The USA in the Time of James Garfield
1881
By Mike Donovan
Garfield as General Garfield as President
Hero at Chickamauga – Died on the anniversary - Never lost an election - Canal boat operator – # 20 - Western Reserve Eclectic Institute – 329 – Huge Baseball Fan - Defeated Democrat Winfield S. Hancock (There were two loser candidates in US history named Winfield!) in the election of 1880 – The final tally was 214-155 in the Electoral College. – Last President Elected from House of Representatives - Chess wizard - Enjoyed a good slug of booze now and then - “Lawnfield” - VP Chester A. Arthur – Assassinated by a lawyer
“Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning.”
JG
America needed a breather in 1880 after the incendiary election of 1876. Both parties almost deliberately dummied down their campaigns for 1880. The two major parties were so passive that it took the third party of Jimmy Weaver to offer any interesting ideas, like reduction of child labor, or safety standards for industry. Weaver was the leader of the Populist Party. Weaver and Neal Dow of the Prohibitionist Party were the two third party candidates in 80. This campaign was ‘Night of the Generals.’ Hancock, Garfield and Weaver had all been generals in the Union Army.
The competition for the Presidency seemed essentially to be about which candidate had the best Civil War record. The election of 1880 had no exiting issues dividing the parties. Bamford Parkes represents the historian’s consensus when he calls 80 “the dullest election campaign in American history.” The beginning of James Garfield’s term would provide excitement soon enough. The Garfield era started out with a bang.
Popular vote 1880----------Garfield –4,454,416
Hancock--4, 444,952
Weaver------308, 000
James ‘Boatman Jim’ Garfield was a man to whom you could say three sentences and then he could take two pens, and, one in each hand, translate those three sentences simultaneously into both Latin and Greek. Wow. He liked to do it as a parlor trick but it was not merely a stunt. Garfield was professor of languages at a University. JG was a man with no enemies, a likable outgoing backslapping sort of man, six feet tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes, a uniter like Jack Kennedy, not a divider like Harry Truman. James Garfield was a good Christian and a great guy. So naturally he was murdered, shot in the back by a lunatic at a train station. In keeping with his warm personality he was walking arm in arm with his Secretary of State when he was shot from behind.
Garfield’s Cabinet;
Secretary of State--------------------James Blaine -----–1881
Secretary of War------------------Robert T. Lincoln----1881
Secretary of Treasury--------------William Windon----1881
Attorney General-----------------Wayne MacVeagh---1881
BIO
James Garfield grew up without a father. He was born in Orange, Ohio on November 19, 1831, a Jackson baby. When James was only two his father died of smoke inhalation while fighting a forest fire. James was less than two years old at the time. His mother Eliza soldiered on, working hard, maintaining the farm and raising the family alone. MRS. G. is a model women of early American history.
JG grew up with a love of reading and a thirst to go to school whenever he could. He got a job as a teenager on the great ships traveling the Great Lakes. A little seasickness was a little too much and he moved on to a job pulling Ohio canal boats from land. He fell into the canal and almost drowned 14 times by his own estimation.
Eliza gave young Jimmy 17 dollars so he could attend Geauga Seminary in Chester Ohio. He and his brother roomed at a farmhouse and helped out with the chores. Garfield also worked as a carpenter’s helper.
In 1850 he enrolled in the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (Hiram College today) a religious school on a hilltop in northeastern Ohio. It was the inaugural year of WREI. The Disciples of Christ were in charge, the same denomination of later President Ronald Reagan. Garfield was a top-of-the-line student and became a teacher before he graduated. Garfield also became a fully ordained minister. It helped him develop into a great orator, which in turn helped him become President.
Garfield also taught at Williams College in the northwest corner of Massachusetts.
Jimmy was elected to the Ohio Legislature in 1859. When the Civil War broke out, Garfield supported Lincoln enthusiastically. He joined the Army and saw action at Shiloh. Soon he was chief of staff to the famous General Rosecrans and rose to the rank of brigadier general. At Chickamauga (9-63) Garfield rode up and down the length of the front on a wounded horse, delivering important instructions under heavy fire. The hero of Chickamauga was promoted to major general. The horse never got a medal.
