Let everyone and every person be in subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God. Those which exist are established by God. Therefore, he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God. They who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. We know that back here, After the flood, did God ordain human government? Human government is supposed to protect the people, the honest people from the crooks, the good people from the bad people, and protect the people from the government also. That's what government's supposed to do. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? We see what that's happening in America today all the way across the nation, no fear of authority. One of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, that he will not condemn the violence that they're bringing havoc to all the way across the nation. And something's wrong with the government that won't control anarchy and violence in the nation. Do what is good, and you will have praise from the Son. For the government is a minister of God to you for good, but if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing, for it is a minister of God, an avenger, who brings wrath upon those who practice evil. Now we've been studying the presence of America, and what effect they had on America, and what effect they had on the world. No man is an island. What you do and how you live and behave affects other people around you. Some people have wrecked their lives and wrecked other people's lives also. We know that. Women and men have, in families, wreck people's lives or they can build up people's lives. A mother and father is supposed to raise a God honoring what we might call citizen. Citizens. Citizens that will be an asset to the community and to their country. and citizens that will fight for what is right when they're called upon to do it. James Abram Garfield was born November 19, 1831 in Long Cabin. He died September 19, 1881. He was a very patriotic person. You might call him a Radical Republican, and of that time a Radical Republican were like the Radical Democrats today. They were basically the same people. He was a member of the Ohio State Senate from the 26th District in office January 2nd, 1860 to August 21st, 1861. He was the only member of Congress, basically seating member of Congress, that actually was elected president while he was serving. He was a politician and a lawyer. He was a member of the United States Army from 1861 to 1863. His rank was Major General. His commands were the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the 20th Brigade of the 6th Division Army of Ohio. The battles they were in basically was the American Civil War, the Battle of Middle Creek, the Battle of Shiloh, the Siege of Corinth, the Tullahoma Campaign, and the Battle of Chickamauga. Now let's go back and look at his early life. I have to stick to my notes because they are thick and I can't remember everything about this man's life without reading my notes and going along. So please excuse my turning pages and reading. James Garfield, James Abram Garfield, not Abraham, but Abram Garfield was born the youngest of five children in his family on November the 19th, basically in wintertime nearly, in 1831 in a log cabin in an orange township near what is now Moreland Hills, Ohio. He had been in the Western Reserve until 1800. Garfield's ancestors were from New England. His ancestor, Edward Garfield, immigrated from Hill Morton, Worcestershire, England to Massachusetts around 1630. James' father Abraham, or Abram that is, had been born in Worcester, New York and came to Ohio to court his childhood sweetheart, Mehithabel Ballou. But he found out she'd already got married. So he decided to to marry her sister, Eliza, who had been born in New Hampshire. James was named for an older brother that had died in infancy. Around 1833, Abram and Eliza Garfield joined the Church of Christ. Now we go into church history. Now, Alexander Campbell started the Church of Christ. He had been a Baptist. He had spoke out. He was an educated man in Greek and in Hebrew. He basically joined the Baptist ranks against pedo-baptism, and that's baby baptism. After a while, Alexander Campbell basically went astray, doctrinally. He started preaching baptismal regeneration and a very holy life after baptism. And you had to go to church or you went to hell again. I mean, it's a very strict group of people the Church of Christ are. and very limited and narrow-minded in their thinking. Now this shaped James Garfield's life. Abram was his mother's favorite child and he remained close with his mother all of his life. She remarried, his father had died and She remarried in 1842, but soon left her husband Warren Belden, or Alfred Belden. At that time, when a woman left a husband, it was scandalous, absolutely scandalous. But she was finally awarded a divorce in 1850, and James took his mother's side in this divorce. Belden died in 1880 and James Garfield noted in his diary a great satisfaction that man had died. Garfield used to listen to his mother tell him stories about his ancestors. and how that in Wales that his great great grandfathers and his ancestors had served as knight of Caerphilly Castle, a knight. Garfield was poor and he was fatherless. Now I can tell you what it feels like to be fatherless. My father was killed when I was two years old, and I remember that very well. I remember him, his death, his funeral, et cetera. I mourn for him. Even though we were not close, I lived with my grandmother and grandfather, but when my father came home, which was not real often, he was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder from World War II. And he was pretty wild, was ended up being killed in 1949. Anyway, I missed him. And I wanted a father really bad. I'd look at a man and I'd just look at him and I'd think it was my father. Little boys do that. My mother got married again soon. Then she got married again. She got married again. And she got married again until finally she married this person much outlaw, Dale Aldo But that man taught me everything that I knew, and he raised me. He taught me to do anything, basically. We moved up here to Fish Lake Valley. I was a welder, a plumber, a farmer, a carpenter, a veterinarian, a doctor, everything in life that you do, he taught me how to do it. And it has served me well all of my life. I just didn't go to his escapades outlawry. Garfield was mocked by his children or by his other children in school and in his neighborhoods. And he just escaped that by reading every book in the library he could put his hands on. And I know how that feels because I did the same thing. I read every autobiography and history book in the library in Fish Lake Valley and in Fairfax School near Bakersfield. He finally left home at 16 in 1847 and he was rejected by every ship port in Cleveland. And he finally found work on a canal boat and his job was managing the mules. the mules that pulled the canal boats. He had only been there six weeks working and he became very ill. And he had to go home with jaundice, probably some sort of hepatitis or whatever. And during his recuperation with his mother, his mother and a local education official, now he didn't have much schooling but he had learned a lot from reading. He wanted to learn, but he never had time because he had to work. The official got him a promise to postpone his return for the canals for a year, taking care of the mules, and to go to school. In 1848, he joined the Gauguin Seminary in nearby Chester Township. Garfield later said of his childhood, I lament that I was born to poverty and that I did not have a father. That's very, very important for a boy to have a father. I can tell you that. He said, 17 years of my life have passed before I got any inspiration at all. But when he went to school, he was inspired. A boy without a father and a boy with a father with enough wealth to guide him to higher education. He attended there to the academy from 1848 to 1850. He learned and just absolutely just relished in academic studies. He was an excellent student, he applied himself, and he was especially interested in Greek and Latin. He became a Greek and Latin scholar and began to teach. He was very interested in language and speaking, public speaking. He began to appreciate the power the speaker had over an audience. And he loved to defend unpopular truths against popular errors. The seminary was coeducational, and he was attracted to one of his classmates, Lucretia Rudolph, whom he later married. To support himself at the college, he worked as a carpenter's assistant and as a teacher. He did not like the need to go from town to town to teach or to politic for a job. He hated it. He called it play-seeking, which he says was the law of my life at that time. In later years, he absolutely astounded his friends by letting physicians pass by that all he had to do was go do a little politicking to get. Garfield attended church there more to please his mother than to worship God. But in his late teens, he underwent a religious awakening. He got saved. He got an experience with God, personally, an experience with God. He attended many camp meetings back then, at one which he was born again on March the 4th, 1850, and baptized into Christ, he said, by being submerged in the icy waters of