The four lost men

Wolfe supplies a moving portrait of his dying father, as well as a rich meditation on American history and ambitions. Discussion of the title characters Presidents James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and Rutherford B. Hayes provides Wolfe an opportunity to assess the mood and promise of the nation as well as to reflect on the obstacles that had blocked paths toward untapped American potential. Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes, the four Republican presidents who followed Grant during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, were all Civil War generals and sel…