President James A. Garfield’s life and Northeast Ohio ties are on display

On March 4, 1881, James A. Garfield was inaugurated as the 20th president of the United States. He’d sought to end the spoils system and promised to address the injustices of slavery, but his time in office was curtailed when he was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau. 

Garfield’s 200-day presidency and his life in public service are an often glossed-over piece of American history. But the life and legacy of the Northeast Ohio-born president has attracted attention in recent years, locally through a recently formed nonprofit and globally through the dramatic miniseries “Death By Lightning.”

The street view of the front porch of James A. Garfield's house, where he delivered his famous front porch speeches. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

 

The Garfield Trail of Ohio was created in 2020 by a group of interested parties, including Garfield’s great-great grandson, founder and Executive Director Tim Garfield; Treasurer and co-founder Carla Vondrak Garfield; Secretary and co-founder Debbie Weinkamer; and co-founder Chris Weinkamer. 

The organization is focused on preserving the legacy of James A. Garfield and his family at a number of important locations in Ohio: his birthplace in Moreland Hills; his alma mater, Hiram College, where he became principal; the James A. Garfield National Historic Site; and his place of interment at Lake View Cemetery. The organization also hosts events that educate participants about the life of Garfield and holds a yearly fundraiser.

John Garfield, the great-great-great-great grandson of President Garfield, recently graduated from Shaker Heights High School and is currently a tour guide at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor. 

None of James A. Garfield’s descendants have served the public in a political capacity since his son, James Rudolph Garfield, was appointed Secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.

John Garfield wants to change that. 

John Garfield at the James A. Garfield National Historic site with his recently published book, The People’s Congressman: James Garfield. Jeremy Brown/The Portager

 

This fall, John Garfield plans to enroll in an undergraduate political science program while participating in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, either at the University of South Carolina or Miami University. Ultimately, he wants to rekindle the family's political legacy and attempt to unite voters on both sides of the aisle. And he recently published his first book, “The People’s Congressman: James Garfield,” a 60-page exposition about the president’s time as a congressman. 

John Garfield invited The Portager to take a tour of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site on Dec. 21, after the government opened back up from a 43-day shutdown. 

The James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor is where President Garfield called home. He purchased the property in 1876 and carried out the first successful front porch campaign at the home in 1880, where crowds gathered on his front lawn to listen to him speak. The home became known as Lawnfield by the reporters who covered the events. 

A tour through The James A. Garfield National Historic Site offers a detailed glimpse of the life that Garfield and his family left behind. There’s a history lesson in every room of the historic Garfield house, and the visitor’s center takes guests through exhibits that showcase stages of Garfield’s life, in chronological order, from the cradle to the grave. 

The home, at 8095 Mentor Ave., along with its contents, was donated to the Western Reserve Historical Society by James A. Garfield’s children in 1936. It was declared a national historic site in 1980 and is currently managed by Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

The Garfield National Historic Site is one of the most detailed presidential sites from the 19th century and features a massive collection of antique Victorian furniture, most of which was owned by the Garfield family, as well as accurately reproduced wallpaper and several original authentic paintings, photographs and artwork. 

After James A. Garfield's assassination, his wife, Lucretia, created a memorial library with his books and papers on the second floor of the Mentor home; it’s the nation’s first presidential memorial library. John Garfield estimates that the library houses between 2,000 and 3,000 books that were personally owned by President Garfield. Amidst the collection are several books by Shakespeare, a poet and playwright who President Garfield had much admiration for and often cited in his writings. John believes President Garfield’s manner of speaking and his ability to connect with and mesmerize a crowd was due, in part, to his influence gained by reading Shakespeare’s works.

“He read a ton of Shakespeare and that olde English way of speaking, and that high and low vibrato of giving a speech,” John Garfield said. “In one area of the library of the house are rows of his political books, from the economy to political thought to comparative politics to public speaking, and another row of Abraham Lincoln and his politics. It’s really cool to be close to those books. His oration definitely came from those books – not only from those books, but from being a preacher in churches around Cleveland and at Hiram. I think that’s where he got his big confidence from.” 

