Bookavore

voracious reader with a certain verbal attitude

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In an impressive, nationwide campaign to remind voters of Crédit Mobilier, and to exploit any lingering questions about Garfield’s role in it, Democrats covered every available surface in every major city with the numbers 329—the amount of money Garfield had been accused of earning in stock dividends. The numbers were on sidewalks, buildings, streets, and barns. Somehow, they even made their way into the homes and offices of members of the incumbent Republican administration. When the secretary of war sat down to breakfast one morning, 329 was scrawled on his napkin. The secretary of the treasury found the numbers on a piece of mail addressed to him, the secretary of agriculture on a beet someone had placed on his desk, and the secretary of state on his hat and, incredibly, the headboard of his bed.

—-page 60 of Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

A beet! A BEET! THE HEADBOARD OF HIS BED! It is passages like this that have made me a fervent reader of presidential biographies.

It might also interest you to know that Garfield was our last president born in a log cabin.

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