Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
PBS American Experience has a excellent historical movie of the assassination of James Garfield at the hand of Charles Guiteau that might have been more shocking to the American people than the assassination of Lincoln.
PBS American Experience has a excellent historical movie of the assassination of James Garfield at the hand of Charles Guiteau that might have been more shocking to the American people than the assassination of Lincoln.
Frankly, if President Garfield would have had good bodyguards and/or good doctors, then he would have probably survived this assassination attempt on him.
Indeed, President Garfield appears to have been a very talented man and thus it is certainly a very large shame that he didn't have very much time to serve as our President.
I saw that a few weeks ago and was astonished at how much I didn't know about Garfield. I bought the one book that most of the documentary was based on, and it's in my nonfiction to-be-read pile.
I was so fascinated by the whole treatment of his gunshot wound, which even in those times, should have been survivable. The doctor who took over the President's care was too arrogant to listen to any other doctors, and he kept probing the bullet wound, causing it to get infected, and causing the infection to travel deeper and deeper. Even though germ theory existed, the doctor treating the President rejected it as quackery, when what he was doing was truly quackery.
I also didn't know much about Garfield's politics before watching this, apart from "he pretty much agreed with Lincoln" which I kind of remember from high school. The whole process by which he was nominated was really interesting.
Then the story of the assassin was like a movie unto itself. The guy was clearly suffering from paranoid schizophrenia by today's standards. But like today, no one got alarmed enough by his behavior to take any action, or cared enough to take any action, until it was too late.
The book is amazing. Garfield is really a sort of unsung "what might have been" case study in American history. Had he not been killed, he may have been remembered as a great president.
It is utterly embarrassing to come to understand this late in life that this otherwise obscure President, known mainly for what was done to him rather than what he did was the most courageous President in terms racial justice since Lincoln and Grant, and who would not be matched until midway through the 20th century.
Before today, I had always regarded Lincoln's 1st and 2nd Inaugural Addresses as two of the most powerful ever written, but that was before reading James Garfield's.
The will of the nation, speaking with the voice of battle and through the amended Constitution, has fulfilled the great promise of 1776 by proclaiming "liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof."
The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. NO thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both...
No doubt this great change has caused serious disturbance to our Southern communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen...
The free enjoyment of equal suffrage is still in question, and a frank statement of the issue may aid its solution. It is alleged that in many communities negro citizens are practically denied the freedom of the ballot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote. These are grave allegations. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil. It is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice...
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