President Garfield’s alma mater, Hiram College, partnered with The Garfield Trail of Ohio to host an exclusive screening of the first episode of the Netflix miniseries “Death By Lightning” on Nov. 5, one day before its official release. The screening was followed by a panel discussion with a Q&A session; afterward, guests were invited to a reception in the Kennedy Center. The event was free, although registration was required. 

“Death By Lightning” is an American historical drama that details the later years of James A. Garfield’s life, from shortly before his unforeseen inauguration as president until his subsequent death Sept. 19, 1881. President Garfield was shot by Guiteau on July 2, 1881, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C.

The miniseries was created by American screenwriter and producer Mike Makowsky and was based on author Candice Millard’s award-winning book, “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.” 

Milllard said she didn’t know much about Garfield until she stumbled upon Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the induction balance, a type of metal detector that Bell created specifically to find the bullet in James A. Garfield’s body in an effort to save his life.

“I was actually doing research on Alexander Graham Bell and I stumbled upon this story of him inventing the induction balance to try to find the bullet in Garfield, and I wondered what Garfield was like,” Millard said. “Like most Americans, I knew very little beyond the fact that he had been assassinated, so I started researching him and I realized that he was brilliant and great and kind and progressive and really would have been one of our great presidents, so I felt really excited and fascinated by the story, so that’s what inspired me.”

She was excited about how accurately the episode represented the facts.

“I love it. I think they’ve done just a brilliant job and they really did stay true to the story,” Millard said. “They took some creative license, which I expected, but Mike Makowsky, the creator of the series, did a lot of his own research. He felt very passionately about it and really genuinely cared about this story, as well, and I’ve always trusted him and he just did a brilliant job. The cast is amazing, as well.” 

The four-part miniseries features Michael Shannon portraying James A. Garfield and Matthew Macfadyen playing his assassin Guiteau, with Betty Gilpin as Lucretia Garfield, Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur and Shea Whigham as Roscoe Conkling. 

Based on the applause following the 52-minute episode, the screening seemed to be well received by those in attendance.  

Along with Tim Garfield, President Garfield’s great-great-great grandson James A. Garfield III and John Garfield also attended the event, as well as other members of the Garfield family.

An impressive detail of episode one of “Death By Lightning” was the authenticity of the reenactment of the chaotic 1880 Republican National Convention at the Interstate Exposition Building in Chicago, as well as the meticulous design and sheer size of the set where the convention hall was duplicated.

“I think the movie, the part that I’ve seen, was very well done,” Tim Garfield said. “It takes you into the convention that we haven’t really seen so much of before, and I think that was a fascinating piece of history to learn about and see. You can read about it and look at a picture, but if you look at the look on Garfield’s face as he looks around that room and the camera pans and you realize the scope and the size of the building in that day, it’s incredible.” 

James A. Garfield attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, later named Hiram College, in the 1850s. While there, he met his wife, Lucretia Randolph. Garfield was then elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 and served until 1861, at which time he enlisted in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. Although Garfield didn’t want to leave the Army, he was coaxed by President Lincoln to take a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to represent Ohio’s 19th District, where he served when he delivered his famous campaign speech that accidentally landed him in the White House.

Shannon delivered a remarkable performance when he reenacted Garfield’s campaign speech to support fellow Ohioan and then-presidential nominee John Sherman, played by Alistair Petrie, at the 1880 Republican National Convention – the speech that paved Garfield’s path to the presidency. After his speech, Garfield asked the crowd "And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want?" And instead of the crowd calling out in favor of Sherman, a voice in the crowd yelled out, “We want Garfield.” Support for Garfield as the presidential nominee snowballed from there, even though he never intended to run for the position.

The title “Death By Lightning” was taken from a letter that James A. Garfield wrote to Sherman in November 1880, after Garfield was elected president. "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning, and it is not best to worry about either,” he wrote.

All four episodes of “Death By Lightning” are currently available on Netflix with a paid subscription.