnt she took she made public appearances, sometimes on her own, but then sometimes only with him. And so and i think he almost kind of was ambivalent about how public a role she should take. Her support of the antisuffrage movement occurred, however after she left the white house. So while there was some press coverage of it, it wasnt widely known. I will add, though, that she was also a great advocate of civil rights. And in her home in albany, she not only welcomed as a dinner guest, but as an overnight guest booker t. Washington. Swain we have 12 minutes left. And as the Arthur Administration gets its sea legs and finishes out its three years, Lucretia Garfield is establishing herself as a widow, enormously popular first lady. How did she do that . Weve got a lot of people very curious about her move to pasadena california. How did that all come about . Anthony well, because she couldnt take the cold winters in ohio anymore. She also maintained a home in washington as a president ial widow. And. Swain and the house in mentor ohio, which she continued to work on. Anthony right, but she also there were times that she leased the house or the property for because it was just more feasible. Now, she had her brother i think it was joe who was sort of the manager of the house, but, you know, california was, you know, 1880s, 1890s, a really sort of opening up as the sort of Promised Land of sunshine and a lot of california was settled by wealthy midwesterners. So she went out to pasadena in 1900. And she was distantly related to these two famous architects, greene and greene, who were sort of known for whats called the california craftsmans style architecture. She had a great interest, as you know, in architecture. And so she worked very closely with them in designing this Extraordinary Arts and crafts california arts and crafts mansion, which is Still Standing, a private home. And it really became kind of a showplace. And she was even in one of the in one of the carriages of vips in the early pasadena rose parade. You know, so she she had a very full life in california. Swain youve said made the point many times that she was interested in so much. One of our viewers on facebook, j. Y. Vered, says, she thats Lucretia Garfield always struck me as wonderfully progressive, and not just because of the air conditioning she had them make for the new jersey house. At the renwick, i saw a silver and ebony teapot she bought for the white house from dominick and haff in new york. And she lived in a greene and greene house in south pasadena, which we just saw, which was hyper modern for the time. The teapot is fantastically modern for 1881. What do you think of all this and her taste . Anthony well, im probably not the best person to ask about taste, but i would just say this. Along those lines, she was also an advocate for womens suffrage. She believed completely in it. Now, she didnt come out publicly. Just like the issue of temperance, she thought it would make a lot more of a controversy then need be. But her daughter also affirmed that her mother truly believed in the equality of the genders. And you also see her, when former president Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 is mounting a campaign against the incumbent republican president , she supports Theodore Roosevelt. She comes out while he makes an appearance in los angeles she comes to that event. Swain tony in pleasantville new york, good evening. Tony high hello, susan, how are you today . Swain great, thanks. Tony thanks to book tv, one of the best books i ever read was destiny of the republic by candice millard. And in that book, so many facts, but the three that caught my attention tonight were abraham lincolns son, tad, involvement in three president ial assassinations, not necessarily being involved in the assassinations, but being in the area of them. And you showed an artists sketch of the railroad car that carried president garfield to the house where he passed away. I wonder if mr. Anthony could tell the story of how that car got there. And lastly, theres a park up in that area i believe its called seven president s park maybe they might have to make that eight president s, now that president obama visited under different circumstances why so many president s went to the jersey shore. Swain okay. Well, we have very little time, so the. Anthony it was fashionable. The salt air was thought to be recuperative. And in order to reach that house, they had to lay extra track, so it went so the train could go right up to the house. Swain and he mentioned all the president s. And during the years of the Arthur Administration, these are the first ladies who were alive julia tyler, sarah polk harriet lane, Mary Lincoln Julia grant, lucy hayes, and, of course, Lucretia Garfield. Today we see a bonding that crosses policy parties among women who served in the white house. Was that happening at this time . Anthony you know, if we could credit good, old Molly Mcelroy whos basically forgotten in history with anything, its bringing them together. She invited to the white house julia tyler and harriet lane to publicly receive with her as sort of cohostesses. And because of the pension issue mrs. Lincoln and mrs. Tyler were, again, in the news, along with mrs. Garfield, and with Molly Mcelroy leaving the role of substitute first lady and handing it over to cleveland whos a bachelor at the time whose sister, Rose Cleveland will be assuming that role there was a lot of press about these two sisters, sort of passing it on. At the same time, in conjunction with all this, the very first book is written on the history of first ladies, and it is a collective biography, and it is called ladies of the white house by and her name just escaped me, but its a very famous book, and it came out in many editions. Swain Lucretia Garfield, or crete garfield, outlived her husband by 37 years. And we talked about how she spent much of that time trying to catalog and preserve her husbands history. Well, were going to return one last time to the house in mentor, ohio, and learn a bit more about how she did that. Todd arrington if james a. Garfield were to walk into this house right now, he actually would not recognize this room, because when he was alive and living here in the home, this was actually the kitchen. After his death, Lucretia Garfield started to make some major changes to the property. This room was converted from the kitchen into this sort of open Reception Room. The most significant change that she made after his death was the construction of the nations very first president ial Memorial Library. Okay, now as we get to the top of the steps here, before we go into the Memorial Library, we come first to the memorial landing. And its here that we find one of Lucretia Garfields favorite portraits of her husband. This portrait was done by carolyn ransom who was a good friend of the garfields. And it shows james a. Garfield as a Major General during the american civil war. This is the room that Lucretia Garfield came up with in her mind as a place really to memorialize her husband, to keep his memory alive for herself for their