We're now on the 20th day of my daily presidents threads celebrating the 250th anniversary of the USA.Today we have James A. Garfield (11/19/1831 - 9/19/1831), who served as president for 6 months1881. After only 3 months in office he was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a deluded office seeker. Although Garfield survived the attack, medical incompetence and poor practices resulted in his infection and he died eleven weeks later. His murderer tried to argue it was the doctors that killed Garfield and not him, but he failed. Prior to becoming president, he was a major general in the Union Army and a representative from Ohio.Notable actions or events during his presidency include his strong stance on rooting out corruption, asserting presidential authority over senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, refinancing the national debt, reforming the Post Office, and his positive relations with African Americans and Civil Service Reform.What do you think of the guy who wasn't an orange cat who loved lasagna?
>>18518764>medical incompetence and poor practices resulted in his infection and he died eleven weeks later.Man pre germ theory medicine really was Russian Roulette
>>18518772they already had a handle on germ theory in Europe at this point but retarded Amerifat doctors thought it was pseudoscience
>gets shot by an incel so repulsive that he couldn't even get laid at the Oneida free love commune
The four part miniseries Death by Lightning is a great take on Garfield and Guiteau, with superb acting all around. It’s probably 90% accurate /his/ with a bit of dramatic license and compressed characters and storylines.
>>18518804His death was what finally drove home the need to do something about the spoils system.
>>18518804Beat me to it. Guiteau seems very contemporary and would have been right at home here. He’s the precursor for all the young men going berserker these days for schizo political reasons.
>>18518772Blood letting is legit though. It's crazy that the practice has been ceased as a direct result of fud and propaganda.
>Despite Guiteau's frantic protests, Arthur refused to pardon him and he was hanged the following June. Guiteau insisted he did not kill Garfield, but his doctors did. He may have not been wrong.[3]
>>18518814>>18518804At least John Wilkes Booth was a studly actor who had dozens of female admirers. At least Lee Harvey Oswald had a wife and kid (albeit one just using him in green card fashion to get to America). This guy though...
Garfield was the one assassinated president who would have 100% survived with modern medical care, even 19th century medical care if his doctors weren't total morons.
>>18518823Ronald Reagan would have died if it was just 20 years earlier, he would bleed out from being shot in the lung. Medical care by 1981 had just gotten good enough that they could repair that kind of injury.
>>18518823McKinley would have lived though? He had an abdominal wound that should be survivable today?
>>18518831he was suffering from pancreatic necrosis so that would probably kill him
>>18518815It's still used to treat shit like hemochromatosis and polycitemia vera though.
>>18518815Blood letting is still used for diseases where it makes sense, like polycythemia. Same with how trepanation, electroshock, and leeches are still used. A lot of the time, advances in medicine are simply people gaining a better understanding of when things are or are not appropriate treatments.
>>18518823Lincoln might have survived with modern medicine. But not without significant impairment afterwards.
https://youtu.be/2x-Gfeen-b8?si=6UUWqVKjLe5g6UubCharles Guiteau composed weird songs and sang one as he was on the gallows but this isn’t one of them despite being in first person. “Goodnights” were a common Anglo ballad form with a criminal having his last words before execution and this song recycles some bits while being adapted to the Garfield assassination.Garfield was a standup guy in a really slimy political era and it’s a shame that he got shot by such an incel creep.
>>18518867the bullet probably cut through both lobes of his brain so no he couldn't be saved
>Like Hayes four years earlier, Garfield was an Ohioan Civil War veteran chosen as a compromise candidate. The Republican Party turned their backs on deepening economic and social injustices to wring another president from the Bloody Shirt. Democrats, seething at being robbed last time, nominated General Winfield Hancock, a Civil War hero who appealed to the South as well as the North for heading one of Reconstruction's fairest and most benevolent occupation districts. Hancock remained on active duty at Governor's Island in New York and did not campaign. Garfield barely scraped across the finish line in the closest presidential election yet.>A kindly man who hugged his mother on Inauguration Day, Garfield had a fatal weakness in that he hated to say no and almost as soon as he was in office, he was deluged by dozens of office-seekers. "My God, what is there in this job that makes a man want to get into it?" he said in exasperation.
>>18518764Death By Lightning is a weird bit of hagiography for Garfield.
Both Peskin's old biography and C.W. Goodyear's most recent one are really good. Peskin's maybe has more information, especially on his Civil War career and pre-Congress childhood, but both are well worth reading.People like to say he was a huge What If but I somewhat struggle to wonder if he would have been as effective if he had lived. He was a Gerald Ford "reach across the aisle and find compromise" type of guy and I suspect that he winds up the typical Gilded Age president doing some internal improvements and some economic stuff. But a potential two full terms of the Half-Breeds in power and Blaine as Secretary of State the whole time, who knows?
>>18518024>>18518764James Garfield someone really hatedCause he was assassinated
>>18518764Theres a really good Netflix Miniseries about him Lighting in a Bottlehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jopqrSojQEGarfield was the man and this is one of my favorite quotes. People love to blame to dark conspiracy, psyops, foreign interference, alphabet agencies, ethnic cabals ect. but the reality that in a free republic, all the faults come down to the laziness and apathy of the people. Republics are based on a mobilized population of citizens, not lazy subjects waiting for their gibs me dats.
>>18519652Garfield was pulled from a life of rural poverty through education and believed wholeheartedly in education being the cure-all, especially in lifting blacks after the Civil War. He definitely would have invested heavily in education if he hadn't been killed. IIRC he was one of the creators of the pre-Cabinet level Departmet of Education during Johnson's presidency.
>>18518764>reforming the Post Officethis is what got him assassinatedthe postal deep state isn't to be trifled with
>>18519246>a Civil War hero who appealed to the South as well as the North for heading one of Reconstruction's fairest and most benevolent occupation districtsin this context that probably means he was like oh you guys can beat the shit out of freedmen all you like. i close my eyes and pretend nothing's happening.
>>18519667Arthur carried out most of his plans for cracking down on corruption in the post office anyway.
>>18519668fuck off LBJfag
>>18518764God bless Charles J. GuiteauBecause he shot Garfield, his doctors invented modern air conditioning.
>>18519668>>18519682fagsame
https://youtu.be/DEgEMjHyMxM?si=wKNdYrCXnWr1aa10Another ballad about the Garfield assassination—a weird spoken word/sung thing with very little to do with the actual /his/ of the incident. Johnny Cash does a great version but this is the oldest recorded one I know of. It’s interesting that this shooting inspired more ballads than Lincoln—“Booth Shot Lincoln” and McKinley—“White House Blues”.
>>18518764his grave memorial is amazing
