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James A. Garfield
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James Abram Garfield (1831–1881) was the twentieth President of the United States, serving for a brief two hundred days in 1881.[1] He was the second President to be assassinated, only sixteen years after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865, and he was the fourth President to die in office regardless of cause.[2]
Garfield is the father of "front-porch" campaigning, as during his run for President in 1880 "reporters and voters went to hear him speak," which was unheard of at the time, especially given it was still unusual for candidates to court voters directly during their campaigns.[3] He was additionally an ameteur mathematician, and he came up with an additional proof of the Pythagorean theorem,
making him the only U.S. President to contribute to the field.[4]
Stalwarts and Half-Breeds[edit]
During the Hayes Administration, the Republican Party had seen itself divided into two major factions: The Half-Breeds and the Stalwarts. The Half-Breeds believed that appointments in politics should be based on merits, while Stalwarts took the view that those who showed themselves to be loyal to the victors deserve to have the opportunity of taking part in the new Administration.[5] Hayes deciding not to run for President in 1880[6] and a vocal group of Republicans attempting to renominate former President Ulysses S. Grant[7] further put things into chaos, especially given Hayes clearly was much more in the Half-Breed camp, while Grant was both a favorite of the Stalwarts and the enemy of the Half-Breeds, who viewed the failures of his administration as coming from the his Stalwart status.
The Grant wing of the RNC, made up of Stalwarts who were angered by the Half-Breed actions of Hayes, was unable to get the support needed to nominate Grant for President, but the anti-Grant side was unable to get behind a candidate, creating deadlock. Garfield emerged as the candidate of choice, even in spite of him only being at the convention to campaign for John Sherman. However, to balance the ticket, his running mate was to be famed Stalwart Chester A. Arthur.[3]
The divide that cost Garfield his life[edit]
Even when the divide seemingly quashed through the creation of a balanced ticket, that still did not appease everyone. One Stalwart who was not satisfied was Charles J. Guiteau (1841–1882), a man who attempted to get a political role in the Garfield Administration but was rejected, which he blamed on his Stalwart views. From this, he came to the conclusion that only the death of Garfield and, with it, the return of the Stalwarts to power within the Republican Party was acceptable.[8] He famously declared himself the "stalwart of stalwarts," upon the death of Garfield for this very reason.[5]
Bad medical advice makes things worse[edit]
President Garfield could have easily survived this assassination attempt if it were to occur today. Garfield even lived another eleven weeks after being shot,[9] with "massive infection, which resulted from unsterile practices" of the era being the real cause of Garfield's death. Ira Rutkow, both a professor of surgery and a medical historian, even went so far as to say "Garfield had such a nonlethal wound. In today’s world, he would have gone home in a matter or two or three days.” However, doctors engaged in practices such as attempting to fish the bullet out of Garfield's body with their unwashed hands (the notion of washing hands before operations being beneficial did not become common understanding in medical circles until about a decade after Garfield's death[10]) and restricting Garfield's food intake out of due to fear the bullet hit his intestines, despite the fact it had not.[11]
Many of the issues that came from those trying to help Garfield came from them not understanding where the bullet actually was. X-rays would not be first discovered until the 1890s, with attempts to remove the bullet resulting in failure. On two separate occasions, doctors attempted to use Alexander Graham Bell's metal detector to find the bullet inside Garfield, both of which ended in failure.[11]
A truly bizarre trial[edit]
Charles Guiteau was put on trial for murdering the President and the results were, to put it simply, rather odd. Guiteau at one point attempted to claim it was "temporary insanity" which caused the event, stating he would not “do it again for $1,000,000.”[12] Specifically, Guiteau argued that "he was legally insane because the Lord had temporarily removed his free will and assigned him the task he could not refuse."[13] Elsewhere in the trial he "employed the unusual defense of poetry to plead his innocence,"[14] and, despite himself being a lawyer, decided to ask for legal advice from random members of the audience.[15]
Guiteau firmly believed that either he would be pardoned by Arthur or the jury would declare him not guilty, even planning to run for President in 1884 along with discussing a lecture tour the second he was released. That did not occur, and he was hanged in 1882.[8]
References[edit]
- ↑ James A. Garfield Britannica
- ↑ Have any presidents or first ladies died at the White House? The White House Historical Association
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 United States presidential election of 1880 Britannica
- ↑ James Garfield Was the Only U.S. President to Prove a Math Theorem, Esther Inglis-Arkell, Gizmodo 6 August 2013
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Stalwarts, Half Breeds, and Political Assassination National Park Service
- ↑ Rutherford B. Hayes Britannica
- ↑ Ulysses S. Grant Britannica
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 A Stalwart of Stalwarts
- ↑ James Garfield: Assassinated Learning English
- ↑ Keep it clean: The surprising 130-year history of handwashing The Guardian
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 A President Felled by an Assassin and 1880’s Medical Care The New York Times
- ↑ From Grave to Gay The New York Times
- ↑ The Trial of Charles Guiteau: An Account Famous Trials
- ↑ Charles Guiteau’s reasons for assassinating President Garfield, 1882 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
- ↑ Forgotten Assassin of a Forgotten President Mysterious Chicago