children, and really by extension for the country, as well. All over the room, you see books. These are all books that belong james agar james a garfield. This is a beautiful piece that was actually sent to mrs. Garfield completely unsolicited by someone from in italy. Its a beautiful memorial piece that has an image of James Garfield in the middle surrounded by flowers. This is all actually made with small stones pressed together, and it was one of mrs. Garfields favorite pieces. We have a very beautiful marble bust of james a garfield. This was also sculpted by an italian sculptor and given to mrs. Garfield around 1883 about two years after her husbands death. And then here we have what lucretia called the memory room. This is the room that she had constructed along with the library in 1885 and 86, in which she stored her husbands official papers and documents. So it was in this room that she had his papers organized catalogued, and then bound up and stored, really, to keep them for posterity. A lot of very interesting items in here. Most significantly is the wreath, i think, up on the up on the shelf there in the frame. That wreath was actually lying on garfields casket while he was lying in state in the Capitol Building in washington d. C. The wreath was sent to mrs. Garfield via the british delegation from Queen Victoria along with a nice handwritten note of sympathy from the queen. Something thats really interesting about this room is the fact that the garfields used this room a lot. It wasnt one of those, you know, sort of beautiful rooms that you cant actually go into or touch anything. You see lucretias writing desk here. She spent a lot of time here writing letters. Youll see here that she did use blackbordered stationary. She actually used that for the rest of her life, just to kind of denote lifelong mourning for her husband. Here in front of the large windows on kind of a happier note, two of the garfield children actually got married in 1888. There was a double wedding ceremony here, where harry garfield, the oldest garfield son, and molly garfield, the only surviving garfield daughter, both married their respective fiances in a double wedding ceremony right here in front of the windows in the library. Swain well, Lucretia Garfield made it into the new century. She died in 1918 at the ripe old age of 85. How did she live those postwhite house years . And what should where should we put her in the pantheon of first ladies . Anthony well, unfortunately her tenure was so brief, but we can say this. She was the first to be selfconscious enough to not destroy her papers. She was the first to keep a diary of her white house days. And she might best be thought of as a former first lady, in a sense, in terms of her career. I think there is a lot of similarities between her and jacquelyn kennedy, both in terms of committing to the legacy of their husbands, and yet also not allowing their lives or the lives of their children to be weighed down by the grief. Swain were looking at some photographs of the large family. Do you know if any of the garfield family members went into politics . Anthony well, one of her sons was in Theodore Roosevelts cabinet. And another son was in Woodrow Wilsons cabinet, as fuel administrator. She died right, you know, at the very beginning, a year into world war i, and she was actually herself doing work as a volunteer with the red cross in pasadena when she died. But theres some suggestion that she decided to go from republican to a progressive to slightly democratic, because president wilson gave her son a job in the cabinet. Swain well, and on that note, we will thank you. You know, weve talked about the fact that youve spent your historical career, historians career focusing on the first ladies. As we close here, weve got lots of first ladies ahead of us. How did you get interested . And why do you think its interesting for people to learn about first ladies . Anthony because they have a natural influence on the thinking of their husbands. And their intelligence and their wisdom and sometimes their ability to even see sort of a larger picture that they, the husbands themselves, cant, was for so many years neglected. You know, they were always just sort of written off as mannequins for clothing who had, you know, nice dishes. And in fact, you know, their intelligence and their efforts and conscientiousness helped their husbands reach the presidency. Swain heres one of carl anthonys books, first ladies the saga of the president s wives and their power, 17891961. Its available, as are his other books, wherever you buy your books. As were closing out here, i say this each week, we are working with the historical sites, and thanks to the folks at the garfield home in mentor, ohio, for their help tonight, but also with the White House Historical association who are our partners in this series all year long. We have this biography book that they have published for many years. We got a special edition of it. For those of you who wanted to read more of the biographies you can find it on our website selling it at cost, just with the idea here that you can learn more history if youre interested. Thanks for being with us tonight on our first Ladies Program on the garfield and Arthur Administrations. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] when frances fulsome married resident grover cleveland, she became a first lady with many firsts. She is the first lady to be married in the white house. And at age 21, the youngest woman to serve as first lady. And when she died, she lived an additional 51 years after leaving the white house. Frances cleveland this sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans original series, first ladies; influence an image. From Martha Washington to Michelle Obama, sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv, on cspan3. With live coverage of the u. S. House on cspan and the senate on cspan2, here on cspan three we complement that coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings. And then on weekends, cspan3 is the home to American History tv, with programs that tell our nations story. Including the civil wars 150th anniversary, visiting battlefield and key events. Touring museums and Historic Sites. History bookshelf, the bestknown American History writers. The presidency, looking at the policies and legacies of our nations commanders in chiefs. With top professors delving into americas past. And our new series, featuring archival government and educational films from the 1930s through the 1970s. Cspan3, created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable or provider. Satellite provider. We now take you live to the warren g. Harding symposium and marion, ohio for a conference on the modern first ladies. They will be discussing the lives of the first ladies, including Coolidge Harding roosevelt, and nexen. Ohio State University at marion and the National First Ladies Library organizing todays event. This is live coverage on American History tv on cspan3. [indistinct chatter] good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the campus of the ohio State University