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 A victim of the "Zero Year Curse", President James Garfield was shot this day in 1881 after only 4 months in office.

According to the conspiracy theory, the Indian Chieftain Tecumseh placed a curse on the US Government after the defeat of his brother, The Prophet, at Tippecanoe.  Any President thereafter who was elected in a year ending in "zero" would die in office.  And the curse was worth citing for the first years I was teaching.  William Henry Harrison (1840), Abraham Lincoln (1860), James Garfield (1880), William McKinley (1900), Warren Harding (1920, FDR (1940) and JFK (1960) all died of natural causes or were murdered.

Then came Ronald Reagan (1980) and, despite John Hinkley's best effort, he completed his term in office.

It was a pretty far-fetched theory away.

James Garfield was a general in the American Civil War who performed well in the western theater.  Later he became the only sitting member of the House of Representatives to be elected to the White House after narrowly defeating another ACW hero, Winfield Scott Hancock.

At the time the Republican Party was divided into factions.  The "Stalwarts" favored continuation of running the government based on a spoils system - hiring people based on party loyalty, cronyism and nepotism.  Their opponents were the "Half-Breeds" who wanted civil service reform.  

Garfield aligned with the Half-Breeds.  His Vice-President, Chester Arthur, was a Stalwart chosen to balance the ticket.

Enter Charles Guiteau,  who apparently suffered from both schizophrenia  and "grandiose narcissism".  Guiteau had written a speech "Garfield vs. Hancock" which he believed had won the election for the Republicans.  Historians doubt that the speech was ever delivered.

As a result, Guiteau concluded he should be appointed our ambassador to France, even though he did not speak their, or any other foreign language.

He pestered both the President and Secretary of State to such an extent that he was banned from the White House.  Thinking he didn't get the job because he, like Arthur, was a Stalwart, Guiteau plotted his revenge.

Going to a DC gun shop he purchased an English Bulldog revolver, paying an extra dollar for ivory handles as he believed it would be displayed in a museum.

Garfield traveled without security.  Only one previous president had been assassinated and that was widely believed to be a fluke, due to the Civil War.  Indeed newspapers regularly published the president's daily schedule.

Knowing that Garfield would be at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station to take a train to New Jersey, Guiteau waited for an opportune moment and shot Garfield twice, crying "I am a Stalwart and now Arthur is President!"

Garfield was shot twice...neither shot was fatal.  However American doctors were skeptical about the work of Joseph Lister and antiseptic surgery.  It was the treatment of his doctors that introduced infection and led to Garfield's death in September.

At Guiteau's trial in October  he admitted to the shooting but not the killing. In his defense, Guiteau wrote: "General Garfield died from malpractice. According to his own physicians, he was not fatally shot. The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant. They ought to be indicted for murdering James A. Garfield, and not me."

He was executed on June 30, 1882.






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