POLITICAL VIOLENCEWhy Was James Garfield Assassinated? A Historian Reveals the Real Story Behind Netflix’s “Death by Lightning”
The real history behind James Garfield’s murder is as much about the corrupt political system he railed against — and how his death ultimately shattered it.
President James Garfield’s life is defined by the man who ended it. Charles Guiteau, Garfield’s assassin, has been historically characterized as a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. However, it’s another label that helps explain why he shot the president: office seeker.
Netflix’s new miniseries, “Death by Lightning,” charts the twin paths of Garfield and Guiteau and the moment they collided in fatal fashion. However, to really understand why Guiteau shot the president, and why Garfield’s legacy remains vital yet so under the radar, is to peel back the layers of 19th-century America’s corrupt political culture.
While Guiteau pulled the trigger, it was the anti-merit-based “spoils system” that put bureaucrats in office and put the gun in Guiteau’s hand. It also secured Garfield’s place in history, overshadowed as it is, as the man who championed civil service, up until his final moment, according to Ted Miller, a teaching professor of history at Northeastern University.
“He’s like a 19th-century JFK,” Miller said. “You can’t call him a great president because he doesn’t have enough time, but he is a martyr for civil service, much like JFK was the martyr for civil rights.”
The federal bureaucracy of the 19th century was defined by the spoils system. Members of the winning political party would recommend their supporters to the president for appointments to federal agencies, even if they had no qualifications. The expectation was that those federal workers would then all but work for their political patron, according to Alan Gephardt of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site. About 5% of each federal employee’s salary was even “assessed” to fund campaigns.
By the mid-19th century, there was an active movement among some politicians to end the spoils system and institute more robust rules around civil service.
For politicians, the spoils system created a situation where they were constantly beset with requests from hopeful and often ingratiating office seekers, like Guiteau.
“To the victors go the spoils, they say, but really it’s a problem for office seekers because they have to make promises that they don’t really want to keep and it forces office holders to make deals that they don’t want to,” Miller said.
Enter Garfield and Guiteau.
