The Death of President Garfield 2 July 1881

The Death of President Garfield

The 20th U.S. president was born 19 November 1831. He was fatally wounded just four months into his presidency.

He was shot twice by Charles Julius Guiteau, an itinerant whacko who'd been seeking a job in the Garfield administration.

James Garfield was born in Ohio and yes, in a log cabin. But his family was poor, so it probably wasn't a very nice log cabin. His parents had no education, but James took to it like a fish to water, and that was his ticket to politics.

Garfield was an Ohio congressman for 18 years, a Republican. He was popular and powerful and a terrific speaker. In 1880 the Ohio legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate, but that was a presidential election year; Garfield's election as president happened while he was still in the House of Representatives.

He hadn't even wanted the job, they say. He was a supporter of John Sherman, who was duking it out with leading Republican contenders James Blaine and Ulysses S. Grant for the party nomination. But the crowd wanted Garfield, especially after he gave a rousing speech. After two days and a record number of ballots, Garfield emerged as the Republican candidate.

He easily defeated the Democrat candidate, Winfield Scott.

James Garfield

The first few months of his presidency were rough. The Republican party was split, and Garfield had made an enemy of New York's powerful Senator Roscoe Conkling. And Garfield's wife, Lucretia, came down with malaria.

But by June things were looking up. Garfield had triumphed over Conkling, and Lucretia was resting in New Jersey and regaining her health.

Meanwhile, crazy Charles Guiteau was stalking President Garfield, having decided he had to assassinate the president "to unite the Republican Party and save the Republic."

Guiteau had a long history of being a weirdo. After Garfield became president, Guiteau would visit Garfield's office, seeking a political appointment. He was such an oddball he was eventually banned, so he turned his attention to seeking a consulship in France from Secretary of State James Blaine.

After a few visits, Blaine bluntly told Guiteau to get lost.

Instead, Guiteau obtained a revolver and began following Garfield. He had one opportunity to kill the president in church, but instead drew attention to himself by heckling the sermon. Garfield even noted the event in his diary, describing his future assassin as "a dull young man, with a loud voice, trying to pound noise into the question."

Guiteau had another opportunity several days later, but decided he didn't want to kill Garfield in front of Lucretia.

On the morning of 2 July 1881, Guiteau knew that Garfield would be at the Baltimore and Potomac train station. President Garfield and his two teen sons, Harry and Jim, were on their way north to meet up with Lucretia, and Garfield planned to attend his 25th class reunion at Williams College.

Guiteau arrived at the station early. He stowed his things, got his shoes shined and eagerly anticipated his fame for killing Garfield. His plan was to immediately surrender and be taken to jail.

President Garfield and Secretary Blaine entered the station together, just the two of them. From three feet away, Guiteau fired at Garfield. The bullet went through Garfield's right arm and he said, "My God! What is this?"

Guiteau shot Garfield again, firing into his back. Guiteau took off running, with Secretary of State Blaine chasing after him. Officers from the train station apprehended Guiteau, and they had to quickly usher him from the station amid an angry crowd's demand for immediate retribution.

In the confusion, the police didn't even take Guiteau's gun until they'd finally taken him out of the station. President Garfield lay in a pool of blood in the station as his son, Harry, tried to summon medical help and keep the crowd back.

Guiteau had failed as a lawyer, failed as a preacher, failed as a politician, and now he had failed as an assassin. He didn't kill President Garfield, medical malpractice did. The president had a bullet lodged in his body, and doctors dug around his insides while scoffing at the concept of germs. Garfield died 19 September 1881, a couple of months before his 50th birthday.

President Garfield had been in office only 200 days.

Charles Guiteau pleaded insanity and most of his trial hinged on that issue. He raved in court, openly badgering witnesses and insulting his defense attorney (his brother-in-law!). His trial lasted until 26 January 1882. When he was found guilty, the crowd cheered.

Charles Guiteau looking a little bit nutty

Guiteau was hanged 30 June 1882, in front of a crowd of hundreds.

http://www.who2.com/blog/2013/11/the-death-of-president-garfield

Lucretia Garfield Biography

• U.S. First Lady

• 

  The Death of President Garfield

Lucretia Rudolph Garfield was the wife of James Garfield, the 20th president of the United States. Her father was a co-founder of what became Hiram College, where Lucretia was educated and where she met her future husband. The Garfields married in 1858, but their early years were spent apart -- James served in the state legislature, then in the Union army during the Civil War. When James was elected to Congress in 1862, Lucretia began the life of a political spouse and mother (they had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood). As First Lady, she had a rough go of it. Her husband took office in March of 1881 and she came down with Malaria in May. While recuperating in New Jersey she got word her husband had been shot on 2 July. She nursed him until he died on 19 September, just six months after taking office. Lucretia lived another 36 years, politically active but out of the limelight.

White House, Washington D.C.