at marion. I serve as the chairman of the warren g. Harding symposium advisory committee. Today, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the sixth annual warren g. Harding symposium entitled the modern first ladies portraits in contrast. Today, in partnership with the National First Ladies Library in canton ohio, we are proud to welcome a group of outstanding authors, researchers, and dignitaries who will examine the distinctly varied styles and approaches of those fascinating women who have served our country as first lady. They will also share up close and personal insights into the life in the white house from the hardings to the obama administration. We have some special guests i would like to introduce today in the audience. A number of representatives from the ohio history connection, the official Historical Society of the state of ohio. They include aaron bartlett, fred smith, elizabeth nelson, and don sweeney. We are also pleased to welcome again members of the Harding Family this afternoon, including three of the president s greatnephews. Nephews welcome to all of you and thank you for being here. We also want to acknowledge today the participation of the cspan Network Broadcasting our sessions this afternoon live on cspan3s American History tv. Welcome to their viewers from across the nation. Today, each of our sessions will feature a presentation of approximately 60 minutes followed by an opportunity for members of the audience to ask questions. And we ask that before you ask a question, you wait until a microphone has been passed to you. There will be a 15 minute break between each of the sessions and in order to show respect for our speakers and your fellow audience members, we ask that you silence all electronic devices. And now, to begin our first session, entitled paving the way, will you please join me in welcoming the moderator for the session, the director of education and special events lucinda. [applause] thank you. [applause] thank you, and thank you, everyone, who is involved with the harding symposium. You have absolutely no idea how thrilled my colleagues and i are all to be here. Anytime we get a chance to present first the ladies, we always first ladies, we always present our mission, you can tell im really good today. [laughter] which is to to get the public about the lives and the activities of the first ladies of this country. And believe me, they were all wonderful. And as i was talking to somebody last night at the reception, we think all the president s were quite intelligent. Everyone of them. Because they were smart enough to marry the woman whod who became the lead partner and the first ladies of our country. We want you to be wowed. Thank you. [laughter] a reall right . Are we all right . And as we are every day, it is a privilege to work with them. So, i would like to introduce friends that we know very well through the years. As a introduce each one in the order of of Florence Harding followed by Grace Coolidge followed by hoover, their representatives will give a brief biography to you of how wonderful they really were. First, a good friend of ours, sherry holmes. Of the warren g. Harding president ial site. This is very unusual. Sherry is a former journalist. She is one of the two newspapers, [indiscernible] but she also was at the canton repository. [bad audio quality] she is a lector and an author. And has authored several books. Would you please introduce ms. Harding . I would be happy to. [indiscernible] was a native of marion, ohio. Born in 1850 she and her two younger brothers [indiscernible] an industrious and selfmade businessman, [indiscernible] she attended the cincinnati conservatory of music as a teenager, studying piano. And it shocked her parents when she awoke at the age of 19, literally, with the boy next door. The marriage produced a son, marshall, before imploding in divorce. In 1891, 30yearold florence married 25yearold warren harding, editor of the marion daily star newspaper. Lawrence florence embraced newspapering as a Family Business and quickly jumped in to revamp the circulation department. She was not a woman to make housekeeping and cooking her life possible. For whatever reason, the hardings did not have children other own. I mention that this lifethreatening malady severely impacted her quality of life and her philosophy of how to the for life. As her husband entered and 60 did in National Republican politics florence was always his most enthusiastic supporter. The hardings entered the white house in march of 1921, following the presidency of woodrow wilson. They spent just what a ninemonth there before his first term was over. President harding died of a heart attack and congestive Heart Failure in august of 1923. Florence died just 15 months later. She died of Kidney Disease and Heart Failure in november of 1924. She was 64 years old. Cynthia. Cynthia is the former executive director of the Calvin Coolidge memorial foundation. She is a lector and author, as well as we found out a commentator. And you have a column of your own now and then that keeps you very active. Cindy has authored the book, race coolidge, southern star, and when im really excited to get a hold of. Cynthia, will you please introduce grace . Grace was born 10 we third, 1879 in burlington, vermont. One of vermonts larger cities. You probably know vermette does not have very many large cities. She was an only child and her very middleclass parents could afford to send her onto the university of vermont. She graduated in 1902 and immediately set out for northampton, massachusetts to be trained to teach deaf children in the oral method. Which is a very, very tough way of teaching. She then taught until her marriage to Calvin Coolidge, a young lawyer in town. Her mother had wanted her to stay in burlington so she could find a nice, handsome doctor for her, but grace said you was going to northampton, the home of Smith College where there werent hardly any men. But she found the one guy in town. They lived in a two family house in North Hampton and raised two sons there. She stayed at home while her husband commuted by train to boston to the legislature. When calvin was tapped to run for Vice President , they relocated to the Willard Hotel in washington dc. I think well hear through our discussions today what happened at the white house next. Thank you. And another dear friend of ours. An historian, lecturer, and author. Her books, one of my favorite because she is a near and dear to my heart, the story of Frances Wilson cleveland americas youngest first lady. She has also written a book that is very personal to her. The busy ms. Dunlap here has a few books to come out very soon. 2016 charles g dodd. The other in 2017, i cant wait to get a handson, is im sorry, i have the right title today. She is working on a biography. [a woman among women. A woman among women. Her middle name, short for louise, was born on march 29 1874 in waterloo, iowa. Her parents were charles and florence henry. And, yes, daddy wanted a boy. And so momma allowed her eldest daughter to be named lou. We all think that that is modern. In many ways lou was