Requiem for a Dream

A little story about Garfield

Today I’m writing about one of the most gifted, remarkable, accomplished individuals ever to become a public figure. Of course, I speak of Garfield.

Not the orange cartoon cat. The other Garfield.

It is one of the great absurdities of our time — a time not lacking in absurdities — that saying the name “Garfield” is vastly more likely to call to mind a mediocre product of late 20th century pop culture than President James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States. In this post, I want to convince you the Garfield who deserves primacy in your mind is, in fact, this most obscure of presidents. I also want to give an illustration of the sad what-ifs that litter history, the moments when something — often something small and unrecognized — nudges history away from a better future that might have been.

So what was great about James A. Garfield?

Like another, considerably more famous president, Garfield was born, in 1831, in a log cabin. In his case, it was a log cabin in a part of Ohio that had only recently been wilderness. But that understates the modesty of his familial circumstances.

When Garfield was a young child, his father died fighting a forest fire, so he and his four siblings were raised by their mother in poverty extreme even by the standards of the time and place. Garfield’s childhood was mostly drudgery that escalated as he got older. At the age of 17, after taking ill while working on canal boats, Garfield was convinced by his mother to go to a seminary — where he was revealed to be a brilliant student.

After the seminary, he got a job as a janitor at a small college. When the brilliance of his mind was discovered — shades of Good Will Hunting — he was promoted to teaching English. Then he studied at an elite college in Massachusetts.

When he went back to Ohio, he was made a professor at the college where he had once worked as a janitor. Then he was made its president.

He was 26 years old.

A staunch abolitionist, Garfield grew interested in politics. He studied law, passed the bar, and was elected to the state senate.

He was 29 years old.

When the Civil War broke out, Garfield studied military affairs, helped raise volunteers and organize units, and enlisted as a lieutenant-colonel.

Bringing the same intelligence and dedication to soldiering as he did to everything else, Garfield outwitted and defeated Confederates in a battle in Kentucky and was promoted to brigadier general. After further distinguished service at the Battle of Shiloh and elsewhere, Garfield was promoted to major general.

Early in the war, Garfield apparently decided that being an officer in the most desperate struggle in American history wasn’t enough to keep him busy. So he won election to Congress.

By now, you can probably guess that in his Congressional career, Garfield proved to be hard-working and effective. And highly principled, naturally.

Garfield not only opposed slavery and saw the Civil War as a drive to abolish it forever, well before that became a conventional view, he criticized Abraham Lincoln for not being harder on the slave-owning aristocracy of the South. And when the war ended, and Reconstruction began, Garfield was a strong supporter of black suffrage and civil rights.

Brilliant, thoughtful, idealistic, courageous. Pick your adjective. If it’s positive, it probably fits the man. If Garfield’s life were a Horatio Alger story — Horatio Alger actually wrote campaign literature for Garfield — that story would have him become president. And so he did.

Garfield was the sort of person who spent his free time studying mathematics — and did it so well that he published a trapezoid proof of the Pythagorean theorem in the New England Journal of Education.

There is a case to be made — particularly if we take account of personal starting points — that James A. Garfield was the most impressive man ever to occupy the White House.

(I should note that Garfield was human, made mistakes, said dumb things, and became embroiled in the occasional controversy. No one who climbs the greasy pole of power comes away with entirely clean clothes, but given how greasy the poll was in that era, and given how far Garfield climbed, he was a saint.)

The White House is where the fairy tale ends, of course. Because if there’s one thing everyone knows about Garfield — the president, not the cat — it’s that he was assassinated.

In 1881, a mere four months into Garfield’s presidency, a deranged loser shot him for no reason worth mentioning. Garfield didn’t appear in mortal danger at first, but over months his condition gradually worsened. After suffering long and horribly, he died.

This was no mere personal tragedy.

When Garfield became president, the era of Reconstruction had passed. Federal troops were out of the South. Southern reactionaries were pushing blacks out of public offices and voting booths with terror, intimidation, fraud, and the laws that would collectively come to be known as “Jim Crow.” Garfield could do little about it. Support for Reconstruction had evaporated in the North. Even Garfield’s Republican Party lost its zeal for reform as it became the party of the establishment. The promise of the 14th Amendment was fading rapidly.