The voters of Garfield’s Akron-Youngstown district voted him to Washington as their Congressman in 1862 while he was still at the front. James heroically chose to serve another full year of combat before taking his Congressional seat in December of 1863. His Ohio constituents may have saved his life. Garfield might not have survived many more slugfests like Chickamauga.
Garfield was re-elected to the House of Representatives 8 times. Then in 1880 he was elected to the US Senate from Ohio. A month later he was elected President so he resigned the Senate seat. As you can deduce, the Congressional and Presidential elections were not always held on the same day. There is actually no word for an elected official who has yet to be sworn in, although the time is called the “interregnum.” Such persons were often the ideal choice for a higher office, using the momentum of the first victory to win the second before ever serving a day in the seat they won initially.
EVENTS;
ELECTION OF 1880
INAUGURATION
GUITEAU SHOOTS GARFIELD - JULY 2 1881
ELECTION OF 1880
There was not a boatload of difference in policy in this election or indeed in any of the presidential contests of this era. The choice was between the party of big business with corrupt leaders (Reps,) and the party of big business with slightly less corrupt leaders (Dems.) Neither Party was a friend to the common laborer or the struggling farmer. Both parties believed in lassaiz faire economics within US borders, and a high tariff to keep the foreign competition out. Both rejected virtually all reformist notions of the radical left, such as the eight-hour workday, the right to strike and a free liberal education at the government’s expense for everybody.
The front-runner for 1880 was President Hayes, but Rutherford had pledged to serve only one-term, and unlike TR later on, he actually honored his commitment. The succession was thus up for grabs.
At the Republican Convention of 1880 the two favorites were Jim Blaine, the reformer (moderate reformer) from Maine, and former President U.S. Grant. Also in the hunt were the acting Secretary of the Treasury James Sherman, ‘the human icicle,’ and Vermont Senator “Syrup George” Edmunds.
Ulysses Grant was out on an extensive overseas vacation after his grueling 8 years of handing out undeserved jobs in Washington. The two-term limitation was an unquestioned part of our political tradition, but a band of Grant supporters back home were devising slick reasons why it would be ok for him to run thrice. Grantites claimed that “two term” meant only no more than two consecutive terms. Therefore Grant was eligible again. Congress heard about this and passed a resolution by a vote of 233-18 that any violation of the two-term tradition consecutive or otherwise would be “unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with peril to out free institutions.”
Ulysses Grant was the number one choice of the ‘Stalwarts’ and the choice also of that faction’s intrepid leader Roscoe Conkling of NY State. The Stalwarts thought that the best jobs belonged to the best Republicans, not the best people. Stalwarts were of the mind that the Republican Party was just fine as it was and did not need reforming. The passive Grant was perfect too, as far as they were concerned.
Grant supporters decided to take his overseas vacation and turn it into a political asset. They correctly anticipated that Grant’s arrival back home would generate tremendous publicity and excitement and this they believed could be used as political campaign capital. Ulysses suffered ridicule throughout his presidency for his lack of knowledge on foreign affairs, but this trip to more than 30 countries would return him to the US as a new and improved man on that score.
Critics scoffed at this concept. They said he hadn’t learned much at all especially since only one stop in his itinerary included a language he could speak.
The Republicans met in Chicago to make their 3,000 speeches, making it truly the ‘windy city.’
There was so much opposition to Grant in the states he was favored in that his supporters wisely tried to install a “unit-rule”. The unit-rule meant that all delegates in a state had to vote for whatever candidate carried a majority in that state. Without the unit-rule Grant would lose a large number of delegates from the states he won and would probably have no chance against the other candidates like Blaine, Edmunds, and Sherman.
A little known politician from Ohio named James Garfield rose to oppose the unit-rule, as well as a couple of other slick rule proposals that happened to favor Grant’s candidacy. In leading the fight that successfully stopped the unit-rule proposal, Garfield had no idea that he had planted the seed that would lead to his presidency and early death.
