What If Garfield Lives?

This is the planning phase for "I Like Mondays" (you want it, contribute here). The problem is that these James Garfield lives threads never get far, which is why I ask for some commitment here in actually getting beyond five posts and a few comments on stalwart/halfbreed division, and one post of the "he'll need to get wounded for civil service reform to pass" deal. I need discussion on the gamut from successors to policies to political effects to how this all effects the rest of the world beyond the United States, etc.,etc. So what if James Garfield survives?
 
I bought a tribute book to Garfield a few years ago. It implies he was strongly in favour of rights for former slaves.

Does anyone know

1) Was that in fact GArfields' view

2) Could he have actually done something about political rights for black guys in the South if he wanted to?
 
I bought a tribute book to Garfield a few years ago. It implies he was strongly in favour of rights for former slaves.

Does anyone know

1) Was that in fact GArfields' view

2) Could he have actually done something about political rights for black guys in the South if he wanted to?

"The will of the nation, speaking with the voice of battle and through the amended Constitution, has fulfilled the great promise of 1776 by proclaiming "liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof." The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787."

"No doubt this great change has caused serious disturbance to our Southern communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen."
 
"The will of the nation, speaking with the voice of battle and through the amended Constitution, has fulfilled the great promise of 1776 by proclaiming "liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof." The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787."

"No doubt this great change has caused serious disturbance to our Southern communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen."
I'm assuming those are quotes from him?
 
What could a President in the early 1880s do to ensure that the US Constitution, especially the 14th and 15th amendments were applied in the states that had rebelled 20 years earlier?
 
What could a President in the early 1880s do to ensure that the US Constitution, especially the 14th and 15th amendments were applied in the states that had rebelled 20 years earlier?

Use Federal troops and militia to enforce them. Presidents have been doing that since the Whiskey rebellion.
 
I'll bracket this out for easier usage (I do think this topic will die -as every other one dealing with Garfield garnered perhaps 6 posts maximum and died off). Feel free to add anything I may have missed,


  • Economics
  • Reforms and Regulations
  • Military (Army, Navy, and so forth)
  • Domestic policies
  • Civil Rights
  • International Affairs
  • Supreme Court
  • Successors and the Elections to follow Garfield
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesgarfield/

I do think Garfield could usher in an earlier "Progressive age" with Anti-trust/monopoly laws and greater regulations and restrictions in economic matters. In foreign affairs, all I could find was this "In foreign affairs, Garfield's Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882." I'd say successors in the election of 1888 could range from James Blaine to John Sherman, though I'd say Blaine could clinch it, perhaps with Sherman gaining the office later on.
 
Garfield had just broken the political power of Roscoe Conkling at the time he died. Conkling was the power in the Senate and was a major for of civil service reform. Garfield was the political power in Washington and had the people behind him. He probably could have dramatically changed policies in Washington and the nation.
 
So, we've got to figure out Garfield's position on things first off, then figure out what was actually possible for him to do at the time. Going off the shortlist you've provided:

- Economics
Garfield supported the Silver Standard and wanted a fixed silver standard system worldwide. He also wished for a reduction in interest on debt.
Called for more investment in agriculture, as well as in developing industries.
Supported the construction of a canal in Central America to be controlled by the United States.

- Reform and Regulation
In addition to ending the practice of patronage, Garfield also wanted term limits on minor Executive Department posts (exactly what 'minor' means in this case is not clear to me, that is the wording he uses).

- Military
There is little information on Garfield's political military stances, and the same goes for his Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln.

- Domestic Policies
Garfield was critical of Mormons and hoped to enforce the abolition of polygamy in Utah.
Advocated literacy programs, especially in the South, and called on Congress to implement universal education (whether this means higher education, or simply primary and secondary education is debatable).

- Civil Rights
Garfield was strongly opposed to the Jim Crow laws of the South.

