Category Archives: Reviews

Destiny of the Republic, A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President—Part II

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Part I of this book by Candice Millard was about Garfield’s early life, his military service during the Civil War, entrance into politics, and his seemingly accidental connections to a madman named Charles Guiteau who shot him and the inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. This part will be about the medical treatment after Guiteau shot him, or more accurately the inept medical treatment of Garfield, the people who interacted with Garfield during his long decline to his end, and the remarkable transformation of Vice President Chester Arthur. Arthur was transformed from being a political hack to becoming an admirable American President.. He was influenced to become a decent President by the coaching from a previously unknown disabled woman and by his limited contact with the remarkable Garfield. I would be remiss if I did no encourage any student of history or anyone who enjoys a well written, interesting story to read this book. I give it a very high recommendation.

Alexander Graham Bell began working on an electrical induction device when he learned that President Garfield had been wounded by a gunshot from the insane Guitreau, and that there was doubt where the bullet had lodged. He hoped he could develop a metal detector that would assist in identifying the location of the lead slug embedded in Garfield. Bell would test his equipment with some success on a Civil War veteran who had carried a bullet in his body for many years. However, his equipment failed to find the bullet in Garfield in part because of an error in setting up the equipment, and in part because Bliss, the doctor in charge of Garfield’s treatment, gave him a completely incorrect assessment of the approximate location of the bullet. Bell continued to work on his equipment after failing to find the bullet in Garfield, and would eventually find the location of a slug in Private John McGill who had carried a bullet twenty years after being shot at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill. Bell made a return visit to Garfield’s bed and found a feeble signal in the general vicinity where Bliss believed the bullet to be lodged. Bell was unconvinced, but Bliss took it as proof of his ideas. Bell did not know the President was on a mattress with metal coils that probably gave the false signal that Bliss believed proved he was right. Continue reading →

Destiny of the Republic, A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President—Part I

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I heard Peter Boyles on KOA radio of Denver interviewing Candice Millard and reviewing her book, and decided it sounded fascinating. I now think “fascinating” doesn’t do the book justice, and I give this book a very high recommendation. I wanted to do a single part review, but this book simply had too much information for a mere couple of pages to do it justice. This part will be about Garfield’s early life, his military service during the Civil War, entrance into politics, and his seemingly accidental connections to a madman named Charles Guiteau and the inventor, Alexander Graham Bell.

I am frequently astonished at how little I know about history, and this book led me even further to the conclusion that I don’t know enough. I certainly knew little about James A. Garfield. He was born to a poor family that was barely scraping out a living in Ohio, and his father died when he was two. His mother, Eliza Garfield, who came from a family of intellectuals, and eleven year old brother worked to keep the family from starving, and eventually sacrificed what little they had to see that James could be educated. His ability to learn was remarkable. His willingness to work at any job perhaps was just as remarkable. He worked on the Erie Canal with rough men, and was amazingly saved from drowning by a rope that caught solid in a crack as he fell overboard alone in the dark. He worked as a janitor at a preparatory school and within a year was an assistant professor teaching literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. He was accepted into Williams College in Massachusetts, and became the president of Eclectic Institute by the age of twenty-six. Continue reading →

No Sense of Decency, The Army McCarthy Hearings—Part II

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The first half of the review of this book discusses the early days of McCarthy’s attacks on communists in the U.S. government beginning with a speech in 1950 to a Wheeling West Virginia women’s club when he announced he was holding a list of communists or suspected communists in the State Department. This part will talk about the expansion of his attacks and the gathering of forces that eventually tore him down. I’ve suggested that anyone reading this book should also read “Blacklisted by History,” which presents strong defenses of McCarthy and his actions.

The rebuff by his colleagues did not deter McCarthy, and he continued his attacks on powerful people. He called Secretary of State Dean Acheson the “…great Red Dean.” He declared Truman was a drunkard, and that “The son of a bitch should be impeached,” after Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur. Truman commented after McCarthy’s attack on General Marshall, “The man who made that attack isn’t fit to shine General Marshall’s shoes.” Edward R. Murrow said that he hadn’t always agreed with Truman, but said “…we are obliged to applaud his choice of shoeshine boys.”

McCarthy would announce on television that presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and five of his key advisors were supporters of communism. He broadened his attack by declaring, “…those who wear the label Democrat wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal.” He later angered Eisenhower with his lengthy speech attacking the Army. Eisenhower told his brother Milton, “I am not going to get into a pissing contest with that skunk.”  Richard Nixon, who had gained fame interrogating suspected communists as a member of HUAC, said “When you go out and shoot rats you have to shoot straight…you might hit someone else who is trying to shoot rats too.” Continue reading →

No Sense of Decency, The Army McCarthy Hearings—Part I

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I recommend this book because it presents a picture of history that is important. However, I would caution that I believe some of the information and accusations about Senator Joseph McCarthy follow “the standard media line.” The introduction to the book includes the quote from Joseph Welch in interrogating Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?” This is referred to as a response to “…an attack by Senator Joseph McCarthy” on June 9, 1954. Stay with me through this review, which discusses many historically important events, and I’ll present the opinion that this quotation, from which the title of the book is taken, makes me less eager to recommend the book.