The Chicago Convention was the most boisterous of all time up to that point. The cheering and hissing and demonstrations for men and resolutions were such that one newspaper said they acted “like so many Bedlamites.” (Bedlam at the time was an actual place in London filled with lunatics. When it was closed, the term bedlam joined the dictionary with a small b to mean a place in a condition of lunacy.)
Grant led on the first ballot, with Blaine a close second and Sherman third. All three had strong support but none enough to win. Thirty-three more ballots followed with no change. On the 34th ballot 17 votes showed up for James Garfield. The Ohioan took 50 votes on the 35th ballot and the momentum suddenly went overwhelmingly Jimmy’s way. Garfield protested. He did not come to Chicago to become President of the United States. He only wanted to help out with the Convention, see a Cubs game, and maybe bribe a cop. But it was too late. Blaine and Sherman both hated Grant and would much rather lose to Garfield than continue in a hopeless deadlock against the strong man Ulysses. James and James both threw their support to James Garfield and on the 36th ballot it was all over.
Garfield the half-breed had the nomination but now he had to do something to appease the defeated Stalwarts. He would use the vice presidency as a carrot. First he approached a Stalwart giant, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Roscoe told them what they could do with the Vice Presidency. Grant’s people then turned to Conklin’s pet-dog Stalwart underling Chester Arthur of New York.
Boss Conkling ordered Arthur to reject the Vice Presidency, but Arthur saw his moment. He could live the rest of his life as a party boot licker, or take his chance to advance in life at the risk of incurring the wrath of the sponsor that brought him to the dance. Arthur did not hesitate. He jumped at the chance to be Vice President. Conkling was very mad.
The Half-breeds weren’t very concerned about allowing a Stalwart on the short end of their ticket. James Garfield was in drill-sergeant health and was 49 years old. No one expected to ever see the little known Chester Stalwart Arthur as president.
The Democrats also were saddled with extreme Southern racism, which balanced out the negative Republican well-known propensity for business corruption.
The Republicans campaigned hard with the help of writer, philosopher Robert Ingersoll. Bob was one of the most famous authors of his day. A sample of his cheerful work,
“The idea of right and wrong is born of man's capacity to enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have entered his brain. But for this, the word conscience never would have passed the lips of man.”
Ingersoll had this to say about the Democrats,
“The Democratic Party is a party of famine; it is a good friend of an early frost.”
For the frosty Democrats Sam Tilden, the Al Gore of his time, wanted a chance to win a second time and serve a first. But his health was shaky and his support was too. Tilden withdrew his candidacy just before the Democratic Convention met and no one pleaded with him to reconsider.
The Democrats in the end selected a war hero to lead their charge in 1880. Winfield Hancock had served valiantly in both the Mexican and Civil Wars and was a former Reconstruction governor. Willie English, an Indiana banker was picked as Veep. Hancock was a hero of the battle of Gettysburg where he was seriously wounded and yet insisted on continuing on. Winfield was known for immaculate dress and maculate tongue. He was a prolific swearer and probably let out a few gems the night of his razor thin defeat. After the war, Scott had been a Reconstruction governor.
During the 1880 campaign Hancock blundered when he said that the tariff was a ‘local issue.’ The Dems had worked long and hard to establish themselves as the party choice for those that favored a revenue tariff, - a tariff high enough to produce revenue but not so high as to cripple the volume of imports. By dismissing this as a ‘local issue’, Hancock lost an established block of revenue tariff voters in a very close election. A cartoon spoofed his economic ignorance by showing Hancock asking someone, ‘Who is Tariff, and why is he for revenue only?’
For two reasons the South was obviously going to vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats now that the federal troops were gone. For one the Southern whites would ‘vote as they shot’ and for two were going to forcibly take the black vote away from the Republicans through criminal voting rights violations.
The Republicans made the best of a bad situation by exaggerating the pro-Southern proclivities of Hancock. Winfield’s sweep of the South in 1880 marked the beginning of the ‘Solid South’ factor that would be important in Presidential elections at least until 1956.
