Assassination of James A. Garfield
Assassination of James A. Garfield | |
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First degree murder
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Sentence | Death by hanging |
James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., at 9:30 am on Saturday, July 2, 1881. He died in Elberon, New Jersey, 79 days later on September 19, 1881. The shooting occurred less than four months into his term as president. Charles J. Guiteau was convicted of Garfield's murder and executed by hanging one year after the shooting.
Assassination
Background
Guiteau had turned to politics after failing in several ventures, including theology, a law practice, bill collecting, and spending time in the utopian Oneida Community.[3] Former President Ulysses S. Grant was the early front runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1880 and was supported by the Stalwart faction.[4] Guiteau became a Stalwart and a Grant supporter, and authored a speech, "Grant against Hancock".[5]
When Grant lost the nomination to
Guiteau arrived in Washington, D.C., on March 5, 1881, the day after Garfield's inauguration, still believing that he would be rewarded.[12] He obtained entrance to the White House and saw the President on March 8, 1881, dropping off a copy of his speech as a reminder of the campaign work which he had done on Garfield's behalf.[13] Guiteau spent the next two months roaming around Washington, staying at rooming houses and sneaking away without paying for his meals and lodging.[14] He passed his days loitering in hotel lobbies to read old newspapers and using hotel stationery to write letters to those who he thought could help him obtain an appointment from Garfield.[15] In addition, he spent time shuffling back and forth between the State Department and the White House and approaching various Cabinet members and prominent Republicans to press his claim, all without success.[9] Guiteau was destitute and increasingly slovenly because he was wearing the same clothes every day,[16] and would walk through the cold, snowy city without overcoat, hat, gloves, or boots.[17] On May 13, 1881, he was banned from the White House waiting room. The following day, he encountered Secretary of State James G. Blaine, who told him, "Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live."[18]
Guiteau's family had judged him to be insane in 1875 and attempted to have him committed, but he had escaped.[19] Now his mania took a violent turn, and he decided that he had been commanded by a higher power to kill the President. He later stated, "I leave my justification to God."[20]
Guiteau borrowed $15 (equivalent to $470 in 2023) from George Maynard, a relative by marriage, then went out to purchase a
Guiteau continued to prepare carefully; he wrote a letter to William Tecumseh Sherman, the Commanding General of the Army, asking for protection from the mob that he assumed would gather after he killed the President,[31][32] and he wrote other letters justifying his action as necessary to heal dissension between the factions of the Republican Party.[33] He went to the District of Columbia jail to ask for a tour of the facility where he expected to be incarcerated, but he was told to come back later.[34] He spent the whole month of June following Garfield around Washington. On one occasion, Guiteau trailed Garfield to the railway station as he was seeing his wife, Lucretia Garfield, off to a beach resort in Long Branch, New Jersey; he decided not to shoot the President then, as Lucretia was known to be in poor health and he did not want to upset her.[35][36]
Shooting
Garfield was scheduled to leave Washington on July 2, 1881, for his summer vacation, which was reported in the Washington newspapers,
As Garfield entered the station's waiting room, Guiteau stepped forward and shot the president at point-blank range from behind. Garfield cried out, "My God, what is that?", flinging up his arms. Guiteau fired again, and Garfield collapsed.[39] The first bullet grazed the President's shoulder, and the other struck him in the back, passing the first lumbar vertebra but missing the spinal cord before coming to rest behind his pancreas.[40] Guiteau put his gun back in his pocket and turned to leave via a cab that he had waiting for him outside the station, but he collided with policeman Patrick Kearney, who was entering the station after hearing the gunfire.
