Two men who believed strongly in destiny met at a Washington train station in 1881. Ever since converting to the Disciples of Christ years earlier, President James A. Garfield thought God was directing his life. Likewise, Charles Guiteau, a deranged lawyer and public-office seeker, saw divine guidance in his own actions. On July 2 Guiteau fired two bullets at Garfield, one of which lodged in the president’s back. Garfield fell to the ground. "Oh my God!” he said. Two months later, he died. 168 James A. Garfield k Following a route taken by many other New Englanders, in the late 1820s James A. Garfield’s father, Abram Garfield, moved to the Midwest in search of opportunity. Once in Ohio, he invested his savings in a canal company that failed. Then, with his remaining money, he bought a farm in Orange township near Lake Erie, where in 1829 he settled down with his wife, Eliza Ballou Garfield, and their two children. In a short while, Abram and Eliza joined the Disciples of Christ, a religious sect separated from the Baptists. The Disciples called for adherence to the commandments as originally stated in the Bible. In that sense they were fundamentalists, though rational rather than emotional ones. On November 19, 1831, James Abram Garfield was born to Abram and Eliza in a log cabin built by his father. Just two years later the elder Garfield died from a fever, leaving James’s upbringing to Eliza. She was described as a "bright, cheerful woman,” who created a happy atmosphere for her children. James loved to hunt and to read; he especially liked studying the American Revolution and delving into fiction. The farm, however, occupied much of his time, as from an early age he helped his mother in a struggle that, despite their efforts, left them mired in poverty. In 1848, at age 17, Garfield decided to take to the sea, but got no farther than a nearby canal. For six weeks he worked on a barge and made several trips from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, first as a driver then as bowman, with the responsibility of preparing the locks along the route. Soon after an illness forced him to return home, he resumed the schooling he had disrupted earlier. At first unconcerned with religion, in 1850 he was baptized into the Disciples of Christ and from then on saw God’s will in almost everything, including his own life. He remarked, "Thus by the providence of God I am what I am and not a sailor. I thank him.” In 1851 Garfield enrolled in a new Disciples school, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College), where he earned a reputation as a serious student, well-liked for his friendly and kindly manner, and discovered his talent as an orator. The Ohioan initially looked at life as rewarding, but after a love affair turned sour, he said, "To the first view . . . the world and society seem pleasant and alluring, but when their depths are penetrated, their secret paths trod, they are found hollow, soulless, and insipid.” From then on he went through bouts of depression and confusion that sometimes caused indecision. In 1852 Garfield obtained a job teaching at the institute, and after saving his money he enrolled in 1854 at Williams College in Massachusetts as a junior. After graduating, he returned to Ohio and in 1857 became president of Hiram. He also began preaching; his openair orations were described by one observer as inducing tranquility among listeners, making it seem they had been taken to a "beautiful region of heaven.” The following year he married Lucretia Rudolph after a long courtship, filled with much self-doubt on his part. They had seven children, one of whom died in childhood. Garfield soon grew tired of educators, finding the petty bickering among the faculty to be insufferable, and he searched for an alternative career. In 1859 he decided his future pointed to politics. That August he ran for the state senate as a Republican and won—beginning his remarkable record of never losing a political campaign. He owed his success largely to Harmon Austin, a banker who became his lifetime campaign manager. Austin’s adept tactics made it appear that office sought Garfield, rather than the other way around, and as a result preserved Garfield’s belief in destiny—an objective observer would call it a manufactured destiny— and the aura that came with it. "His desire to manage people and their affairs is very marked,” Garfield said about Austin, "and though I like him very much indeed and accept his admonitions . . . I can’t say they are entirely reasonable or pleasant.” Austin saw politics as a sport. He said, "I have such a horror of being whipped that I cannot let it alone.” James A. Garfield 169 Garfield’s speeches on the stump in his state senate campaign dealt mainly with slavery, then an issue tearing the country apart. He condemned the practice while praising the Republican Party for protecting free labor. The following year Garfield spoke throughout Ohio in support of Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaign; he attracted large audiences and much acclaim. When the Deep South moved toward secession in late 1860, he opposed all efforts at forming a peace mission and was one of only three senators in his state legislature who voted against negotiating with southern leaders. As a strong unionist, he called the secessionists traitors and thought they should be hanged. To James Garfield the Civil War was nothing less than a crusade for union and against slavery. "The sin of slavery,” he said, "is one of which it may be said that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission.’” In 1861 he became colonel of an Ohio regiment and rallied his troops with oratory and patriotic fervor. Knowing nothing about strategy, he studied training manuals and the accounts of European military leaders, particularly Napoleon. In January 1862 he achieved one of the rare Union victories at that