the Targreen River. He worked for, after leaving the college, he worked for a year at various jobs, including teaching. and finding that some of the New Englanders worked their way through college. He said, well that's what I want to do. I want to work my way through college and get a degree. He had to prepare for his examinations and he passed them. From 1851 to 1854 he attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, later named Hiram College, in Hiram, Ohio. A school run by the disciples, again, these are the church. He was most interested in the study of Greek because the Bible, New Testament, was written in Greek. And of course the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures were translated into the Greek Septuagint, so he was very interested in this. He secured a position of janitor to work himself through the school. He met Letitia Rudolph there, who also enrolled in the institute, and he wooed her while teaching her Greek. He developed a regular preaching circuit. He was a preacher. He had a regular preaching service at neighboring churches, in some cases earning a gold dollar per service. A gold dollar per service. So that means that they liked him. He was pretty good at preaching. By 1854, Garfield had learned all the institute could teach him and was a full-time teacher. He enrolled in Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts. As a third year student, given credit for two years. Study at the institute after passing a cursory examination. When I went to the seminary, I took a placement examination. And this is what he did here also. His life and my life are a lot alike in so many ways. When I went to the seminary, I took a placement examination and I passed all the remedial classes. I was a freshman, but all I took was advanced classes. I didn't take any freshman classes. The next year, I was a freshman the first year. The next year, I was a sophomore. Or not a sophomore, but a junior. And from then on, I was a graduate student. He was impressed with a college president. The man's name was Mark Hobson. He said the ideal college is, is Mark Hopkins on one end of the log and the student on the other. Hopkins later said that there was a large general capacity applicable to any subject that this man wanted to study. He could eat it up. He said there was no pretense of genius at all, but he was a genius. He was hired to teach penmanship to the students of Powell Hall, Vermont. A job previously held by Chester A. Arthur, another future president of the United States. Garfield graduated Phi Beta Kappa. from Williams in August 1856, and he gave an address at the commencement. He was a non-sophisticated Easterner, or Westerner they said, and yet he fit in well with these Eastern, what they might call, intellectuals. He had an extensive and positive influence on all of those around him. He returned back to Ohio with a degree from Eastern College and it made him a man of distinction. He returned to Hiram to teach at the Institute in 1857 and was made its president. He didn't see education as his real calling, though, to tell you the truth. He thought that he would be better to apply his life to politics. He lived in an extremely anti-slavery atmosphere and began to realize that politics were probably his future life. He married Lucretia and they had seven children. Five of the seven children survived their infancy. After his marriage, He decided to enter his name to read law. That meant he went in and became an apprentice lawyer. Robert Gallatin Riddle firm was in Cleveland. And he did his study in Hiram and he was admitted to the bar in 1861. The local Republican leaders invited Garfield to enter politics upon the death of one Cyrus Princess. He was a nominee for the local state senate seat. He was nominated by the state convention. and he was elected serving until 1861. His major contribution as a senator was a bill providing for Ohio's first geological survey to measure its mineral resources, but the bill failed. Now we have a problem. A man that had propagated and bid for Senator against Stanton had made a lot of speeches. His name was Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln believed in big government. He was Hamiltonian. He believed that individual rights of states meant nothing. that the Union was basically the god of this country, that each state, the rights meant nothing to them. You have to realize now when he was going to be elected as president that he'd already made a lot of speeches and that he had forbid the state from leaving the Union on pain of invasion. The states had The Southern states had made statements and tried to sue for peace with what they called the Union, and they wanted to call themselves the Confederate States of America. They said they would pay for all military property that was in the South, that they wanted to be left alone, they wanted the high tariffs of the North. They were supporting 70% of the taxes and the income of the United States was coming from the South. And they wanted to bring in high taxes in and out, high tariffs in and out, and the Southerners were paying for this and they wanted free trade. They wanted free trade. Now England went along with the Confederate States, by the way, and so did many other nations. The North was looked upon as villains, trying to squish and squash and to lord over. The weaker states, they said. The North was very powerful and there were a lot of rich industrials in the North. In the industrial North, where they had basically corporate welfare, for bignesses to grow, they were growing off of the taxes of the South. And the South didn't want to have anything more to do with this. They just said, leave us alone, you go your way, we'll go our way. The Civil War was not started over slavery, it was started over states' rights. In Abraham Lincoln's election, his inaugural address, he basically threatened to wage war on the South if they didn't pay their taxes. And if they tried to succeed, he would invade them. They put up that for a while and he just kept listening with his ear to the ground, waiting for them to make one false move so he could declare war. And that happened at Fort Sumter. Now, a lot of the people in the North, the Radical Republicans in the North and the anti-slavery abolitionists, they wanted to start a war over slavery. The war wasn't started over slavery. And when he was elected as President, when Abraham Lincoln was elected as President of the United States, Garfield started to read military texts. Now he's going to study out how to become a warrior, a general, a leader. He regarded the Civil War as a holy crusade against slave power. See these people were looking upon it totally different than what Abraham Lincoln was doing. Now the radical Republicans and the, what we call the anti-slavery abolitionists, they were very outspoken. They wanted to lord over and just literally control the South, which is a total different culture there. When finally the Civil War started, Garfield knew that his place was in the Union Army. So he joined the Union Army. Now, he wanted to go to war, but Governor William Dennison requested that Garfield defer his military ambition to remain in the legislature for a while, where he helped to appropriate and raise funds to equip Ohio's volunteer regiments. Garfield spent the spring and early summer on a speaking tour of North eastern Ohio encouraging enlistment in the new regiments. He finally made a trip to Illinois to purchase muskets. Garfield then returned to Ohio and in August 1861 received a commission as a colonel in the 42nd Ohio Infantry Regiment. The 42nd Ohio existed only on paper. The Ohio Regiment existed only on paper. There was nothing to it. He was not there yet. So Garfield's first task was to build his 42nd Army, his 42nd Regiment. He started recruiting many of his neighbors and former students in college. He traveled to Camp Chase outside of Columbus, Ohio to compete his training. And in December, Garfield was ordered to bring the 42nd to Kentucky where they joined the Army of Ohio under Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell. Buell assigned Garfield the task of driving Confederate troops out of eastern Kentucky for his campaign which, besides his 42nd, included the 40th Ohio Infantry and two Kentucky Infantry Regiments and two Calvary units. They departed and went to Gettysburg, Kentucky in the middle of December in the Battle of the Big Sandy River. His march there was not much, uneventful, until he reached Paintsville, Kentucky on January 6, 1862, and this is the middle of the winter now, where Garfield's cavalry engaged the rebels at Janney's Creek, the rebels as the Confederates. The Confederate troops were under Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall. and he held the town in numbers roughly equal to Garfield's numbers. But Garfield positioned his troops so as to deceive Marshall into gaining an advantage and thinking that the rebels or the Confederates had been outnumbered. Marshall ordered his troops to withdraw to the forks of Middle Creek. On the road to Virginia, Garfield ordered his troops to pursue them. They attacked the Confederate positions in January 9, 1862 in the Battle of Middle Creek. This was actually the only pitched battle that Garfield personally commanded. The Confederates withdrew from the