The Democrats tried to make the most of the ‘great fraud’ of the previous contest. They also dug up the figure of $329 dollars that Garfield had received in the Credit Mobilier scandal of the Grant years. Garfield claimed it was an above board loan, and not something he had to apologize for. But the Dems did not let up, writing the figure of 329 repeatedly in prominent places for voters to see and ponder.
The Democrats made much of the bad reputation of VP candidate Chester Arthur who had been removed from office as collector of customs in New York under a cloud of borderline misconduct. In California the Democrats resorted in October of 1880 to a counterfeit letter supposed to have been written by Garfield to a Mr. Sean Morey. The “Morey Letter” advocated the mass immigration of cheap Chinese labor into that state and probably cost Garfield the golden state in 1880. Jimmy never said those things.
The Republicans won the 1881 White House by only 9,000 popular votes, but fared better in the Electoral College. The GOP won largely because the economy had recovered from the depression of 1873-1879 just in time for the election.
1880 The Republicans Hang On In a Squeaker
Garfield was officially a ‘minority president.’ That means Garfield did not win more than 50% of the popular vote. Some sources give his win at 9,000 plus, while other sources give a figure of 7 thousand plus. In any case it was less than 10 g’s for G. No figures are available for the vote tally of the Prohibition Party and its candidate ‘Sober Tony’ Dow. Some drunks misplaced them and they were never recovered.
The Republicans fared well in the Congressional elections of 1880 controlling both Houses.
INAUGURAL - MARCH 1881
Garfield was the first President to have his mother attend his Inauguration ceremony. James did not forget his mittens.
Garfield was late for the swearing-in so the Senate Gatekeeper climbed a ladder, pushed the official wall clock back six minutes and in walked Garfield to take the oath of office punctually at Noon.
SUPREME COURT
Garfield made one successful appointment to the Supreme Court in the person of Thomas Stanley Matthews. Thomas had a record of anti-slavery before the Great Civil War. President Rutherford Hayes had first nominated him, but because the two had been classmates at Kenyon College, the President was accused of favoritism and the Senate rejected Matthews. But Garfield nominated Tommy again and this time he passed. Later Matthews would become a US Senator himself, the only high justice ever to enter the Senate after serving on the Supreme Court.
BOOKWORMS – HOLMES/HELEN HUNT JACKSON
Authors were bigger celebrities in Garfield’s time than they are today. There is a scene in a recent movie where comedy actor Jim Carrey is told that a rival is writing a book. “A book?” he decries with disdain. “Excuse me a moment.” Then he pantomimes the act of vomiting twice. Only in today’s society could such a scene be conceived, written, produced, sold, and then bought approvingly by the public.
In Garfield’s time there was no such perception of the craft of writing. What a movie star is today (the ultimate mark of success), an author was in 1881
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote one of the most famous works of this brief Garfield era, called Common Law. This book, published in 1881, was based on lectures he delivered in 1880. Holmes sweet Holmes argues that law is not an ironclad set of rules that society must conform to, but rather the opposite; that law must be flexible and change with the needs of a fluid society.
Common Law was so influential that it helped Holmes obtain a teaching job at Harvard and later a slightly better job as a member of the US Supreme Court.
In other books … If you were a soldier who killed Indians then Helen Hunt was mad about you. Her book A Century of Dishonor, published in 1881, was the first mainstream exposure of the injustice system as it applied to the American Indian. It was republished in 1993 and is reselling like hotcakes. Dee Brown’s got nothing on Helen Hunt. (Dee wrote Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.)
GARFIELD TYPICAL RACIST
Racism was so normal a condition of white Americans that it’s hard to find a single 19th century President whose writings and spoken words can stand the spotlight of presentism. Garfield was opposed to the suggestion of annexation or peaceful unification with Mexico because he felt that the mixture of the races down there had already brought about a poor mixture and added up to ‘a population and a territory that I earnestly hope may never be made an integral part of the United States.’ James would have his Caucasian hands full coping with today’s USA where Spanish is now the second official language.
