Number 20: James Garfield

Year in office: 1881
Pre-service occupations: general, lawyer, educator, state senator, U.S. representative, U.S. senator
Key events during his administration: Appointments showdown, beginning of Star Route fraud investigation, his assassination

Presidential rating: no rating but popular

ESSAY

He’s a great “what if.”

Like the other president who died so shortly into his term, James Garfield forever leaves us pondering the course of the nation had he lived. Would Garfield be remembered as another Lincoln or would the name still be associated with a fat, orange cat?

As with William Henry Harrison, though, James Garfield’s meteoric rise to power and shocking death merits examination. He was a popular man, a brilliant orator, a skillful politician, a friend to many and an enemy to few.

Of course, he’s remembered primarily—or only—because of his assassination, as his time in office was short. But during the run up to his abbreviated presidency, Garfield eared his reputation as one of the brightest political stars of the era. General, congressman and would-be reformer, Garfield raced through the post-war political scene like a meteor—and burned out almost as quickly when his life ended in 1881. The “young man in a hurry” is, like all the presidents, worth examining in full.

An educated and loquacious man
James Garfield came of age in an extremely poor area of Ohio known as the Western Reserve. After a brief seafaring adventure—on the canals of the east, not the Great Lakes or the oceans—the intensely curious and highly intelligent Garfield enrolled in the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. A simple and poor college, the Institute fired Garfield’s mind. He developed disciplined study habits, worked on speaking skills and started a daily diary that remained with him until his death.

Garfield went east for a degree, entering Williams College in northwest Massachusetts in 1854. There he came under the tutelage of one of the 19th century’s most noted educator’s Mark Hopkins. At Williams, Garfield’s speaking skills became legendary, and his salutatorian on commencement day in 1856 awed the assembled audience, including Hopkins, who was as proud of Garfield as if James were his own son.

His two years at Williams also awoke Garfield’s political interests; he joined the abolitionist movement and the Republican Party. He had also built up excellent skills in working with people whose views he didn’t necessarily support—a highly valuable skill for a politician. He returned to the Institute as a teacher, but soon entered Ohio politics and a Republican Party supporter. He finally won an office in his own right in 1859, to the Ohio senate. There, both his speaking and organizational skills made him an asset to the state.

Meanwhile, Garfield courted and wed Lucretia Rudolf, an old classmate from the Institute, in 1858. Their marriage wasn’t always an easy one, but they raised five children together. He called her “Crete.” He also read law and was admitted to the Ohio bar.

War
At first, Garfield sought compromise. In the Ohio senate, he arranged a banquet in honor of the Kentucky and Tennessee legislatures to demonstrate their common bonds. The effort was well received and highly praised. But after Fort Sumter, Garfield tossed aside compromise and fought for victory.

As a state senator, Garfield urged the raising of regiments for the Union cause. Friends insisted that his stature—his political stature—merited him a generalship, so Garfield sought a commission. He became the colonel of the 42nd Ohio Volunteers—a natural occurrence, in keeping with the spirit of the times that the man who raised the regiment usually led it.

His actions in western Kentucky during early 1862 were exaggerated by Union media eager for positive news and by Garfield himself. True, he had chased the Rebels from the area, but the case was, to put it kindly, overstated with exuberance. Still, Garfield lobbied for and gained promotion to brigadier.

He was later assigned to General Don Carlos Buell’s army during the Shiloh and Corinth campaigns, but ill health sent him home in the autumn.

During the fall of 1863, Garfield, now a U.S. representative in the 38th Congress, returned to the field with a general’s rank to serve as the chief of staff for Major General William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Army of the Cumberland. On September 19 and 20, Confederate Gen. Bragg, reinforced by James Longstreet’s veterans from Virginia, badly defeated Rosecrans at Chickamauga in northeast Georgia by driving half his army from the field—including Rosecrans and Garfield.

At a crossroads, Rosecrans and Garfield paused. One way lead to Chattanooga and safety. The other way lead back to the battlefield where the Union’s George Thomas was still fighting on Snodgrass Hill. Rosecrans went with the remainder of the army back to Chattanooga and eventual obscurity. Garfield, on the other hand, returned to the battlefield.

