Seven Presidents Park along the Jersey Shore in Long Branch is a well-known spot for beach goers in the summer. Long Branch can be quite crowded in July (and very expensive) so I visited it last November. But if you are taking in the waves just a handful of miles from New York City, try to stop by this site. The park is named after the seven presidents who vacationed there. They are Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson. James Garfield also took a vacation there in June 1881, but he is more remembered for his decision to die at the beachfront a few months later after he was shot by an assassin.
Garfield was born in 1831 in a log cabin in Ohio. When he was a very small child, his father died leaving the family in poverty. Through his own intelligence and drive, Garfield pursued a life in education and he enrolled in local schools. He decided to go to Williams College in Massachusetts where he had to work to support himself. He became caught up in the Abolitionist ferment in Massachusetts and it impacted the rest of his life. After graduation he returned to Ohio and became a teacher and soon the principle of his school.
By 1856, Garfield was a committed Republican. He helped raise the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He was a Union officer commanding troops at Shiloh under Ulysses S. Grant. He was repeatedly promoted and left service as a major general.
The park appears on maps of the city. It is located on Joline Avenue and Ocean Blvd. I had to walk a little ways to find the statue along the water. While the park is named after seven presidents who visited the area before 1920, there is an eighth president who visited Long Branch, Donald Trump. So far, there is no effort to turn this into Eight Presidents Park.
Long Branch had become an important beach resort before the Civil War. In fact, Mary Lincoln summered there. In 1869 when Grant summered in the same town he declared it the “Summer Capital.” Grants successor Rutherford B. Hayes also vacationed there. Basically all Republican presidential families vacationed here from Mary Lincoln to William McKinley. Two were assassinated and Mary Lincoln’s husband was also assassinated. Three of the four U.S. Presidents killed in office had some connection to Long Branch!
When President Garfield was shot, he was taken to the Long Branch area to recover or die in peace. However, he had already vacationed there.
In June of 1881, Garfield needed some relaxation from his position and he, along with his secretaries. went to Elberon, a town just below Long Branch in New Jersey. Garfield wrote that when he was there, “The worry and work of Washington seems very far away… I have always felt that the ocean was my friend.” [President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier p. 445] When Garfield was at Elberon, Ulysses S. Grant was also there. Grant was angry at Garfield for interfering with his “Stalwarts” at the Customs House in New York. Grant was on the beach when Garfield walked by and did not rise to greet him, and Grant made comments in the press antagonistic to the new president. Garfield wrote that “I am quite certain he injures himself more than he does me.” [President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier p. 446]
The Seven Presidents monument is right along the seaside. It consists of a statue of President Garfield and six small monuments commemorating each of the other presidents. In the Long Branch area there are at least three markers or monuments honoring Garfield.
On July 2, 1881, not long after Garfield had returned to Washington from New Jersey, he was shot. Charles J. Guiteau, who millions of American schoolkids learned was a “disappointed office seeker,” was the culprit.
The assassin revealed himself as a Republican Stalwart. Stalwarts were people who were loyal to President Grant, and by the 1880s saw New York’s Senator Roscoe Conkling and Garfield’s Vice President Chester Arthur as their leaders. Many Stalwarts resented Garfield’s moves towards making government service in various departments a professional occupation, rather than the American tradition of the “spoils system” in which each president cleared out the previous office holders and appointed his allies to those positions. Garfield was looking at filling posts with what would be called a modern civil service approach.
Charles Guiteau may have aligned himself with the Stalwarts, but he was unknown to the men who ran this Republican faction. However, Guiteau claimed that his work had helped to get Garfield elected president in 1880 and that he expected to be rewarded with a high position in the Federal government. Historians have looked at the assassin’s work during the election of 1880 and say that his electoral efforts were entirely in his own mind.
Guiteau had made up his mind to act on his grievances before he actually fired his gun. He patrolled Washington in the weeks before the assassination to prepare. He followed Garfield and Secretary of State James G. Blaine to look for an opportunity to carry out the killing. On July 1, 1881 he watched as Blaine and Garfield walked down a street and later told investigators that “Mr. Garfield had sold himself body and soul to Blaine, and that Blaine was using Garfield to destroy the Stalwart element of this nation… and disrupt the Republican Party and cause a civil war.” [President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier p. 447]
On July 2, 1881 Garfield left the White House to take a train to his reunion at Williams College. He was accompanied by Blaine and his son Hal. When they had entered the train station, a shot rang out. Garfield vomited and fell face down on the train station’s floor. A police officer almost immediately arrested Guiteau, but he was surrounded by commuters who began assaulting the assassin. A wedge of police officers rescued Guiteau from the crowd and took him to jail.
