Garfield James

James Garfield Biography in Special Presentation Binding Presented to Widow Lucretia Garfield

 

1st edition hardcover copy of A.D. Hosterman's Life and Times of James Abram Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States (Springfield, Ohio: Farm and Fireside Publishing Company, 1882), in special presentation binding. The front cover is gilt-stamped "To Mrs. Lucretia R. Garfield from The Author."

 

Brown and black morocco leather boards, gilt stamped spine with raised bands, blue marbled endpapers, and gilt-edged pages. In near fine condition. Overall light toning and scattered foxing. The covers show expected surface wear to edges and corners. Minor wear to top of front cover hinge. Measures 12mo, or 5.625" x 7.75" x .75".

 

The 336pp book is divided into 23 chapters arranged chronologically, the last chapter, "Gems of Poetry and Song," dedicated to reproducing a handful of elegies. The Table of Illustrations lists 11 illustrations in the volume, however, this special presentation copy lacks the two frontispiece portraits of Garfield and Lucretia.

 

Garfield's biographer, A.D. Hosterman, had a clear objective in publishing this volume less than a year after Garfield's death. In the preface, Hosterman wrote: "That this volume may be the means of energizing young men and young women by showing them, in panoramic review, the life of one whom we all honored in life and mourned in death, is the ambition of the author. Garfield had a great heart, as well as a great, well-trained brain. Having his example before us, we can all live better lives. All may not have his immense powers but there are many noble things his life may teach us to accomplish. We can imitate his example in his home. We can pattern after his beautiful traits of character." (viii)

 

The volume also covers Garfield's assassination, convalescence, death, funeral, and some of the earliest tributes and memorials. Chapter 22 shows that, just one year following his death, people were already discussing the possibility that Garfield's death resulted at least in part from medical malpractice. We know today that it certainly was, but not for those exact reasons. While Hosterman thought that Garfield was not properly examined or treated because his injuries were assumed fatal, an even larger impediment to Garfield's recovery was his doctors' unfamiliarity with or dismissal of basic germ theory.

 

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, 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.

 

Arthur David Hosterman (1860-1939) was an intrepid newspaper journalist who became editor of Farm and Fireside Publishing Company soon after college graduation. Just several months after this book was published, Hosterman resigned from the firm and traveled to California, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska.

 

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