raised as a boy. She was touched or hunt, shoot, fish, and read a horse, but her mother also major she learned how to sew cook. The fact that she was brought up with those twin threats from both of her parents contributed to the quite unique woman that she did eventually become. When she was 11, her father took a banking job in california. They moved there in 1885. And lou pretty much consider there to be her home. She entered originally los angeles normal school. Then when her family moved, she transferred to San Jose College where she got her teaching certificate. She wanted to teach the upper grades because of her love science and because she was so young and a woman, she could not find a position in that field. She was attending lectures that were available there in the area by the recently opened stanford university. And she heard a series of lectures by dr. Grammar on matters related to the allergy. Stanford, when it was opened, was coeducational and was one of the first private universities founded in this country that was not affiliated with a religious institution. It is also completely tuition free. And so, lou wrote to dr. Brenner and asked if it would be possible that she, as a woman, could come study theology. She was admitted and became the first woman to receive a bachelors degree in geology and that university. It was there that she met hoover, whom she is actually older than, but because she had had her previous excuse me, teachers education, she was obviously a freshman when he was a senior. The courtship eventually developed. He graduated and left for australia, where he found a position in mining. And the two of them continued their correspondence and lou eventually agreed to marry him. Dr. Brenner, who is tying to find her a job after she graduated from stanford, learned of the engagement and wrote them a letter saying, here i am trying desperately to find you a job and yet you have decided to get married and to leave us. And he signed it, your loving professor in law. [laughter] the hoovers were married on february 10, 1899. And the left the very next day for china. Where bert had a mining job. Over the next several years, the couple traveled all over the world. Lived in many different places. Lou went into the minds with bird. She was kind of like the what we see so often with many women of professional men who had the same educational background she was sort of the unpaid employee. They lived in london for a number of years. Lou was very instrumental and active in helping when world war i broke out, which will get to later, and then when they return to living fulltime in the United States, she was involved with Many Organizations here until they eventually came to the white house. Thank you. These ladies were outstanding in their own way and a time when women really were not supposed to succeed on that level, and they did. The first question i would like to pose to the lady of the day mrs. Harding, this is the harding symposium, that it is also important. Abigail adams, if we can go back to her, she wrote to her husband when he was in philadelphia remember the ladies, we have all heard this. However, she was really angry with john because he didnt remember the ladies. He thought she was kidding when she said make sure that you make as part of the laws of this new nation because, you know, we dont have rights like to in education, really. You dont have rights to our own property. Lady washington to give you an idea, lady washington did inherit money from an inheritance from her first husband, but lady washington really needed to get married because it had to be in the hands of a man because a woman couldnt. This was the way it was for women. So, when he called her, oh, you are so soft, she wasnt too happy. Well, we, many years later to another first lady we come many years later to another first lady, Florence Harding who is the very first first lady to cast a ballot to vote for her own husband as president of the United States. Yes, the 19th amendment has passed. And cynthia, we are going to follow it do because they were on the same ticket. And this is you have to forgive us. It is not about the president s. It is about the ladies. She was the Vice President s wife, but she was to secede mrs. Harding into the white house. Can you please talk about the campaign a little bit and how and a time when women were not supposed to be out in front, and they werent, mrs. Harding was it true that she rather knew that women would kind of be instrumental . Is that safe to say to echo i to say . I think it is very safe to say. All three of these women were in the same administration. Mrs. Hoover, the wife of Herbert Hoover, he is the secretary of commerce in the Harding Administration. So all three of them knew each other and were linked in that Harding Administration. Mrs. Harding, of course, is reluctantly put in the place of campaigning for her husband. So she says. As she is not enthused about him running for president at first but once he decides that throw his hat in the ring, she is at 110 . And she really demonstrated that through the campaign. She was comfortable with the press. Because she considered herself to be a newspaper woman. She wasnt a writer for the newspaper, as her husband was, but she knew all the newspaper editors, she knew the reporters at a lot of different newspapers, she absolutely thought it was her business as much as it was her husbands. She knew all the slang, the lingo of the newsroom. So she could talk they easily with the press. And by 1920, you really have the press stepping up. And we had news we reel footage, newspaper reporters are working out of the press house which was built especially for the press r and to theear of the harding home press at the rear of the harding home. Wouldnt we like to have that today, a threemonth president ial campaign . [laughter] so she gave interviews, but she didnt call them interviews. She chatted, she says, with the newspaper reporters. Saying she did not want to be quoted, but knowing all the time she would be. And that was ok because she knew how to play the game. It would have been unseemly if she had gone out in front and culture own news conference. That would have been undermining her husband. So she goes around the back door a little bit. Sure, i will chat with you. Her weight until last, she knew how to play the game. She was not someone who is nit in real knife life. She played the game. But at other times, she could play up the other parts of her life. Like all of these women, they are complicated, multilayered women. And she could talk the business game. She said i love working women because i did it. She knew what that felt like. During the time between her two marriages with her young son she did try to support herself and giving cano lessons. And it didnt work for a well. She knew about that loneliness. She knew about that heavy responsibility. She could identify with those women and they could identify with her. And with this whole new contingent of voters, the women voters in the 1920s, she felt this a very vital role very adequately in relating to those women voters. And