It may seem like an insignificant event—after all, most of the army was in retreat—but it illustrates that Garfield’s instincts were sharp—as were his political calculations. Many senior officers were later cashiered, especially Rosecrans. Who would re-elect a congressman who ran? But a congressman who ran BUT went back to fight? Different story. Garfield was promoted to major general. (Glenn Tucker gives details of this event on p. 311-313 of his Chickamauga, 1961.)

He would later leave the army for good when his term began that December and remained in Congress until he was elected to the U.S. Senate just before his nomination as a dark horse candidate in 1880.

Congressman Garfield
Once firmly ensconced in the House, Garfield joined the Radicals and embraced their hard-line course against the South. He chafed against Lincoln’s seeming moderation and would join his fellow Republicans and break with Johnson over Reconstruction. He grew disappointed in his fellow Ohioan, Salmon P. Chase, who as chief justice presided over Johnson’s impeachment. Garfield had considered Chase a political mentor but left Chase behind when he seemed to favor the defense during the trial (which wasn’t really true).

Garfield became known as a fiscal hardliner; he embraced the hard-money policies that favored the return to the gold standard. Rutkow explains that Garfield, knowing his district was politically safe (i.e., he never faced a serious challenge, and only once was his margin of victory below 60%) could make a serious, fiscally sound case for hard money without having to cater to political whims.

During his decade-and-a-half career in Congress, he also formed a rivalry/friendship with James G. Blaine of Maine, one of the key power figures of late 19th century Republican politics. Blaine had power in the House, and while he was Speaker, kept Garfield from leading the Ways & Means Committee. When the Democrats gained control of Congress, however, Garfield became the ranking opposition member—and a respected one at that.

Garfield’s career was nearly derailed through three separate scandals. “His involvement in these affairs seemed strange at the time,” writes Rutkow, “ since Garfield was decidedly puritanical in his views concerning public officials, industrialists and illicit business dealings.” (p.32) However, Garfield’s name came up in connection to the Credit Mobilier scandal. The federal government had subsidized a large portion of the Union Pacific’s construction from Nebraska to Utah. To cover up some money laundering, stock for the dummy corporation, the Credit Mobilier, was spread around Congress.

Garfield was among the congressmen who accepted stock, though by his word, he had no honest recollection about the matter. His less-than-forthcoming answers to investigators, however, hurt him politically. Soon, he had to justify his participation in the “Salary grab” of 1873, where Congress voted itself a 50% pay increase the same year the Panic hit (see entry on Grant).

Garfield was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee; so, of course public wrath came his way. He sent a letter to his constituents explaining what happened—and wasn’t entirely truthful in his explanation. Nevertheless, the safeness of his district and the distance of the next election prevented the twp scandals from hurting him too much. The final scandal was as much a scandal as a conflict of interest, where Garfield, as a lawyer, represented clients on one end and worked on legislation related to those same clients on the other. Rutkow relegates the matter to poor judgment rather than corruption.

Garfield was to play a role in the 1876 election crisis when he was appointed to the 15-member commission that was to decide the fate of the disputed electoral votes. What’s most notable about this is Garfield’s attitude: Rutkow relates that Garfield was “tired of the namby-pamby way in which many of our Republicans treat public questions.” (p.38) This speaks to Garfield’s desire to get things done boldly, not timidly, and he would carry that frustration throughout Hayes’ administration.

Hayes’ partial attempts at civil service reform, which Garfield didn’t fully support (because he didn’t like the rule that federal civil servants couldn’t participate in party politics) left the congressman despondent. Even those mild efforts met with strong opposition, and in Garfield’s opinion, that made the Hayes administration an “almost fatal blow” to the Republican Party.

Near the end of the 1870s, Garfield realized that he needed to move to the Senate and easily won the open seat in 1879.

The election of 1880
It’s true that James Garfield was a dark horse candidate. When President Hayes finally convinced his fellow Republicans that he really did mean he wasn’t going to seek a second term, party power brokers aimed to succeed Hayes with their own brand of Republicanism.

There were three main factions. The first were the Stalwarts: New York boss and Senator Roscoe Conkling lead them and backed ex-President Grant for a third term. Conkling ruled New York politics and had crossed Hayes over control of the New York Customhouse, the most lucrative port in the nation. The senator, according to some historians, wanted a third Grant term because Grant was supposedly controllable, though that seems dubious. More likely it was because Grant’s attempts at civil service reform came to naught.

