When Sarah Vowell described the story of America as hideous memories with beautiful songs, she knew of what she spoke.
Certainly, among us today are people who remember John F. Kennedy's assassination in hideous Dallas, in 1963. His assassin may have been a dissolute loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, but many believe Oswald was an innocent fall guy and that Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy, possibly involving Mafia hit men. No matter, it was hideous and lunatics were involved.
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| General James A. Garfield |
Lincoln, of course, was shot in the back of the head by another lunatic, a self dramatizing out of work actor, who shot Lincoln, slashed an accompanying officer and then leapt to the stage, shouting, "Sic Semper Tyranis!" thus always to tyrants, before fleeing. Another hideous memory.
Between those two assassinations another President was shot, just a year into office, and before he could make any mark in history. James A. Garfield had been a true war hero, in the Civil War, which ended only 16 years before he took the oath of office. He was nominated when the Republican convention deadlocked, torn asunder by the boss of the New York party, who thought he deserved to be running the government, and would have been had his candidate been nominated.
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| President James A. Garfield |
Garfield may have been the finest mind since Lincoln, and certainly one of the most admirable men to have ever been elected President.
His inauguration speech was--outside of Lincoln's two addresses--the finest or among the finest ever given.
After a brief summation of the history of this nation, in which he put our struggles into a moral and emotional framework, he turned to the problems which his administration had to face, among them the unfinished work of freeing the former slaves, who without education and help could never be really free, he noted.
He knew he had to address the spoils system of government and replace it with a Civil Service whose job it was to serve the people not simply to be paid off for services rendered to victorious candidates.
He pointed to the financial underpinings of democracy which entailed decisions about whether to back American currency with gold or not.
And he turned to the issue of racism, and colored folks in the crowd stood weeping as he highlighted the importance of this work:
| The supremacy of the nation and its laws should be no longer a subject of debate. That discussion, which for half a century threatened the existence of the Union, was closed at last in the high court of war by a decree from which there is no appeal—that the Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof are and shall continue to be the supreme law of the land, binding alike upon the States and the people. This decree does not disturb the autonomy of the States nor interfere with any of their necessary rights of local self-government, but it does fix and establish the permanent supremacy of the Union. | 9 |
| 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." | 10 |
| 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 thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both. It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than 5,000,000 people, and has opened to each one of them a career of freedom and usefulness. It has given new inspiration to the power of self-help in both races by making labor more honorable to the one and more necessary to the other. The influence of this force will grow greater and bear richer fruit with the coming years. | 11 |
| 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. | 12 |
| The emancipated race has already made remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear, they have "followed the light as God gave them to see the light." |
Had he been successful in solving these problems, we might have been spared the Jim Crow years in the South and much heartache, but he was shot by a man who was clearly a lunatic, whose family had hoped to commit to an insane
but who, as is understandable to us today, managed to get a gun.
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| Garfield's lunatic assassin |
Such is American history: the great, the less than great and the potentially great wiped out by the weirdest and most diseased among us.
Mad Dog,
ReplyDeletePresident Garfield would surely appreciate your taking note of his many accomplishments, as well as his stirring State of The Union speech, over a hundred years after he delivered it. It's a travesty that he's remembered instead because of the actions of his killer-Civil War service and being elected to the highest seat in the land all eclipsed by his murder. Talking about adding insult to the ultimate injury...
I agree his speech is moving, strong and inspiring-no wonder former slaves wept when they heard it. He embraced the weakest in society forcefully and without reservation and at the same time proclaimed the essential nature of the Union. His words were powerful, but not intended to divide his fellow citizens. Contrast that to the lack luster, uninspiring, divisive drivel delivered by Trump this week as he, among other things, sought to paint immigrants as criminals and a threat to the jobs of real Americans..He didn't care if these remarks and others only continued to divide the country. Unity is hardly one of his goals. One does have to wonder what in the end Donald will go down in history for. Nothing good.
Maud
Garfield, who was apparently one of our most virtuous Presidents is remembered most for his death; he spent only a year in office.
ReplyDeleteOne of the lessons of his dying was how medical/surgical care can turn a less than lethal wound into a catastrophe. American physicians and particularly surgeons of the late 19th century had no concept of antisepsis and microbiology. They probed his wound to death.
Trump belongs to that other, more numerous group of Presidents who were simply small men in a big office.
The thing about the office is, if you are a big man, you can expand it like a huge balloon, but if you are small, it simply shrinks around you, and is of little consequence.