Another diary, I groaned silently as I read the words in gilt on the cover. I had just seen a small thick diary on the box-lots table at the auction house, and I wasn’t ready for another.
This one, though, was apparently different. It was in a glass case as part of a special sale that was also open to online bidding – where the prices tend to run higher. I was obviously curious about what made this diary so unique, other than its appearance. It did not have the customary lock, giving it the look of a slender book you could hold in your hand.
It was titled “Day Unto Day. An Illuminated Diary” written in gilt lettering. Does it light up, I wondered.
Without removing it from its place on the glass shelf, I gingerly lifted its cover and read that it was made to hold “memorial entries.” I took the diary from the case and started turning the pages.
It was published by the Religious Tract Society of London, and Googling, I found the earliest publication date as 1877. The pages were illustrated with stylized Bible verses and flowers. The owner had written deaths, births and marriages in fountain-pen ink on the monthly pages. I noticed that a number of the surnames were Dulles, so I assumed he or she had descended from that lineage.
The entries reminded me of those grand and thick old Bibles that turn up at auction from time to time, the ones that are a genealogist’s dream.
This diary was not signed and bore no year. One entry, though, cracked open a door into perhaps the year and most assuredly a major event in American history: “President Garfield shot 1881+.” The entry was for July. In September, a follow-up: “President Garfield died 1881+.”
The writer was referring to James A. Garfield, the country’s 20th president who was assassinated on July 2, 1881, in a train station in Washington, DC. The assailant was Charles J. Gaiteau, described as an emotionally disturbed man who was angry because Garfield had refused to appoint him to a diplomatic job. Gaiteau was captured on site and later hanged. (You can see part of Gateau’s brain at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Scientists back then wanted to study it.)
Garfield was seriously hurt, with two bullets lodged in his body. One was in his back, and over a period of time, doctors repeatedly poked into the wound to try to find it (he was also shot in the arm). He succumbed to infections related to the shooting on Sept. 19, 1881.
His assassination and short presidency are not embedded in the country’s collective memory as that of President Lincoln. As a congressman from Ohio, Garfield was among a group of Radical Republicans who seemed to have butted heads on some policy matters with the more moderate Lincoln.
Garfield was against slavery, and for punishing southerns who had rebelled against the Union and for taking control of southern plantations.
As president – he was in office for four months, starting in March – he supported revamping the Post Office and reforming civil service, among other things. He was also an advocate for newly freed slaves, recommending education and voting rights, and appointing several African Americans – including Frederick Douglass and Blanche K. Bruce (a former Senate leader elected from Mississippi during Reconstruction) – to key positions.
As for the diary, here are some other pages from it.
