Blast to the Past: Return to the Future

April 29, 2009

Hello again,

Welcome to my final installment of my “Blast to the Past,” blog. I just want to take this time and thank all of my loyal readers, it has been incredible relaying to you all of the events that I have witnessed over the past few months in the 1880s. I know I’ll be leaving this time soon and returning home, and in order to prepare for my arrival, I want to share with you the crucial and lasting aspects of the assassination of President Garfield. But first, I’m sure you are all asking yourselves this question: why should be care? Why would you care about an event that happened over a hundred and twenty years ago? There are many different reasons that one should care, but three standout from the rest: Garfield was the President when he was killed; the succession issue that was raging back then is still being debated about to this day; the civil service requirements and differences that Garfield wanted to implement; and the sterile practices that we witness and experience today were brought to America because of Garfield’s “death at the hands of his doctors,” that I told you about in my previous blog.

First and foremost, the reason why people during my time should care about the assassination is because he was the President of the United States at the time. A president has only died in office eight times; it happened three times before Garfield’s assassination and four times since. Its impact alone should be felt, as the consequences of such an event leaves the country in turmoil and makes one wonder what could have been. After all, Garfield was for the advancement of race relations, and with him in office for a longer period of time, perhaps Plessy v. Ferguson would not have happened as it did and the country would not have been divided and segregated for half of a century as a result. This is all speculative, of course, as one cannot be sure what would have actually happened, but Garfield’s death should be felt in the present world either way.


Another impact that the assassination had was on the issue about succession of the President. Questions were being raised about when exactly a president is deemed unable to execute his power. Those questions are still present in today’s society, and many movies or other pop culture forms have touched upon this, such as the movie “Air Force One,” which shows the President being unable to perform due to being held hostage and having a compromised opinion. In 1886, five years after Garfield’s death, an act was passed that made cabinet members in line for succession instead of congressional leaders if something were to be happen to the president. When the current succession line was passed in 1947, it added the congressional leaders back into the order behind the Vice President, which basically amalgamated the original succession order with the one created by the 1886 act. Generally, the problem of succession has been waging since the Constitution was first written, with many questions revolving around one issue or another, but none as much so as when it is time to let the Vice-President or another successor take the President’s place when they are lying on their deathbed and unable to perform their duties like Garfield was. That argument is still debated to this day, and that is important to the present day world with the increasing threat of terror attacks and chances for the President to be injured or worse.

Garfield, like I previously mentioned, wanted the government to move away from the Spoils system, believing that it would make the country more efficient if they did. Ironically, this was one of the main reasons that Guiteau shot him, due to the fact that Guiteau had believed he was qualified enough and had the necessary clout to receive a position just because he was apart of Garfield’s party. This desire of efficiency and fairness that Garfield held quite literally led to the advent of the civil service system used today; civil service meaning all of the appointees that work for the government. By the Pendleton Act that was passed in memory of Garfield, the spoil system was phased out and the merit system took its place, which appointed people based on their merits rather than their political or personal loyalties. This change is felt upon everybody in the country in the twenty-first century, with the most qualified people getting the jobs that best suit them, instead of having a random person get a governmental job just because he knows somebody or has a connection with a high level official. Though, admittedly, sometimes cronyism does still exist within the government today, it is no near as rampant as it was back in the nineteenth century.

The Garfield assassination also enormously impacted the present day world because it revolutionized the healthcare practices of the time. Like Ira Rutkow says, “the controversy surrounding Garfield’s death became a dividing line between the new and the old in American medicine.”1 Which basically means that doctors in the country were starting to embrace Dr. Joseph Lister’s antiseptic and sterility policies that were the foundations of present day medicine. Rutkow further writes, “fueled by the Garfield tragedy, an increasing number of positive articles concerning antisepsis brought about the acceptance of Listerism by the late 1880s.”2 Listerism is, of course, the practices that are executed by following the “sterile technique, developed by the British surgeon Joseph Lister in the mid-1860’s…which was accepted in France, Germany and other parts of Europe.”3 Without Joseph Lister’s work, and the prominence and notoriety that Garfield’s case brought, perhaps America would be in a different medical place that we are in today, which maybe would have stunted America’s rise to be the country that we are and have been since the end of World War II.

Its interesting reading about history and then actually living in the time that historians are writing about. For the most part, historians have constructed the Garfield story exactly like it happened, with a few exceptions here and there, of course. What they don’t pick up, however, are the various components of the relationships of the historical people that they are writing about, something that I have been lucky enough to witness for myself. I’ve seen the various intricacies of the story and the ties that bind the characters therein together, and on that aspect there are many other components that historians could discuss and talk about. Its unfortunate that this story isn’t as prominent and spoken about as much as it should be as I feel the country lost a potentially great President in Garfield, one that desereves regonition. Overall, however, this was an amazing experience, one that I wouldn’t trade in for the world. As an article in the Ohio Farmer that I have read ends with this, I think it best that I, too, end this adventure with the same words: by losing Garfield, “Americans have lost an able and fearless defender.”4


Well, now its back to the future, I hope you enjoyed my blog as much as I enjoyed writing it for you, so long!






Citations:


1 Rutkow, Ira M. James A. Garfield. 2006, Henry Holt and Company, p 132.


2 Rutkow, Ira M. James A. Garfield. 2006, Henry Holt and Company, p 132.


3 Schaffer, Amanda. "A President Felled by an Assassin and 1880’s Medical Care."
New York Times [New York] 25 July 2006.


4 "Death of the President." The Ohio Farmer 24 Sept. 1881: 204.