But Garfield saw an opening. It was the dominant theme of his inaugural address.

The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. No thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both. It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than 5,000,000 people, and has opened to each one of them a career of freedom and usefulness. It has given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both races by making labor more honorable to the one and more necessary to the other. The influence of this force will grow greater and bear richer fruit with the coming years. 

By the standards of the day, that’s strong stuff. But it is also self-satisfied. All the hard work seems done.

No doubt this great change has caused serious disturbance to our Southern communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen. 

“Under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.” That sounds like something Martin Luther King Jr. could have said.

The emancipated race has already made remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear,they have "followed the light as God gave them to see the light." They are rapidly laying the material foundations of self-support, widening their circle of intelligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that gather around the homes of the industrious poor. They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men. So far as my authority can lawfully extend they shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the Constitution and the laws. 

That’s all very idealistic. But the reality on the ground is quite different, and getting worse rapidly. Will Garfield acknowledge that and push back?

The free enjoyment of equal suffrage is still in question, and a frank statement of the issue may aid its solution. It is alleged that in many communities negro citizens are practically denied the freedom of the ballot. In so far as the truth of this allegation is admitted, it is answered that in many places honest local government is impossible if the mass of uneducated negroes are allowed to vote.

Here, Garfield is stating the usual public rationale for Jim Crow: Blacks may be legally entitled to vote and hold office, but they were only recently slaves. As slaves, they were denied education. And no man, white or black, is fit to vote and hold office without education. Barring blacks is all very unfortunate but there are no other options.

In practice, of course, the Jim Crow laws that purported to screen out uneducated voters and office holders — black and white — were much less concerned with education than skin colour, which is why ostensibly race-blind policies produced deeply one-sided outcomes. The whole system was a pious lie.

So Garfield turned the lie against itself.

These are grave allegations. So far as the latter is true, it is the only palliation that can be offered for opposing the freedom of the ballot. Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil. It is a crime which, if persisted in, will destroy the Government itself. Suicide is not a remedy. If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice. 

It has been said that unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. It should be said with the utmost emphasis that this question of the suffrage will never give repose or safety to the States or to the nation until each, within its own jurisdiction, makes and keeps the ballot free and pure by the strong sanctions of the law. 

But the danger which arises from ignorance in the voter can not be denied. It covers a field far wider than that of negro suffrage and the present condition of the race. It is a danger that lurks and hides in the sources and fountains of power in every state. We have no standard by which to measure the disaster that may be brought upon us by ignorance and vice in the citizens when joined to corruption and fraud in the suffrage. 

The voters of the Union, who make and unmake constitutions, and upon whose will hang the destinies of our governments, can transmit their supreme authority to no successors save the coming generation of voters, who are the sole heirs of sovereign power. If that generation comes to its inheritance blinded by ignorance and corrupted by vice, the fall of the Republic will be certain and remediless. 

The census has already sounded the alarm in the appalling figures which mark how dangerously high the tide of illiteracy has risen among our voters and their children. 

Garfield is saying he absolutely agrees that a lack of education can render citizens unfit to vote. Shockingly, that lack of education is widespread. Across the nation. And thus, it endangers the Republic itself.

Then he returns to the South.

To the South this question is of supreme importance. But the responsibility for the existence of slavery did not rest upon the South alone. The nation itself is responsible for the extension of the suffrage, and is under special obligations to aid in removing the illiteracy which it has added to the voting population. For the North and South alike there is but one remedy. All the constitutional power of the nation and of the States and all the volunteer forces of the people should be surrendered to meet this danger by the savory influence of universal education. 

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. 

In this beneficent work sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown. Let our people find a new meaning in the divine oracle which declares that "a little child shall lead them," for our own little children will soon control the destinies of the Republic. 

Garfield is calling for a national crusade: Education for all. Volunteers and state governments are needed. But it is a national crusade. The national government must lead.