- International Affairs
Garfield was very interested in increasing relations with Latin America and the developing Republics. (Remember this was before the Spanish-American War, so Spain still had some influence in the Caribbean)

- Supreme Court
Garfield appointed only one Justice to the Supreme Court in his term, Stanley Matthews, a lawyer and politician who served on the Supreme Court only seven years.
Nevertheless, Matthews was influential on at least one potentially relevant case: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, a case in which Matthews, writing in the opinion of the Court, established that laws which are administered discriminatively based on race were unconstitutional, no matter the intent of the law.

- Future Elections
Within the nine months of his term, Garfield effectively united the disparate Republican factions under him, culminated by the resignation of Conkling, his largest Congressional opposition. He was adept at choosing political appointments in a manner that balanced political interest or at least tended to satisfy everyone enough that he remained popular.
My bet would be on him winning by a much greater margin in the 1884 election, based solely on what he was trying to do at the time of his assassination, not even considering what he was capable of doing.

FYI, most of the information provided here was based on his intentions as expressed in his inaugural address.
 
Not a problem, I enjoyed reading up on Garfield and now look forward to seeing what becomes of this project. I'll be glad to contribute as many of my own opinions and speculations as you like. Personally, I feel that Garfield was a pretty sharp individual and would have been the right guy at the right time if his term had not been cut short.
 
I'll bracket this out for easier usage (I do think this topic will die -as every other one dealing with Garfield garnered perhaps 6 posts maximum and died off). Feel free to add anything I may have missed,


  • Economics
  • Reforms and Regulations
  • Military (Army, Navy, and so forth)
  • Domestic policies
  • Civil Rights
  • International Affairs
  • Supreme Court
  • Successors and the Elections to follow Garfield
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jamesgarfield/

I do think Garfield could usher in an earlier "Progressive age" with Anti-trust/monopoly laws and greater regulations and restrictions in economic matters. In foreign affairs, all I could find was this "In foreign affairs, Garfield's Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882." I'd say successors in the election of 1888 could range from James Blaine to John Sherman, though I'd say Blaine could clinch it, perhaps with Sherman gaining the office later on.

How can you have a progressive age before progressivism is even born?

Not to mention that progressive philosophy was an urban phenomenon, and in the 1880's the US was still an overwhelmingly agrarian country. While populism can have some effect, you're not going to have much success turning Western farmers against Eastern factory owners without some heavy authorial fiat.

I know he's a Republican so I probably already know the answer to this but...what was Garfield's stance on protectionism?
 
Not to mention that progressive philosophy was an urban phenomenon, and in the 1880's the US was still an overwhelmingly agrarian country. While populism can have some effect, you're not going to have much success turning Western farmers against Eastern factory owners without some heavy authorial fiat.
Say what? I will admit that my knowledge of that part of US politics is relatively minimal, but didn't LaFollette have most of his support in rural areas?

And surely, turning rural farmers against city-slicker business types should be trivial. Certainly in Canada, the western farmers hated the tariffs protecting Eastern industry, and hated the eastern owned railways. (Joke: farmer stands in a field destroyed first by a late frost, then by drought, then by a plague of grasshoppers, shakes his fist at the heavens and shouts "God Damn the CPR". Except it's not entirely a joke, unfortunately.) Maybe the dynamic was different south of the border, but I don't think it was all THAT different that way.
 
Say what? I will admit that my knowledge of that part of US politics is relatively minimal, but didn't LaFollette have most of his support in rural areas?

And surely, turning rural farmers against city-slicker business types should be trivial. Certainly in Canada, the western farmers hated the tariffs protecting Eastern industry, and hated the eastern owned railways. (Joke: farmer stands in a field destroyed first by a late frost, then by drought, then by a plague of grasshoppers, shakes his fist at the heavens and shouts "God Damn the CPR". Except it's not entirely a joke, unfortunately.) Maybe the dynamic was different south of the border, but I don't think it was all THAT different that way.

I'm merely pointing out that the progressive movement was a complex result of a myriad of factors unique to the situation in which it arose. You can't simply jump-start something like that by changing one politician.
 
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