bringing them into the game. She thought it was important for them to know about politics and government. She is right there, front and center. Thank you. Said the, a very different, very opposite in the way. What was horrible, if any . What was her role, if any check of any . There was no Governors Mansion in boston, so even though a friend of Calvin Coolidge said, i will buy you a brownstone, i will put in 32 servants, i will set to all up can you just moved to boston . And grace should be released to entertain and help you with your will as governor. And Calvin Coolidge said, no that is beyond her means and we will not do that. So when it came to the vice presidency, grace did not campaign. Again, she stayed home. And calvin did a little campaigning, since the hardings were on their front porch. And then when it came to calvin running in his own right, their son had just that. And i will be telling you about that a little bit later. So, there was not a whole lot of [indiscernible] but thomas edison, buyers done, byerstone, all came to visit. I dont know how many of you have been to plymouth, vermont. When they came to town they talked and Grace Coolidge was right there talking with these folks and talking about politics. So she seems to have come into her own a little bit in this time period, and then when they did win and went back to the white house, she had a little bit more of a role. In terms of campaigning, i would say this. William allen white said, when looking at the campaign, one flag, one country, one conscious, one wife, and never more than three words will do calvin all of his life. [laughter] and in the Washington Post article said, mrs. Coolidge is really dollar smile is the greatest political asset. There we go. We would agree with that. And in that, correct me if im wrong, but of the panelists here, the hoovers were not political. They do not have a political background. Is that truthful to say . Yet, these brilliant people were running for president. The interesting thing is that hoover did attempt to run for the president in 1920. And there was a campaign that was written, if my memory serves me correctly, by vernon kellogg, a friend of the hoovers, and lou oversaw the writing and editing. So then when the selection of harding was made, being good republicans, and loyal to the party, the hoovers obviously stepped back and supported harding. But the hoovers loyalty was named because he was named secretary of commerce and the Harding Administration and held that position through both the harding and the coolidge administrations. Their politics was of the covert type. Instead of the overt type. So they were working the relationships and the connections behind the scenes. So when once quilish announced that he was not going to run bird rose to the top pretty quickly as the top candidate. And once the nomination was secure, as i artie mentioned this was a very welltraveled couple and very comfortable traveling. So they hopped a train. And many times, it would stop and they would come out of the back and wave to people. Lou would say a few words, birds would give his speech, and they would go on. She was an advisor, monitoring with the press was saying about him and keeping the two sons abreast of what was going on. So she was active and likely more active than her two immediate predecessors. I would just piggyback on what we have said about Florence Harding being the first first lady to be able to cast a vote. We have to realize we are just now to the third election. Where women are given the opportunity to vote. And we are just beginning to see changes in the role that women are playing in candidate selection and being delegates to the national convention. So there is a lot going on under the radar that we sort of need to keep in mind when we look at the political involvement of these women. They really are paving the way. Very much. Ok, ladies, we have to talk about it fashion. Let me get right now to the campaign because actually and truthfully, lets be honest, the First Impression we sometimes get of a candidate cost wife is candidates wife is at the convention or on the campaign trail and it kind of sets the tone. Mrs. Kennedy once said, in private, referring to her gorgeous ensembles as her state clothes. It was much more casual in private life than anyone ever realized it these ladies had to have and these ladies had to have it. I think im going to start with cynthia because mrs. Coolidge, she was younger, 40 some years old, a fashion plate. A beautiful woman. And was of wonderful kind of like dolly madison. She was the foil for calvin. How much did that physiology play for her . Well, the fashions of the day were quite something. This was the boring 1920s, folks. We have lepers and shorter skirts flappers and shorter skirts, and your arms show. I know we are all hearing about Michelle Obama letting her arms show, but grace did a little bit of that. Her husband was very concerned with being her are not cool her official portrait that is right. And i have just been back to plymouth vermont and looked at some of her gowns and some of her purses and so on. And i did know from reading her letters that she made her own dresses at the white house. But calvin did not like this. He said that his two frumpy too frumpy. As grace said, i think it is the happy secret to married life, you have to dress good to please ones husband. And the social secretary said i have never known any man more interested in his wifes clothes than mr. Cool it. And the more elaborate her dresses were, the better he liked it. So, i have just seen to magnificent gowns. One is all gold. And these were ordered from garfinkels. Of course, stern was a great friend. Maybe he gave them a discount. And then she had a beautiful code. On the back of it as a peacock in gold and blue, all the way down the back. These are very, very nice. But she didnt worry too much about her clothing. But since she didnt give interviews, they did take a lot of pictures of her. She was happy to pose and that is how the nation knew a lot about her. And calvin wanted her to wear Something Different every day. I dont know how they could do that, but he said that is what where we are going to spend our money. I like that kind of guy. [laughter] well, fortunately or unfortunately, this photograph of lou in her girl scout uniform, there is a quote by someone unattributed that says that this is the only way he has ever remembered lou and that is she always wore her girl scout uniform. And that is fortunate in one respect because it was great promotion for the girl scouts. Not so great because he was quite a fashion plate. If any of you particularly you women, have ever noticed the magazines, you will notice there was always a cover of a first lady at least in all of our lifetimes. The first lady to be photographed for folk magazine vogue magazine was lou hoover. So she was actually quite fashion conscious. She designed a lot of her own clothing. She loved color, she loved fabrics. There are some gorgeous gowns that are in storage at the Hoover Library with Gold Metallic and Silver Metallic spreads threads woven in to