President James Garfield was shot 140 years ago today.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

President James Garfield was shot 140 years ago tomorrow (died two months later), Washington DC: #LOC

Link to tweet

[FSogol]

1. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by

Candice Millard.

Great book on the subject.

James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.

[Freddie]

5. Just downloaded this to my kindle

Thanks for the recommendation!

[Sympthsical]

13. Second this

It's a fantastic book. I've read it twice. Millard's prose and how she constructs events is wonderful.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Trivia:

Abraham Lincoln's eldest son, Robert, witnessed the assassination.

Garfield died indirectly b/c of the gunshot. What killed him was the gangrene that set in as a result of surgeons with limited medical/surgical knowledge and experience.

[bullwinkle428]

3. Robert Todd Lincoln was also present at the Pan-American Expo in

Buffalo, NY, when McKinley was assassinated in 1901. Lincoln did not actually witness that shooting, but was just outside the building when it happened.

[lagomorph777]

6. OMG - no wonder he never ran for President.

Sorry, terrible taste but I couldn't resist.

[Freddie]

4. My great-grandfather was born around this time

Was named James Garfield M____.

[marble falls]

7. My condolences to the fambly. I heard it was antifa special forces.

[Boomerproud]

8. His Secretary of War, Robert Lincoln was in the train lobby

when the shooting happened. Garfield could also write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other simultaneously.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. President Garfield Was Shot On The National Mall. The Site Only Just Got A Plaque.

I think I posted this at DU at the time. I'll look later.

LOCAL NEWS | NOV 20, 2018

Mikaela Lefrak https://twitter.com/mikafrak

President Garfield Was Shot On The National Mall. The Site Only Just Got A Plaque.



From left: James A. Garfield, III, the National Park Service’s Paul Ollig and Todd Arrington, and Tom Garfield unveil the new wayside signs.

National Park Service

President James A. Garfield was the only one of the four assassinated U.S. presidents without a marker at the site he was shot.

That changed on Monday, when the National Park Service unveiled two new interpretive signs near the National Gallery of Art. The first explains Garfield’s life, and the second focuses on his untimely death in Washington.



The 49-year-old President had only been in office four months when he decided to take a trip to New England to escape the swampy summer heat. Right after he arrived at the Baltimore and Potomac rail station on July 2, 1881 to catch his train, an unstable attorney named Charles Guiteau shot him with an ivory-handled pistol.

Garfield developed a terrible infection and died Sept. 19.

The Baltimore and Potomac rail station is, of course, no longer there. The building and tracks were demolished in 1908 during a redesign of the National Mall, and the National Gallery of Art’s West Building now stands in its place. The changes to the urban landscape complicated the process of building a proper memorial.

{snip}

[Beatlelvr]

10. His widow Lucretia moved out west

She had a big house commissioned by architects Greene and Greene of Pasadena, Ca which still stands. She died here in the 20's. Many streets in this area are named after her.

By all accounts, Pres Garfield sounds like a decent fellow.

[Dial H For Hero]

11. His assassin gets a song in Stephen Sondheim's musical "Assassins".

[Polybius]

12. A damn shame that 90% of the people can only name Lincoln and Kennedy as assassinated Presidents

Garfield and McKinley get no love.