field and Garfield sent his troops to Prestonburg to represent provision itself. And in recognition of his success in the battlefield, Garfield was promoted to Brigadier General. After Marshall's retreat, Garfield's command was the sole remaining Union force in eastern Kentucky. Now he did something unusual here. Now he announced to all the people in the community, that they, as rebel soldiers, he said, could return to their homes and live in peace and quiet, and would remain loyal to the Union. He would allow them to just go, whatever now. Remember, the Union army would begin to destroy towns and farms and people's civilian lives and civilian property. which was basically an unusual act of war. That's what we call total war. The South did not do that. In repercussions for that, Bill Anderson and Quantrell, William Quantrell, went in and burned some towns and some farms. But nothing compared to what Sherman and what later would happen all through the South. Now, Garfield's promotion gave him a command to the 20th Brigade of the Army of Ohio, which ordered in early 1862 the German Major General Ulysses S. Grant. And they advanced on Corinth, Mississippi. The Confederate forces under Albert Cindy Johnson surprised Grants' men in their camps, driving them back. Gauffreau's troops got word of the battle and advanced quickly, joining the rest of the army on the second day to drive the Confederates back across the field and into retreat. The action was later known as the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Shiloh, one of the terrible skirmishes that took place, one of the bloodiest battles in that war up to date. Garfield in person was exposed to fire day and night, but escaped uninjured. General Henry W. Halleck Grant Superior took charge of the combined armies and advanced ponderously toward Crent. When they arrived, the Confederates had fled. That summer, Garfield suffered from jaundice and significant weight loss. He probably had hepatitis. He was forced to return home where his wife nursed him back to health. Now by the way, I don't know whether you know this or not, but sometimes wives followed their husbands in the war effort, and they cooked for them. Did you know that? Sometimes the wives followed the husbands on the war trail, the battle trail, in the backgrounds, cooking for and nursing their husbands back to life. During this period of time also, embalming was being, began to be used. And soldiers would take their wages and pay for a receipt, they'll have a checkbook, or whatever you want to call it, if they got killed in battle, they were to be embalmed and actually buried in a grave. So men and soldiers were not buried in a grave, they were just mass buried, thrown into a ditch and covered up a little bit or whatever. I think you've seen some of the horrible examples of this in movies, on TV, on YouTube, etc. While Garfield was home, his friends tried to gain him to a Republican nomination for Congress as a representative. He refused to campaign with the other delegates. He returned to military duty that autumn and went to Washington to await his next assignment. The man was a patriot. He may have been on the domineering side and sometimes what is considered the wrong side, but he did it with an absolute patriotic spirit, wanting to free the slaves. But the slaves weren't free yet. that the war wasn't over, slavery, until the Republicans were almost ready to oust Abraham Lincoln out of office because he was not fighting the war over slavery. Let's go a little bit further. He was almost about to lose his, he was almost about to be replaced, Abraham Lincoln was. During that period of time, he was supposedly having an affair, but his wife just overlooked it, whether it was true or not, period. He began to study the military actions, and he began to say, this guy did this wrong, this guy did this wrong, this guy did that wrong. And then he was introduced to a man by the name of William S. Rosecrans, Major General. Now, he began to be a personal friend of Rosecrans. Rosecrans suffered from insomnia. And Rosecrans was a very educated man. And when he would not sleep at night, he would get Garfield and they would talk about everything under the sun. And he said, here I am, out in the middle of this war, and I have a mental, intellectual equal that I can talk with. This is great. They had voracious appetite for conversations. He said that Garfield was the first well-read person in the Army that he had ever met. Their discussions ran deep into the night, and of course that might have been 12 o'clock, you know. Or 11, 10. People went to bed at 6 o'clock at that time. Especially in the winter time. Now, Roche-France was converted from Methodism to the Roman Catholicism. Now Methodists don't have much to offer, so it might have been a little easier to convert him to Catholicism. But they became very close friends and the Church of Christ are a very arrogant, argumentative people. And talking to this close bosom friend, Rosecrans, his what we might call narrow view of the Christian faith softened to some extent. They worked together and devised a Tullahoma campaign to pursue and trap the Confederate General Braxton Bragg in Tullahoma. After the Union succeeded, Bragg retreated toward Chattahooka, where Rostrand stalled and requested more troops and supplies. Garfield argued for immediate advance in line. After they had a council of war, finally Rochecrans agreed to attack. The Battle of Chickamauga, September 19, 1863. confusion among the wing commanders over Rostram's orders created a gap in the line, resulting in a rout of the right flank. Rostram's concluded that the battle was lost and fell back on to Chattanooga to establish a defensive line. Garfield thought the army had held well and with Rostram's approval headed across the Missionary Ridge to survey the scene. Now, Garfield was a great general. He was good at Greek, and in Latin, and whatever he studied, and he studied military strategy. Garfield was correct. His ride became legendary. While Crossran's era reignited criticism about his leadership, His army avoided disaster and they were stranded in the Chattanooga surrounded by Bragg's army. Garfield sent a telegram to Secretary of War Edmund M. Stanton alerting Washington that they needed immediate reinforcements to avoid annihilation. And Lincoln and Halleck delivered 20,000 troops by rail within nine days. In the meanwhile, Grant was promoted to command the Western armies and quickly replaced Rosecrans with George H. Thomas. Garfield was reported to report to Washington where he was promoted to Major General and commissioned. He resigned before taking seat in the House of Representatives. Grant and Garfield, after that, had a guarded relationship. He did not know why that he was not promoted. And this other man was put there. Because he was right all the time. He was right with Rosecrans. He was right with all of the strategies that he had predicted in the battles. And why didn't he, why wasn't he allowed to be a general and go on and help in this, in his, what we call, holy war. In 1862, while he was an Army golfer, was approached by friends for running for Congress from Ohio's newly redrawn heavily Republican 19th District, which he could win. He was worried that he might get some obscure assignment. And it might, though, allow him to resume his political career. And the first regular session wasn't going to be until December 1863. And it allowed him to continue for his war service. In other words, he could continue being a warrior or a general. He refused to campaign for the nomination. Back then, many people didn't campaign for their own political positions. They had their friends do it for them. He was elected in the local convention on the 8th ballot in October 1863. After his nomination, Garfield was ordered to report to the War Secretary Edmund Stanton in Washington to discuss his military future. He met with Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who befriended him. He saw him as a younger version of himself. They agreed politically and were both part of the radical wing of the Republican Party. He took his seat in December 1863, and Garfield was extremely disgusted with Lincoln. He was disgusted with him. The war wasn't about slavery, it was about state rights, and he didn't like it. He wanted to press the South hard. Many of the radicals led by Thaddeus Stevens wanted to rebel-owned lands confiscated from all of the owners of the South. They wanted it confiscated and held in common. You remember now that Abraham Lincoln and some of these people were great students of Karl Marx. The Republicans weren't like the Republicans today. Lincoln threatened to veto any bill on the widespread bias that they were going to confiscate all of the southern properties and redistribute the land and the wealth. They wanted to look at England's glorious revolution. A nation without a king, without a crown, but that was ruled by a parliament. Not the people, but the parliament. Lincoln finally realized that he was about to be replaced. And so he issued a war measure. Lincoln's war measure was called the Emancipation Proclamation. And then this Garfield said, he was very, very much marveled at this Illinois second-rate lawyer, could be the instrument to utter words which shall approach a memorable, what we might