The Presidential Campaign and Murder of James Garfield

James Garfield, to the extent he is known in American political history at all, is generally remembered as one of the many post-Civil War presidents with a terrible beard. As it turns out, terrible beards were just the style in his era, but surely our own time’s penchant for terrible beards is not why we have gone from largely ignoring, to finding the relevance in the second American president to be assassinated.

When Candace Miller wrote Destiny of the Republic back in 2011, the book was mainly a curiosity, not obvious fodder for a Netflix docudrama. Yet here we are, with no less than Michael Shannon in the leading role as the doomed president and Matthew Macfadyen as Charles J. Guiteau, the probably mentally ill man who ultimately kills him.

What makes Death by Lightning — the new four-episode miniseries on Netflix — stand out so much is that, in an age where historical dramas often act as romanticizations of ugly history that’s difficult to conceptualize in modern terms, Death by Lightning is openly, unapologetically, a story about political machine politics in the early 1880s. There was a lot of speculation last year about Democrats holding an open convention to decide their presidential nominee. Well, Death by Lightning gives us a glimpse of what the process actually entails. Far from the rubber stamp that contemporary conventions deliver, the 1880 Republican convention was a serious fight for the future of the party, and one where James Garfield stumbled into a leadership role because he looked and acted the part of a leader when no other person or party factions inspired much confidence.

This isn’t politics as public relations campaign. Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham) is such an important figure here because, as we are constantly reminded, most of the federal budget at this point is funded by customs duties originating from New York City. And Senator Conkling controls New York City. How does Senator Conkling control New York City? Well, mostly by a system of patronage and spoils by which politically connected people are able to obtain lucrative government jobs. Death by Lightning doesn’t ever clearly explain how the system works, though, in part because the inscrutability of the system is the main reason why President Garfield can’t just easily kick Conkling aside.

The important part here, is that a government, any government, needs a budget in order to function. Imagine if, say the Internal Revenue Service was simply hiding money, or openly accepting bribes for tax collectors to look the other way. This is more-or-less how Conkling and Chester Arthur (played exceptionally here by Nick Offerman) were managing New York City’s custom duties. The unholy union of Conkling’s political machine with theoretically nonpartisan bureaucrats creates a major structural problem for Garfield and the other Republicans, like James Blaine (played by Bradley Whitford). How do you democratize an aspect of the government that’s completely insulated from any sort of democrat process?

Death by Lightning is based on Miller’s history book from 2011, but that came out in a political context that feels almost as different from today as 1881 does. In Obama’s first term, the main point of contemporary comparison was that a charismatic dark horse candidate like Garfield can’t solve every problem at once, and had to make deals with unsavory allies to get his agenda through. Team of Rivals is a more famous book from that historical subgenre.

But today, the main part of the story that resonates is the sense of general panic that no one seems to have a decent idea what political parties are even supposed to do anymore. There are serious discussions in Death by Lightning as to what the purpose of political power even is. Nick Offerman steals the show as the once and future president Chester Arthur principally because the formerly idealistic lawyer who became Conkling’s chief bagman is the only character going through what we might call a modern character arc. Arthur frequently goes on drunken benders as he continues to grieve his dead wife. Despite the major events of the story essentially being random freak accidents having little if anything to do with him, Arthur can’t help but be haunted by the idea that there’s some sort of greater purpose at play.

Death of Lightning shows a very different notion of the meaning of faith and death from the level of cartoonish pop culture that is prevalent today. James Garfield lived through the Civil War. He saw awful things, and knows death is around the corner for anyone at any time. The show’s title comes from Garfield, with understated irony, commenting that he would rather not overthink his security arrangements because he thinks getting assassinated is about as likely as getting killed by lightning. It’s a bit of a glib statement, really, given that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated only sixteen years earlier. But Garfield’s shtick is that he’s a political figure who people look up to because of his integrity rather than because he’s especially smart or qualified for the job. Garfield isn’t a skilled politician, but he does have integrity enough to state that he’d rather lose fighting for a noble cause than win fighting for an unjust one.

Not everyone copes as stoically as Garfield. Guiteau’s contribution to the story as Garfield’s eventual assassin is that he’s symbolic of the hustler culture and the various hangers-on who hopes to enrich his dreams through the patronage system. In 2011, Guiteau surely looked like someone with unreasonable expectations of President Obama. In 2025, Guiteau takes on disturbing parasocial undertones, despite nary a Tiktok in sight to disinform him. In one funny, but darkly disturbing sequence, we see Guiteau give off incel vibes as he completely fails to fit in with the Oneida Community, which we might describe in modern language as being a free love commune. But with terrible beards, conservative-looking bonnets, and prayer circles.

Did Conkling’s empire of political favors create Guiteau? Well, no, probably not. The bigger point of Death by Lightning is that well-positioned bureaucrats having disproportionate influence clearly didn’t help. Guiteau’s visions of megalomaniacal glory differ from those of the more important, more politically well-connected characters mainly because he’s simply very bad at selling his generally harebrained ideas, even when against all odds he’s able to find a receptive audience. In one standout scene, he inexplicably gets the chance to try and sell Blaine and Arthur on the concept of small donors. Whether this idea could have even worked in 1880 is rather besides the point. Guiteau will say, or do, anything to get into the door because his goal is power and fame for its own sake.

Guiteau admires Garfield’s rise from a humble background not his agenda. Garfield comes to see every small victory he achieves as possible only thanks to the grace of God. In one of Guiteau’s few encounters with Garfield, the mentally troubled man completely fails to grasp that the the main value Garfield has which he lacks is genuine humility, a sharp contrast to openly corrupt rivals like Conkling.

For all this, the likes of Conkling, or even Guiteau, are treated as beyond redemption. Their great flaw is that they wanted to be remembered as men, rather than for their actual deeds. History may have largely forgotten the likes of James Garfield and Chester Arthur, as the final episode’s postscript grimly reminds us. But even as they have been relegated as footnotes in the grand narrative of American history, at least in those footnotes, we know that they stood for something greater than themselves. That’s why we at least know their names, while Conkling and Guiteau don’t even have that much to their credit.