INARGUABLY, the defining event of President James Garfield’s life was his death. Shot in the back on July 2, 1881, by the mentally unstable Charles Guiteau, Garfield died 11 weeks later mostly as the result of the medical mishandling of his wound by doctors ignorant of (or some might say oppositional to) germ theory. Guiteau himself would use the tragic circumstances of Garfield’s sometimes brutal aftercare in his defense at trial, saying, “The doctors killed Garfield. I just shot him.”
The assassination of Garfield less than four months into his presidency leaves little of record to note for his administration and relegates it to a footnote in the history of the highest political office in America. But the man himself was anything but a footnote and C.W. Goodyear’s comprehensive and meticulously researched biography President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier masterfully delivers us a candid portrait of the faculties and frailties that made Garfield a pivotal player in every theater he found himself involved, including as a teacher and principal at the Eclectic Institute, as a general during the Civil War, serving nine terms as a U.S. Representative, and as the founder of the nation’s modern-day Department of Education.
Goodyear doesn’t offer apologies or rationalities for Garfield’s role in the relocation of Salish Indians as some biographers might, and he carefully and objectively unravels Garfield’s involvement in the Credit Mobilier investment scheme that threatened his reputation and career.
Refreshingly, Goodyear handles Garfield’s character with the same even-handedness, and paints us a portrait of a man in