time when he defeated a Confederate force at Middle Creek, Kentucky. With his battlefield prestige, powerful oratory, and commanding presence—he was six feet tall and broad-shouldered—Garfield won the notice of Republican leaders, and in September 1862 they selected him to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. After his election victory, he absented himself from Congress so he could continue serving in the army. In August 1863 General W. S. Rosecrans attacked the Confederates at Chickamauga in Tennessee. After the general made a strategic mistake, Garfield prevented defeat by riding along the battlefront and redirecting the army. The fight, which ended in a draw, resulted in criticism of Rosecrans but praise for Garfield, though he may well have been culpable in planning the botched effort. The Ohioan retired from the army in December 1863 and took his seat in Congress, where his colleagues placed him on the Military Affairs Committee. He later served on the Appropriations Committee and the Ways and Means Committee and exerted considerable influence on both. He ranked among the hardest workers in Congress, and though never known as an intellectual, he read extensively and owned a 3,000-volume library. Garfield’s ardor for Lincoln cooled as the Civil War continued. He criticized the president for failing to win the conflict sooner and for being too lenient with the South. Although he supported Lincoln for reelection in 1864, he let it be known that he did so reluctantly. Garfield wanted the total defeat of the South, including the seizure of large plantations and an end to slavery. He said: "This is an abolition war.” After Lincoln’s assassination, Garfield tried to establish cordial relations with the new president, Andrew Johnson. But he later broke with Johnson over Reconstruction policy and sided with the Radicals who sought to punish the South. Garfield wanted the Confederate leaders either exiled or shot. He insisted: "Let no weak sentiments of misplaced sympathy deter us from inaugurating a measure which will cleanse our nation and make it the fit home for freedom and a glorious manhood.” As part of that freedom, he advocated equal rights for African Americans. Yet by the early 1870s the Ohioan began changing his views. He concluded that much of Reconstruction had failed, and he disliked Republican policy as thoroughly as he did that of the southern Democrats. He was appalled, for example, when in 1875 federal troops expelled several Democrats from the Louisiana legislature so it could organize under the Republicans. He realized, too, that northern public opinion no longer supported large-scale federal intervention in the South. Northerners wanted their political leaders to spend more time tackling the severe economic depression that was hurting almost every American. Garfield believed that with the Fifteenth 170 James A. Garfield Amendment, which protected black suffrage, the federal government had done all it could for the former slaves. The amendment, he said, "confers upon the African Race the care of its own destiny. It places their fortune in their own hands.” They would have to fend for themselves and, as he put it, show their manhood and worthiness by their achievements. On several other issues then before Congress, Garfield sided with conservatives. He disliked the Grange, an organization of farmers devoted to ending monopolies and setting railroad shipping rates, calling it a form of communism. He opposed unions and believed the federal government should use troops to break up strikes, and he opposed the large-scale immigration of Eastern Europeans, fearing they would corrupt politics. Yet he supported civil service reform, though with greater restraint than some in the Republican Party. Where many reformers considered the spoils system crude for its appeal to political favoritism and wanted to end it in order to add dignity to government, Garfield mainly wanted to alleviate the pressure on officeholders, particularly congressmen being badgered for jobs. He said, "I should favor the Civil Service if for no other reason [than] of getting partially rid of the enormous pressure for office.” During the disputed presidential election of 1876, Garfield organized congressmen to support the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, and served on the special Election Commission that voted to make Hayes president. After Hayes entered the White House and chose Ohio Senator John Sherman as his secretary of the treasury, Garfield appeared ready to obtain Sherman’s seat in the Senate. Hayes, however, asked the congressman to remain in the House, where as minority leader he could fight for the president’s programs, and Garfield agreed. An opportunity to enter the Senate presented itself again in January 1880 when the Ohio legislature met to fill a vacancy for the following year, but the unexpected struck—namely, the Republican nomination for president. Garfield entered that year’s national convention in Chicago supporting Sherman for the White House. He did not particularly like his fellow Ohioan, nor did he expect him to win, but he wanted to stop Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign. Grant, whose renown as the hero of Appomattox partly erased from the public mind the scandals during his two terms in the White House, came to the convention with a substantial following. As reformers within the party searched for someone who could beat him, they turned to Garfield. He rejected their pleas, though, saying that as Sherman’s campaign manager he might be accused of impropriety should he seek the nomination. Yet as much as Garfield neither craved the presidency nor expected to obtain it, he realized a deadlocked convention could turn to him. New York senator Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwarts, who opposed the reformers, placed Grant’s name into nomination in what