Description:

Garfield James 1831 - 1881 Scarce Letter Signed by President Garfield written on Executive Mansion letterhead, one month before being shot
Single page letter boldly signed, written on lined Executive Mansion letterhead, 7.5" x 9.75". Dated "June 7, 1881" and signed by President Garfield as "J.A. Garfield". Expected folds, small erased pencil marks, else fine condition.


An outstanding condition and very scarce example of a full letter, signed and dated by President Garfield on Executive Mansion letterhead. The letter was written just one month before Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau, which ultimately resulted in his death, and during his wife's illness with Malaria which he mentions in his letter. The letter reads in full:

"To: Gov. L.A. Sheldon /Santa Fe /N.M.

Your letter from Kansas City received . Mrs. Garfield was able to sit up an hour this morning and is rapidly recovering. She joins me in kind regards to Mrs. Sheldon and yourself.

J.A. Garfield"

During his extremely short time in office, Garfield's accomplishments as president included a resurgence of presidential authority against senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, energizing American naval power, and purging corruption in the Post Office. Throughout his congressional service he firmly supported the gold standard and gained reputation as a skilled orator.

His complex relationship with his wife resolved by the time he was elected president. By the time he was nominated he wrote telling her that he would accept the nomination only with her approval. Despite expressing her wariness of the personal cost to come with such an honor she was willing to compromise her privacy for her husband's success. Lucretia Garfield was one of the first presidential candidate's wives to appear on a campaign poster, currently in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution and upon his inauguration was active in her role as first lady. However whatever public cause she may have intended to support, her active public role came to a sudden halt in early May of 1881 when she contracted malaria and nearly died in the White House.

After her husbands assassination Lucretia Garfield then focused on various memorials to her husband. With the intention of someday writing a memoir about her late husband based on his letters, she eventually created the first presidential library, a research room and a vault that held his papers that were housed in a wing she added to their home.

She also kept a firm control over her husband's letters, consistently refusing permission for their use by those who wrote her requesting their use; she wished to first have them all published in an authorized biography of him, a task eventually accomplished after her death.

The combination of Garfield's extremely short term as President and his wife's later firm control over his letters has created the combined effect of them rarely coming up for availability. Only a half dozen others on Executive Mansion letterhead are even known to exist.

A very scarce and highly important letter in extraordinary condition.

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