Garfield for similar reasons did not share Grant and Seward’s desire to annex Cuba. He not only did not want to buy Cuba, he said that he wouldn’t take Cuba if the world approved the action and the USA was paid ten million dollars to take it!
James told a black audience in 1880 that he was not going to do anything to hinder their cause but he wasn’t going to do anything to help it either. He was not going to be their Lord Protector or their “Moses” (as Andrew Johnson had once pledged.) “Permit no man to praise you because you are black,” he told them, “nor wrong you because you are black.”
SHOOTING OF PRESIDENT CREATES SUCCESSION CRISIS
When Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881 after only four months in office it opened up an important controversy about the line of succession in the White House. For 79 days Garfield lingered on in frail condition before dying on September 19. The country held out hope, but the victim knew better. On the day he was shot he told his doctors, “I am a dead man.” Between July 22 and September 19 Garfield was only capable of performing one singular act of Presidential duty. He signed one extradition paper.
The question now arose as to whether or not Vice-President Arthur should assume the duties of president without in fact becoming President, or should he be given the oath of office, thus supplanting the president. Another question had to be addressed. If Arthur were sworn in, would Garfield then be allowed to return to office if he recovered his health, and if so by what legal written authority? The matter came to a formal discussion at a cabinet meeting on Sept 2, 1881 and they came to this conclusion. For now Garfield would continue as president but they would consult with Garfield before making any important decisions (‘squeeze my hand if we should attack, squeeze it twice if we should try diplomacy first.’)
Fortunately there were no actual crucial issues of war and peace in the late summer 1881. The succession issue was still unresolved when Garfield died at his home in Elberon, New Jersey on the 19th.
DEATH OF JAMES GARFIELD
Garfield was assassinated at the Washington D.C. train station in 1881 by a disgruntled job seeker who wanted the unfair Civil Service system reformed. At least that is the standard historical version of the event.
James Garfield was about to embark on a train for Williamstown, Massachusetts where he was to attend the 25th reunion at his old school, Williams College. He never made it. The assassin after firing two bullets into the innocent man reportedly shouted, “Now a Stalwart is President!.” Another account says that he shouted. “I am a Stalwart and now Arthur is president.” By another account, he did not make this Stalwart statement until after his arrest. Another book says that he shouted, “I am a Stalwart. Now Arthur is president of the United States.” What he may have said was “Yaaaahhh you no good snake, take that!” My money says he probably said the Stalwart stuff later while under arrest and the rest is a fable of history. But we will never know.
One of the bullets that struck the President came to a stop lodged against his spine. The docs couldn’t find it. The bullet could not have been removed even if it had been located properly. As it happened doctors put their fingers injudiciously into the wound in search of the bullet. They may have hastened his death through unsanitary operations. It is unlikely however that Garfield would have survived the wound in the best-case treatment. If he had pulled through, James Garfield probably would have been unable to ever walk again. The doctor most to blame was named Doctor Doctor Bliss. His parents had named him “Doctor” at birth.
The famous Alex Bell was involved in the attempt to save Garfield's life.
The Charles Guiteau trial began on November 14, 1881 in the D.C. Supreme Court. It did not last long and the verdict was predictable. Although a lawyer by profession, the shooter was defended by his brother-in-law who pleaded for mercy on the grounds of insanity. The assassin had long been unable to support himself as a lawyer because of his mental deficiencies. A lawyer who can’t support himself can hardly hope to ably defend himself. If Guiteau had been allowed to defend himself he certainly would have had a fool for a client.
The story of Guiteau as a ‘disgruntled office-seeker” is a myth of American History. Guiteau was an ‘office-seeker’, but only in an odd sort of way. He wanted to be appointed Minister to Vienna, a post he had no qualifications for. He certainly did not speak a word of Austrian, nor any other foreign language for that matter. Those who wanted Civil Service reform later cleverly planted the fable that Guiteau shot Garfield in the cause of Civil Service reform. It was not the motive for the deed, but the myth was quickly and widely believed and has been adopted as history.
