1881: The Assassination of President James Garfield—The First Successful Coup d’état in American History

President James A. Garfield’s assassination, published in 1881 in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Garfield is supported by Secretary of State James G. Blaine. At left, assassin Charles Guiteau is restrained by members of the crowd. A. Berghaus and C. Upham, published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1881.

Everyone was taken completely by surprise when James Garfield won the Republican Party nomination for twentieth president of the United States. The nomination was supposed to go to former president Ulysses S. Grant, but the first thirty-five ballots were deadlocked. On the thirty-sixth ballot, Garfield—who had received just one or two courtesy votes on each roll call—unexpectedly received the support of the remaining candidates.

Then Garfield was elected president, squeaking by to win the popular vote by almost ten thousand votes, much to the chagrin of the industrialists and money powers. They were now faced with a president who believed in hard money (currency backed by gold so it retains its value), and who had unpardonably appointed Minnesota’s William Windom as his treasury secretary, insisting that he wanted someone free from the influence of the Eastern bankers. Furthermore, Garfield immediately established himself as the undisputed party leader, ignoring senatorial courtesy as a way of appointing individuals to key positions, one of the methods used by lobbyists to gain influence in key areas of the nation’s government during each presidency. For potentially the next eight years, they would have to do without that important luxury.

So just a mere hundred days after taking office, President James Garfield was shot in the back at a train station, one more independent president who could not be controlled.