The Assassination of Garfield… No Not that One, the President.

Today in 1881, the twentieth president of the United States was shot.  Garfield was considered a healthy man and the bullet wound should not have been a fatal one. However, Garfield died three months later on September 9, 1881 from that very shot. In those three months, Americans read daily in the papers the most up-to-date medical report on his condition, including his temperature, his pulse, and his pus. His wound had become infected, largely due to doctors on the scene of the shooting sticking their fingers around where the bullet had entered his body. Garfield might have otherwise lived.
James Garfield was shot by a man named Charles Guiteau. And to understand why Guiteau shot the president, some explanation of late 19th century politics is necessary. During this time, the political world very much existed on the spoils system. Any government job was given as a reward for knowing the right person and experience for that position was not considered. Garfield’s vice president, Charles A. Arthur, had previously served as the customs collector at the New York Custom House and had been appointed by Senator Roscoe Conkling. (I know a lot of names, but bear with me it gets good). When Arthur was customs collector, Rutherford B. Hayes was president. He decided to appease those complaining about the spoils system, to stand up to the all-powerful Conkling, and fired Arthur (an entirely symbolic move in all reality). This action prompted Conkling to convince fellow members of the Republican Party to dump Hayes as presidential nominee in 1880. This allowed Garfield to become the presidential nominee and Conkling insured Arthur would be his vice president.
So now you’re thinking, what about this Guiteau character? Guiteau was a troubled man who had dropped out of college, who had joined the Oneida community in an attempt to please his father, and who wanted a politically appoint government position.
Quick tangent: The Oneida community was an outshoot of the utopian societies that sprang up during the Second Great Awakening period in U.S. history. It’s found, John Humphrey Noyes, coined the famous phrase “free love.” He did not believe in traditional marriage and instead preached group marriage. As one of my favorite authors Sarah Vowell explains, in this free love community Guiteau could not find any love at all and was often called “Charles Gitout.”
But back to the matter at hand, when Garfield was president Guiteau came to the White House every day. He begged to be appointed the ambassador to France.  He was sent to the Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Blaine also waved him off, prompting Guiteau to write a snarky letter about the Secretary. Garfield also took a stand against the spoils system, angering Conkling and angering Guiteau, who loved the senator and believed he should benefit from the spoils system. Then, according to the assassin, God told Guiteau to kill the president. Guiteau also claimed he killed Garfield so Vice President Arthur could assume the post (and in his twisted logic, Guiteau would be appointed ambassador by the new president based on his gratitude). When this information became available, Arthur was appalled.
Guiteau admitted to most of this during his entertaining trial. Guiteau had appointed himself co-counsel for the defense and often interrupted his lawyers. Eventually he was found guilty and sentenced to hang on June 30, 1882.
Guiteau’s final words were a poem he wrote especially for his execution (he also wrote a short play entitled The Almighty where God confronts Guiteau’s enemies).  In this poem, Guiteau stated “I saved my party and my land, Glory hallelujah! But they have murdered me for it. And that is the reason I am going to the Lordy, Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah! I am going to the Lordy!”

Losing Faith

Today in 1972, the Watergate scandal began. A group known as the Plumbers broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, D.C., beginning a series of events that revealed the corruption that was plaguing the federal government.
That year, President Nixon was running for reelection against the Democratic nominee, George McGovern. McGovern was supported from party liberals who agreed with opposition to the war and his agreement with feminism. However, McGovern was too liberal for many Americans with his support to legalize marijuana and legalizing abortion. By November, the question was not whether Nixon would win the election, but why what percentage. Nixon won in a landslide, taking 61% of the vote.
However, Nixon was a troubled man. While brilliant, he was also extremely paranoid. He created an “enemies list” that included reporters, politicians, and celebrities that he perceived as unfriendly to the administration. Nixon created a special investigation unit known as the Plumbers to gather information about David Ellsberg, a former government official who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. Nixon ordered his Plumbers to not only find information about Ellsberg, but to burglarize the office of his psychiatrist to discover his weaknesses.
On June 17, 1972 five former employees of Nixon’s reelection committee broke into the Democratic headquarters. The police immediately recognized that these were not run-of-the-mill burglars, as they were armed with walkie-talkies, bugging devices, and $2000 in new one hundred dollar bills. Suspiciously, Nixon’s press secretary responded to the break-in by calling it a third rate burglary attempt and to be wary of any elements who might to stretch it beyond that. To those already concerned that Nixon might be involved, this immediate denial seemed to be a red flag.
More and more information became available in the weeks and months following the break-in. By the middle of 1974, it was clear that Nixon might not have known about Watergate before hand, but that he had become involved afterward by authorizing payments to the burglars if they would remain silent or commit perjury. He instructed the FBI to halt its investigation of the crime. Reporters from The Washington Post traced some of the money used in Watergate to the Nixon campaign. When the burglars were sentenced in 1973, the judge warned them that if they did not reveal who paid them, they would receive much longer sentences. Soon after, two Nixon aides resigned and Nixon fired the White House counsel who had agreed to participate with prosecutors.
Until this point, there was no hard evidence linking Nixon to the incident, just a great deal of suspicion. However, it was discovered that Nixon had secretly taped everything in the Oval Office (the tape recorded was left over from the Johnson years). Nixon refused to hand the tapes over, instead offering his own edited transcripts. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to provide copies of the tapes.  However, Nixon continued to refuse. At this time eighty-four members of the House filed sixteen bills of impeachment. Finally, a transcript was provided. Even the edited version severely hurt Nixon’s case. This, along with other evidence, revealed that on June 23, 1972 Nixon definitely knew that the burglars were linked the White House and that he knew his attorney general had been involved.
Three more articles of impeachment were adopted by the House; charging the president with obstruction of justice, using federal agencies to harass private citizens, and hindering the Senate committee’s effort to investigate a cover-up. Fearful of being convicted, Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974.
Watergate revealed the corruption that plagued the government. Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in 1973 after revelations appeared that he had accepted bribes from construction firms while he was governor of Maryland. Nixon’s attorney general and two White House aides were convicted of obstruction of justice in regards to Watergate and were sent to jail. Americans, who had grown wary of a government that had kept them fighting in Vietnam since 1964, lost confidence in their national leaders.