The second powerful faction was the Half-Breeds, so called because they had pledged only partial support to the Grant administration and when they broke with Grant, they maintained some “see I told you so” style of credibility. They were led by Maine’s charismatic and slick James G. Blaine.

The third faction was basically the rest of the party, which bowed to neither the East Coast money interests nor the corridors of power. They were made up of the Midwestern and Western states (the South being a solid Democratic bloc). Their candidate was outgoing Treasury Secretary John Sherman.

Grant and Blaine held the strongest leads throughout much of the balloting, with Sherman barely registering. But on the 36th ballot, Blaine and Sherman supporters switched to Garfield, who won the nomination. It’s fascinating in that Garfield, already noted for his speaking skills, supposedly wasn’t actively seeking the nomination—though the did he or didn’t he question is still disputed—was by far the most popular man at the convention, even more so than Grant. When introducing Sherman’s candidacy, cries of “Garfield!” nearly drowned him out.

Conkling’s Stalwarts weren’t exactly mollified when Chester A. Arthur was selected to be the vice presidential candidate—convention politicking had gone against the Grant backers—and Garfield wasn’t exactly enamored with the choice either. It would cause some problems later.

The Democrats chose a genuine war hero—and a confirmed Democrat—as their candidate: Winfield Scott Hancock, the Army of the Potomac’s best corps commander (II Corps). Among his many laurels, Hancock had fought in almost every major battle in the east and had broken Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.

Garfield returned to Mentor where he conducted the first ever “front-porch campaign,” where party-members, supporters, well-wishers, bands, clubs, civic organizations by the wagon- and trainload came to hear speeches and see the candidate.

Campaign issues at first centered around 1876, but Democrats really couldn’t gain any traction, both because Hayes was not running and because their own investigations had revealed shady dealings on behalf of their own candidate (see previous entry). The campaigns instead focused on the two men. Admittedly, Hancock was the war hero while Garfield, though a general, really couldn’t compete, and Republicans knew they couldn’t touch Hancock’s service. Instead, they focused on him being the figurehead leader of a corrupt party; Democrats returned the favor.

Garfield got a tremendous boost in October when Democratic supporters attempted to damage the Republican by claiming he supported unlimited Chinese immigration. (See the last entry for more on this issue.) The letter, addressed to a “H.L. Morley” of Massachusetts, was published in a newspaper called The Truth. Chinese immigration was a heated issue in the West, and Garfield hurt himself by not answering the widely disseminated charge quickly. Finally, he provided a letter refuting the charge, and handwriting experts declared the Morley letter an obvious forgery. (Gee, this all sounds familiar, doesn’t it, Dan Rather?)

Garfield’s stature went up, the Democrats took a hit (no evidence Hancock was involved) and Garfield won in a close election. He took 214 electoral votes to Hancock’s 155, and just under 9,500 popular votes from over 9 million cast.

“Power” cabinet
With the election won, Garfield set about organizing the administration. The president-elect always must satisfy the various factions of the party that supports his election. To fail to do so for whatever reason usually invites problems, as it did for Grant and Hayes. This involves two things: the cabinet and appointments. The cabinet continues to be a major issue to this day; appointments have evolved into a different animal. The latter started becoming an issue in Grant’s term and would lead to tragic consequences in 1881.

The former produced two months of headaches for Garfield, making the end of 1880 and the beginning of 1881 a period of angst and frustration for the president-elect.

Garfield made his first selection by offering the State Department to James G. Blaine. The Secretary of State’s office during the 19th century was quite powerful: Europeans considered him akin to prime minister, while Americans considered him, and not the vice president, second only to the president. Garfield biographer Ira Rutkow explains that giving State to Blaine was a huge affront to Conkling—who did, after all, “deliver” the crucial state of New York for Garfield, hard feelings from the convention aside.

Conkling wanted a place in the Garfield administration, too—and not just the vice presidency, which few people thought much of. Conkling wanted one of his men at Treasury, the second-most powerful cabinet post. The Treasury secretary controlled monetary policy and a huge number of patronage positions. However, Garfield balked at the thought of having an Eastern moneyman once again in charge of federal monetary policy. Instead, he would eventually name William Windom of Minnesota to the post.