bouquets and other very expensive fabrics. And i contacted a fashion historian and ask about that, and she said these were highly fashionable garments and designs at the time. Lou wore a lot of velvet for the gowns that she wore for state dinners. But when the price of cotton dropped, in 1931, she ordered a gallon of calico gown of calico made for the state dinner for the officials from the department of agriculture and the department of labor in february of 1932. Do her best to try to promote the cotton industry. And she was assessed by the Society Editor for not wearing either velvet or satin. [indiscernible] well, florence comes into the white house at age 62. She is well aware that she is a lot older than grace. And she dresses what is described as very appropriate for her age. She wears a lot of great, lilac grey, lilac. She likes clothes. When warren was in the senate she spent quite a bit of money on clothes. But when she entered the white house, her she she has a contradiction here. She still knows she needs to dress like a first lady and she says, even in letters to her daughter in law, that the public expects her to change her clothes several times during the day or she would get criticism she knows, if she had the same thing on in the morning as she did at a function later in the afternoon. So she has to have this wardrobe. By this time, though, in the white house, her Kidney Disease makes it hard for her to change clothes several times a day. Physically difficult for her. So clothes dont have as much meaning for her in the white house as they did in the senate years. She was asked by a woman journalist, she liked get to give preference to, what is your opinion on the length of skirts . They were creeping up. They wanted to know, specifically, what would you tell these young girls across the country who have skirts almost up to their knees . And she said, i am not going to even utter a comment about that except to their mothers. [laughter] that was pretty smart. Her skirt like tended to be just a few inches above the tops of her shoes. Because she is mindful of her age and she has swollen ankles. Because of her Kidney Disease. Ok. Now, when she goes into the white house, there is all this fuss made about the harding blue. She has a gallon made an harding blue and there is all this description gown made an harding blue and there is all this description how it is not quite what real blue. It is in between electric blue and, you know, i dont know. There was also a marion blue, which was a navy. There was also a florence lavender. And these colts were being made in these colors clothes were being made in these colors. Grace could come at the same time, she had a veil designed, the Grace Coolidge avail in navy blue. Vaeil in navy blue. You could just like your first lady or president ial life, i guess. A big fuss is made about this. But she is going to cover her arms, usually. Again, mindful of her age. She is great to just appropriately. She does get a little bit of criticism from the Washington Society pages about being a tad on the funky side. But by and large, women across america think she is just just kind. It was liked, it was very possible popular. Ladies, i kind of went to combine these next peers. I want to make sure we get in every question. You can take this anywhere you want to go. But this has to do with the press, the relationship with the press, the public and private persona of each, and how each coped that way, which kind of goes into their partnerships somewhat with their husbands on how they supported them and policies with how did World Politics or how did world events shape what happened . I would like to start with you because we were talking about this. Yeah. I mean, lou hoover is just mind blowing. Really. Im not kidding. This is a woman who spoke mandarin chinese. She was, at the time of the boxer rebellion, she had no fear. The chinese were hiding out in a Little Common where they were staying and lou is the one going out and getting the supplies and her tires being rated with bullets on her bicycle. And then she writes to a friend and says you missed all the excitement. [laughter] she has traveled to country after country. She is an organizer in london, you mentioned this. If anybody should have succeeded, it should have been these selfmade couples. They were wealthy and generous to a fault. Here we have the press going along with how they are using the press or not being used. The public is seeing them, not seeing them. And will defense or world events, or maybe Something Else interfering and changing the road that the couples took. Can you start that off . I know that is a lot to go on, what it is kind of tied in. The hoovers inherited an extremely booming economy, which will hear about when we talk about florence and grace. The roaring 1920s were also a time of enormous prosperity. And when Herbert Hoover comes into office in 1929, part of what he says in his inaugural speech is that he has great optimism for the country. And there is just no hint, at least in the hoover horizon that the waters underneath maybe a little bit troubled. So there was a bit of a stock market crash on october 23rd or 24th. And it is giving an inkling that there is going to be some problems. Then the day that we now refer to as black tuesday, october 29 1929 hits, and the stock market tanks. And you have to understand that after coming out of these years after met his prosperity, it is really difficult, at first, to determine whether or not this is just a blip on the economic radar screen, or if this is the beginning of a problem. Of course, as we know, as we had the benefit of 20 20 hindsight it was the beginning of a very severe problem. It becomes very clear in the 1930s that the economy is in very dire straits, with the depression that probably hadnt been experienced in most of the lifetimes of those people. Probably the last time there had been a depression of thats a very would have been that severity would have been doing the harassment, cleveland years. So the white house was scrambling on how they were going to deal with this. And hoover is dealing with the very uncooperative congress. There were several Different Reasons for that lack of cooperation. He is tying to get them to pass a variety of release measures. Hoover was not a republican, in the sense that we think of many republicans today where as you want to reduce the amount of government involvement in what is going on, hoover was very much someone who said find ways for government to be beneficial and lets facilitate that. He had a lot of enemies in congress for a lot of Different Reasons. And there was not that support. He formed what was called the president s Emergency Committee for employment, which got this acronym peace. If any of you ever read the story i forget its now, but it is about the dozen children, some of you may remember that. Cheaper by the dozen. She was an engineer. And a close friend of lous. And lou recruited lillian to try and find employment for women. Lou used to relationship with the girl scouts because she had been National President of the girl scouts, she got on