Kearney apprehended Guiteau and was so excited at having arrested the man who had shot the president that he neglected to take the gun from him until after they arrived at the police station.[41] Kearney demanded, "In God's name, man, what did you shoot the President for?" Guiteau responded, "I am a Stalwart, and want Arthur for President." The rapidly gathering crowd screamed, "Lynch him", but Kearney and several other police officers took the assassin to the police station a few blocks away.[39] As he surrendered to authorities, Guiteau uttered the exulting words, repeated everywhere: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it, and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now!"[42] This statement briefly led to unfounded suspicions that either Vice President Chester A. Arthur or his supporters had put Guiteau up to the crime.[43]
The Stalwarts were a Republican faction loyal to
Treatment and death
Garfield was carried to an upstairs floor of the railway station, conscious but in shock.[46] One bullet remained lodged in his body, but doctors could not find it.[47] Robert Lincoln was deeply upset, thinking back to the assassination of his father, Abraham Lincoln, 16 years earlier; he said, "How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town."[47]
Garfield was carried back to the White House, and doctors told him that he would not survive the night; nevertheless, he remained conscious and alert.[48] The next morning, his vital signs were good and doctors began to hope for recovery.[49] A long vigil began, and Garfield's doctors issued regular bulletins that the American public followed closely throughout the summer of 1881.[50][51] Garfield's condition fluctuated; fevers came and went, he struggled to keep down solid food, and he spent most of the summer eating only liquids.[52]
Navy engineers rigged up an air cooler to relieve Garfield from the heat of a Washington summer. Fans blew air over a large box of ice and into the President's sickroom, and the device worked well enough to lower the temperature 20 degrees (Fahrenheit).[53] Doctors continued to probe Garfield's wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments, attempting to find the bullet,[54] and Alexander Graham Bell devised a metal detector specifically to find it. He was unsuccessful, partly because Garfield's metal bedframe made the instrument malfunction, and partly because self-appointed chief physician Doctor Willard Bliss allowed Bell to use the device only on Garfield's right side, where Bliss insisted the bullet had lodged.[55] Bell's subsequent tests indicated his metal detector was in good working order and that he would have found the bullet had he been allowed to use the device on Garfield's left side.[56]
On July 29, Garfield met with his Cabinet for the only time during his illness; the members were under strict instruction from the doctors not to discuss anything upsetting.[57] Garfield became increasingly ill over a period of several weeks due to infection, which caused his heart to weaken. He remained bedridden in the White House with fevers and extreme pains. His weight dropped from 210 pounds (95 kilograms) to 130 pounds (58 kilograms) as his inability to keep down and digest food took its toll.[58] Nutrient enemas were given in an attempt to extend his life because he could not digest food.[59] Sepsis and infection set in, and the President suffered from hallucinations for a time.[60] Pus-filled abscesses spread all over his body as the infections raged.[61]
Garfield's condition worsened under the oppressive summer weather in Washington.
Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors been more capable.[65][66] However, most American doctors of the day did not believe in anti-sepsis measures or the need for cleanliness to prevent infection.[67] Several inserted their unwashed fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Also, Bliss had supplanted Garfield's physician Jedediah Hyde Baxter. Bliss and the other doctors who attended Garfield had guessed wrong about the path of the bullet in his body; they had probed rightward into his back instead of leftward, missing the location of the bullet but creating a new channel which filled with pus. The autopsy discovered this error and revealed pneumonia in both lungs and a body that was filled with pus due to uncontrolled sepsis.[68] The conventional narrative regarding Garfield's post-shooting medical condition was challenged by Theodore Pappas and Shahrzad Joharifard in a 2013 article in The American Journal of Surgery, in which they argued that the President died from a late rupture of a splenic artery pseudoaneurysm, which developed secondary to the path of the bullet adjacent to the splenic artery. They also argued that his sepsis was actually caused by post-traumatic acute acalculous cholecystitis (inflammation of the gallbladder). Based on the autopsy report, the authors speculate that Garfield's gallbladder subsequently ruptured, leading to the development of a large bile-containing abscess adjacent to the gallbladder. Pappas and Joharifard say this caused the septic decline in Garfield's condition that was visible starting from July 23, 1881.[69]
Vice President Arthur was at his home in New York City when word came the night of September 19 that Garfield had died. He said, "I hope—my God, I do hope it is a mistake", but confirmation by
Garfield's body was taken to Washington, where it
Trial and execution
Guiteau went on trial in November,
Guiteau's trial was one of the first high-profile cases in the United States where the insanity defense was considered.[77] Guiteau vehemently insisted that he had been legally insane at the time of the shooting, but he was not really medically insane, which caused a major rift with his defense lawyers, and which probably contributed to the jury's impression that Guiteau was merely trying to deny responsibility.
Guiteau was actively making plans to start a lecture tour after his release and to run for president himself in 1884; at the same time, he delighted in the media circus surrounding his trial. Guiteau was dismayed when the jury was unconvinced of his divine inspiration, convicting him of Garfield's murder on January 25, 1882, and sentencing him to death.[78] He appealed, but his appeal was rejected, and he was hanged on June 30, 1882, just two days before the first anniversary of the shooting, in the District of Columbia. Guiteau famously danced his way up to the gallows and waved at the audience, shook hands with his executioner, and, as a last request, recited a poem that he had written called "I am Going to the Lordy".[79] He requested an orchestra to play as he sang the poem; it was denied. As per request with the executioner, Guiteau signaled that he was ready to die by dropping the paper.