call an emancipation speech. The Emancipation Proclamation did nothing except that it was only a war measure, but it gave the Radical Republicans a great favor toward Lincoln. Now, here's our man. This is what we want. We want to take all the land from the South. We want to abolish slavery. We're going to control the taxes. We're going to build our land again. Build better and bigger. Big government. less states' rights, and you remember now that during this period of time, anybody in the North that spoke against Lincoln, any newspaper that spoke against Lincoln, the doors were shut to the newspaper and the editors were arrested. He completely nullified all of their rights. and all those that would speak for him, he padded their pocketbooks. Garfield not only favored abolition safer, he believed that the leaders of the rebellion, as he called it, had forfeited their constitutional rights. He supported the confiscation of southern plantations and exile and execution of all the rebels as a means to ensure a permanent into slavery. Garfield felt that Congress was obliged to take these measures to determine what legislation is necessary to secure equal justice to all loyal persons without regard to color. He was more supportive of Lincoln now. As a matter of fact, all the Radical Republicans were more supportive of Lincoln. Because he made this war measure and he made this Emancipation Proclamation to stay in office, basically. He differed from his party, that is, James Garfield did, in several ways. He was the only solitary Republican vote to terminate the use of boundaries in recruiting. In other words, you could only recruit this. Every person that joined the Army was an Illinois, it was an Ohio, it was whatever state you were in. He wanted to do away with states' rights and states' boundaries. They wanted to make a universal union. Some of the financially able people had fought their way out of the Civil War. A future president of the United States' father had fought himself out. He had got a substitute to fight for him in the Civil War. Teddy Roosevelt's father. Teddy Roosevelt looked down upon that. Many of Teddy Roosevelt's family had fought for the South. and not the North, also. James Garfield was more supportive of Lincoln when he took the action against slavery. The action against slavery did nothing. It didn't free any slave anywhere. It only, supposedly, they were demanding that all the South turn its slaves loose. Nobody, no slave in the, there was still slavery in the North. And every factory had white slaves in it. Basically you couldn't leave. Every child was a slave in a factory from five years old above, above, and then above, if he lived that long. He tried to demand that people could not exclude commutation or hire somebody to take their place in the war. Under Chase's influence also, Garfield began a staunch proponent of a dollar backed by a gold standard, and this was absolutely good. A gold standard, basically you have zero inflation. his opponent of a dollar backed by gold standard. He said that anything, any paper money printed is a sin against the nation. It's fiat money, it means nothing. That money, if a dollar is printed, a paper dollar is printed, it ought to be backed by gold dollar. Now remember that there were silver, they wanted everything to be in gold. Later on, we find out that Franklin Roosevelt changed the gold standard to the silver standard because the Jewish people controlled the gold. And he told them, he said, if you don't do what I tell you, I'll strike new money. And so we have the silver standard. The greenbacks. Garfield voted with the Radical Republicans in passing the Wade-Davis bill designed to give Congress more authority over reconstruction, but it was defeated by Lincoln's pocket veto. Lincoln was not a Radical Republican, neither did he believe that the slaves could be freed and let loose in America. They had to deport them, just like James Monroe had in Monrovia. They wanted to deport them to South Florida, give them a state within the United States, in another country, like in the Caribbean or whatever, where they could have their own and have their own rule, and rule over their own people, and that the people in the South would welcome any Negro, black person left in the South, because he was a worker. If you get a shortage of workers, then you take better care of your workers. Take a lesson from John Demese Stetson when he set up the first medical supplement to his workers, the schools for their children, housing, etc., etc., etc., education, because he needed workers. Garfield wanted to promote Rosecrans as Lincoln's second running mate. But the delegates chose Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, the only Democrat that stayed with the Union. As a matter of fact, Andrew Johnson's own farm and plantations were confiscated by the southern states. Lincoln and Garfield both were reelected. Now, Solomon P. Chase had become the Chief Justice, and his relationship with Garfield kind of distances himself. Garfield took up the practice of the law in 1865 as a means to improve his personal fortune and finances. You know, when they went to war, It financially broke them in the north and of course in the south they were devastated. Their land was confiscated so many times by banks and railroads. They were about to have, Wall Street was about to have an absolute insurrection after Lincoln's assassination. And riots occurred. And he stood up and he gave this speech. He did not praise Lincoln and he did not condemn Lincoln. What he said was as important as what he didn't say. Fellow citizens, clouds of darkness are around him. His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. Justice and judgment are the establishment of his throne. Mercy and truth shall go before his face. Fellow citizen, God reigns and the government of Washington still lives. He didn't mention Lincoln. He didn't mention the assassins. He didn't mention the South. He didn't mention anything. And it was a great speech. He finally said of Abraham Lincoln later, he said, Lincoln was one of the few great leaders whose wisdom increased with his power. Basically, Lincoln usurped complete power. over the economy, and over what you said, anything. It was complete power, big government, and very little freedoms in any local. He said, as Lincoln's power grew, and his control grew, his wisdom increased with his power. Now he wrote some very flowery words, as you know, in his speeches. He was a, Garfield was a firm supporter of black suffrage. He had been of the abolitionists. But he admitted the idea of African Americans as whites and political equals gave him the shudders. Again, he said, they need to be put someplace else where they can rule themselves. and not in the white society down there in the South, we're going to have a lot of problems down there. President Johnson sought to a rapid restoration of the Southern states and re-enfranchisement. In other words, so the people of the South could vote and that they wouldn't lose their properties, etc, etc, etc. And he even stated, Johnson even stated that that he wouldn't mind allowing the plantation owners to conscript their former slaves for one year at a time like he was pursuing. Andrew Johnson was a slave from the time he was 11 years old or 10 years old until he was 21 under subscription. He did escape. He tried to buy his freedom from his former owner. His mother had sold him into slavery. And he thought just one year at a time that a black person could go into voluntary servitude for one year at a time. So that they could stay on the ranches, the farms, the plantations where they had grown up and lived, and that the financial devastation of the South would be what we might call padded just a little bit. to a certain extent. Now, Garfield hesitatingly supported Andrew Johnson's efforts to restore the South and the North and to declare peace. And then, because we had complete control by the Republican Party, nobody could vote in the South that was white, basically. And if you had been in any army, any kind of a general or whatever, leader in any southern army in the Confederate States, you might be hung. They all feared that Johnson, a former Democrat, might join with other Democrats to gain a political control of the South again. And they weren't willing to give the white citizens of the South, of the Confederacy, of what they called a rebellion, to infringe, in other words, allow them to vote again. The conflict between the branches of government was a major conflict of the 1866 campaign when Johnson taking the campaign trail to the swing-around circle. The South was still disenfranchised and northern public opinion behind the Republicans, they gained two-thirds majority of both houses and Garfield having overcome his challengers and the district nominating convention was easily re-elected. Garfield opposed the original initial talk of impeaching Johnson, but he had to leave on other pressing business when the vote was taken. He later said that he was aligning himself with Thaddeus Stevens. that sought Johnson's removal. They didn't want anybody sympathetic to the South at all. And yet this Southern Democrat warrior that had now become president, that was a former slave himself, that was born in a horrible, terrible condition. His family had been