This major four-hour series on the assassination of James A. Garfield starts at the future president’s farm in rural Ohio. Michael Shannon plays Congressman Garfield as an involved family man encouraging and entertaining his children. Along with his spiritual guidance for his progeny he is cutting wood to build a picnic table for his family and he discusses his plans to add a new bedroom for the privacy of his teenage daughter. At the other end of the country, the future assassin Charles Guiteau is in the Tombs, New York’s notorious prison, being questioned about defrauding a landlord. Guiteau is played by Matthew Macfadyen. He is alone, intelligent, a skilled talker, but with an obvious deficiency in recognizing reality from his own phantasy.
These two will be the focus of this major series which has already gotten very good reviews.
The world they inhabit is filled with Civil War figures, many with gray hair and seeing the world they created in 1865 rapidly declining. The party that carried on the war, the Republicans, had once been seen as a reformist movement seeking to free the slaves, extend citizenship rights regardless of color, and increase the power of the Federal government. By 1880, it had seen Reconstruction overthrown and a series of governmental scandals that left the party in disrepute. The shining star of the Republic, Ulysses S. Grant, had stepped down from the presidency in 1877, but now his supporters wanted him to run for his third term in 1880.
Garfield has been called on to make the nominating speech for his presidential hopeful John Sherman. He is opposed to James G. Blaine played by Bradley Whitford depicted as an aging politician from Maine, even though he was just a year older than Garfield. The scene at the convention is excellent. The director has recreated the architecture and the audience to look like the cameras were really at the convention.
Garfield makes his nomination speech, just under five minutes, with such erudition and forcefulness that as the convention deadlocks in picking the nominee, many delegates begin to call for Garfield to be the candidate. The Ohio Congressman stands up and says he does not want to be the president, but after repeated ballots, he is elected unanimously by the convention to be the Republican nominee.
At the convention, the leader of the New York delegation, Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham), even though voting for Garfield at the end, becomes the nominee’s sworn enemy. Conkling was the leader of the Stalwart faction that backed Grant. He sees Garfield as a reformist whose plan is to end the Spoils System that has given Conkling so much power and made him so rich. Under him is his major domo, Chester A, Arthur, director of the New York Customs House from whose tariffs are collected more than half of the Federal government’s income each year (with some going to Conkling’s organization}.
After returning from the Chicago Convention, Garfield decides he will not travel the country making speeches against his Democratic opponent Winfield Scott Hancock. He will campaign from his front porch. The keeps him far from the corrupt forces in his own party and allows him to stand by his family. It also means he will get advice and support from his wife Lucretia (Betty Gilpin). The movie does not mention that Garfield’s own adulterous relationship earlier had nearly broken up his marriage.
Garfield was born poor. He fought for an education and became a college professor and president. In the 1850s he was active in Abolitionist circles. When the Civil War started, he enlisted and was later promoted to Brigadier General. In 1862, Garfield was elected to Congress. Against great odds, he rose to the top and he heroically took on the powerful to create changes to make the United States a “more perfect” nation.
Charles Guiteau seemed to have viewed himself as another Garfield. At times he showed smarts. He became a lawyer, but seems to have neglected his clients. Although he was twenty years of age when the Civil War broke out, he appears to have played no part in it. During the 1870s he moved to the Oneida Community, a “free-love” commune where a man could have multiple partners. Instead, he was rejected by most of the women there who changed his name to “Charles GitOut.” He left the community and wrote a book plagiarizing from the works of the Oneida co-founder John Noyes.
Macfadyen plays this dangerous character as menacing, smart, deceptive, and comically insane. Even when Guiteau is about to be hanged, he is looking for a laugh.
During the first three months of Garfield’s term, he is handicapped by the Vice President the Republican Party chose for him, Conkling’s henchman Charles A. Arthur. As the president tries to reign in Conkling’s corruption by taking the Customs House away from his control, Arthur conveys intelligence to the New York Senator and plots with him against Garfield. To counter the reformist impulses of Garfield, Conkling resigned from the Senate hoping to embarrass the president. He expects, after a few weeks, to be reelected by the New York State Legislature, but Garfield outmaneuvers him and he is denied his seat and “disappears” from politics.
While this Republican civil war is going on, Charles Guiteau is trying to get appointed to head a consulate in Europe. Secretary of State James G. Blaine sees the crazed lawyer as a shady character who lies and uses forged paperwork to advance his career. As his ambition is thwarted, he tries to use his tenuous connect to Chester Arthur to prevail on the president.
Arthur (Nick Offerman) is a drunk, violent, womanizing, corrupt politician. Oddly enough, Garfield recognizes him as a man of genius who had been an Abolitionist lawyer before he became involved with Conkling. When Guiteau shoots the president in the Washington train station, Garfield counsels Arthur to continue his work by reforming the Spoils System and create the modern civil service which will be based on merit, not on who is friends with the president.
The series is well worth watching. The acting is very good. Even better is the CGI that accurately recreates Chicago, New York, and Washington in 1880 and 1881. The costumes and accoutrements will intrigue many viewers. You will also learn at least a little about politics a decade-and-a-half after the Civil War.
There are some problems here as well. I doubt the “F- Word” was used so often and so openly as the Republican leaders used it in the film. There are some nods to the emerging Black electorate with Frederick Douglas, a delegation of Black veterans, and Sen. Blanche Bruce appearing, but many of the Republican delegates from the Southern States had large numbers of Black men which are not represented. I also had trouble with the depiction of Arthur. He headed the New York Customs House with a thousand men under him, yet he is seen in intense physical fights with his opponents. One privilege of power is to have others administer the beatings.
The are a few factual flaws as well. Grant along with his opponents were not at the Chicago Convention. It was not considered polite for the candidates to attend the campaigning at the convention. Also, while Arthur got his power through the Custom House, he had been removed by Rutherford B. Hayes before the time when the series depicts.
I question the director’s depiction of a close relationship between Arthur and Guiteau. The assassin kept claiming that he was trying to help Arthur become the president. This led reporters to examine their connections, but all they found were the most ancillary ties.
The series takes its inspiration from Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, an excellent popular account of Garfield’s assassination. Death By Lightning engages in the usual fictionalization to make this a watchable film, but it does adhere to the historical record for the overwhelming part of the series.
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