Conkling, however, was much more experienced at political warfare than Garfield. Every time he had gone into battle, no matter how bruising, he had emerged even stronger than before. He seemed unaffected even by highly public humiliations, shrugging off scandals that would have ruined another man. Just two years earlier, he had been caught in a brazen affair with Kate Chase Sprague, the wife of William Sprague, a U.S. senator and former governor of Rhode Island, and daughter of Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury under Lincoln and the chief justice of the United States. Newspapers had
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