President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier, C. W. Goodyear. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023.

Summary: A full-length biography of the twentieth president tracing his evolution from a Radical Republican to one who sought to unify his party and a country still riven by the Civil War.

I think for many of us, even fellow Ohioans, James A. Garfield is simply one of the mediocre presidents from our state. Largely, in Garfield’s case, it was because he was in office only five months, two of them spent slowly and painfully dying from a crazed assassin’s bullet and the unhygienic treatment of his doctors. Sadly, he spent most of his time in office dealing with office-seekers, leading, after his death, to the civil service reform he so ardently had sought. Left undone was so much work in solidifying Black civil rights jeopardized by the failures of Reconstruction, dealing with the rapid industrial expansion of the country and its economic institutions, and of course, leading in the extension of education opportunities.

This biography left me wondering “what if” Garfield had the opportunity to serve two terms. The arc of his life was one that combined capable leadership and the ability to bring people together across political differences. C. W. Goodyear’s account of Garfield’s life also reminded me of what a remarkable story was cut short by an assassin’s bullet. He was the last of our presidents born in a log cabin, in this case a rude one on Ohio’s Western Reserve. Growing up without the father who died in his infancy, he was raised by the strong-willed Eliza, who exerted an influence throughout his life and survived his death. At sixteen he left home to work briefly on the Ohio Canal before illness forced him to return home. His path lay in the direction of education, attending first the Geauga Seminary, and then after taking some teaching jobs, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, which later became Hiram College, a Disciples of Christ school, the church body into which he’d been baptized. He met Lucretia Randolph while he was there, teaching her Greek. He then went on to Williams College, gaining the respect of students and faculty as he completed the final two years of his education.

On his return from a prestigious Eastern college in 1856, he was hired as a teacher, and a year later as the president of the Eclectic Institute. He also preached in churches throughout the Western Reserve, gaining the wide respect of local citizens. He married Lucretia in 1858, But even before then he’d married politics, supporting the candidacy of John C. Fremont for president. By 1860, he’d been elected a state legislator, while reading for the law, passing the bar exam in 1861.

The Civil War interrupted his political aspirations. He felt he had to lead by example, raising volunteers from the Western Reserve and his own Institute. As a colonel under Don Carlos Buell, he drove Confederates out of eastern Kentucky through savvy and courageous maneuvering and battlefield courage. He subsequently was appointed a Brigadier General. After service both in Mississippi and Tennessee, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Western Reserve, an office he did not seek but accepted, a pattern later to be repeated.

Garfield’s House career occupies the major part of this book. Goodyear traces the career of the emancipationist congressman from the abolitionist Western Reserve, his efforts to support Reconstruction, an increasingly futile fight with the rise of Southern Democrats, but one he never gave up. We see the rising leader, friend to all, even his political opponents, even more important in the Hayes administration, when Republicans were in the minority, and he gave up a Senate bid to serve as minority leader. Garfield even manages during this all to formulate a proof of the Pythagorean theorem, submitting it for publication in The Atlantic Monthly. The major blot on his career was a financial scandal, and Goodyear shows how Garfield, both needy of money for living expenses, and glad for help, got caught up in the Credit Mobilier scandal, for all of $329.

The other blot on Garfield, and a mark of Lucretia’s greatness, was Garfield’s affair with another woman during a time of separation. He confessed, she reconciled, and subsequently, as Garfield pursued legal practice to supplement his income, they moved to Washington during congressional sessions, along with Eliza. Goodyear portrays these two women as mainstays in his life, and Lucretia is described as “unstampedeable.” Garfield eventually realized what he had in her, but for a time, it appears he was trying to live free of her.

The last part of the book has to do with Garfield’s presidential campaign and brief presidency. In 1880, the two major candidates were James Blaine and Ulysses Grant, the latter supported by Boss Conkling of New York, with fellow Ohioan John Sherman an uninspiring third choice, but one Garfield supported. One has the sense in the deadlocked convention that Garfield was the one with presidential mettle, and after a string of ballots, the shift to Garfield, although he never sought the office. After the nomination, the challenge was to unify the party. Blaine was a friend who became his closest confidant and Secretary of State. The challenge was Boss Conkling. And here the question is how far Garfield the reformer would go to win Conkling, the epitome of machine politics in his age. His success brought dismay, but it was Conkling who was dismayed when, as President, Garfield refuses some key appointments, and Conkling overreaches in resigning, only to find the limb sawed out from under him.

Goodyear devotes briefer space to the assassination and death. He doesn’t name the assassin until after the deed, alluding to his delusional job-seeking several times before. He also describes the unhygienic treatment of Garfield’s doctors who probably introduced the infection that killed him. Candace Millard’s Destiny of the Republic (review), tells this part of the story in far more depth. In some ways the death paves the way for reforms enacted by Chester Arthur, that would have been far more difficult for Garfield–a surprise in some ways as Arthur was a product of the Conkling machine.

In the end, impressed as I was with Garfield’s life before he was president, I found myself wondering how much of a reformer Garfield would have been. Garfield’s reformist passions always seem to conflict with his ability to be well-spoken of by all and to avoid making enemies, to unify. He helped negotiate the compromises that won Hayes the presidency and put the nails in the coffin of Reconstruction. Yet he was unyielding to Conkling. He probably would have advanced a vision for education in the country. Working with Blaine, we may have had an enlightened foreign policy. He made several key civil rights appointments and I suspect he would have resisted the worst of Jim Crow. But we shall never know…

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.