Aftermath
Part of Guiteau's preserved brain is on display at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.[80] Guiteau's bones and more of his brain, along with Garfield's backbone and a few ribs, are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine,[81] at the Army's Forest Glen Annex in Silver Spring, Maryland. Garfield's assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883. Garfield himself had called for civil service reform in his inaugural address[82] and supported it as president in the belief that it would make government more efficient.[83] It was passed as something of a memorial to the fallen President.[84] Arthur, himself in poor health by 1884, did not actively seek the Republican nomination which went to James G. Blaine, whom Arthur had retained as his Secretary of State. Blaine went on to lose a close election to Democrat Grover Cleveland.
The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station was later demolished. The site is now occupied by the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. The National Park Service in 2018 placed permanent wayside signs to mark the spot of the assassination and to honor Garfield.[85][86] A few blocks away the James A. Garfield Monument stands on the southwest corner of the U.S. Capitol grounds.
The question of Presidential disability was not addressed.
Congress did not deal with the problem of what to do if a president were alive but incapacitated as Garfield was, nor did the Congress take up the question thirty-eight years later, when Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that put him in a coma for days and left him partially paralyzed and blind in one eye for the last year and a half of his presidency. The Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967 and provides an official procedure when the incapacity of a president is recognized.
Lincoln's assassination had taken place roughly sixteen years before during the closing stages of the Civil War. On the other hand, Garfield's term was marked (for the most part) by peacetime, and a general complacency with respect to presidential security had developed by this time. Garfield, like many other presidents, often preferred to interact directly with the public, and although some form of security was almost certainly in place, a comprehensive security detail had not been seriously considered by either Congress or the president up to that point. Remarkably, it would not be until the
Notes
See also
- Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
- Assassination of William McKinley
- Assassination of John F. Kennedy
- Garfield Tea House
- List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots
- List of incidents of political violence in Washington, D.C.
- Assassination Vacation (2005 book)
References
- ^ Cheney, Lynne Vincent. "Mrs. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper" Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. American Heritage Magazine. October 1975. Volume 26, Issue 6. URL retrieved on January 24, 2007.
- ^ "The attack on the President's life". Library of Congress. URL retrieved on January 24, 2007.
- ^ Addams (2009), pp. 26–27
- ^ Faber & Faber (2012), pp. 133
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 57
- ^ Wang (1997), pp. 184–186
- ^ Feldman (2005), p. 86
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 587
- ^ a b Millard (2011), pp. 106–107
- ^ Peskin (1978), pp. 588–589
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 588
- ^ Oliver & Marion (2010), p. 41
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 589
- ^ Oliver & Marion (2010), p. 42
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 127
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 106
- ^ Resnick (2015)
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 590
- ^ Millard (2011), pp. 80–82
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 170
- ^ a b "Trial Transcript: Cross-Examination of Charles Guiteau". Law2.umkc.edu. Retrieved May 25, 2013.
- ^ Alexander (1882), pp. 107–108
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- ^ June (1999), p. 24
- ^ Elman (1968), pp. 166, 171
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 165
- OCLC 1588445.
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 168
- ^ Taylor (2007), pp. 77–78
- ^ Kittler (1965), p. 114
- ^ Vowell (2005), pp. 164–165
- ^ Original letter Archived 2008-02-07 at the Wayback Machine in Georgetown Univ. collection
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 592
- ^ "A Great Nation in Grief" The New York Times, 3 July 1881.
- ^ a b Peskin (1978), p. 593
- ^ a b Vowell (2005), p. 160
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 581
- ^ Conwell (1881), p. 349
- ^ a b Peskin (1978), p. 596
- ^ Millard (2011), pp. 189, 312
- ^ "Garfield II: A Lengthy Demise". History House. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2015.
- ^ New York Herald, July 3, 1881
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 230
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 47
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 178
- ^ Peskin (1978), pp. 596–597
- ^ a b Peskin (1978), p. 597
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 598
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 599
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 600
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 124
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 601
- ^ Peskin (1978), pp. 601–602
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 194
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 602
- ^ Millard (2011)
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 603
- ^ a b Peskin (1978), p. 604
- ^ Bliss, D. W. "Feeding Per Rectum: As Illustrated in the Case of the Late President Garfield and Others". Washington: N.p., n.d. Rpt. from the Medical Record, July 15, 1882.
- ^ a b Peskin (1978), p. 605
- ^ Millard (2011), pp. 289–291
- ^ "The Death Of President Garfield, 1881". www.eyewitnesstohistory.com. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 313
- ^ Swaney, Homer H. (1881). Lives of James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Washington, DC: Rufus H. Darby, Printer and Publisher. p. 95.