Guiteau was a writer, too. He had a manuscript, and thought that shooting the President would help get his book published. It has never been published. Charles had once been a member of the Oneida Community of upstate New York, a cult of education and recreation where what was known much later as “free love” was often practiced. But Guiteau was not wanted in the circle of sex swapping and was nicknamed “Charles Git out.”
That Charles Guiteau was mentally unstable as can also be deduced from the fact that he honestly thought that the Stalwart branch of the Republican Party would reward him for his deed and even give him the Foreign Service job he so earnestly desired. It never crossed his crossed mind that going to jail for murder might be problematic for that idea. Chuck ranted and raved throughout his trial. Guiteau tried to say that the doctors treating his wound had caused the death of the President. He just happened to shoot him. Not a bad ruse. He gets the reduced charge of attempted murder, the doc s get charged with 2nd degree negligent homicide, and the shooter gets to live. It was a long shot that didn’t work.
Guiteau was in fact still yelling his side of the story as they put the hood on him at the gallows. A crowd of 200 witnesses had paid money to be seated for the execution of the 40-year-old lunatic.
Guiteau once actually had a personal interview at the White House with the President Garfield regarding a possible job at the French consulate. You never know whom your dealing with in this crazy world. The personal interview must have played some role in his deranged decision making process as he proceeded with the assassination. What a scene that must have been, Garfield chatting it up politely with his visitor, not knowing that he was interviewing the grim reaper himself.
The nation bought the Civil Service assassination story, and as a result the Pendleton Civil Service Act became law. From now on, Civil Service jobs would be awarded on a competitive testing basis and not just as political spoils. So in a sense Charles Guiteau’s act might have been terrorism rewarded.
Garfield assassination, 2 sketches
CONCLUSION
Many arrogant historians are fond of lumping all the presidents from Johnson to Cleveland into the category of weak mediocrities.
Was James A. Garfield a nonentity and a weakling? Lets ask Jim Blaine the man who lost to Garfield at the Republican National Convention after a tough fight. In 1884 he wrote this about JAG,
“ The nomination of General Garfield was unexpected
but it was not unwelcome. It was not an escape from
the clash of positive purposes by a resort to a negative
and feeble expedient. General Garfield was neither an
unknown nor an untried man. For twenty years he had
been prominent in the public service, both civil and
military, and for ten years he had ranked among the
foremost Republican leaders. No statesman of the time
surpassed him in thorough acquaintance with the
principles of free government, in knowledge of the
legislative and administrative history of our own
country and in intelligent grasp of the great questions
still at issue. In eloquence, culture, and resources he
had few peers. His ascendancy in the Convention was
so marked as to turn all eyes towards him. His
conspicuous part in the debates of Congress, his
numerous popular addresses, had made him familiar
to all the people. He represented the liberal and
progressive spirit of Republicanism without being
visionary and impractical, and his nomination was
accepted as placing the party on advanced ground. ”
SOURCES
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
This book is too good for the high school students who had to read it and were only dreaming of the bell to ring and the school year to end. Anyone of any adult age could read this and come away rich and happy.
Cambridge Modern History of the United States, - c)1901 – Collective authorship. Best British historians collaborate on fat US History book. Needless to say, its great.
The Complete Book of US Presidents, by DeGregorio, c) 2004
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt
Bemis won the Pulitzer Prize twice. The first time in 1927 for a book on the Ed Pinckney Treaty, and in 1950 for a book on the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams. That's an impressive gap in time to repeat the feat.
Encyclopedia Britannica, c) 1985 – I paid $1,493 for this encyclopedia in 1985. I'd darned well better use it.
Growth of the American Republic, Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Harvard,) and Henry Commager (Columbia) – c) 1940 – Oxford University Press.
I read the whole thing. 788 pages. There are flashes of excellence, but a lot of snobby and racist work too. What a bad combination that is.