slaves for many years, white slaves. They should have seen, James Garfield should have seen that this man was even born in a worse condition than he was. He had become an orphan. His father had died. He never went to school one day in his life. Andrew Johnson didn't. And he worked his way up in the government and finally became President of the United States. Ulysses Grant succeeded Johnson in 1869 in Garfield. had moved away from remaining the radicals in Stevens and their leader that died in 1868. Throughout his career, Garfield favored the gold standard. decried attempts to increase the money supply through issuance of paper money not bagged by gold and later through the free and unlimited coinage of silver. He said all money should be precious metal with stability. He said anything else is a sin against the people of the nation. And boy, where are we in a mess today. Any party which commits itself to paper money will go down amid the general disaster, covering with the curses of the ruined people that is ruined." Garfield in 1868 gave a two-hour speech on currency in the House, which was widely applauded at that time. He advocated a gradual resumption of the specie pavements. In other words, buy back all the greenbacks. The tariffs had been raised high to high levels. That's what the war was over. The tariffs had been raised to high levels during the Civil War. Afterward, Garfield made a close study of the financial affairs, advocating removing the tariffs toward free trade. That was the whole cause of the Civil War. It was over tariffs and taxes. The Republican position was a protective tariff that would allow American industries to grow. Basically, in many ways, this was nothing but corporate welfare. His break with his party likely caused him his place on the Ways and Means Committee of 1868 or 67. Even though the Republicans held a majority in the House until 1875, Garfield remained off that committee because of his advocacy against high tariffs. In 1870, Garfield, then chairman of the House and Banking Committee, led a vacation into the Black Friday gold panic scandal. Garfield blamed the easy availability of fiat money in greenbacks for financing the speculation that led to the scandal and to the collapse. Garfield was not enthused about Grant being re-elected because of all the corruption in his administration. He said, I would say that Grant was not fit to be nominated and Greeley, Horace Greeley, is not fit to be elected. We just got the lesser of the evil. Scandals, scandals, scandals and corruption throughout the Grant administration. This is why Jesse James and Frank James and these people went to war, personal war, against the railroads and the banks. The railroads were just given free range where they went through the South, wherever they built railroads, and they took the people's property. And the banks controlled the property because they were financially strapped when the war was over and the southern farmers were in great need and the banks either confiscated their lands or else took out loans so high interest that they couldn't pay them back and they would confiscate the land. The railroad scandals were great. The Union Pacific Officers and Directors secretly purchased control of the Credit Mobilier of American Company and then contracted with it to undertake construction of the railroad. The railroad paid the company's grossly inflated invoices with federal funds. Here we got, this is corporate warfare. This is how the railroads got so strong. This is how the banks got so strong. This is how the industry got so powerful. And then the company was allowed to purchase the Union Pacific securities well below the market price. The credit muller allowed large profits and stock gains and distributed substantial dividends as a fraud. The high expenses meant Congress was called upon to appropriate more funds. And one of the railroad officials was controlled Credit Mobilier was also a congressman, Oaks Ames of Massachusetts. He offered some of his colleagues an opportunity to buy credit mobile stock at par value, well below what is sold for on the open market. And the railroad got its additional appropriation from these senators. All this took place during Grant's term. And here we have James Garfield all along watching the whole situation. Garfield was kind of tied up in this scandal to some extent, but he really, they offered him what they call a loan, a $300 loan, but he paid it back. Nobody else did, but he did. The Democrats took over the House of Representatives in 1875 and Garfield lost his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. The Democratic leadership of the House appointed Garfield as a Republican member of the Ways and Means Committee now, and many of his leadership rivals defeated in 1874 Democratic landslide. Blaine was elected to the Senate. Garfield was seen as a Republican floor leader and the likely speaker should the party regain control of the chamber. All this time, the Republicans are allowing corporate welfare tremendously because the Republicans are these crooks under Grant's leadership. Grants were given to expanding the railroads and was an unjust practice, he said. And he also opposed the monopolistic practices of the corporations. We have monopolies. Remember that Teddy Roosevelt broke the monopolies. He looked upon the workers' unions and supported the proposed establishment of the United States Civil Service as a means of ridding officials of the annoyance of aggressive office seekers. And here is why he lost his life later. We had the stalwart Republicans and the moderate Republicans. The stalwart Republicans are the ones that wanted to keep what they call the gratuity system. I watched a man the other day talk about James Garfield and he didn't know what the Stalwarts were. This guy wrote a book and everything else, he didn't know who the Stalwarts were. The Stalwarts believed in graft. And that when you were elected to office you had the right to import and employ your friends. Whether they were able to do the job or not. Garfield wished to eliminate the common practice whereby government workers, in exchange for their positions, were forced to kick back a percentage of their wages as a political contribution. Corruption. Corruption. Corruption. In 1876, the presidential election approached Garfield that Garfield was loyal to Senator Blaine and fought for the former senator's nomination. At the 1876 Political National Convention in Cincinnati, when it became clear after six ballots that Blaine could not prevail, the convention nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. And although Garfield had supported Blaine, he had kept good relationship with Hayes. and wholeheartedly supported the governor. Garfield had really hoped to retire from politics after his term expired and devote himself to full-time practice of law. He liked to practice law. He liked being a lawyer. But he thought that his need to support his party, so he sought re-election and won it easily in October. The celebration fell short. Garfield's youngest son, Nettie, fell ill with whooping cough and shortly after the Congressional election, his son died. When Hayes appeared to have lost the presidential election the following month, the Democrats, Samuel Tilden, the Republicans launched efforts to reverse the result in southern states where they held the governorship. South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. If Hayes had won all of these states, he would take the election by a single electoral vote. Now Hayes did. Actually, Tilden actually won the election by the proper vote. And only by backroom deal was Hayes elected at all. Grant asked Garfield to serve as the neutral observer in the recount in Louisiana. The observer soon recommended to the state electoral commission that Hayes be declared the winner. Garfield recommended the entire vote of West Phylicia, Paris, which had given Tilden a size majority, be thrown out. The Republican governors of the three states certified that Hayes had won the election and won their states. The Democrats were outraged. and Congress would be the final arbitrator. Finally, in a backroom deal, they voted to allow Hayes to win the election if he would remove all the troops from the South and stop the Reconstruction Act, which the Reconstruction Act was pure graft and absolute villainy in every state and fort. That's what caused the Ku Klux Klan to rise, was the Reconstruction. The corruption of it. Hayes needed Garfield's expertise to protect him from the agenda of a hostile Congress. And he asked him not to seek it. Garfield, as the President's key legislator, gained considerable prestige and respect for his role. When Congress debated what became the Bland-Allison Act, to have the government purchase large quantities of silver and strike it into fully legal tender silver dollars. This is when the silver dollars began, actually. Garfield fought against this deviation from the gold standard. but it was enacted over Hayes' veto in 1878. I know this is a long message, because this is a long story. Hayes suggested that Gaulfield run for governor in 1879, seeing that it was a road he would likely put Garfield in the White House. He preferred Garfield served to seek election as a U.S. Senator. And other candidates fell to the wayside and Garfield was elected