- ^ A President Felled by an Assassin and 1880s Medical Care The New York Times, July 25, 2006.
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 208
- ^ Millard (2011), pp. 25–26
- ^ Millard (2011), pp. 312–313
- PMID 23827513. Retrieved February 16, 2021.
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 608
- ^ Peskin (1978), pp. 608–609
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 321
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 173
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 136
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 250
- ^ Millard (2011), p. 322
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 175
- ^ "Guiteau Found Guilty," New York Times. January 26, 1882, p. 1
- ^ "Last Words of Assassin Charles Guiteau". University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law. Archived from the original on 13 December 2007. Retrieved 15 December 2007.
- ^ Siera, J.J. "Come see Dead People at the Mutter Museum[permanent dead link]". Venue Magazine. Rowan University. Issue 41. Volume 2. URL retrieved February 19, 2007.
- ^ Carlson, Peter. "Rest in Pieces". The Washington Post. January 24, 2006. p. C1.
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 540
- ^ Peskin (1978), pp. 551–553
- ^ Peskin (1978), p. 610
- ^ @NationalMallNPS (July 2, 2021). "The waysides are permanent. Guiteau's revolver was a .442 caliber British Bulldog revolver with ivory grips. After he bought it, Guiteau remarked that it would look good in a museum. It was once part of the Smithsonian collection, but is now lost" (Tweet). Retrieved July 10, 2021 – via Twitter.
- ^ Daley, Jason (November 19, 2018). "Why Doesn't Garfield Assassination Site on the National Mall Have a Marker?". Smithsonian. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
- ^ Vowell (2005), p. 171
- ISBN 0-312-08257-6.
The first congressional session after the assassination of McKinley gave more attention to legislation concerning attacks on the President than had any previous Congress but did not pass any measures for the protection of the President. Nevertheless, in 1902 the Secret Service, which was then the only Federal general investigative agency of any consequence, assumed full-time responsibility for the safety of the President.
Cited works
- ISBN 978-0-252-03349-0.
- Alexander, H. H. (1882). The Life of Guiteau and the Official History of the Most Exciting Case on Record: Being the Trial of Guiteau for Assassinating Pres. Garfield. Philadelphia, PA: National Publishing Company.
- Conwell, Russell H. (1881). The Life, Speeches, and Public Services of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States: Including an Account of his Assassination, Lingering Pain, Death and Burial. Portland, ME: George Stinson. OCLC 2087548.
- Elman, Robert (1968). Fired in Anger: The Personal Handguns of American Heroes and Villains. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Company.
- Faber, Charles F.; Faber, Richard B. (2012). The American Presidents Ranked by Performance, 1789–2012. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-6601-6.
- Feldman, Ruth Tenzer (2005). James Garfield. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company. ISBN 978-0-8225-1398-8.
- June, Dale L. (1999). Introduction to Executive Protection. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-8493-8128-7.
- Kittler, Glenn D. (1965). Hail to the Chief!: The Inauguration Days of our Presidents. Philadelphia, PA: Chilton Books.
- ISBN 978-0-385-53500-7.
- Oliver, Willard M.; Marion, Nancy E. (2010). Killing the President: Assassinations, Attempts, and Rumored Attempts on U.S Commander-in-Chief. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-313-36474-7.
- Peskin, Allan (1978). Garfield: A Biography. Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-210-2.
- Resnick, Brian (October 4, 2015). "This Is the Brain that Shot President James Garfield". The Atlantic. Washington, DC: Emerson Collective.
- Taylor, Troy (2007). Wicked Washington: Mysteries, Murder & Mayhem in America's Capital. Charleston, SC: The History Press. ISBN 978-1-59629-302-1.
- ISBN 0-7432-6003-1.
- Wang, Xi (1997). The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860–1910. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-4206-1.
Further reading
- JSTOR 25101018.
External links
- History House's account of Guiteau's life and the assassination of Garfield, part 1, 2 and 3.
- James A. Garfield On Prospect of Being Assassinated: Original Letters and Manuscripts Archived January 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine Shapell Manuscript Foundation
- New York Times article reprinting indictment
- New York Times article on shooting at time of shooting
- Garfield's murder and Guiteau's trial at the Crime Library
- Charles Guiteau Trial homepage at the University of Missouri–Kansas City
- Charles J. Guiteau collection at Georgetown University
- "American Experience | Insanity on Trial". PBS. Archived from the original on February 22, 2017. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- "The Attempt on the President's Life", a September 1881 article about the shooting, printed in The Atlantic