Why was James Garfield assassinated? A historian reveals the real story behind Netflix’s ‘Death by Lightning’
The real history behind James Garfield’s murder is as much about the corrupt political system he railed against –– and how his death ultimately shattered it.
President James Garfield’s life is defined by the man who ended it. Charles Guiteau, Garfield’s assassin, has been historically characterized as a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. However, it’s another label that helps explain why he shot the president: office seeker.
Netflix’s new miniseries, “Death by Lightning,” charts the twin paths of Garfield and Guiteau and the moment they collided in fatal fashion. However, to really understand why Guiteau shot the president, and why Garfield’s legacy remains vital yet so under the radar, is to peel back the layers of 19th-century America’s corrupt political culture.
While Guiteau pulled the trigger, it was the anti-merit-based “spoils system” that put bureaucrats in office and put the gun in Guiteau’s hand. It also secured Garfield’s place in history, overshadowed as it is, as the man who championed civil service, up until his final moment, according to Ted Miller, a teaching professor of history at Northeastern University.
“He’s like a 19th-century JFK,” Miller said. “You can’t call him a great president because he doesn’t have enough time, but he is a martyr for civil service, much like JFK was the martyr for civil rights.”
The federal bureaucracy of the 19th century was defined by the spoils system. Members of the winning political party would recommend their supporters to the president for appointments to federal agencies, even if they had no qualifications. The expectation was that those federal workers would then all but work for their political patron, according to Alan Gephardt of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site. About 5% of each federal employee’s salary was even “assessed” to fund campaigns.
By the mid-19th century, there was an active movement among some politicians to end the spoils system and institute more robust rules around civil service.
For politicians, the spoils system created a situation where they were constantly beset with requests from hopeful and often ingratiating office seekers, like Guiteau.
“To the victors go the spoils, they say, but really it’s a problem for office seekers because they have to make promises that they don’t really want to keep and it forces office holders to make deals that they don’t want to,” Miller said.
Enter Garfield and Guiteau.
Garfield was a successful educator and Union commander during the Civil War. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1862, representing his home state of Ohio. President Abraham Lincoln had encouraged him to step down from military command, according to presidential biographers Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Garfield won reelection for 18 years before he became the first sitting member of Congress to become president.
Guiteau’s life was the flip side of the coin. Guiteau’s mother died when he was only 7 years old, leaving him with an abusive father. He tried to become a lawyer and then a theologian, but failed at both.
After Garfield became the dark horse Republican presidential nominee in 1880, Guiteau saw his best shot at fame and fortune. He worked his way into Republican political circles and eventually received permission from vice presidential nominee Chester Arthur to give a speech at a Republican rally.
When Garfield beat Democrat Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock in November 1880, Guiteau figured the least the president could do was make him consul to Paris, despite his lack of diplomatic experience. He made repeated attempts to get Garfield’s ear but was shut out by Garfield and his staff.
In time, Guiteau came to believe that killing Garfield was the only way to save the Republican Party, and that it was, in fact, what God wanted, according to Gephardt. On July 2, 1881, he followed through with his divine mission and shot the president in a Washington railroad station.
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Garfield died from his gunshot wound 80 days later on Sept. 19, 1881. As author Candice Millard recounted in “Garfield, Destiny of the Republic,” Garfield reportedly asked a close friend on his deathbed, “Do you think my name will have a place in human history?”
Two years later, Chester Arthur, Garfield’s vice president and then president, ultimately signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 that established a merit-based system of employment in the federal government.
“It’s Garfield’s death that really brings about this change,” Miller said. “It basically says that you can’t be removed from the office. You’re not subject to the president. You’re subject to the bureaucracy.”
For Miller, Garfield’s presidency still looms large as a testament to what civil service can and should be in American government and American life. The gradual damage done to protecting civil service in the U.S. has only opened the door to a new kind of spoils system, he said.
“This has been going on really since the [19]80s when they were chipping away at the civil service, and consequently, politicians have moved toward the corporations instead of seeking out their supporters in the office seekers,” Miller said. “We have to safeguard against any restrictions on the civil service going forward and even strengthen it.”
