American History - Part 127 - Garfield - His brief Presidency - Assassinated
Channel: ListenAndReadAlong
Date: 04/07/2013

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.
In eighteen eighty, President Rutherford Hayes completed four successful years in the White House. He did not want to serve another term. Hayes was a Republican. His party had great hopes of electing another Republican in the election of eighteen eighty.
This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe report on that election.
Finally, on the thirty-fourth ballot, seventeen of the delegates voted for a compromise candidate. He was James Garfield, a Republican leader in Congress. Soon, both Sherman and Blaine asked all of their delegates to vote for Garfield. The compromise candidate won the nomination.
James Garfield offered the vice presidential nomination to Chester Arthur of New York. KAY GALLANT: The Democratic Party chose for its presidential candidate a hero of the Civil War -- General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania.
The election campaign of eighteen eighty was not exciting. Nine million people voted in the election. James Garfield won. He got only ten thousand more popular votes than Winfield Scott Hancock. But he got a majority of votes in the electoral college. Garfield won two hundred fourteen electoral votes. Hancock got one hundred fifty-five.
HARRY MONROE: The new president was forty-nine years old. He had served in the House of Representatives for seventeen years. He had been a teacher, a college president, and a general in the Union army during the Civil War.
James Garfield became president of the United States on March fourth, eighteen eighty-one. His choices for a cabinet immediately re-opened the conflicts that had appeared during the party convention.
KAY GALLANT: The Republican Party had two powerful leaders. One was Senator Roscoe Conkling. The other was Senator James Blaine. Garfield won Blaine's support by naming him Secretary of State. He lost Conkling's support by refusing to name one of Conkling's supporters Secretary of the Treasury.
Garfield denied he had promised anything to Conkling. Then he made Conkling even angrier by appointing one of Conkling's political enemies Collector of Taxes for the port of New York. That was the most important federal job in Conkling's home state.
Conkling refused to accept the appointment. He began a struggle in the Senate to block it.
KAY GALLANT: After several weeks, it became clear that the Senate would approve President Garfield's choice for the tax collector's job. Conkling decided to resign in protest. He would ask the New York legislature to show its support by electing him again to the Senate.
Before this could happen, something very unexpected took place. It happened in the train station in Washington, D.C., on July second, eighteen eighty-one. A man ran up to President Garfield, pulled out a gun, and fired twice. One bullet cut Garfield's arm. The other went into his back.
HARRY MONROE: The assassin was Charles Guiteau. When he fired the gun, he shouted that he supported Roscoe Conkling's political machine.
Charles Guiteau was insane. He believed God had ordered him to kill the president. But the words he shouted caused many people to wonder if others might be involved. After all, the vice president -- Chester Arthur -- supported Roscoe Conkling, too. If James Garfield died, Chester Arthur would become president.
KAY GALLANT: The president was carried to the White House. A doctor tried to remove the bullet from his back. He could not find it. Days passed. The president's condition changed from day to day. Doctors pushed their instruments into the wound as they continued to look for the bullet. The wound became infected. Garfield grew worse. Then he grew better. He asked to be taken to the sea shore.
Two months later, the doctors warned the Cabinet and Vice President Arthur that Garfield was dying. The end finally came on September nineteenth, eighteen eighty-one.
The president's body was taken back to Washington. Memorial services were held there. And then the body was taken to his home state of Ohio for burial.
James Garfield had been president for six months. He was the second American President to be assassinated. The first -- Abraham Lincoln -- had been shot just sixteen years before.
KAY GALLANT: The man who shot James Garfield -- Charles Guiteau -- was tried by a court in Washington. He was found guilty of murder. Like those found guilty of plotting to kill Abraham Lincoln, he was hanged.
Vice President Chester Arthur was in New York when he received news of President Garfield's death. He quickly sent for a judge to give him the oath of office as President. Arthur was in his early fifties. He would serve one term as leader of the United States.