User:GhostRiver/garfield

Background

James A. Garfield

Main article: James A. Garfield

Election of 1880

Main article: 1880 United States presidential election

Charles J. Guiteau

Main article: Charles J. Guiteau

Guiteau was born on September 8, 1841, in Freeport, Illinois, the fourth of six children. His mother died when he was seven years old, leaving Guiteau's father Luther, a cashier at the Second National Bank of Freeport, to raise his children alone. Insanity ran in the Guiteau family: his mother had reportedly suffered from postpartum psychosis, while one of Guiteau's brothers, a nice, and a nephew were also named clinically insane upon their deaths.

Assassination

Preparation

Smithsonian photograph of the British Bull Dog revolver used to shoot Garfield.

On June 6, 1881, Guiteau purchased a .44 caliber British Bull Dog revolver, a knife, and a box of cartridges from O'Meara's Gun Shop, which was located one block away from the White House. Although the revolver model with a wooden handle was less expensive, Guiteau opted to purchase the version with a white bone handle, believing that it would make for a better museum display after the assassination. He borrowed $10 from his cousin to pay for the weaponry. Guiteau was unfamiliar with guns and asked O'Meara where he might practice his shooting; the gun shop owner told him that he would need to leave Washington proper, and so Guiteau would practice by the edge of the Potomac River.

Aftermath

Public reaction

Outside of the US, there was a mass outpouring of grief from British citizens and leaders upon the news of Garfield's death. The Times, which had been reporting on daily updates of the president's well-being, decorated its columns in mourning black, a custom typically reserved for British nationals and monarchs, while businesses and government buildings closed and church bells were rung in London on the day of Garfield's funeral. Americans were largely surprised by this international reaction, which had not been seen upon Lincoln's death prior.

Presidency of Chester Arthur

Artistic depiction of Arthur taking the oath of office in his New York home

Main article: Presidency of Chester A. Arthur

Arthur received news of his predecessor's death from a messenger boy that came to his New York City brownstone around 11:30 p.m. on the night of September 19. A telegram received at 12:25 a.m. on September 20 informed Arthur that he was to take the oath of office post haste. Elihu Root, Daniel G. Rollins, and Stephen French, who had been with Arthur when he received the telegram, proceeded to search the city for an available judge to administer the oath. They returned with John R. Brady and Charles Donohue, both justices on the New York Supreme Court. Arthur's inauguration was held at approximately 2:15 a.m. on the morning of September 20, 1881. Two days later, Arthur underwent a second, formal swearing-in under Chief Justice of the United States Morrison Waite. During his inaugural address, Arthur sought to establish that he intended to continue the vision of his predecessor rather than forging his own path.

Legal ramifications

Garfield was unguarded during his assassination, and throughout most of his presidency. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln 16 years prior had been regarded as a direct result of the American Civil War, and Garfield, who served during peacetime, had no reason to expect that he would be targeted. Even after Garfield's death, the government was hesitant to create a force of guards that would protect the president and keep distance between him and the crowd; the ability of a head of state to interact directly with his constituents was seen as integral to American democracy. The United States Secret Service, which had been established in 1865 to combat rampant counterfeiting of US currency, began offering protection to the presidential family in 1894, when first lady Frances Cleveland requested protection from "Western gamblers, Anarchists, [and] cranks" who had sent threatening letters to her husband Grover. Permanent protection of the president and his immediate family did not occur until after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. The Secret Service served unofficially as presidential bodyguards between McKinley's death and 1906, when a line was added to the annual Congressional appropriation for the department listing one of their duties as "protection of the person of the President of the United States".