A History of the American People, c) 1970 – by Norman Graebner, Gil Fite, and Phil White. I don't like the design and layout of this heavy hardcover college book.
History of a Free People, by Bragdon and McCutchen -c) 1954 Brag taught at Phillips Exeter and Sam McCutchen at NYU –
These guys know how to turn US history into a daunting and unpleasant task. Some teacher apparently beat them with a cane when they were 15 and got history answers wrong, so these old men pass that standard onto their students. Every child is asked (ordered) to write a full fledged legitimate history book as homework. I am not kidding you. If you completed all the assignments and if the work were any good at all you could hire an editor and shape it up into a legitimate book. Thats how cruel this book is. And of course the student did not ask to be forced to go to school for 12 years in the first place.
A History of the United States to 1865, by T. Harry Williams of LSU, Richard Current of the University of Wisconsin, and Frank Freidel of Harvard - c) 1965 Knopf
These guys are the Willie Mays Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams of the American historian ballclub.
Freidel died in 1996 at the age of 76. Of course the political chapters are great and the chapters on social trends, art, education, philosophy and economics are not.
Life of James A. Garfield, c)1901
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams – c) 1933 Scribner
General US history for general reader. Smooth writer who sold a lot of books in his time.
I think it's wrong to want to harm anyone or to gloat over harm that comes to anyone, but if I saw James T. Adams fall down a flight of stairs I'd stare at it like nothing had happened and I wouldn't come over to see if he was all right. He is a wicked man.
The National Experience, Part Two: A History of the United States Since 1865,- by John M. Blum, Edmund S. Morgan, Willie Lee Rose, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Kenneth M. Stampp, and C. Vann Woodward –c) 1981 (1st edition was put out in 1963)
Stampp wrote the book on Reconstruction, with all due respect to Foner.
New American History, by Hart, c) 1934 – It was ‘new’ in 34. Great work.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This 40 pound textbook is a good example of PC outrageous liberal pseudo-history.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morrison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
Morison seems bitter whenever a Dem loses an election. he writes of the loser of 1880 Hancock that he “ran a lame and lazy campaign.”
Presidential Elections, by Gino Hogenboon
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty – c) 1977 (Fourth revised and abridged from original work from 1966) – Harper & Row.
Garraty got his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College. I didn't even know there was a Brooklyn College. He often ran the New York Marathon, and he lived to be 87.
I have some issues with Johnny, but he writes well. He doesn't believe in adverbs. “Get rid of the adverbs,” he tells his Columbia students, “and your writing will improve.” I barely know what he's even talking about. I'm a drummer who can't read music. I can't diagram a sentence to save my life and cannot tell you what a preposition is, but I remember the bad old days when I was supposed to learn that.
Twenty Years of Congress, 1861-1881, Volume II, by James G. Blaine,
c) 1884 – This book is easy to read but my copy is not. It is an original edition; the paper is strong and not deteriorating; however it does smell like an old car engine in a most unpleasant way, so my reading sessions are generally limited to about ten minutes.
Blaine is surely taking a subtle swipe at Horace Greeley when he mentions that Garfield was not overly “visionary and impractical.” In other words, not like some folks we could mention.
The United States, The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, William Miller co-author of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College - c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
Aaron helped to pioneer the course concept of “American studies” back in the 1930's at Harvard.
The Youth’s History of the United States c)1881 – For the first sketch of the Garfield shooting. But don’t let the title fool ya. This book for high school freshman in 1881 has the quality of a college history book today. History was big back then. Even chumps knew their stuff. Now even experts don’t.
VIDEO
The American President’s Series, C-Span TV, Professor Allan Peskin, author of Garfield, c) 2005
– I’ve copied the audio of this extensive TV program and play in on long drives.
Death at Union Station - This 1973 movie about the assassination of Garfield stars John Vernon as the President, and Burt Lancaster as Guiteau.
Candice Millard came out with a new book on Garfield in 2011 and I don't own it, but I did listen to her lecture at the National Book Festival on the Washington Mall, and it was extremely enlightening (on TV – I didn't go there.)
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