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Guiteau and the Assassination of President Garfield

DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD

Days before his 1880 election, James Garfield gave a speech in his home state of Ohio. He urged young men, anxious to demonstrate their independence, to vote for him - even if their fathers and grandfathers planned to do the same. Using a phrase, which after his death seemed strangely ironic, the former Civil War Major General said:

Your life is full and buoyant with hope now, and when you pitch your tent, I beg you to pitch it among the living and not among the dead.

People remembered those words after Garfield (who only months before had watched his inaugural parade) was himself "among the dead." He had died "so soon," it was said, but not in vain:

Garfield, the Nation's chosen chief,
Alas, now dead! How deep our grief!
Rising self-made to highest state;
Falling so soon, by cruel fate.
If but thy death may emphasize
Each noble plan thou didst devise, --
Let sad Columbia mourn thee slain, --
Dying, thou hast not died in vain.

By the time those words were penned, Charles Guiteau had met his own fate.