The Prologue to the book describes that Joe McCarthy, “…ruthlessly, and many would said (sic) recklessly—exploiting the tensions of the cold war between the United States and public anxiety about Communist subversion at home.” I disagree with much of the condemnation of Joe McCarthy for reasons I will discuss in a blog posting on the subject, but the focus on the influence of television on American politics in this book is intriguing. As the author observes, “As it turned out, history would show that the decisive factor…was …a very recent entrant in the American political wars: television.”

The author correctly points out several world events that led the American public to support McCarthy’s allegations of the Soviet threat and influence that led to weakening of U.S. positions during and after World War II. J. Robert Oppenheimer admitted association with Communist organizations while the debate about development of the hydrogen bomb was being debated. Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg were convicted and sentenced to death for providing the Soviets information that led to their successful detonation of an atomic bomb that was designed from information stolen from the Manhattan project. (Roy Cohn, who would be the primary assistant to McCarthy, was a key player in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.) Continue reading →

Blacklisted by History, the Untold Story of Joe McCarthy—Part III

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The first two parts of this review discuss the early history of Joe McCarthy’s charges about extensive Soviet penetration of the U.S. government and the growing resistance by powerful forces to those charges. This part will discuss the later stages when attacks against Joe began be take hold. It is my opinion that his support base quickly eroded when he shifted his focus from people in the State Department to the U.S. Army in general and General Marshall in particular.

“McCarthy’s most controversial speech, deplored by friend and foe alike, was his marathon70,000 word indictment of Gen. George C. Marshall, presented to the Senate on June 14, 1951…” (The public gave Joe wide support before that speech.) McCarthy was seeking the source of policy blunders in and after World War II, and those drafting the speech for him decided Marshall was at the center of the problem. For example, Marshall disagreed with Churchill’s contention that an invasion of the French coast would result in disastrous casualties, and that the invasion should be up through Italy to the “soft underbelly of the Balkans.” Stalin was furious at that idea (because he wanted the Balkans left to him after the war), and Marshall and Eisenhower agreed with FDR’s desire to accede to Stalin’s wishes. Joe was also upset with FDR’s secret Yalta deal with Stalin that gave the Soviets control of Manchuria’s ports and railway systems (and conceded Poland to the Soviets) and the diligent efforts by the State Department to assure Communist control of China. The author offers the opinion that the “…criticism is deserved…a good deal of what he had to say about the policy blunders were not only true but urgently important…McCarthy was right that an immense conspiracy was afoot—especially with regard to China—though erring as to the role of Marshall.”

I found a memo originally classified “Top Secret” copied on page 423 to be quite startling. It turns out the State Department not only wanted Mao to have control of mainland China, they also wanted Chiang Kai-shek ousted from Formosa. The memo clearly states that “The U.S. should inform Sun Li-jen in the strictest confidence that the U.S. Government is prepared to furnish him the necessary military aid and advice in the event that he wishes to stage a coup d’état for the purpose of establishing his military control of the island.”

The book details Joe’s investigations and those conducted against him. The author observes that there were as many investigations of Joe as he conducted against others. He only had one Democrat Senator who was clearly on his side. Joseph P. Kennedy was an admirer of Joe, and McCarthy steered clear of Massachusetts as J.F.K. campaigned to become a Senator. Unfortunately for Joe, he made an enemy of Henry Cabot Lodge, who lost to J.F.K. That wouldn’t be as big a problem as the fact that President Dwight Eisenhower disliked Joe intensely. The anti-George Marshall speech had outraged Eisenhower. “Marshall and Ike were both products of the Roosevelt regime, avatars of the peculiar global vision FDR and Harry Hopkins had promoted during World War II. Both generals had been raised to power over the heads of others by the New Deal White House, and perforce were agents of Roosevelt’s often addled wartime notions and inertial carry-through by Truman. You couldn’t survey the Roosevelt-Truman record without running across the names of Ike and Marshall.”

There were two events involved in the eventual censuring and destruction of Joe that had a central role in the recent George Clooney movie “Good Night and Good Luck.” One was the interrogation of Anna Lee Moss, who wore a cute little hat with a flower on top and acted quite sweet and innocent under Joe’s interrogation. Senators Stuart Symington and Scoop Jackson asked Mrs. Moss whether there were other Annie Lee Mosses in Washington. She demurely answered, “Yes, sir, there are three Annie Lee Mosses.” The Senators and the media immediately decided that Joe had brought the wrong Annie Lee Moss to be interrogated. The facts later proved that there was only one Annie Lee Moss who had lived at the address where a Communist newspaper subscription had been delivered. The FBI had investigated the Annie Lee Moss who was being interrogated, found that she had joined the Communist Party on December 1, 1943, and had provided that information to Senator Scoop Jackson prior to the hearings. Senator Jackson had been told by the FBI they were convinced that she was a Communist.

