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James A. Garfield: James Garfield
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Destined for the Presidency, James A. Garfield enjoyed an 18-year career in Congress. He hungered to be Ways and Means chairman, but to his dismay the post repeatedly went to others. In 1871, the Speaker of the House bypassed Garfield and named Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts.
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On July 2nd, after breakfast with James S. Blaine, the two men went to the Baltimore & Potomac train station for Garfield to catch a train. They were heading to a big convention. Suddenly, someone fired a gun. James A. Garfield had been shot. The shot killed him. The assassin was Charles J. Guiteau who was a crazed lawyer (are there any other kind?).
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James Garfield "rode" his performance during the Battle of Chickamauga to the White House, literally. As a brigadier general and William S. Rosecrans Chief-of-Staff, Garfield accompanied Rosecrans to the relative safety of McFarland Gap, between Chickamauga and Rossville. He then rode 6 miles back to Snodgrass Hill to rejoin the line hastily formed by General George Thomas, where he appraised the situation, acting as Rosecrans eyes and ears.
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For the next decade religion and academic life occupied Garfield. He attended a seminary, taught in district schools, and from 1851 to 1854 studied and taught at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, now Hiram College. Through these years Garfield was an introspective person with narrow views and a small circle of friends. Deeply religious, he zealously embraced and preached the doctrines of the Disciples of Christ. From the Eclectic, a Disciple school, he entered Williams College. He graduated with honors in 1856.
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Garfield was capable of neatly straddling a volatile issue. He was never so strong on the high-tariff issue as were most of his Republican colleagues and, as late as his presidential campaign of 1880, he remained publicly equivocal on the issue of Federal patronage. The Federal jobs at the disposal of the party in power were the life-blood of politics during the "gilded age." One wing of the Republican party - the "stalwarts" - called for no dalliance on the question, claiming the jobs as the just due of those who worked to put the party in power. Another wing of reformers, the "doctrinaires," felt that the quality of government would be improved if Federal jobs were assigned on the basis of merit. Garfield attempted to placate both sides.
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This is the first single volume to focus on the presidencies of both James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. Drawing from a host of studies on the foreign and domestic policies of the nation during the Gilded Age, as well as from his own primary research, the author presents a somewhat revisionist look at Garfield and Arthur--revisionist in that he gives the reader a renewed appreciation of both men. Far from being cynical spoilsmen or naive incompetents, individuals whose presidencies provide studies in ineptitude, Garfield and Arthur emerge as men of considerable ability. While making no claims of greatness, Doenecke maintains that each was a significant transitional figure, playing a crucial role as the institution of the presidency moved from the weak leadership of Andrew Johnson to the forceful direction of Theodore Roosevelt.
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