State of California

State of California
Flag Seal
Nickname(s): The Golden State
Motto(s): Eureka[1]
Official language	English
Spoken languages	As of 2007 English only 57.4%[2] Multilingual 32.8%[2] Spanish 28.5%[3] Chinese 2.8%[3] Tagalog 2.2%[3]
Demonym	Californian
Capital	Sacramento
Largest city	Los Angeles
Largest metro	Greater Los Angeles Area
Area	Ranked 3rd
- Total	163,696 sq mi (423,970 km2)
- Width	250 miles (400 km)
- Length	770 miles (1,240 km)
- % water	4.7
- Latitude	32° 32′ N to 42° N
- Longitude	114° 8′ W to 124° 26′ W
Population	Ranked 1st
- Total	38,332,521 (2013 est)[4]
- Density	246/sq mi (95.0/km2) Ranked 11th
- Median household income	US$61,021 (9th)
Elevation
- Highest point	Mount Whitney[5][6][7][8] 14,505 ft (4,421.0 m)
- Mean	2,900 ft (880 m)
- Lowest point	Badwater Basin in Death Valley[6][7] −282[9] ft (−86.0 m)
Before statehood	California Republic
Admission to Union	September 9, 1850 (31st)
Governor	Jerry Brown (D)
Lieutenant Governor	Gavin Newsom (D)[10]
Legislature	California State Legislature
- Upper house	California State Senate
- Lower house	California State Assembly
U.S. Senators	Dianne Feinstein (D) Barbara Boxer (D)
U.S. House delegation	38 Democrats, 15 Republicans (list)
Time zones	Pacific Time Zone
- Standard time	PST (UTC−8)
- Summer time (DST)	PDT (UTC−7)
Abbreviations	CA, Calif., Cali., US-CA
Website	www.ca.gov

State of Colorado

State of Colorado
Flag Seal
Nickname(s): The Centennial State
Motto(s): Nil sine numine (English: Nothing without providence)
Demonym	Coloradan
Capital (and largest city)	Denver
Largest metro	Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area
Area	Ranked 8th
- Total	104,094 sq mi (269,837 km2)
- Width	380 miles (612 km)
- Length	280 miles (451 km)
- % water	0.36%
- Latitude	37°N to 41°N
- Longitude	102°03'W to 109°03'W
Population	Ranked 22nd
- Total	5,187,582 (2012 estimate)[1]
- Density	49.3/sq mi (19.0/km2) Ranked 37th
- Median household income	57,685[2] (11th)
Elevation
- Highest point	Mount Elbert[3][4][5][6] in Lake County 14,440 ft (4401.2 m)
- Mean	6,800 ft (2070 m)
- Lowest point	Arikaree River[4][5] at the Kansas border 3,317 ft (1011 m)
Before statehood	Territory of Colorado
Admission to Union	August 1, 1876 (38th state)
Governor	John Hickenlooper (D) (2011–)
Lieutenant Governor	Joseph A. Garcia (D) (2011–)
Legislature	General Assembly
- Upper house	Senate D-18, R-17
- Lower house	House of Representatives D-37, R-28
U.S. Senators	2. Mark Udall (D) (2009–) 3. Michael Bennet (D) (2009–)
U.S. House delegation	1. Diana DeGette (D) (1997–) 2. Jared Polis (D) (2009–) 3. Scott Tipton (R) (2011–) 4. Cory Gardner (R) (2011–) 5. Doug Lamborn (R) (2007–) 6. Mike Coffman (R) (2009–) 7. Ed Perlmutter (D) (2007–) (list)
Time zone	Mountain: UTC-07/UTC-06
Abbreviations	CO, Colo. US-CO
Website	www.colorado.gov

The Day Lincoln Was Shot April 14, 1865.

April 14, 1865. As four year of Civil War draw to a close, our country again faces unforgettable tragedy: the assassination of the President.
On this day in 1865, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.

Booth, a Maryland native born in 1838, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces.

In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy. Learning that Lincoln was to attend a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth masterminded the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into disarray.

On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln's private theater box unnoticed and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth leapt to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]–the South is avenged!" Although Booth broke his leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he managed to escape Washington on horseback.

The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, Lincoln, age 56, died–the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and other secret forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other people eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed. Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, was buried on May 4, 1865, in Springfield, Illinois.

http://www.history.com/

OBAMA Social Security Scandal chained consumer price index

President Obama on Wednesday will introduce a budget proposal that, even by his own standards, isn't great. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, the president acknowledged it's not his "ideal plan" for reducing the deficit or growing the economy.



It shouldn't be that surprising, then, that his party's progressive base is irate. A collection of liberal grassroots groups are joining with organized labor other groups Tuesday to make it clear to the White House that they flat out oppose one of the key elements of Mr. Obama's plan -- the seemingly innocuous proposal to change the way the government measures inflation.



"This is a challenge, but we don't feel we have any choice but to do everything we can to change the outcome of this debate from where the president seems to be driving it," Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told CBSNews.com.

• Obama to propose entitlement cuts, tax hikes
• Graham: Obama "showing a little bit of leg" on budget

Richtman's organization and several others are delivering more than a million petition signatures to the White House Tuesday, opposing any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.



While the White House has yet to lay out the details of the president's proposed 2014 budget, it has confirmed that cuts to Social Security are part of the plan -- in the shape of a "chained" consumer price index (chained CPI), or a change in measuring inflation.



A "chained" CPI measures inflation more conservatively (about 0.2 or 0.3 percentage points more slowly) than the standard CPI that's currently used to make cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security benefits.



Democrats in Congress have had no qualms about labeling the potential use of the chained CPI as cut to Social Security benefits, and last week, the White House didn't deny it.



"This is not the president's idealized budget," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday, when asked about the fact that the chained CPI would not only effectively cut benefits for seniors, but also for veterans. "It is not what he would do if he were king or if only people who supported his proposals were in Congress."



Opponents of the chained CPI are skeptical that putting this offer on the table will make Republicans any more open to increasing tax revenues as part of a deficit reduction plan. Richtman pointed out that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has suggested Republicans would like to take the president's concession without offering up any of their own.

Bernie Sanders

332 Dirksen Building

U.S. Senate

Washington,

D.C. 20510

Phone

(202) 224-5141

Fax

(202) 228-0776