Recently, I read Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic, the long, strange tale of how James Garfield, who reluctantly went to the 1880 Republican National Convention, gave a speech, and accidentally got himself nominated for president. Meanwhile, a professional deadbeat named Charles Guiteau ingratiated himself with the Republican Party in New York in an effort to secure himself a consul position, "preferably Paris." Garfield won the election. Guiteau, believing it was all his doing, kept showing up at the White House for his reward. After all, he believed he had secured the White House for Garfield. Nobody from Garfield rival Samuel Conkling to Secretary of State James G. Blaine to Vice President Chester Arthur seemed to recall that happening.
Guiteau was a strange man in a very strange time. Republicans were fractured three ways between Secretary of State John Sherman (younger brother of war hero General William Sherman), James G. Blaine, and former president Ulysses Grant. Sherman turned to Ohio Congressman James Garfield to make his nomination speech. And had Sherman not asked him, he'd have stayed home on his farm in Mentor, Ohio. By the time it was over, he clinched the nomination despite pleading with the convention not to do this.
_Crop_Edit.png) |
| Charles Guiteau |
Meanwhile, Charles Giteau made plans. He wanted the consul position in Paris. After all, it was his speech that got Garfield elected. (In reality, twisting Roscoe Conkling's arm got Garfield elected. That was more Blaine and John Sherman than anything else.) Once Garfield was ensconced in the White House, all Guiteau had to do was show up at the White House to collect the spoils.
Only...
Until McKinley was assassinated, presidents did not have Secret Service protection. And the White House was not as locked down as it is now. Ulysses Grant often sat in a hotel lobby for some quiet time. Once, while walking back to the White House, a pedestrian fell in step with him and struck up a conversation. The stranger mentioned he did not think much of President Grant. Grant agreed and said he never that much of him, either. This was the world in which Garfield became president. On the downside of this, anyone could drop by the White House and ask to see the president. Guiteau felt this would get him the office he sought.
Only Garfield implemented some controls over the system, limiting hours and having his personal secretary act as gatekeeper. Frustrated, Guiteau felt God's will was being thwarted. Then it occurred to him that maybe God wanted him to kill the president.
So he found himself at a train station as Garfield prepared to leave town, briefing Blaine and War Secretary Robert Todd Lincoln as he made his way toward the train. Giteau shot him in the back.
Here's where Guiteau differs from other presidential assassins and would-be presidential assassins John Wilkes Booth clearly killed Lincoln. Leon Czolgosz put a gun in McKinley's belly. Conspiracy theories aside, Oswald sat in that book depository. And John Hinkley? He'd just like to forget shooting Reagan. But if any of them denied shooting the president, they would say they it was someone else. Guiteau? He said he didn't kill Garfield. His doctors did. He was right, but he pulled the trigger. However, if Reagan had been shot in 1881, he'd have been a goner. The technology needed to save him was either too new or not invented yet. Garfield in 1981 would have been back to work in a couple of days. Not the least reason that doctors in the 1980s took germ theory as a given. The problem was Dr. DW Bliss appointed himself Garfield's doctor and rolled over other physicians, one because he was Black (despite having a far better reputation and track record) and another because she was a woman. Bliss insisted on sticking his finger in Garfield's wound, compounding the infection. Garfield did not die of a bullet wound. He died of sepsis. (I've had sepsis. Not fun.)
So no, James Garfield need not have died for Charles Giteau's sins. One quack doctor the a massive ego and an inability to try anything new (He even flubbed Alexander Graham Bell's new metal detector by limiting him to the wrong side of the body.) killed the president. Bliss's reputation and practice never recovered. Flash forward 20 years. William McKinley might have lived, but the technology was bleeding edge. Would the X-Ray machine hurt him? (Having had several, I can say no from personal experience) How would electric lights interact with the ether of the operating theater? So things we now take for granted had too many question marks. Harding would die of natural causes. Kennedy would die by a Marine marksman's bullet (all conspiracy theories aside.) Reagan benefitted from modern medicine and a near hermetic bubble presidents have traveled in since JFK died. And the shooters? Booth actually had a plan going in, and more importantly, a day job. He was the only "smart assassin" among presidential killers, and I include John Hinkley's failed attempt. On any other day, Charles Giteau, Leon Csolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald, and John Hinkley would be hitting you up for change on a street corner. They just blundered through the net.
And Booth might have been tactically smart, planning a decapitation strike on the government at a time when security was a polite suggestion. From a strategic point of view, he managed to commit treason against both the United States and the Confederacy before getting shot in Mudd's barn. Good job, Johnny. How'd that work out for you? Oh. Right. The Army shot him when they found him. His co-conspirators were hung, and Andrew Johnson flailed his way through four years, becoming the first president to get impeached. How'd that help the South again, since they'd already lost the war?