Oddly, Garfield gives the appearance of being under the domination of Blaine during this period, as the only firm commitment he got for a cabinet position was from Blaine by the time he got to Washington. None of Garfield’s proposed appointments seemed to meet with Blaine approval. Blaine also published, without Garfield’s knowledge, a pointed editorial that seemed to take aim at the Stalwarts, who were infuriated.

Garfield was dismayed at the fighting between the two strong personalities and their followers—and he still didn’t have a cabinet. Finally, in Washington, with his inauguration shortly to come, he made his choices. He offered War to Robert Todd Lincoln (A. Lincoln’s son), which gave prestige to the incoming administration. He wound up giving Treasury to Windom after abandoning all further attempts at compromise with Conkling proved futile when discussing the Navy secretary and postmaster general positions.

Garfield named Stalwart Thomas James to be postmaster general—but without consulting Conkling, which lead to, in Ira Rutkow’s words, an hour-long browbeating, where Conkling, witnessed by Arthur,

“...charg[ed] him with duplicity and lack of concern for the needs of the Republican Party. Arthur recalled that ‘for invective, sarcasm and impassioned eloquence, this was the speech of Conkling’s life.’ Garfield listened to the harangue in silence. He made no promises and made no apologies, but came away convinced, more than ever, that Conkling had little regard for most of his fellow Republicans.” (p.68)

There would be consequences.

The administration in action
President Garfield’s inaugural address is remarkable in that it was completely out of character. The man who had brought Hopkins to tears at his valedictorian fell flat during what was arguably the biggest speech of his life. Why? He was exhausted. The bruising cabinet nomination fight had left him little time to work on his speech; so, he didn’t finish until 3 that morning. When he took the oath later that day, he was wiped out.

Still, the new president took office amid prosperous times. The hard economic times were over and Garfield could look forward to tackling some interesting problems, such as pressing for education for blacks, especially in the South. Education was the key to black advancement, he argued in his inaugural, and he repeated that theme later that month in Louisiana. But other problems came up almost immediately—and probably made him happy that he picked the right men for cabinet positions.

First, Garfield set about strengthening the economy through Wall Street collaboration. Secretary Windom and Attorney General Wayne MacVeagh worked out an arrangement with brokers and bankers to redeem 5 percent and six percent government bonds for the new 3.5 percent bonds without unduly affecting the shareholders. Getting rid of the older bonds, which were used for Civil War public debt, became a bright mark for the administration—especially because it reduced interest on the public debt by 40 percent and saved the federal government $10 million a year.

Second, Garfield’s people uncovered one of the greatest scandals in American history: the “Star Route” fraud. It involved corruption in the post office, and it would take a bit of space to explain it. “Star Route” refers to special delivery routes in the southwest that were designated with a star or asterisk on the postal schedules, and that was where some of the fraud occurred. For example, one route charged the government $50,000 a year instead of the $1,000 contracted for. Biographer Rutkow explains that only someone high up in the Postal Service and elsewhere in t he government could authorize such fraud. (p.74-75)

Rumors had been circulating for years until finally a congressional investigation began. During his first week in office, Garfield ordered Postmaster General James to investigate and eliminate the abuses and corruption. He did so, and the investigation and charges would continue long after Garfield’s death.

Meanwhile, Secretary Blaine was working in Central America making the United States’ claim to any canal built in that area—a long-standing vision stretching back for several administrations.

Problems between Garfield and Arthur—and Conkling
While the Star Route fraud investigations got underway, the appointments controversy commenced once more. While Garfield was making appointments—including many black Americans to federal offices, Garfield needed to deal with the thorny problem of New York politics. The battle for civil service reform had only been postponed following Hayes’ half measures. The president actually invited Conkling in March to discuss appointments in hopes of somehow healing the rift. Garfield told the senator that while he agreed with the Stalwart’s suggestions, he needed to remember the non-Stalwart New Yorkers who had supported him in Chicago. Conkling thought they should be “exiled” to foreign service for all he cared.

Once more, Garfield seemed to be under the sway of a powerful personality when he submitted a number of Stalwart names for New York positions. An outraged Secretary Blaine tried to dissuade Garfield, but instead, the president sent another appointment: William Robertson, a Conkling enemy, as collector customs of the Port of New York.

