What if Garfield had not died?

(First post!) What if James Garfield had not been assassinated in 1881?
As I remember my history from High School (1958) which could be faulty, was that Garfield agreed with the Doles, Hales and others in Hawaii that Hawaii would be a great addition to the United States. It was his backing that brought American Samoa into our orbit. Which almost caused a war with Germany. He might have set up more coaling stations in the Pacific (more islands under the Stars and Stripes). His positions on American expansion were ahead of his time.
 
As I remember my history from High School (1958) which could be faulty, was that Garfield agreed with the Doles, Hales and others in Hawaii that Hawaii would be a great addition to the United States. It was his backing that brought American Samoa into our orbit. Which almost caused a war with Germany. He might have set up more coaling stations in the Pacific (more islands under the Stars and Stripes). His positions on American expansion were ahead of his time.
My bad I was thinking of Cleavland. Not Garfield. Garfield was attempting to clean up government and was shot by an office seaker who had been told NO.
 
(First post!) What if James Garfield had not been assassinated in 1881?

Weird, I was just at the Garfield Memorial a few days ago and thinking about this subject. This has been brought up several times, but only one thread has managed to get more than six posts.


If I remember correctly, Garfield was very passionate about racial equality in the south and believed that civil rights would be one of the most important issues for the nation for the next century. His strong opposition to Jim Crow laws made him very unpopular in certain parts of the nation Assuming he lives up to his talk, this could have very interesting effects on the development of the United States.
 
Garfield's son James was a cohort of Thedore Roosevelt. He was Roosevelt's Secretary of Interior. So from gleaming a bit of what his son was like. Garfield may have been the first Progressive President of the country.
 
Indeed, only the military nessecities of the Spanish-American War led to US forces landing and taking the islands as a valuable coaling station.
Hawaii was a coaling station long time before Spanish American War. The planters took over then offered Hawaii to US prior to The war. But Cleavland refused. First American troops/navy station at Pearl harbor around 1875. Mckinley oked the offer in 1898. Sorry I got messed up about Presidents
 
My bad I was thinking of Cleavland. Not Garfield. Garfield was attempting to clean up government and was shot by an office seaker who had been told NO.

Not quite.

Guiteau was--simply put--a complete nut--a delusional freak who'd never have gotten a job from anyone no matter how bad the spoils system got. (He was hoping for an ambassadorship, by the way. In Vienna, or Paris. Not that he spoke any languages but English, or had any other qualifications at all.) Classic presidential assassin, in other words.

As for Garfield--showed every sign of being a tough reformer who was willing to make the President important again. Probably a big loss.
 
Garfield was an intellectual, very well read, and, he had the ability to simultaneously write in Greek with one hand and in Latin with the other.


to add insult to injury, it is considered likely that Garfield could have been saved if a bunch of doctors hadn't been poking around in the wrong area with unwashed hands looking for where the bullet went in. massive infections :(.


according to the audio-book I "read" ("Assassination Vacation," by Sarah Vowell), Charles Guiteau's nickname at a free-love retreat was "Charles Get-Out" due to his ah lack of popularity.
 
I think Garfield would have gone done in history as a good president. I"ll have to do a little research to be able to post more in a sensible fashion.
 
I think Garfield would have gone done in history as a good president. I"ll have to do a little research to be able to post more in a sensible fashion.

According to what little I know about the man, it seems like he would have been a forgettable president if he hadn't died. This isn't a bad thing. In my opinion a forgettable president is certainly better than a bad one.

Not much happened during his four months. He spoke out against mormons, specifically polygamy, and endorsed racial equality during his inaugural address. During his campaign he vowed to stem Chinese immigration as well. No real efforts were made in his brief tenure though.

He only made one executive order; the establishment of memorial day.

Chester A Arthur's presidency could be viewed as a good indication of what could have been. Not a lot happened. Polygamy was discouraged but not outlawed; they were banned from voting. Immigration was reformed; impoverished people, criminals, mentally ill and Chinese couldn't become citizens. International time zones were established. Relations with Korea was established.

Two things that Arthur did that may not have happened under Garfield were the virtual repeal of the 15th Amendment and the establishment of a modern navy.

Arthur barely enforced the 15th and was a big proponent of Jim Crow laws. The lack of endorsement to the end of segregation was a huge blow to civil rights.

While Garfield wasn't anti-navy, at least I found no evidence of it, Arthur was just really pro-navy and dedicated his term to modernizing it. The US Navy in 1881 was virtually identical to the one in 1865. The Naval War College and Office of Naval Intelligence was established during his term. Denying the US a powerful navy may result in no Spanish American War.
 
Another change, and a very good change, might be far fewer or no Presidential "libraries".

For our foreign friends, each president whether good, bad, or ugly now gets money from the government and benefactors to set up a "library" containing their papers after their term of office. It's an entirely sycophantic and corrupt practice with presidents grubbing about for donations while still in office.

There's always varying attempts to make excuses for this exercise in the personality cult the presidency has devolved into. The "libraries" are often referred to as research centers, a few are actually part of universities, most include a museum of some sort, and most ex-presidents maintain their publicly funded offices there. Despite all the window dressing the practice is nothing more than another method to curry favor with and get favors from presidents.

Garfield, believe it or not, has one of the first presidential libraries. In his case, his widow set up a few rooms as a memorial to him and accepted private donations to maintain the collection. (IIRC, it's now maintained by the government.) While his library was created for a different purpose and in a far less corrupt manner than the libraries that followed, Garfield's presidential library set the precedent. While all of his immediate predecessors didn't follow that precedent, by the 20th Century each president was accepting donations and offers while still in office with regards to maintaining their "legacy".

No Garfield assassination, no young grieving widow, and maybe, just maybe, presidential papers end up in the Library of Congress where they belong after each presidency.
 
You're asking about the hypothetical presidency of a highly intellectual, anti-fundamentalist, pro-civil rights reformer pledged to clean up government and pull no punches?

Just watch The West Wing and imagine they've all got moustaches and tailcoats.
 
You're asking about the hypothetical presidency of a highly intellectual, anti-fundamentalist, pro-civil rights reformer pledged to clean up government and pull no punches?

Just watch The West Wing and imagine they've all got moustaches and tailcoats.

:D

Oh that did tickle me.


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I agree Garfield probably would have been one of many unknown Presidents, however if he did stick by his instincts, he could have been a very important one.

His inaugarul speech speaks quite plainly of the need for full citizenship for African-Americans, with no compromises. Plenty of room for controversy there.

He also talked about universal education, agricultural protectionism and civil service reform.

Given the nature of Jim Crow laws, mainly being based around literacy tests and the like, plus Garfield's track record as a moderate 'Reconstrutor', I can see him trying to use education as a means of advancing black civil rights.

No assassination means James Blaine stays on at the State Department. So we might see earlier attempts at Pan-American diplomacy, trade deals and efforts to increase US influence over the Western Hemisphere. He was in favour of Hawaiian annexation, so that might come up. He was also something of a Anglophobe, so there might be something there.
 
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