Back in March, I announced that I was beginning a trio of unknowns — Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur. Then the 1960s took over, but I’m back at it. Who is James Garfield? A teacher, an officer, a forceful Republican — and a man who barred his own vice president from the White House. (John Adams probably wishes he’d thought of that — Jefferson, too!) Last of the log-cabin presidents, Garfield dreamt of becoming a sailor but only made it as far as the canals, where he decided the maritime life was not for him. An enthusiastic reader, he did well academically and was teaching lower grades before he’d even received a B.A. Although he prospered as a teacher — becoming a college president! –, it wasn’t something he wanted to do for the rest of his life; after serving as a staff officer in the Civil War (specifically, as General Rosecrans’ chief of staff), he became a force in the Republican party. Like Lincoln before him, Garfield combined aggressive campaigning for other Republicans with his own campaigns, and would serve as both a Representative and a state Senator.

One of the more contentious issues he was embroiled with was the ‘spoils system’, in which civil service jobs were handed out to political insiders rather than on merit. The “Stalwarts” of his party defended the practice: it was simply how the game was worked. You put in the work, you reap the rewards. Many in both parties, however, wanted civil service reform, and Garfield was among that number — if not a zealot for the cause the way his Democratic counterpart Cleveland was. The debate within the GOP was such that when Garfield was chosen to be the Republican candidate, he was saddled with a bitter rival within the party, Chester Arthur, who defended the spoils system. Garfield and Arthur got along so poorly that they’d refuse to speak to the other, and there were times when Arthur was refused access to the White House entirely! this made Arthur’s life after Garfield was shot most unenviable: he was positioned to ascend to the White House because a would-be assassin shot Garfield and cried “I am a Stalwart! Arthur is president now!”. Talk about bad optics.

Garfield is a unique entry in the American Presidents series because it was written by a surgeon who takes special interest in the details of Garfield’s fate after he was shot. While we now know that the bullet hit no vital organs, doctors at the time did not, and had no real way of knowing — Alexander Graham Bell’s prototype metal detector notwithstanding. They kept probing his wound with unwashed fingers and unwashed tools, ultimately leading to massive internal infections and months of prolonged pain and malnourishment: the man vomited constantly, losing a dramatic amount of weight. Rutkow devoted at least a quarter of the book to the subject of medicine at the time, and how badly Garfield was treated by men who should have known better, even as limited as their tools were. (Tellingly, Rutkow refers to the assassination attempt: Garfield was effectively killed by malpractice.)

This was a most interesting read, though it doesn’t give a huge idea into the man himself beyond a sense that he was devoted to his family, his party, and his friends; he was intellectually gifted, and appears to have been setting a good course for his office before he was shot, despite some earlier indiscretions while in office dealing with lobbyists and conflicts of interest.

Well, Arthur is president! Let’s see how he does.