This is radical stuff. Under the Constitution, the minimal education provided in the late 18th century was the purview of state governments. The federal government had nothing to do with it. A federal education department wouldn’t even be created until almost one century after Garfield spoke those words.

That is all very impressive. But in the following paragraph, Garfield pulls back and looks at the United States — past, present, and future — and says something that is startling to read today.

My countrymen, we do not now differ in our judgment concerning the controversies of past generations, and fifty years hence our children will not be divided in their opinions concerning our controversies. They will surely bless their fathers and their fathers' God that the Union was preserved, that slavery was overthrown, and that both races were made equal before the law. We may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation. Is it not possible for us now to make a truce with time by anticipating and accepting its inevitable verdict?

This is a man who sees the full sweep of history. He sees that the divisions of the present will pass. He sees that, sooner or later, the full equality afforded by the Constitution will come. Almost 20 years before the birth of Martin Luther King Senior, Garfield anticipated the civil rights movement — and called on Americans to hasten its coming.

We cannot know what would have happened had Garfield lived. But given all that this extraordinary man had overcome to become president — and without denying the enormous structural forces arrayed against reform — we can at least say it is significantly possible that he may have greatly accelerated the move toward universal education, and in doing so expanded the role of the federal government long before the Progressive Era. What knock-on effects that may have had are unknowable. But one possibility, surely, would be to hurry the United States toward its “final reconciliation.”

But a mentally unstable man shot Garfield. And the reconciliation was retarded, not hastened.

Such loss. And for nothing. It’s a tragedy.

But it gets worse.

Remember that Garfield did not quickly die from being shot, but rather lingered and suffered, for months, before dying. Many modern physicians have examined the extensive and detailed records of Garfield’s treatment over the years and most have concluded that that Garfield wasn’t killed by the bullet that struck him. He was killed by the doctors who treated him.

Those doctors were the best in America, foremost among them a man named Frank Hastings Hamilton. They used what were considered the best techniques among such men — notably digital penetration and palpation of the injured subcutaneous regions. Or to put that more plainly, sticking their fingers into the bullet hole. In addition to inflicting agony on the patient, this technique risked the introduction of infection if the probing instruments — the doctor’s fingers — were not scrupulously clean.

The fingers of Dr. Hamilton and his colleagues were not scrupulously clean. In fact, the doctors did not wash their hands at all before tickling the president’s innards.

You may imagine that is because the germ theory of disease, and the threat posed by invisible microbes, were not known to the best American doctors of 1881. Not so.

In fact, in 1876, Dr. Hamilton had personally attended a lecture in Philadelphia by a visiting British surgeon by the name of Joseph Lister. Informed by advances in what we now call the germ theory of disease, Lister pioneered antiseptic medicine — cleaning stuff before you stick it in people — and caused a sensation in Britain by showing that scrupulous cleanliness saved lives. He went on a tour of America to talk about and demonstrate antiseptic medicine. One stop on that tour was in Philadelphia. Dr. Hamilton attended, but he had already made up his mind that Lister’s theories were nonsense. While many who attended were impressed by Lister’s lecture, Dr. Hamilton left unconvinced — a full five years before President James A. Garfield was shot.

The depressing truth is that if one Yank had been a bit more open-minded when he attended a Brit’s lecture, one of the most exceptional men ever to occupy the White House might have lived. And accomplished who knows what.

I can’t stop without sharing the answer to the question that overshadows all of late 19th-century history: Why does “Listerine” — the mouthwash — sound kinda like “Lister”?

As Lister’s antiseptic techniques were increasingly adopted, they became known as “Listerism.” In the United States, a chemist named Joseph Lawrence developed an antiseptic liquid in 1879, with hopes of selling it to doctors and dentists for use in their practices. In honour of Joseph Lister, he called it “Listerine.”

Only in 1914 did the company decide to market its product as a daily mouthwash, but for that purposes its name was perfect — because cleanliness had become a culture-wide mania by that time and nothing said “clean” the name of Joseph Lister. It did well, although not spectacularly. But everything changed in the 1920, when the company essentially invented and marketed a disease called "halitosis.” Listerine was the cure. Sales exploded and a legendary brand was born.