Assasinations

Thankfully, the story of Garfield’s death is more interesting than the story of his life. His pre-presidential bio can be crammed into the following respectable sentence: The last president born in a log cabin, Garfield grew up with his widowed mother in Ohio, eked his way through college, became a college professor who moonlighted as a preacher, married his wife, Lucretia, in 1858, fathered five children, was a Union general in the Civil War, and served the people of Ohio in the House of Representatives from 1863 to 1880.

But back to his death. It is the story of this self-made man’s collision course with two of the most self-serving, self-centered, self-absorbed egomaniacs of the late nineteenth century—Garfield’s nemesis, Senator Roscoe Conkling, and the assassin, Charles Guiteau. The Garfield assassination is an opera of arrogance, a spectacle of greed, a galling, appalling epic of egomania dramatizing the lust for pure power, shameless and raw. And where else can a story like that start but in New York? (excerpt)
— Sarah Vowell in "Assassination Vacation"

Galling Appalling Epic day of Note: On this date in 1881 President James Garfield was shot by insane office seeker Charles J. Guiteau.

Watch the new American Experience PBS Documentary on James A. Garfield to.pbs.org/20GViWp

Image: “Assassination of President James A. Garfield,” The Library of Congress, accessed July 1, 2016,www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003671706/