Garfield's long illness raised a question among government leaders over whether or not Arthur should assume the role of the presidency, either temporarily during his recovery or permanently in the case of his death. Garfield was the first president to be incapacitated for an extended period of time: Abraham Lincoln had died a matter of hours after his shooting, while William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor were only indisposed for a matter of days before succumbing to their respective illnesses. During a cabinet meeting, Blaine cited Article II, section 1 of the Constitution, suggesting that Garfield was incapable of "discharg[ing] the Powers and Duties of" the presidency, and that Arthur had sufficient recourse to assume the title. Arthur refused, to little effect: Congress was out of session, and thus did not require any presidential attention, while Garfield's cabinet had license to conduct their respective business as they saw fit. This lack of urgency, and the belief that Garfield would recover before he was needed again, allowed the issue of presidential disability to languish unaddressed. The issue was raised again in 1919, when Woodrow Wilson suffered a nonfatal stroke and was confined to his bed for 17 months, during which all communication was mediated through his wife Edith. Wilson's physician Dr. Cary Grayson refused to sign a document of disability for his patient and purposely obscured the severity of Wilson's condition in order to temper conversations of succession. On February 10, 1967, at the suggestion of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had suffered a number of nonfatal health issues during his term, the 25th Amendment was passed, codifying the circumstances in which the vice president could succeed an incapacitated, but otherwise living, president.

Legacy

A gold star and plaque marked the site of Garfield's assassination until the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station was demolished in 1907.

The site of the shooting was acknowledged with a simple marker shortly after Garfield's death: a small star was placed on the floor of the station, while a marble plaque was inscribed with the president's name, office, and the date of the assassination. In 1907, the marker was removed, and the train station was demolished shortly afterwards. The gold star vanished upon the demolition of the train station, despite efforts to recover it from the Pennsylvania Railroad, Smithsonian Institution, and the US Bureau of Railway Economics Library. On November 20, 2018, what would have been Garfield's 187th birthday, the National Park Service installed two commemorative markers outside the National Gallery of Art, built on the former site of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station.

There exist a number of memorial statues and structures to Garfield in the US. On May 12, 1887, the James A. Garfield Monument was unveiled in Washington, D.C., crafted with funds raised by the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, the Garfield Monument Fair, and the sale of condemned cannons. On Memorial Day in 1890, the James A. Garfield Memorial in Cleveland opened at Lake View Cemetery, the president's final resting place. Six years later, on May 30, 1896, the James Garfield Memorial, designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and architect Stanford White, was unveiled in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. The Elberon cottage in which Garfield died has since been demolished, although a small granite memorial was placed on the property in the 1950s. In nearby Long Branch, New Jersey, close to the Church of the Presidents, the Garfield Tea House exists, crafted from the wooden railroad ties used to create the emergency train tracks used to take Garfield to his oceanfront cottage.

An autopsy conducted on Guiteau found nothing out of the ordinary save for an enlarged spleen, the result of a malaria infection. Two sections of this spleen, several parts of Guiteau's skeleton, and pieces of his brain were placed in the Army Medical Museum outside of Washington, now known as the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Additional portions of Guiteau's brain are housed in the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, which employed one of the medical examiners who conducted the autopsy. Historians and doctors have largely assumed that Guiteau suffered from neurosyphilis, possibly contracted during one of his visits with a prostitute. The autopsy records, however, are inconsistent with third-stage syphilis, and it is now speculated that Guiteau suffered from schizophrenia, with aspects of grandiose narcissism.

References

Bibliography

• Ackerman, Kenneth D. (2004). Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield. New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 978-0-786-71396-7.
• Clark, James C. (1993). The Murder of James A. Garfield: The President's Last Days and the Trial and Execution of His Assassin. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-899-50910-5.
• Millard, Candice (2011). Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President. New York, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-52626-5.
• Oliver, Willard M.; Marion, Nancy E. (2010). Killing the President: Assassinations, Attempts, and Rumored Attempts on U.S. Commanders-in-Chief. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-313-36474-7.
• Peskin, Allan (1978). Garfield: A Biography. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0-873-38210-6.
• Rosen, Fred (2016). Murdering the President: Alexander Graham Bell and the Race to Save James Garfield. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1-612-34768-4.
• Rosenberg, Charles E. (1968). The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-72717-2.