Garfield might as well have kneed Conkling in the groin. Writes Rutkow:

“To appoint one of Conkling’s enemies to the coveted of all patronage positions was both a bold political stroke and a supreme insult to the Stalwarts. ‘This brings on the contest at once and will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States,’ Garfield wrote to one of his friends. ‘Shall the principal port of entry in which more than 90% of all our customs duties are collected be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator?’” (p.76-77)

The showdown brought matters to a head with his vice president. Chester Arthur (who had held the post in dispute until Hayes kicked him out) was a pure Stalwart. He and Garfield never got along—party politics had made them running mates—and the Robertson affair drove them completely apart. Arthur refused to speak to Garfield for a month, and soon started calling the president a liar—in public. Incensed, Garfield barred Arthur from the White House.

Conkling eventually lost the fight. Garfield gained in stature while Conkling, in desperation, resigned his seat in protest. The Senate confirmed Robertson anyway. “Grateful” New York voters did not return Conkling, to his surprise, to the Senate.

Garfield had struck a blow against “boss” politics and won.

A man named Guiteau
The battle over appointments created the most unfortunate consequence. Throughout most of the 19th century, the president had to spend the first several months of his term making appointments, and not just the high profile ones. There were thousands of federal posts that needed to be filled. Often, presidents of the same party kept many men on to ease the burden. Even with cabinet officials sharing the load, it was a tiresome and thankless job.

The chief executive was usually assessable to anyone, and Garfield was no exception. On his inauguration day and for weeks after, well-wishers and office-seekers flooded the White House. On of them was a would-be Stalwart named Charles Guiteau. He claimed that he had been key to Garfield’s election and therefore deserved a lucrative foreign posting. In truth, he had made crazy-man speeches on a street corner.

When his repeated visits to the White House and State Department led to no appointments—and actually caused him to be barred from both buildings—Guiteau turned against Garfield. When the president defeated Conkling, Guiteau decided that that Garfield needed to die: His death as the only way that the Stalwarts could take control and prevent the Democrats from starting another war.

Despite Abraham Lincoln’s assassination—even despite the attempted assassination of Andrew Jackson—there was still no guards for the president. Often presidents rode and walked alone or in the company of a few people. On July 2, 1881, President Garfield and Secretary Blaine walked alone into a Washington train station. They were heading to New Jersey and then other places east.

Once the duo had walked past him, Guiteau pulled out his .44 and shot Garfield twice.

The 80 days
If modern doctors had treated Garfield, he probably would have lived; the shooting would have had no more significance than the attempt on Reagan in 1981 and Guiteau would be akin to John Hinkley Jr. as a would-be assassin.

Guiteau’s first shot grazed Garfield’s right arm. His second shot hit him square in the back. Garfield went down; a policeman captured the shooter, who was screaming about being a Stalwart and that Arthur was now president. Blaine cradled the bleeding Garfield. Four cabinet members out on the platform at first thought a joke had been made: the president—shot?

Soon doctors arrived, including one of the few black American doctors. Garfield was moved to a second floor. He was weakening. Doctor Willard Bliss, a wartime gunshot expert and chief surgeon for the U.S. Armory’s hospital in Washington and current member of the DC Board of Health, soon arrived and took command. He probed for the bullet—most likely with dirty fingers—but couldn’t find it. Ten doctors in all gathered and finally agreed to let the president return to the White House.

He couldn’t have been in worse hands. Biographer Rutkow, a clinical professor of surgery who earned his doctorate of public health from Johns Hopkins, is an expert in the history of American medicine. His biography of Garfield is quite damning of the incompetent “care” that Garfield received from Bliss and the few other attending physicians.

Bliss took charge of the president and, like a mini dictator, controlled all access to Garfield and all information concerning his condition. Few visitors were permitted to see him, including family. Even the president’s personal physician was kicked out. The medical community loudly debated Bliss’ methods, but apparently the administration let him have his way. Worse, every doctor who probed into Garfield’s wound did so with unwashed fingers and non-sterilized instruments:

“From the moment that Bliss first placed his finger and instruments into Garfield’s wound, the president’s health was compromised. What had been a relatively clean bullet track was transformed into a highly contaminated one.” (Rutkow, p.110-111)

Garfield’s infected body was shaken with fever, loss of appetite and pain.

