JAMES GARFIELD | A letter by the future president, destined for assassination sixteen years later, mentioning the death of President Lincoln

JAMES GARFIELD

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ("J.A. GARFIELD") AS CONGRESSMAN FOR OHIO, TO BROTHER EWETT, MENTIONING THE DEATH OF LINCOLN

2 pages (9 3/4 x 8 1/8 in.; 248 x 206 mm) on ruled Sherman House stationery, Chicago, 16 May 1865; reinforcements to verso.

A letter by the future president, destined for assassination sixteen years later, mentioning the death of President Lincoln 

The letter takes a decidedly philosophical tone, with Garfield beginning: "Your very welcome letter of the 9th came duly to hand. All your reflections on the life that is yet to be moulded into some form of usefulness are full [of] interest to me. I [am] very much in want of that kind of society of which the wide walks of the world furnish so little—when the hearts of earnest [men] may speak together."

President Lincoln had been assassinated just a month earlier, and the somber mood of the letter persists as Garfield details the slump the nation has experienced: "Bro. Thomas Phillips is with me now and we are in the midst of an effort to establish a very large oil company here; and though the collapse of the rebellion and the death of the President have done much to stagnate business of all kinds, & particularly this, yet there is now a manifest revival and I hope we shall make this a success."

On 2 July 1881, after serving just six and a half months as President, Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of President Lincoln, was among those at the station that day, and was deeply upset as he recalled the assassination of his father 16 years earlier. After eleven weeks of intensive care, Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.