has been called "one of the most brilliant speeches in convention history,” but also one controversial for its sharp attack on the general’s critics. Conkling said: Vilified and reviled, ruthlessly aspersed by unnumbered presses, not in other lands, but in his own, assaults upon him have seasoned and strengthened his hold on the public heart. Calumny’s ammunition has all been exploded; the powder has all been burned once—its force is spent—and the name of Grant will glitter a bright and imperishable star in the diadem of the Republic when those who have tried to tarnish it have moldered in forgotten graves; and when their memories and their epitaphs have vanished utterly. With Conkling’s speech, delegates shouted and cheered. Then Garfield strode to the platform and presented Sherman’s name. His booming voice and impassioned call for harmony slowed Grant’s momentum. Speaking extemporaneously, Garfield said, Not here, in this brilliant circle where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the James A. Garfield 171 destiny of the republic to be decreed for the next four years. Not here . . . but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their hearts—there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom of our work tonight. Despite these words, his successful fight to stop a change in rules turned out to be more crucial. The Stalwarts wanted each state to cast its vote as a unit—that is, to give all of its votes to the one candidate leading in the state. They knew that such a change would assure Grant’s nomination. The Stalwarts were defeated, however, when about 60 delegates from New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois broke with their colleagues and cast their votes individually. Grant took the early lead in the balloting but barely so. On the first roll call he won 304 votes to Maine senator James G. Blaine’s 284 and Sherman’s 93, with scattered votes for others but none for James Garfield. Thirty-three roll calls later, little had changed. Then the Blaine and Sherman forces agreed to back Garfield. On the 34th ballot the Wisconsin delegation voted for him. "I rise to a point of order,” Garfield protested. "No man has a right, without the consent of the person voted for, to announce that person’s name and vote for him in this convention. Such consent I have not given.” The delegates rejected his argument. On the 35th roll call he won 50 votes, and on the 36th he won the nomination. For the convention to adjourn united, the Conkling forces would have to be appeased; the delegates therefore agreed to make Chester A. Arthur the vice-presidential candidate. Arthur, former head of the New York Customhouse, once known for its corruption and attachment to Conkling’s political machine, had linked his career to the Stalwarts. Conkling, however, never promoted Arthur for the vice presidency since he thought it to be an insignificant post. In fact, he urged Arthur to reject the nomination, but the New Yorker decided to accept it anyway. As it turned out, Arthur helped the ticket immensely by using his influence to raise money from government office holders, squeezing so much from them that even old-time political pros marveled at his deed. The spoils system thus benefited a ticket promoted by reformers. The campaign, though, produced little excitement. The Republicans attacked the Democratic candidate, General Winfield S. Hancock of Pennsylvania, for his political inexperience. A man who looked imposing at 240 pounds, Hancock possessed little knowledge of government. Garfield campaigned for sound money, a moderate tariff, pensions for veterans, and limits on Chinese immigration. Although he called for civil service reform, he did so without enthusiasm. In New York City in August 1880, he met with the Stalwarts, and though the record is murky, he likely promised an important job to one of them and agreed to consider all factions in making appointments. The biggest campaign controversy emerged just days before the election when a New York newspaper, Truth, published a letter alleged to have been written by then-Congressman Garfield to "H. L. Morey of the Employers’ Union, Lynn, Massachusetts,” in which he approved of Chinese immigration. "I take it that the question of employes is only a question of private and corporate economy,” the letter stated, "and individuals or companys have the right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest.” Garfield called the letter a forgery, and the misspellings in it—for he was an impeccable speller—bore him out. The Democrats hoped that given Garfield’s campaign pledge, the letter would portray him as a hypocrite on the Chinese issue and excite western voters to side with Hancock. The ploy failed, however, and on election day Garfield carried nearly the entire North and West. He finished with 214 electoral votes to Hancock’s 155, though with a popular vote plurality of less than 10,000. As president the Ohioan would face a divided Congress—a Republican majority in the House, 172 James A. Garfield but a deadlock in the Senate, where two independents held the balance of power. James A. Garfield came into office seeking to make government appointments unfettered by certain congressional restrictions and to select men of quality. He aimed to challenge the custom that the senior senator in a state should approve major appointments in the state involved. He called it "one of the most corrupt and vicious practices of our time.” Much as had happened with his predecessor, Rutherford B. Hayes, Garfield’s determination brought him into conflict with Roscoe Conkling. When the president removed Edwin A. Merritt as collector of the port of New York by naming him consul-general to London and appointed William H. Robertson to the collector’s post, he defied Conkling and his fellow New York senator, Thomas C. Platt, both of whom supported Merritt. Garfield called