the radio and she encouraged girl scouts to look for ways that they could help and volunteer in their communities. Lou used the radio to try encourage volunteerism amongst communities, for people to help one another and support one another during this difficult time. And what is lesser known about her and really wasnt known until after her papers became opened was that she was privately supporting people who would come to her attention. As my colleagues appear are well aware from looking at the correspondence, everything go every single first lady gets memo letters from the public. And lou was no exception. She had enough of a radar to figure out what was legitimate and what needed to be passed on to a staff member to handle. She got a particularly interesting letter. She had a network of people all across the country and should pass that led to somebody in that geographical area. And basically she was asking them, would you look this person up . And do it anonymous mostly anonymously, but let me know if this is legitimate. Lou was privately sending money to a variety of people, particularly women across the country, anonymously through these conduits to give support including a lot of africanamerican women to help them fund college educations. And much of this about lou did not come into the public arena until after her papers were opened up in 1984. To get to the press question that is really the downfall of both hoovers. Their press secretary bags most of them to go public with many of their private philanthropic acts because bert had been an orphan and he would periodically invite children to the white house and just let his hair down, so to speak, and play ball with them and entertain them and allow them to have meals and enjoy themselves in the white house. He was a doing at the doing it as president. And particularly when the 1932 campaign started to get really heated, there was just pressure on the part of their press secretary, let us to some photographs, hold some press conferences, let people see this human side of you because people perceive both of you of being as being very stiff and stuck up and rich and not caring. The press secretary knew the whole other side. And both of them said no. Bert had been raised a quaker, lou had taken on a lot of the quaker teachings and they both said, no, we are not doing this for press. We are doing it because it is the right thing and we dont want to explain the systems two. In the end, their decision not to play to the demands of the press played a pretty significant role in the public pass perception public possible publics perception. Thank you. Grace coolidge . Basically, when the colleges came in to the white house coolidges came into the white house, there was a. Of mourning p there was aeriod of mourning for 90 days there was a period of mourning for 90 days. Remember, this is an interwar time period between world war i and world war ii. So they were cutting back on the budget, scaling back the navy. It was not time to engage the world. It was isolationism. Grace carried on florences devotion to the veterans and having musicals with them as guests and visiting walter beat hospital, visiting the veterans there. She wanted to highlight american music, she followed florences lead on having wonderful music of the white house. But say coolidges didnt really stick with the times. She and her husband were in an age of excess. She was warm and gracious, and that was very important. That gave stability to the nation. When the flood of 1927 came, it did devastate vermont and she and her husband toured the state afterwards. They waved at people and their train stopped many times. At one time, Calvin Coolidge went out and said, vermont is the state i love. And gave a wonderful homily of what he loved vermont because it is where he got his bride, grays. Grace. And grace turned to the newspaperman and said, did you get that . That is really good. And she was right. She also devoted herself to death children, since she had taught deaf children, since she had taught deaf children. When she came back from europe, calvin sent a destroyer to pick them up. I thought that was kind of wonderful. And also the coolidges had introduced their morals, so we know what came out of that was a marriage of Charles Lindbergh and anne. And they were very happy about that. In terms of the press grace did not try to cultivate any kind of press relation. But she allowed herself to be photographed. She did say to the press, leave my boys alone. The children of the first family , and we have seen that i think continually, should be left alone. But she was happy to pose at about 12 00 noon on the steps take questions, and pose with people who want to do visitor. She said she was a national hugger. She wanted to hug everybody. Just as calvin would take his jokes and be a little bit more remote, she wanted to be the warm one. Her radiance came across. And i think the nation did appreciate that. What about the press lady herself . [laughter] well, i think we have to start with the time period that the hard things arrived at the white house. Old or one, still very fresh on everybodys mind. Nearly everything in the hiding administration relates to that. As far as policy and everything that they are doing. Some kind of a reaction to the experience of the soldiers or the women in this country during the war. And think of the wilson administration, particularly at the end when, you know, the public didnt know how ill he was. But the white house is silent during the last couple of years of the wilson administration. There is no entertaining. And a lot of that is due to wartime, but it is also due to president wilsons health. So, one of the things that i think florence was most proud of is saying, you know, and she said this very early after the election, even to Close Friends was, i really want to open the gates of the white house as soon as i get there. It is time for the people to be allowed back in. And she believed that fervently. As did warn, too, that it was the peoples house. And the president s first order of business was issuing that proclamation that, yes, the gates are to be open and people can come on the lawn. A lot of the white house staff thought that was really out of line. And they said, well, the blinds are open. And florence famously said, let them look in. It is their house. She had the marine corps band play concerts every saturday afternoon. And as a member of the public, you could just come on the grounds and spread a blanket and listen to them. She thought that that was her job. As first lady, coming out of that were experienced, coming out of the wilson years, that was her way of bringing back normalcy. Florence working on the policies , bringing back at normalcy to the american people. And that meant bringing light back to the white house. She immediately has 60 vases of flowers filled every day. Flowers is her communication device. There are no cell phones then. And she used the white house green houses and because of her love for flowers, she says, well that is going to bring color in the white house. That is the way for me to express my