Erin ’s Reviews > Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield > Status Update

"Suicide is the chief mode of political death after all."

A second assassination with 16 years with yet another homegrown assassin made the public wonder what kind of country the United States had become.

"I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president."

Robert Todd Lincoln the son of Abraham Lincoln was at the scene of not only Garfield's assassination but also William McKinley.....He was a bad omen.

The White House had a sour smell; sewage odors wafting in from the sometimes malarial swamps beyond the south lawn and from the basement often gave Garfield and his wife Lucretia headaches or nausea.

Garfield had rejected the idea of posting uniformed guards at the White House. He felt a president in a democratic America should not have to worry about assassins like a European monarch. He felt Lincoln's assassination had been a fluke of the Civil War.

No one knew how long a filibuster would last days, weeks, or months.

In 1880 the U.S. Constitution still gave new presidents 4 leisurely months to pick their top advisers, from election day in early November until inauguration day in early March

Wormleys was owned by Black businessman James T Wormley the irony was not lost that a Black owned hotel was the scene of the 1876 backroom deal where Rutherford Hayes agrees to withdraw troops from the South ending Reconstruction and any realistic hope of Black voting rights for the next 80 years.

Garfield was the last American president born in a log cabin.