Description:

Garfield James


James Garfield Biography Written for European Audience by Civil War Officer from Garfield's Ohio Regiment, Presented to Lucretia Garfield

 

1st edition hardcover copy of Captain F. H. Mason's The Life and Public Service of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States, A Biographical Sketch (London: Trubner & Co., 1881), personally dedicated to Lucretia Garfield. Mason inscribed the title page: "To 'Grandma Garfield' with the Kind remembrances of F.H. Mason, Basle, March 14th 1881." With a handsome frontispiece photo of Garfield located to the left of the title page. The copy was presented to First Lady sometime in the 1880s.

 

Red cloth covered boards, the front cover decorated with an armed American eagle at center. In very good to near fine condition. Light foxing scattered throughout. Two typographical errors have been corrected in pen on pages 73 and 88. The covers show expected surface grime. Measures 12mo, or 5" x 7.25" x .5".

 

The 134pp book is divided into 4 chapters, arranged thematically and chronologically, which chronicle James Garfield's life up until his presidential inauguration. President Garfield entered the White House on March 4, 1881; the volume's preface by Bret Harte was written from London on the same day, and Mason recorded his dedication to Lucretia Garfield just two weeks later, on March 14, 1881.

 

Captain Frank H. Mason had served under Colonel and finally Brigadier General James A. Garfield in the 42nd Ohio Regiment during the Civil War. As such, he was uniquely qualified to discuss Garfield's military leadership. Mason lived in Basle following his Hayes era appointment as U.S. Consul to Switzerland. His time abroad granted Mason the opportunity to observe that Europeans had erroneous assumptions about Garfield. The biography is thus very different from others because it markets Garfield specifically to Europeans. As Mason explained: "It has been thought fitting, at the beginning of President Garfield's administration, to place before the European public -- and particularly that of Great Britain, which is bound to the people of the United States by the strong ties of a common race and language -- some record of the life of the New Executive, which may serve to impart a clearer understanding of the man who seems destined to be for some years to come a central figure in American politics." (12)

 

The last part of this sentence underlines the most poignant aspect of this biography: it is unfinished, published a little over a year before Garfield's death. Mason assumed, like everyone did, that "The whole record of his past life carries the assurance that he will honour his great opportunity, and leave behind him when he retires an administration worthy of the best years of the Republic." (134) President Garfield was not allowed to complete even a year of office, let alone retire, before his assassination.

 

James Garfield (1831-1881), a college-educated lawyer, served as an Ohio delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1863 and 1880. The Civil War veteran did not wish to run as a Republican candidate for President in 1880, but he won anyway. On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was shot in a Washington train station lounge by disgruntled office seeker Charles J. Guiteau (1841-1882). The second bullet lodged near Garfield’s pancreas but was irretrievable despite Alexander Graham Bell’s attempts to locate the bullet using the newly developing science of metal detection. After two and a half months of excruciating convalescence in the White House and along the New Jersey shore--where he was probed by many doctors unfamiliar with basic germ theory--Garfield died from complications of an infection at age forty-nine.


Lucretia Garfield, or “Crete” as she was lovingly called by her husband of twenty-three years, impressed many by her strength and stoicism in the months and years following her husband’s death. Lucretia became involved in preserving records related to her husband’s presidency in the thirty-six years before her death in the spring of 1918.

 


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