There were also inferences that the position Mrs. Moss held did not warrant any concern regardless of whether she was a Communist or not. It turns out her job description was to, “Examine messages received in tape form in code and text from Receiving Banks…Process high precedence messages immediately by hand-carrying to overseas desk for quick routing…disposition of encrypted messages destined for or received from the Crypto Center…” As to Clooney’s portrayal of the Moss interrogation in his movie, Clooney made it clear after the fact that he had been informed that Mrs. Moss was a Communist and not a mistaken-identity victim.

The other event portrayed in Good Night and Good Luck was the one most remembered and written about in negative portrayals of Joe. Joe Welch was interrogating McCarthy’s assistant Roy Cohn about a variety of matters, and Welch was skilled at theatrics. Joe raised the issue of Fred Fisher who had belonged to a Communist front organization. Welch railed, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never fully grasped your cruelty or your recklessness…Little did I dream you could be so reckless or cruel as to do injury to that lad.” When Joe tried to respond, Welch interrupted him with, “Let us not assassinate this lad further Senator. You have done enough. Have you left no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Welch then broke into tears and the chamber responded with sustained applause. It turns out that Joe Welch had provided information for a New York Times article that he had “relieved from duty his original second assistant, Frederick G. Fisher Jr. of his own Boston law office, because of admitted previous membership in the National Lawyers Guild…a Communist front organization.” This article appeared six weeks before Joe mentioned Fred Fisher in the hearing. Apparently that NY Times article, reprinted on page 568, was of no interest to those bent on destroying Joe. Joe Welch did not rail at himself, “Have you left no sense of decency?”

I’ve requested a book titled No Sense of Decency by Robert Shogan. I’m guessing from the title that book will take a different tact on Joe’s “guilt,” but we shall see. I’ll remember the warning “history is interpretive” before seeing that book.

I’m going to close this with a quick mention that Joe McCarthy was censured by the Senate on 33 counts, many of which had been extracted from media accusations. One friendly Senator had asked why he could be censured for things said about other Senators when those other Senators weren’t being censured for viscous things they had said about him. The answer was that because Joe was being tried and no one else. Half of the Republicans voted to censure Joe and half voted against it. All the Democrats voted in favor with the exception of J.F.K., who did not attend the session because of illness. Joe’s name has been consistently vilified since. He died about thirty months after the censure vote, and it is often said he drank himself to death. The author observes that, “It’s true that, ultimately, they got him’ but it’s equally true that, before this happened, he got them—or at least a sizable number of them.”

Blacklisted by History, the Untold Story of Joe McCarthy—Part II

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Part one of the review about the book “Blacklisted by History” by M. Stanton Evans gives the background for Joe McCarthy’s original accusations about the infiltration of communist agents in the U.S. Government in general and the State Department in particular and the early attempts to discredit him and his accusations. This part will focus on the friction between those concerned about Soviet spying, including Joe, and reactions of other politicians, including the Presidents.

I’ve read several books that make it clear that Franklin Delano Roosevelt never wanted to hear negative things about the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. He had paved the way to provide diplomatic immunity to the Soviets. He didn’t want to hear that action had opened a broad pathway for the Soviets to establish a massive espionage network in the United States that sent its tentacles into just about every aspect of government and the military. Roosevelt made a rude remark to Adolph Berle when Berle tried to brief FDR about a Soviet espionage ring revealed by Whitaker Chambers. The author summarizes in biting terms the Roosevelt administration’s mood “…during the ‘gallant allay’ daze of wartime, when FDR, Harry Hopkins, and their minions were lauding Stalin, letting Earl Browder out of prison, and strewing roses along the path that led comrades to the federal payroll.”

Truman, I had always thought, took a much less conciliatory tone toward Stalin and the Soviets. I also had read that the generals who had control of who would be briefed about the magnitude of Soviet espionage as learned by the Venona project decided that Truman would not be given that information. The FBI is often blamed for the failure to identify and prevent Soviet penetration, and that blame often includes the allegation that that agency withheld information from Truman. However, the author observes that “…all of this is moonshine and will be so perceived by anyone who bothers to check the official records. As has been seen, the FBI was neither fooled by nor indifferent to Soviet penetration efforts in the 1940s…Nor did the Bureau withhold its knowledge of such matters from the Truman White house.” The author offers the opinion, “That he (Truman) was a visceral anti-Communist is not in doubt. However, he did seem to know little about the way the Soviets and their U.S. agents functioned, or their presence in the government he headed, and didn’t show much interest in learning.” Continue reading →