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By Root 896 0

Age, a foe of the spoils system and a dedicated teetotaler whose feminist wife won immortality, and patronization, as “Lemonade Lucy.” Time was on their side: less than a year after leaving office, Hayes helped to bury the assassinated Garfield. In the summer of 1885, he rode in Grant’s funeral procession, sharing a carriage with none other than Chester Arthur, the onetime boss of the New York Customhouse whose removal Hayes had orchestrated, and who had gone on, against all odds, to become an effective reformer in his own right.

In June 1889, Hayes lost his greatest friend. “How easily I could let go of life,” he said in the wake of Lucy’s passing. On a Sunday in January 1893, he visited her grave in the cemetery near his handsome estate called Spiegel Grove. That evening he wrote in his diary of his longing to join her. At the Cleveland train station a few days later, Hayes experienced severe chest pains. “I would rather die at Spiegel Grove,” he said, “than to live anywhere else.”

Roger Bridges, former director of the Hayes Presidential Center, with C-SPAN consulting historian John Splaine at the Hayes tomb

On the night of January 17, his wish was granted. President-elect Grover Cleveland made the long train journey from Washington to attend Hayes’s funeral. “He was coming to see me,” said Cleveland. “But he is dead and I will go to see him.” The gesture would have touched Hayes, for, by his gallant action, Cleveland buried all the old charges about the disputed election of 1876, along with the man who had won it.

—RNS

James A. Garfield

Buried: Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio

Twentieth President - 1881

Born: November 19, 1831, in Orange, Ohio

Died: 10:35 p.m. on September 19, 1881, in Elberon, New Jersey

Age at death: 49

Cause of death: Infection resulting from assassin’s bullet

Final words: “Oh, Swaim, there is a pain here. Oh, Swaim!”

(to David Gaskill Swaim, his chief of staff)

Admission to Lake View Cemetery: Free

Medical incompetence may have been partially to blame for the death of the twentieth president. Clean instruments and a different sickbed might have prolonged James Garfield’s life.

On July 2, 1881, Garfield became the second president to be wounded seriously while in office. Four months into his term, Garfield, accompanied by Secretary of State James Blaine, set off for a trip to the Northeast. As Garfield and Blaine walked arm-in-arm through Washington’s Baltimore and Potomac railroad station (now the site of the National Gallery of Art) at about 9:30 a.m., a man came within a yard of the president and shot him twice with a .44-caliber British Bulldog pistol.

The first bullet superficially wounded Garfield’s right arm. The second shot passed through his lower back and lodged deep in his body. Garfield cried out, “My God, my God, what is this?” and fell, bleeding heavily. A doctor was on the scene within moments.

The Garfield Monument houses the remains of James and Lucretia Garfield

The assassin, Charles Julius Guiteau, was arrested at the station. A former Garfield supporter, he unsuccessfully sought a patronage position from the president and secretary of state. Turned down, he began shadowing the president. In the weeks prior to the shooting, Guiteau had come within range of the president three times—each time, he found a reason not to shoot. Several letters were found in his pockets, including one which read, “The president’s tragic death was a sad necessity, but it will unite the Republican party and save the Republic…. I had no ill will towards the president.”

Moved to the White House, surrounded by a half dozen physicians, Garfield sipped brandy to ease the pain. Doctors trying to find the bullet probed the wound in Garfield’s back with bare hands and unsterilized instruments. Their prognosis was grim; they did not expect the president to live through the night. Garfield’s family gathered at his bedside. Garfield tried to cheer his sixteen-year-old son Jimmy, saying, “Don’t be alarmed. The upper story is all right, it is only the hull that is