By: Clare McHugh / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com
In 1880, the United States was at a crossroads. Would former slaves finally enjoy full rights as citizens? Could the entrenched system of patronage—the awarding of federal government jobs to party loyalists rather than the most qualified candidates—be reformed? At the Republican National Convention in June, James Garfield addressed these questions as he urged the nation to fulfill its promises to all. Hearing his eloquent speech, hundreds of delegates rose to their feet and cheered in approval before demanding that the Ohio congressman be their nominee.
Garfield tried to refuse his party's nomination. He insisted that he had no desire for the presidency. But the tide of support for Garfield—who had risen to national office from poverty, like Abraham Lincoln, and who had shown heroism as a Union commander during the Civil War—proved unstoppable, and in November 1880, he was elected the nation's 20th president.
Portraits of President James Garfield (left) and his assassin Charles L. GuiteauGetty Images
What happened next represents one of the most tragic chapters in the annals of presidential history: shot four months after his inauguration, Garfield ultimately died of sepsis. In her bestselling work about Garfield, The Fate of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Assassination of a President [Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President], author Candice Millard skillfully tells the story. The award-winning book was the basis for a two-part documentary, Assassination of the president [The Murder of a President], broadcast in the US on the PBS network in 2016.
Facing a major "if" in US history
Now Netflix is the home of an ambitious new adaptation of Millard's work. Death by lightning [Death by Lightning], a four-part drama written by Michael Makowsky, starring Michael Shannon as James Garfield and Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Guiteau - the man who shot him. What can viewers take away from this production? "I hope it's a reminder that you don't need a big event to change the course of history," Millard tells the BBC. "In this case, the combination of one man's madness and another man's ignorance and petty ambition destroyed an entire nation."
Long before he shot Garfield, Guiteau had been showing signs of mental instability, yet he was never treated or isolated in that era of rudimentary psychiatry. As for the arrogant physician Dr. Wilfred Bliss—who insisted on overseeing the president’s care after he was shot—he mocked the latest antiseptic methods for treating wounds, using unsterilized instruments and even his own finger to check the hole near Garfield’s spine. The blame for the president’s death can be placed squarely on Dr. Bliss, as Millard so poignantly describes.
Screenwriter Makowsky chose The fate of the Republic Millard's two-for-one deal, he took it home and read it straight away. He immediately envisioned it as a TV drama. "I called the author and at first she said no," he tells the BBC. "I had to convince her to trust me with the project."
Makowsky could draw on his previous experience in dramatizing true events. A true-crime film he wrote for HBO, Bad education [Bad Education] - about a crooked school principal, Frank Tassone, from Makowsky's hometown of Roslin, New York - won an award Emmy in 2019. Telling Garfield's story meant confronting a constant historical "what if": what if the promising president had not been targeted by the assassin, what might he have accomplished? "He could have been one of our most extraordinary presidents. He had a brilliant intellect. It's a tragedy that he's been left in oblivion, like a footnote," says Makowsky.
Garfield's inauguration ceremony in March 1881Getty Images
Makowsky's essential task was to select from Millard's detailed analysis of the history of the assassination and construct a compelling narrative for television viewers. The fate of the Republic includes pieces on the divisions within the Republican Party, the antiseptics favored by British surgeon Joseph Lister, and Alexander Graham Bell's invention of an early metal detector that was later used to search for lead in Garfield's body. Makowsky chose to focus on the unique journeys of Guiteau and Garfield. "Both men were very eager to get to know each other," he said. "One lifts himself to the highest office in the land, while the other pursues greatness and never achieves it."
The killer's motive
At various times, Guiteau failed as a lawyer, a journalist, and an evangelical preacher. He even failed at a free-love commune he joined; no woman would sleep with him, as Millard recounts. Yet he always believed that God had ordained him for a greater purpose. Guiteau became obsessed with Garfield—after the congressman’s surprise nomination—and traveled to New York in the summer of 1880, determined to play a crucial role in securing his victory in the general election. Guiteau wore down the staff at Garfield’s New York campaign office until he was allowed to give a single, disorganized speech in support of the candidate.