to the Senate by the General Assembly in January 1880. Though his term was not scheduled to commence until March the 4th, 1881 when he was going to become President. He was never seated in the United States Senate. Garfield was one of the three attorneys who argued for the petitions in the landmark Supreme Court case of Ex Parte Milligan in 1866, and his clients were pro-Confederate northern men who had been found guilty and sentenced to death by military court by treasonous activities. If you were in the North, you couldn't support anybody in the South. You died. The case turned on whether the defendant should instead have been tried by civilian court and result in ruling that civilians could not be tried before military tribunals while the civil courts were operating. The oral argument was Garfield's first court appearance. Jeremiah Black had been taken in as a junior partner the year before and assigned to the case to him in the light of his highly regarded oratory skill. With the result, Garfield instantly achieved a reputation as a prominent appellate lawyer. During Grant's term, Garfield had pursued opportunities in law, but declined a partnership offer, told his prospective partner was the intemperate and licentious reputation James Garfield had high moral standards. He wouldn't work with anybody that was otherwise. Garfield in 1871 traveled to Montana territory to renegotiate the removal of the Bitterroot Salish tribe to the Flathead Reservation. He had been told that the people would be happy to move. They would just be happy to just leave their land and go to another place. Garfield expected it to be an easy task. Remember, this man is a moral person. And he knows what right and wrong is and black and white is, okay? He knows what it is. Instead, he found the Salish determined to stay in their Bitterbrook Valley homeland. His attempts to coerce Chief Charlo to sign the agreement nearly brought about a military clash. In the end, he convinced the two subs chiefs to sign and move to the reservation with a few of the Salish people. Garfield never convinced Charlo to sign, although the official treaty document voted on by Congress bore his forged mark. So even though he was an honest man, he found out that he had this bad job, but he was still going to do what his country wanted, and he wanted that land, even if he had to forge the chief's signature. He was a great mathematician, Garfield was, and he developed the trapezoid proof of the Pythagorean theorem. His finding was placed in the New England Journal of Education Mathematics by historian William Dunham wrote that Garfield's trapezoid work was really a very clever proof of that theory. was very religious, after his experience. And he was a member of the Disciples of Christ. His new, broader perspective was rooted in the devotion to freedom of inquiry and the study of history. The intensity of Garfield's religious thought was also shaped by part of his experience in combat and his interaction with his voters. Garfield entered the 1880 campaign season committed to Sherman as his choice for the Republican presidential nominee. That's Sherman, William Tecumseh Sherman, the absolute, the wolf of the South that went through ravage when Georgia howled as he went through burning and killing every man, woman, and child, and dog, and horse, and cow in sight. Even before the convention began, they found out that Sherman wasn't their man. The Republican Party split in two factions, the Stalwarts and the federal government patronage system, and the Halfbreeds, as they were called, who supported civil service reform. This is what got Garfield killed. There was a, Roscoe Conklin of New York was a floor leader of the Stalwarts. They believed in political favors. And they did not want to give up their ability to buy political favors. And Garfield was definitely against it. Conklin sought to expel these men from the convention. Garfield rose to defend the men, giving a passionate speech in defense of their right to reserve judgment. The crowd turned against Coughlin and he withdrew the motion and the performance delighted Garfield's boosters. Now they believed more than ever that this was the man to run for president. Garfield rose to play Sherman's name in the nomination. His nominating speech was well received, but the delegates mustered little excitement for the idea of Sherman as the next president. He had a bad reputation with blood on his hands. Basically the Dark Horse candidate Garfield won. Garfield gained 50 votes in the 35th ballot and the stampede began. Garfield protested to the other members of the Ohio delegation that he had not sought the nomination but he got it. Chester A. Arthur, a member of Conflin's political machine was chosen as vice presidential nomination. Here we have a stalwart, that's Chester A. Arthur, and we have James Garfield as the opposite side of the Republican Party. These are Republicans fighting with Republicans. Garfield traveled to New York to meet with party leaders there, and after convincing the stalwart crowd to put aside their differences and unite for a coming campaign, Garfield returned to Ohio, leaving the active campaigning to others. The Democrats settled on their nominee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania, a career military officer. Democrats expected to carry the solid South with this man. The Republicans, the rest of the campaign would involve a few close states, including New York and Indiana. The practical differences between the candidates were few, but the Republicans began to campaign with a familiar theme of waving the bloody shirt, reminding the North voters that the Democratic Party was responsible for secession and four years of civil war. The Democrats were. That's exactly the opposite of what happened, but they were waving the shirt that if the Democrats were in power, that they would have another civil war. In the South, we've got problems with the Reconstruction. If the Democrats held power, they would reverse the gains of the war and dishonor Union veterans and pay Confederate veterans pensions out of the federal treasury. Fifteen years had passed since the Civil War. The Republicans switched tactics to emphasize the tariff, seizing on the Democratic platforms and called for the tariff for revenue only. Republicans told the northern workers a Hancock presidency would weaken the tariff protection that kept them in good jobs. The tariff is what caused the Civil War, remember. The tariff question is the local question, they said. The ploy proved effective in uniting the North behind Garfield. Between his election and inauguration, Garfield was occupied with assembling a cabinet with established peace between consulants and Blaine's warring factions. Blaine, as delegates, had provided much of the support for Garfield's nomination, and the main Senator received the place of honor as Secretary of State. Blaine was not only the President's closest advisor, he was obsessed with knowing all that took place in the White House, and was even said to have spies posted there in his absence. Garfield nominated William Wyndon, of Minnesota as Secretary of Treasury William H. Hunt, Louisiana as Secretary of the Navy, and Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son, as Secretary of War. And Samuel P. Chase of Ohio as the Secretary of the Interior of New York was represented by Thomas LaMalle, James of Postmaster General, etc, etc, etc. Distracted by His cabinet maneuvering, Garfield's inaugural address was not up to his typical oratory standards and skills. Garfield emphasized the civil rights of African Americans, saying, freedom can never yield its fullness of blessing so long as the law or its administrative places the smartest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen. After discussing the gold standard and the need for education, an unexpected denunciation of Mormon polygamy, the speech ended. When Garfield appointed James, it infuriated Coughlin, a factional opponent of the Postmaster General who demanded a compensatory appointment for his faction. such as the position of Secretary of Treasury. The squabble occupied much of Garfield's presidency. The feud with Conklin reached a climax when the President, at Blaine's instigation, nominated Conklin's enemy, Judge William H. Robertson, to be Collector of the Port of New York. This was a prize patronage positions below cabinet level when held by Edwin A. Merritt, Conklin raised the time-honored principle of senatorial courtesy in an attempt to defeat the nomination to no avail. Garfield, who believed the practice was corrupt, would not back down and threaten to withdraw all nominations unless Robertson was confirmed, intending to settle the question whether the president His New York colleague, Senator Thomas Platt, resigned to seek vindication, but only found further humiliation. The victorious Garfield returned to his goal of balancing the interests of party factions, and then nominated a number of Conklin's stalwart friends to the offices. In 1880, President Hayes nominated Stanley Matthews to Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed Matthews on High Court by a vote of 24 to 23. Reform. Grant and Hayes had both advocated civil service reform by 1881. Civil service reform associations had organized with renewed energy across