the impending fight one that would "settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States.” Although on the surface Garfield seemed to be crusading only for civil service reform, he was also fighting for presidential prerogative and trying to build an organization in New York that could weaken Conkling. Newspapers overwhelmingly supported the president, and Conkling’s abrasive style won him few supporters in the Senate. In a gamble, Conkling and Platt decided to resign their Senate seats and then win immediate reelection as a way to show that New York stood behind them. But after they quit, the Senate on May 18 quickly confirmed Robertson’s appointment as collector. A few weeks later, the New York legislature refused to send Conkling and Platt back to the Senate, choosing instead two moderates to replace them. President Garfield faced a scandal soon after entering the White House. The New York Times had uncovered fraud in the Post Office Department, the government’s largest bureaucracy, which employed more than 50 percent of all federal workers. Years earlier the department had established Star Routes, whereby it entered into contracts with private horse, stagecoach, and wagon companies to deliver mail to remote settlements. The Times found that several companies had received overpayments, some of them thousands of dollars yearly, to make no more than three mail deliveries. Garfield ordered Postmaster General Thomas L. James to investigate the charges, and when the inquiry implicated his own campaign manager, Harmon Austin, he told James to forge ahead and take the investigation wherever it might go. James found that contracts had been awarded to companies closely associated with leaders in previous Republican administrations. The inquiry would continue beyond Garfield’s presidency and force the second assistant postmaster general to resign, along with the secretary of the Republican national committee, and encourage civil service reform. Unknown to Garfield, a lawyer named Charles Guiteau began calling at the White House, looking for a job; at one point he even crashed a reception. Guiteau wrote to the president: I called to see you this A.M., but you were engaged. . . . What do you think of me for Consul-General at Paris? I think I prefer Paris to Vienna, and if agreeable to you, should be satisfied with the Consulship at Paris . . . I claim to be a gentleman and a Christian. At one time an itinerant preacher, Guiteau believed God worked through him. He began stalking Garfield and first thought about assassination in late June 1881 when he found the president walking with James G. Blaine, but he lost his nerve. Then on the morning of July 2 he hunted Garfield down at the Baltimore and Potomac Station in Washington. The president was walking to his railroad car, preparing to leave for his alma mater, Williams College, where he planned to deliver the commencement address. One of the two shots Guiteau fired from his pistol grazed Garfield’s arm; the other lodged in his back near his spinal column. "His death was a political necessity,” Guiteau James A. Garfield 173 wrote in a letter prior to the assassination. "I am a lawyer, theologian, and politician. I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts. . . .” The president lingered in pain for weeks while doctors tried to locate the bullet. They thought it might be in his lung or liver. They even brought in Alexander Graham Bell to use his electric device, an experimental model of a metal detector, to locate it. The attempt failed, however, when metal coils in the president’s mattress interfered with the machine. The country followed the president’s battle for life closely; one railroad even issued progress charts to its riders, presenting the fallen leader’s "pulse, temperature, and respiration.” Meanwhile, the public looked more closely at Vice President Chester A. Arthur and found him wanting. His long friendship with Conkling made many fear for the integrity of the presidency, badly damaged a few years earlier under Grant. Newspapers told about Arthur’s shady deals, and the Nation said, "It is out of this mess of filth that Mr. Arthur will go to the Presidential chair in case of the President’s death.” During the campaign, the same publication had discounted Arthur’s threat to clean government, saying that as vice president he would have no influence. For his part, Arthur genuinely wanted no higher office than the vice presidency, and he reacted to the shooting of Garfield with stunned disbelief. In September aides took the president to the seaside village of Elberon, New Jersey, where he could breathe the ocean air as a tonic. Quite possibly the contaminated instruments used by his doctors to probe for the bullet did the most harm, and had he been left alone, he would have lived. But on September 19, 1881, after saying, "My work is done,” he died. When notified later that day, Arthur cried; on September 20 he took the oath of office. Guiteau’s trial began in November 1881 and lasted until March 1882. His attorneys entered a plea of insanity, and most historians today believe Guiteau was deranged. A jury, however, found him guilty of murder, and on June 30, 1882, he was hanged at the District of Columbia jail. Americans went into deep mourning over Garfield’s death. His body lay in the Capitol rotunda for two days, during which time 100,000 people filed past the casket. Since James A. Garfield had held the presidency only six months, a mere four actively, he had little chance to set policy or leave a lasting presidential legacy. Yet in his rise from poverty to the White House Americans saw the opportunity their society provided for advancement; it encouraged them to believe that if he could do it, so could they. As a result, Guiteau’s assault seemed as much an attack on someone who represented their cherished values as on a man who
served as president.