Quote of the day:

Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning, and it is best not to worry about either.
—James Garfield

A few days ago CJ mentioned Death By Lightning, so I started watching it. Thanks, CJ!

It’s a four part Netflix series that was produced by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the guys who brought us Game of Thrones, but this time they’re dealing with actual history rather than a fantasy world.

The series revolves around James A. Garfield, who became the 20th President of the United States, and Charles J. Guiteau, the man who shot him, which eventually led to Garfield’s death due to the arrogance and incompetence of the doctors who were treating him.

As I began watching the show, I realized I had read a book about these events a few years ago, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. And damn if this show isn’t based on that book!

I could have sworn that I wrote about that book back when I read it, but I can’t find a blog post, so it must have been on Facebook, I guess.

In any case both the book and the TV series are excellent and I recommend each of them.

How do the two compare?

Well, obviously the book has more details, especially regarding the backstories of the various persons, and the TV show takes certain dramatic liberties here and there.

For example, the book makes clear that James Garfield was one of the best speakers in the Republican Party, and there was already much interest in selecting him as the Republican candidate going into the convention. The reason John Sherman asked Garfield to nominate him was to dampen that interest. The TV series doesn’t mention that at all and makes it seem as if Garfield’s nomination comes completely out of the blue simply because of his nominating speech.

Also, John Sherman was not present at the convention but followed events from his Treasury office via telegraph, and when it became clear that Garfield was going to secure the nomination, he sent a telegram to the Ohio delegation to make their votes unanimous for Garfield. In the TV series he’s at the convention and confronts Garfield angrily. Why the change? I suspect this was to dramatize that Sherman was never really reconciled to Garfield’s nomination, however he might publicly try to put on a game face.

Here is how Candice Millard describes the scene where Ulysses Grant’s name is put into nomination to serve for a third term:

…Conkling at last had the floor. Hardly waiting for New York to be called, he sprang from his seat and strode down the aisle—shoulders back, chest out, face already arch with victory. Leaping onto one of the tables where reporters sat, astonished and delighted, Conkling “folded his arms across his swelling breast, laid his head back with a kingly frown upon his cleanly washed face, and settling his left foot with a slight stamp of his right,” said, in a slow, clear, supremely confident voice, “When asked whence comes our candidate we say from Appomattox.”

As the crowd roared its approval, Conkling went on, never deigning to qualify or explain, never hesitating to ridicule the competition or to use the most extravagant praise for his candidate. “New York is for Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated—in peace or in war—his name is the most illustrious borne by living man.… Show me a better man. Name one, and I am answered.” When his attacks on the other candidates evoked shouts of outrage, he pulled a lemon from his pocket and, striking a regal pose, calmly sucked it until the hall had quieted enough for him to continue his blazing theatrical speech. When he had finished, Grant’s supporters abandoned themselves to sheer hysteria.

And here is the same scene from the TV series:

Script writer Mike Makowsky also creates some scenes out of whole cloth that have no basis in historical fact, but in doing so he remains true to the characters. On the other hand, the TV series does not dramatize a serious steamship collision in which Charles Guiteau miraculously escaped unharmed, presumably because they didn’t have the budget to stage such a major calamity.

Then there’s the matter of terminology. Back then there were two factions in the Republican Party, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds. The Stalwarts wanted to keep the spoils system as it was, because that was the source of their power, whereas the Half-Breeds were reformers who wanted to do away with patronage. Clearly, those terms mean nothing to today’s audience, so the TV show mostly refers to the Half-Breeds as Progressives with the implication that they are fighting against the conservative wing of the party.

The spoils system, you may recall, was instituted by President Andrew Jackson, the 19th century version of Donald Trump, when he gained office; “to the victor belong the spoils”. It was the practice where a political party, after winning an election, gave government jobs to friends, relatives, and supporters, regardless of merit.

While the story alternates between Garfield and Guiteau, you might be surprised to learn that Guiteau is not the chief villain of the piece. That dubious honor belongs to New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, a Stalwart supporter of the spoils system and a powerful enemy of Garfield; he tries to thwart Garfield at every turn, and his main ally is Chester A. Arthur who has become Garfield’s Vice-Presidential running mate—you know, to balance the ticket.

Whether you read the book or watch the series, you probably can’t help but notice the contrasts between the historical Republican Party and our modern one. I won’t bother enumerating them; I’ll let you discover them for yourself.

Charles Guiteau, who ends up shooting Garfield, thus precipitating the events that lead to his death, is usually characterized as mentally ill, but I’m not so certain. He seems like a con artist and an attention seeker to me. Yes, he doesn’t have a firm grasp on reality, but if you want to call him mentally ill, I think you have to call a large segment of today’s modern Republican Party mentally ill as well, including their voters, certainly the ones that get their information from media like Fox “News”. 

Last year when I surveyed all the presidents, I had this to say about Garfield:

President Garfield was shot by a deranged office seeker, Charles J. Guiteau, but he was murdered by doctors and surgeons who probed the wounds with unsterilized fingers and instruments. This was long after Joseph Lister had published his work on antisepsis, so they should have known better.

Garfield died a long, lingering death, and the doctors and surgeons were never charged with his murder, but Guiteau was hanged.

[…]

Garfield served too short a time in office to do anything substantial.

I stand by that evaluation of Garfield’s time in office, but of course it completely overlooks what he might have done had the arrogant doctors, led by Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss (yes, his first name was actually “Doctor”), been receptive to Joseph Lister’s work in antisepsis. If Garfield had been a bum on the street and had received no medical treatment at all, he would have been better off and most likely would have made a full recovery as the bullet hit no vital organs. 

So do I recommend the book or the TV series? Both actually.

Read the book and then watch the show to see all those historical figures come to life. Or watch the TV series and then read the book to fill in all the additional background. It’s up to you.

As I’ve been re-reading the book over the past two days, I’ve been marking passages that I wanted to quote, but I’ll confine myself to just this bit about Ulysses Grant, as it makes a nice counterpoint to the previous quote about his nomination. Garfield’s wife Lucretia had been staying at the New Jersey shore to recuperate from an illness when her husband was shot. She had just received a telegram notifying her of Garfield’s “accident” when— 

Ulysses S. Grant appeared at the door. He had been staying in his son’s cabin just across the street for the past two weeks, but, still nursing a grudge, had done nothing before now to acknowledge the president and first lady beyond a stiff bow and tip of his hat. “I do not think he can afford to show feeling in this way,” Garfield had written in his diary just the week before. “I am quite certain he injures himself more than he does me.”

As soon as Grant learned of the assassination attempt, however, the hard feelings and wounded pride of the past year were forgotten. Taking Lucretia’s hand in his, the former president and retired general was at first “so overcome with emotion,” one member of Grant’s party would recall, “he could scarcely speak.” Finally, he was able to tell Lucretia that he had brought with him something that he hoped would give her a measure of comfort. He had just received a telegram from a friend in Washington who was certain that the president’s wounds were not mortal. From what he knew of the injury, Grant agreed. He had known many soldiers to survive similar wounds.

Although he did not stay long, Grant’s words and, perhaps even more, his kindness were an emotional life raft for Lucretia, something to cling to until she could see James. Hurriedly finishing her packing, she left the hotel with Mollie to catch a special train, made up of just an engine and one Pullman car, that had been arranged to take them to Washington as quickly as possible. By the time they reached the station, a crowd had already gathered, many of the women crying as the men stood in silence, hats in hands.

 

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