Guiteau was asked why he had shot the president and he said “I am a Stalwart, and want Arthur for President.” [President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier p. 448] This led many people to become convinced that the Vice President was behind the assassination plot. No evidence has emerged of Arthur being tied to the shooting other than the assassin’s statements.
The country was shocked by the shooting. The United States had gone through a great Civil War. At the end of it, in April of 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated, the first president in American history to be killed. Now, just 16 years later, another president had been shot and he was presumed to be fated to die. Twenty years later a third president, William McKinley, would be assassinated in 1901 in Buffalo. All three presidents were connected to the Civil War, Lincoln as president during the war and Garfield and McKinley as soldiers.
Robert Todd Lincoln was Secretary of War under Garfield and he was at the train station when the president was shot to see him off. He was also present when McKinley was shot.
Although many newspapers reported that the president had died on July 2, after the initial moments following the attempt, it appeared that Garfield might survive. Unfortunately doctors were called to attend to the patient and each stuck his fingers into the hole where the bullet entered his body. None sanitized their hands before doing so. This would result in infections which would contribute to his death.
A doctor told Garfield that he might recover, but the president said “I thank you doctor, but I am a dead man.” But, the president did seem to be making progress against the wound in July, however, by August infections seemed to cause a downturn. His doctors were also concerned that keeping him in Washington might lead him to getting malaria. They wanted to move him out of the city. Garfield, who had been shot right after returning from Elberon, wanted to go back to the resort to recover or live out his last days.
The president was taken in a specially renovated train car to Long Branch on September 6. A temporary rail was installed to Elberon to take him to a house where he would stay on the dunes. He used to look out at the Atlantic from his second floor balcony at the house and he said “This is delightful.” Unfortunately, on September 16 Garfield began to decline. On the 19th, he died.
On September 2, 1918 the statue was unveiled. The unveiling was presided over by the Governor of New Jersey and President Garfield’s son Harry and a daughter were in attendance. World War I was going on, but several thousand people attended the dedication.
The statue was sculpted by Carl Schweizer The statue is bronze and is seven feet high. The statue and its pedestal are sixteen feet high according to the New York Times. That may be how it looked back in 1918, but it is shorter now!
The monument notes that Garfield died in Long Branch.
While the statue is in very good shape, the pedestal needs a cleaning and the the granite has worn away enough to make it difficult to read. Here is what it says:
Dedicated September 2, 1918
In Memory of James Abram Garfield
Twentieth President
United States of America
Born at Mentor Ohio Nov. 19 1831
Died at Long Branch NJ Sept 19 1881
The monument is on hotel property. There are several good restaurants withing a few blocks of the statue as well as normal beach fare.
The position of the statue has Garfield looking out over the beach and at the Atlantic Ocean which what what the actual Garfield said he loved to do.
While he was dying, Garfield liked to look out into the water to see the ships passing towards New York Harbor. He liked to guess where they came from and where they were going and at what speed, which you can still do today standing next to the bronze Garfield.
Here are the small monuments to the other six presidents. Woodrow Wilson is the only president not connected to the Civil War. However, he, unfortunately gave a lot of publicity to Birth of a Nation even if the famous quote was misattributed to him. This helped the general public accept the Dunning School racist history of Reconstruction.
William McKinley served with the 23rd Ohio during the Civil War. He became friends with his major, Rutherford B. Hayes. If you visit his unit’s monument at Antietam, it tells the story McKinley bringing food to the men during the battle.
Each monument tells where the president stayed. McKinley stayed at the Elberon Hotel.
You can see the small monuments at the foot of Garfield.
Benjamin Harrison commanded the 70th Indiana Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. He had a young family and did not accept a commission until 1862. He served until the end of the war and distinguished himself during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.
Ulysses S. Grant started coming to Long Branch when he commanded the army during Reconstruction and he still came after he left the presidency. While Mary Lincoln vacationed in the town, it was Grant who made this the Republicans’ summer white house.
Rutherford B. Hayes was an office of the 23rd Ohio where he commanded William McKinley. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. He was promoted to Brigadier General.
Chester A, Arthur was a Stalwart Republican, and of course Garfield’s assassin said that he shot the president so Arthur could become president.
There is also a Garfield Monument in Washington, D.C. Here is my Photo Tour of that site.
All color photos taken by Pat Young.
To explore all the sites Click Here for our new Google Map presentation.
Source:
President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier by C.W. Goodyear published by Simon & Schuster (2023)
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