the nation. Garfield sympathized with them, believing the spoiled system damaged the presidency and distracted from more important concerns. Some reformers were disappointed that Garfield had advocated limited tenure only to minor office seekers and had given appointments to his old friends, but many remained loyal and supportive of Garfield. Corruption in the post office also sided out of this reform. Profiteering. Post office construction. The star routes were money makers. People that never did anything, they received great salaries. Finally, Garfield demanded Brady's resignation, Thomas, that is Brady, resignation and ordered prosecution that would end in trials of conspiracy. And when told that his party, including his own campaign manager, Stephen W. Dorsey, was involved, Garfield to root out the corruption in the post office department to the very bone, regardless of where it might lead. Garfield believed the key to improving the state of the African-American civil rights would be found in education and aided by the federal government. And during the Reconstruction, Freedman gained citizenship and suffrage which enabled them to persist in government, and he believed that the South had eroded their rights, that the blacks would become America's permanent peasantry. He tried to reform the National Department of Education, and he established public interest in the education of the African Americans. And he appointed several African Americans to prominent positions, one mainly Frederick Douglass. Recorder of Deeds in Washington, Robert Elliott, Special Agent to the Treasurer, John M. Langston, Haitian Minister, and Blanche K. Bruce, register to the Treasury. Garfield believed that support for the Republican Party could be gained by commercial and industrial interests rather than race issues and to reverse the haze policy of conciliating Southern Democrats. He appointed William H. Hunt, a carpetbagger, a rascal, from Louisiana as Secretary of the Navy. To break the hold on the resurgent Democratic Party in the solid South, Garfield took patronage advice from Virginia Senator William Mahone. And a biracial, independent, read and gesture party hoping to aid the independence and strength of Republicans there. While entering the presidency, Garfield had little foreign policy experience at all. He didn't know anything about foreign policy. And he leaned heavily on Blaine. James G. Blaine. He believed he wanted to promote freer trade. The reason for the Civil War was tariffs. Now he wants to promote free trade. He believes that's the way to go. Especially within the Western Hemisphere. Increasing trade with Latin America would be the best way to keep Great Britain from dominating the region. He was encouraging exports and they believed that they could increase American prosperity. Garfield authorized Blaine to call for a Pan-American conference in 1882 to mediate the disputes between the Latin American nations and to serve as a forum for talks and increasing trade. This is why we had the Civil War. Now he's reversing Lincoln's policies. He hoped to negotiate a peace treaty in the War of the Pacific, then being fought by Bolivia and Chile and Peru. Blaine favored a revolution that would not result in the Peru yielding any territory, but Chile which by 1881 had occupied the Peruvian capital, Lima, Peru, and rejected any settlement that would restore the previous status quo. Garfield sought to expand American influence in other areas, calling for the renegotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to allow the United States to construct a canal through Panama, what we call the Panama Canal, without British involvement, as well as attempting to reduce British influence and the strategy located in the kingdom of Hawaii. Hawaii, which became a state. He's doing some pretty brilliant moves with Blaine as his helper. Gaulfield and Blaine's plans for the United States involvement in the world stretched even beyond the Western Hemisphere and he sought commercial treaties with Korea and Madagascar. Garfield also considered enhancing the United States military strength abroad, asking Navy Secretary Hunt to investigate the conditions of the Navy and an eye toward expansion and modernization, which Teddy Roosevelt brought to his peak. In the end, these ambitious plans came to nothing when Garfield was assassinated. Nine countries had accepted invitations to the Pan-American Confederacy. Garfield's successor canceled the conference. Naval reform continued under Arthur, if only on a more modest scale than Garfield and Hunt had admitted. Ultimi ending and the construction of the Squadron of Evolution. One of Garfield's horrible, wearying duties was the seeking office seekers. And there was a guy, Charles J. Gittu, which had come to the White House, which had approached Garfield, administration, and also Blaine, over and over again. He was of the stalwart In other words, he believed in political favors. The toll was of that. And who was Garfield's vice president? What? Arthur. Garfield's vice president was a stalwart from the Conklin group. Guiteau kept pressing his claim and Blaine told him he would not receive the position. He wanted to go to France as an ambassador and consulship of France, but he couldn't speak French. He just wanted a political position. Guiteau began to think that he had lost his position because he was a stalwart. And his idea was if Garfield was to die, then Chester A. Arthur would become president, which was a stalwart, and that people like him would gain position. And Garfield was about to leave Washington for a cooler climate. Washington was a horrible, what we call, malarial infested swamp. And he knew that Garfield would leave. Washington. In July 2, 1881, he made plans to kill him. Either a position or death, blood. He purchased a gun that he thought would look good in a museum. He purchased a gun which he thought would look good in a museum because he was going to kill the President of the United States. So he had a good looking gun to put in the museum, the gun that killed Garfield. And he followed Garfield several times. But in each of his plans, they were frustrated and he lost his nerve. His opportunities had dwindled down to one. When Garfield was going to depart from the train for New Jersey on the morning of July the 2nd, he was going to kill him. Gateaux concealed himself by the ladies' waiting room in the 6th Street station of Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, where Garfield was scheduled to depart. Most of Garfield's cabinet planned to accompany him at least part of the way, and Blaine, who was to remain in Washington, came to accompany him to the station and see him off. The two men were in deep conversation and did not notice Gateaux. before he took out his revolver and shot Garfield two times. Once in the back and once in the arm. He attempted to leave the station, but was quickly captured. He hollered when he shot Garfield, that Hester A. Arthur will become president, a stalwart, and I'm doing this for the stalwart. Robert Todd Lincoln was in the audience and was deeply upset because he saw his father's death 16 years earlier. Garfield was taken out on a filthy mattress and he was inspected by doctors that had dirty hands. The European doctors had come to realize that cleanliness was a very great asset to a patient recovering from the hands of filthy surgeons and doctors. They used filthy cloths, and a doctor at that time, when they came in with their aprons on, the more blood and pus and guts they had on them, the better doctor they were, supposedly. And that's the people that handled the President of the United States. There was a man, a doctor by the name of Joseph Lister, and his pioneer work in antiseptics was known to the American doctors, with Lister himself having visited America in 1876. But few of them had any confidence in this black magic, so to speak, using alcohol and steam and hot water to cleanse instruments. from these unknown, invisible little microorganisms and bacteria. None of his advocates in America were among Garfield's treating physicians. Dr. Williard Bliss, a noted physician and surgeon And Bliss was an old friend of Garfield and about a dozen doctors led by Bliss were soon probing the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. Garfield was given morphine for pain and asked Bliss frankly to tell him his chances and Bliss put it one in a hundred. The wound was not fatal. The wound was not fatal. What was fatal was the doctors. medical malpractice. Garfield got better. But they kept on wanting to take this bullet out of him. He had lost a lot of weight. And they took a message to him from Sitting Bull, the chief of the Ogallala Lakota. And he said to him, my people are starving to death. And Garfield said, let them have my porridge. I can't stand it. That was a joke. Send him my oatmeal. He said, let him starve first. He said, oh no, send him my oatmeal. He didn't have much compassion for the American Indian, did he? They got Alexander Graham Bell in there with a metal detector, and Bliss told him, go, the bullet's probably over here, go over here where the bullet was, and then they started probing for the bullets. And it further killed him, basically. They tried to keep the president comfortable so they invented air conditioning units. Washington's