Meanwhile, the shocked nation clung to every bit of news that came from the White House, regardless of how seemingly false it was. Vice President Arthur came under immediate suspicion, and did Roscoe Conkling, considering the would-be assassin confessed his status as a “stalwart’s Stalwart.”

Months passed and finally the emaciated Garfield could take no more and demanded to be moved from the White House. A special train carried him to the New Jersey shore on Sept. 6. Bliss, seemingly delusional himself, kept telling reporters the president was recovering, but others attending him told a different story. President Garfield was clearly dying.

Finally, his painful ordeal was over on Sept. 19.

Legacy
Chester A. Arthur was sworn in the next day, though in truth, the nation had been without a chief executive since that fateful July day. The hard feelings between Garfield and Arthur—and Bliss, of course—kept Arthur from the White House throughout much of the abbreviated presidency.

The shooting and his ordeal had two lasting legacies. The first was the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform in 1883, which I’ll discuss in the next entry. The second was the intense debate his treatment (or lack thereof) helped spark in a medical community undergoing a major—and positive—transition. “The controversies surrounding Garfield’s death became a dividing line between the new and the old in American medicine,” writes Rutkow, who explains that the heated discussions centered on antiseptics, trained nurses, homeopathy, etc. (Even Charles Guiteau, whose lawyer argued for insanity, claimed that he didn’t kill Garfield; the doctors did. The judge didn’t agree, and Guiteau was executed.)

The arguments would continue for some time, and Rutkow notes that Bliss’ defenders would still be defending his methods when McKinley was assassinated 20 years later.

Final Assessment

Garfield was shot six months into his term and died in September, so, like William Henry Harrison, historians never rate him, and neither will I. But the second president to be assassinated, and second to die so shortly into his term, certainly left his mark on his age.

It’s not just that his death finally began the real reform in civil service. Also, Garfield’s life was one of the bright political stars of the post-war era. The tale of the “young man in a hurry” was a true rags-to-riches story, where a poor boy rose to prominence through his wits, eloquence, quick thinking and ability to compromise.

Garfield’s abbreviated presidency had great promise. He took on—and beat—one of the most powerful political bosses in the nation. His fiscal responsibility reduced public debt. He was attentive to racial matters and kept appointing black Americans to office. He ordered a deep investigation into the U.S. Postal Service fraud. A great “what if” was cut short.

Final assessment: No rating but popular.

Resources
Ira Rutkow’s James Garfield (2006) of The American Presidents series is fascinating because Rutkow is a clinical professor of surgery—and says that Garfield shouldn’t have died. Medical incompetence killed him, not Guiteau’s bullets.

Also useful was The Presidencies of James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur (University of Kansas American Presidency Series) by Justus D. Doenecke (1981).

Illustrations

1 President James A. Garfield

2 Brigadier Gen. James Garfield, probably circa 1863

3 Garfield and family. His wife sits at the table; Garfield’s mother sits at far right.

4 Garfield had several pictures taken of him together with his daughter, little Mollie.

5 This Joseph Keppler cartoon published in Puck on June 16, 1880, shows Ulysses S. Grant, wearing a Civil War uniform, along with many unhappy Republican backers, handing his damaged sword "Third term imperialism" to James Garfield, who is holding paper titled "for nomination President Garfield," in front of "Fort Alliance (anti-third-term)."

6 Garfield received thousands of visitors throughout the 1880 campaign at his Mentor, Ohio, home, pictures here in the Dec. 18, 1880, Frank Leslie’s illustrated.

7 Broadside showing James A. Garfield (right) and Chester A. Arthur.

8 Garfield’s bond of friendship for the unfriendly senators shows President Garfield wrapping a “patronage” ribbon around James Blaine (front) and Roscoe Conkling, as shown in Puck on March 2, 1881.

9 The attack on the President's life--Scene in the ladies' room of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad depot--The arrest of the assassin, from sketches by our special artist's [sic] A. Berghaus and C. Upham in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, July 16, 1881.

10 New Jersey--The removal of President Garfield, with his physicians and attendants, from the White House to the Francklyn cottage, at Elberon by the sea, September 6th, in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, Sept. 24, 1881.

11 New Jersey--President Garfield at Elberon--His first view of the ocean from his reclining-chair, Sept. 13th in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, Oct. 1, 1881.

12 Portrait of the late President James A. Garfield, painted by G.F. Gilman.