Garfield vociferously opposed the system of bonuses for supporters, yet Guiteau believed strongly in it. He expected that, in return for his support, Garfield—now president—would give him an important post. Ambassador to France was his first choice. The deceived man traveled to Washington and appeared daily at the White House, along with crowds of other aspirants vying for high office. Guiteau even once confronted his hero directly, in the president’s office, where he handed Garfield a copy of his campaign speech, with “Consulate of Paris” written on it and a line connecting those words with his name.
Meanwhile, Garfield launched an ambitious agenda for his presidency, including improving the U.S. Navy, seeking to expand trade with Latin America, and protecting civil rights. He appointed social reformer Frederick Douglass—a former slave—as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia, the first African-American to hold a prominent federal office. At the same time, Garfield had to contend with Roscoe Conkling, a Republican senator from New York—perhaps the most powerful politician in the country, thanks to his indirect control of the lucrative customs revenues flowing from the Port of New York. Conkling disliked Garfield's progressive instincts and his opposition to the nepotistic system. He had already imposed his associate Chester A. Arthur as vice president on Garfield. Conkling now sought to block Garfield's Cabinet appointments.
After Guiteau's erratic behavior and unpredictable outbursts led to his being banned from the White House, he began showing up at the office of Secretary of State James Blaine. One day, he pleaded directly with Blaine, but was told flatly that he would never be given a position in the Garfield administration.
Illustration of the moment Guiteau shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad stationGetty Images
Without money or prospects, Guiteau retreated to his dilapidated boarding house. There, lying in bed, he had what he later called a divine inspiration: Garfield was not a “true” Republican, unlike his vice president. In his despondent state, Guiteau concluded that it was up to him to assassinate Garfield and make Arthur the leader of the nation.
Unfortunately, the president was not a difficult target. He walked around unprotected, even though John Wilkes Booth had assassinated President Abraham Lincoln just 16 years earlier. “Murder is no more preventable than death by lightning,” Garfield wrote in a letter, “and it is better not to worry about either.” After following Garfield for several days, Guiteau shot him on July 2, 1881, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station in Washington.
Garfield's phrase, "death by lightning," stuck with Makowsky, who chose it as the title for his work. He collaborated with director Matt Ross on casting and was fortunate to recruit Michael Shannon for the role of Garfield and Matthew Macfadyen for the role of Guiteau.
“We did a better job of casting the cast than we expected,” Makowsky said. After a visit during filming in Hungary, author Millard agreed. “Michael Shannon does an amazing job of capturing Garfield’s brilliance and dignity, but most of all his kindness, which was something I cared about a lot,” she says. “And Matthew Macfadyen, who I’ve watched and admired in so many roles, just becomes Charles Guiteau with all his perversity, delusion, and heartbreaking folly.”
Parts of Makowsky’s script follow the story closely; at other points he takes artistic liberties. Guiteau’s one meeting with the president at the White House was, in reality, perhaps formal and brief, but in Makowsky’s approach, the madman has a chance to express all his miserable desires to Garfield. And Macfadyen gives a powerful performance. “I’m your man,” the actor says, his voice trembling and his eyes brimming with tears. “Help me succeed like you. Open the door ... please. Tell me how I can be great too.”
Makowsky hopes that the public will have some empathy for Guiteau, despite his horrific crime, for which he was hanged on June 30, 1882. “It was easy to ignore him,” the screenwriter says. “But the extreme isolation he experienced in the world, the constant rejection, obviously hurt him, and there were no mechanisms to help him. The country ultimately paid the price for that.”
Garfield's Legacy
Poor Garfield—suffering from pain, fever, and constant worry under Bliss’s devastating care—began to wonder, as death approached, what the future would bring. As Millard recounts, he posed a question to a friend: “Do you think my name will have a place in the history of mankind?”
Michael Shannon as GarfieldNetflix
Garfield did make a difference. The national outcry over his assassination, at just 49 years old, fueled strong calls for civil service reform. The public understood that Guiteau’s anger—though fueled by his own mental disorder—had begun when he was denied the job he believed was his. And Arthur, now president and mourning his capable and likable predecessor, abandoned the corrupt system of nepotism that had brought him to office. When Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883, establishing merit-based standards for federal government employment, Arthur signed it into law.
"Thus began the professionalization of the federal bureaucracy, ensuring that Americans' interactions with the government were not influenced by their personal politics," wrote biographer C.W. Goodyear, author of the book President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier [President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier]. "The benefits for subsequent generations have been immeasurable." /Telegraph/