number heat was unbearable. They propelled air and fans over ice and then dried, had reduced the temperature. The dried ice had reduced the temperature in the sick room 20 degrees. Engineers from the Navy along with the scientists worked together to develop this version of air conditioning to help the President recover. By July, the 23rd Garfield took a turn for the worse. Its temperature increased to 104. his doctors concerned by an abscess that had developed by the wound operated and inserted a drainage tube. Initially it seemed to help, but they were working with filthy hands still. Everything they were doing was contaminating him worse. He was able to hold a brief cabinet meeting in bed on July the 29th. Blessed told them don't excite Garfield in any way. Then the doctors again probed the abscess which went into Garfield's body, hoping to find the bullet. The bullet wasn't the problem, it was infection from their own filthy hands and instruments. They made the infection worse. He only performed one more state act in August, signing an extradition paper. By the end of the month, the President was so much more feeble than he had been, his weight had decreased from 210 pounds to 130 pounds. Garfield wanted to escape the hot, unhealthy Washington. In early September, the doctors agreed to move him to Elberon, part of Long Branch, New Jersey, where his wife and had recovered earlier in the summer. He left the White House for the last time in September the 5th traveling in a specially cushioned railroad car, a spare line from the Franklin Cottage. A seaside mansion given over to his use was built in a night by night by volunteers. In one night it was built by volunteers. After arriving at Elbertson the next day Garfield was moved from the train car to the bedroom where he could see the ocean as officials and reporters maintained would become a near-death watch, basically. Garfield's personal secretary, Joe Stanley Brown, wrote 40 years later, On this day I cannot hear the sound of the low, slow roll of the Atlantic. on the shore, the sound which filled my ears as I walked from my cottage to his bedside without recalling again that ghastly tragedy. On September the 18th, Garfield asked Colonel A.F. Rockwell, a friend, if he could have a place in history, that is. And Rockwell assured him that he would. And he told Garfield he had much work still before him. But his response was, no, my work is done. The following day, Garfield, by then also suffering from pneumonia and heart pains, marveled that he could not pick up a glass despite feeling well and went to sleep without discomfort. He woke the evening around 10, 15 p.m., complaining of chest pain in his chest to his chief staff and friend, General David Swain, who was watching him, he placed his hand upon the breast over his heart. The President then requested a drink of water from Swain. After finishing the glass, Garfield said, Oh Swain, this parable pain, press your hand on it. As Swain obligingly put his hand on Garfield's chest, Garfield's hands went up reflexively, clutching his heart, and he exclaimed, Oh Swain, can't you stop this? Oh, oh, Swain, those were Garfield's last words. They sent for Bliss, who found Garfield unconscious. Despite any effort to revive him, Garfield never woke again. He was pronounced dead at 10.30 p.m. local time, aged 49. Chester A. Arthur, took the presidential oath of office that's been returned by New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady. Chester A. Arthur was afraid to even go out in the public because of this man that had killed, or had shot, Garfield and said, Chester A. Arthur will be the new president, a stalwart. Chester A. Arthur not only pardoned my great-great-grandfather, Sam Paul, of the derogatory House of Corrections, but he also became a staunch civil service reformer, which was the opposite of where he came from. Many people believe that Garfield had a non-lethal wound, that basically he was starved to death and killed by malpractice. Even the man that killed him said that I didn't kill him. The doctors killed him by malpractice. They should be sued for malpractice and hung for the death of the presidency. Well, they hung him later anyway, about a year later. Gatot was indicted on October the 8th. 14, 1881, for the murder of the President. He said he admitted to the shooting of the President, but not to killing. He said, General Garfield died from malpractice, not my wounds. He was executed on June 30, 1882. Garfield's funeral train left Long Branch on the same special track that had brought him there, traveling over tracks blanketed with flowers and past houses adorned with flags. His body was transported to the Capitol and then continued to Cleveland for a Cleveland burial, chalked by his death. The Marine band leader, John Philip Sousa, composed a march in memoriam, John Philip Sousa, which was played when Garfield's body was received in Washington, D.C. And again, more than 70,000 citizens Some waiting over three hours passed by Garfield's coffin as his body lay in the state of the United States Capitol Rotunda. Later, on September 25, 1881, in Cleveland, more than 150,000 people in number, equal to the entire population of that city, likewise paid their respects. And John Philip Sousa March was again played. His body was temporarily entered into the Schofield family vault in Cleveland Lake View Cemetery until his permanent memorial was built. Memorials to Garfield were erected across the country. On April 10, 1882, seven months after Garfield's death, the United States Post Office Department issued a postage stamp in his honor. 1884, the Conservative of Flowers In 1887, the James A. Garfield Monument was dedicated in Washington. Another monument in Philadelphia's Fairmont Park was erected in 1896. In Victoria, Australia, Cannibal Creek was renamed Garfield in his honor. In May 19, 1890, Garfield's body was permanently entered with great solemn fanfare in the Mausoleum and Lake View Cemetery. attending the dedication ceremony for former President Hayes, President Benjamin Harrison, and future President William McKinley. Garfield's Treasury Secretary, William Wyndham, also attended. Harrison said Garfield was always a student and an instructor, and that his life, works, and death would continue to be instructive and inspiring incidents in American history. Three panels on the monument displays Garfield as a teacher, a union major, an orator, and another shows him taking the presidential, and the fifth shows his body lying in the state of the capital, Rotunda, in Washington, D.C. Garfield's murder by a deranged office seeker awakened public awareness and need for civil service reform and also a protection agency. a secret service. George H. Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio, launched a reform effort that resulted in the Pendleton Act. In January 1883, this act reversed the spoil system where officers paid up or gave political service to obtain and keep federal appointed positions. Under that act, appointments were awarded only on merit and competitive examination. Civil service reform had become a part of, now, the government. The bad thing is that this civil service reform only covered 10% of federal government workers. Arthur, previously known for having been a veteran squassman, civil service reform became his most noteworthy achievement. A marble statue of Garfield by James Noah Haas was added to the National Statuary Hall collection and Capitol in Washington, D.C. a gift from the state of Ohio in 1886. Garfield is honored with a Lifesize Bronze Sculpture inside the Chahouga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Cleveland, Ohio. On March 2, 2019, the National Park Service directed exhibit panels in Washington to mark the site of the assassination of James Abram Garfield. Garfield's life was an example of how you can succeed from a poor birth until a great man and education. Education is the key to greatness in many ways and he believed that. Labor leaders and scientists became heroes. Chester A. Arthur tried to further his ambitions in honor of this man. One thing about him is he tried to do his best with what he could do. America, after Garfield, would become a nation of powerful forces. The very elite rich and the very poor. And this would not be changed until Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, came on the scene. James Abram Garfield lived a short life, but a full life. He died in service for his country. He actually took part in the Civil War, even though he didn't look at the South's rights to exist at all, the Southern states. He can be an example to us what you can do. Education is the key to many things in life. He was our leader for a short time in America. And he tried his best to do what he thought was right, without political graft. He made mistakes. He had a twisted view of the American Indian. He had a twisted view of the rights of the South and the Southern states. But he fought. And he was an honest man and a brave man. Father, we finish this message. It's a long message. Father, there's one man that lived in this nation that grew up from extreme poverty into the highest office of the nation. Let us remember him and what he did and even the mistakes that he made. that would better serve us as we look to men to occupy that place of authority.