care for your. If she sent to a box of flowers and she did to just ordinary people sometimes people, as cindy was saying, people would read to her with her problems their problems. Sometimes there would be a windows messenger bringing a box of files to the door. And a whole neighborhood would say, wait a minute, you got something from the white house because he that would make someone feel special. And she did that quite a that. More than anybody realized. And, as far as the press, she was an open door policy, really. She, you know, she was in summer is more open with the public than she was in revealing her own life. Her private life. And, again, she thought this was her duty to do this. She would often, when the public was taking a tour of the rooms, she would come down the stairs, to the shock of everybody, and say, i will guide you through. How thrilled these people were when that happened. Of course, her favorite famous handshaking. When they would stand in line sometimes for hours, shaking hands. She would have her gloves on, but sometimes her hand would become so swollen she said, forgive me, im going to shake with my left hand. And then have to switch gloves sometimes because her hands were so swollen they would have to cut the gloves off. And this is a woman, again, that Kidney Disease who should not be standing on her feet for that long anyway. But she says, i dont want to disappoint anybody. I am going to say until that last person in line comes through. It is not a token just a for her. It is not, i will put in my appearance for five minutes and then im out of here. She is going to stay until that last person comes through. And she is not going to just shake their hand, she is quick to Say Something meaningful to you. She is going to ask, how are you . And she rates until wait until your respons. Respond. I think that does come through and i dont think she is given enough credit for that. The president , everyone knows he has that very outgoing personality. Where what you saw was what you got. But florence often is is given the impression that she is aloof. That she is rather shrewish, and she is not. She is different from her husband, but she engages with people in different ways. I have always thought she was fabulous. What i have read about her, and never thought i didnt, either. I want to combine two more, if you dont mind. Before we get to the questions which i hope you have. We have been talking here, there are stresses involved certainly, in being locked out of normal life into a next ordinary position. We are normal americans, as are these ladies. And the second level has to be terrible. I want to go to how they relieved their stress, but also, if you would preface it, so we could lighten it up a little, we know they had pets, some of them loved sports, we already talked about florence and her music. Is it true that mrs. Harding im sorry, mrs. Hoover played the piano in the private quarters . Is that a true thing . I dont remember, but she was definitely a lover enter your reason why they were therefore times, there was a gentleman who worked with, i believe, the Steinway Company who is responsible had insinuated himself into the various administrations of the white house to secure the performers for white house social event. And that is likely why he was therefore times because there four times because this gentleman walked towards with lou. Lou wanted american musicians. And he was not always willing to promote american musicians and would write her letters explaining why that particular person she wanted wasnt that the same caliber as perhaps a nonamerican board virtuoso that he was attempting born virtuoso that he was attempting to promote. One of the visitors to the white house said, he looks like a convict. But plays like an angel. [laughter] well, you could lighten it up with all these other things that certainly they used. I want to go to each of them with they had on the public stage. Awful for them. I will let anyone of you start that sad affair that wants to take it on first. And then go right to stress release, if you will. I will take it on because it has happened so rarely in white house history. The loss of your child. And calvin and grace had this happen during their time at the white house. The two boys john and calvin junior, played tennis and he loves tennis with the assistant White House Position and i think it person from the secret service. After that, young calvin, had been wearing socks, had a blister and he really didnt tell anybody about it. It seemed to move into an infection. By the time the white house physicians saw him, it was too late. And already, the infection had moved up its leg his leg. Within just a few days, calvin junior dies. At the white house. And both the parent were absolutely devastated. And so was his brother. I interviewed the brother because john cole at, the surviving son, lived quite a long time, into his 90s. But the whole family was extremely upset. Grace carried it this off with she reminds me of kennedys behavior after the assassination of her husband. Grace coolidge and her husband have people come to the white house and have a service in North Hampton. Then the 16yearold is buried in plymouth, vermont. And grace had to move on because the campaign was coming and with her faith, she was very religious, and with her joy in life, she carries on. I really think the president could not have carried on without this a very strong woman. So it is very important to note the role of a first lady when Tragedy Strikes of this nature. Is this when her interest in baseball really began . Yes, her interest start. She did enjoy her baseball. She listened on the radio. She had her own booth when the senators played in washington and when she eventually went to boston with the red sox. Some people called her the first lady of baseball because of her interest in it and also how much the players adored her. And we see right behind her she has her dark with her. She dressed her dogs up. More than that, she and her husband had many pets. They were given a raccoon for thanksgiving dinner. And they did not wish to eat rebecca. [laughter] so they trained her to cope with life at the white house. This is the only time i have really read in my studies that the staff was not happy. Rebecca jumped in the top and through the soap out. Rebecca was difficult, so they got ruben tuesday stay with rebecca, another raccoon. That was even worse. [laughter] then he sits down and draws an outside house for them to live in. That doesnt work, either. Eventually, rebecca has to be given to israel. So that was so cute because rebecca was brought to the easter egg rolling would take the dogs and make little Easter Bonnet for them. They did love the pets. For the president , it was a real relaxation. Lucinda can we talk to the loss of a husband . Sherry i like to start with the relaxation part. And it will pull the bottom out. Florence had a lot of different interests, should played the piano beautifully and she would often play the end of a perfect day, she was known for that signature song. She loved tennis, sports, very interested in his