onsider
the name James A. Garfield and you'll no doubt think of the matching
phrase, as if from some Column B: ''killed by a disappointed office
seeker.'' That seems to be all there is to know.
But as the dramatic story of Garfield's last year -- from his ''dark
horse'' nomination in June 1880 to his assassination on July 2, 1881 (he
died 11 weeks later) -- is laid out by Kenneth D. Ackerman, that matchup
proves inadequate.
In Ackerman's view, Garfield was -- or could well have been -- far more
than merely an assassin's victim. To Ackerman he was ''the most
promising'' of his generation of post-Civil War leaders: a college
president, a frontline general, and an eight-term congressman from Ohio
before being elected president at age 48.
And, as Ackerman makes clear, the assassination was an act of political
murder, every bit as much as the assassination of President Lincoln 16
years before.
Yes, Charles Guiteau -- who had been a self-appointed speechwriter in
the Garfield campaign -- had been rejected in his bids for diplomatic
postings for which he was woefully unqualified. But he saw his act as one
of revenge for Garfield's betrayal of the Republican Party's ''Stalwart''
faction -- headed by New York senator (and political boss) Roscoe Conkling
and supportive of a third presidential term for Ulysses S. Grant -- in
favor of the ''Half-Breed'' faction headed by Maine senator (and rival
party leader) James G. Blaine.
As Guiteau put it in a letter written the night before the
assassination and intended for the press: ''The President's tragic death
was a sad necessity, but it will unite the Republican Party and save the
Republic'' -- and make his hero, Vice President Chester A. Arthur,
president. ''I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts,'' he proclaimed.
For Ackerman, a Washington lawyer who held posts on Senate committees
and in the Clinton administration, this is very much a political
story.
Indeed, were it not for the assassination, ''Dark Horse'' would stand
as a fine addition to the Theodore H. White ''The Making of the
President'' genre.
Garfield was an Ohio delegate at the 1880 Republican Convention in
Chicago and, ''surrounded by friends, steeped in intrigue, his own ego
stoked by the hour, was in his element here.'' His goal had been to block
Grant's nomination for a (nonconsecutive) third term, but as the
convention deadlocked through 30-plus ballots, delegates from Blaine's
anti-Grant camp began to swing to Garfield.
Partisan bitterness followed Garfield's convention triumph and the
narrow election victory that followed. They, in turn, set the stage for
Guiteau to step from the shadows.
Ackerman portrays Guiteau in Shakespearean fashion. As the political
battle over Cabinet and important patronage appointments proceeds publicly
on the Senate floor, Guiteau periodically appears outside of his cheap
lodging house -- to meet Garfield at the White House, as most office
seekers did in those days; to take ''his usual daily walk'' to the State
Department to press his case for a consular appointment; then to buy the
gun, pleased that the gun dealer cut the price (to $9) on an ivory-handled
pistol that Guiteau fancied would end up in the Smithsonian; and then
literally out of the shadows to stalk Garfield as he took an evening
stroll with Blaine, whom Garfield had appointed secretary of state.
Garfield's assassination cannot rank as a great ''what-if'' as do those
of Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Garfield was in office only four months --
and deeply regretted that he had been forced to spend most of his time and
energies on political appointments.
Still, as Ackerman quotes an earlier biographer, Garfield had made his
''declaration of independence'' by directly opposing Conkling, the New
York boss, in appointing a foe of Conkling as collector of customs in New
York, seeing his stand as a matter of principle -- writing ''that the
principal port of entry in which more than 90 percent of our customs
duties are collected be under the control of the Administration [rather
than] the local control of a factional senator.''
What can be said of Garfield, concludes Ackerman, is that he holds ''a
special place'' among the post-Civil War leaders, ''shot down in his
prime, martyred for taking a principled stand.'' His chance for greatness
destroyed by ''time and fortune.''
Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President
James A. Garfield
By Kenneth D. Ackerman
Carroll & Graf, 551 pp., illustrated, $28[
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