President Garfield's Ghost

June 30, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC - D&A has discovered that its premises at the northeast corner of 13 th Street and Eye Street NW in downtown Washington are "haunted" by a ghost of great distinction. Historical research (augmented by a dollop of speculation) discloses that Bob Dawson's corner office in our second-floor suite occupies the space in which James A. Garfield--while a Representative from Ohio and before he was elected to the U.S. Senate and before he became the 20th president -- had an upstairs office in his three-story brick home.

Garfield is usually remembered for having been the second president to be shot (after Lincoln). He had been president less than four months when struck by two bullets on July 2, 1881. He died on September 19, at age 49. He deserves to be remembered better. The last president born in a log cabin, James Abram Garfield was a purposeful, scholarly, gregarious man who fought for the Union, favored reconciliation with the South, chaired three House committees, worked long hours in Congress and belonged to a "reform" wing of the Republican party.

As we at D&A go about our duties helping clients navigate the shoals of the Washington bureaucracy, we like to think that our resident ghost has imparted to us some of his better qualities: as Civil War Colonel of Ohio's 42nd Regiment, his dislike of delay and his zeal to attack; as a Representative, his scholarly interest in tariff, census, education and monetary issues; as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, his painstaking investigations into the nooks and crannies of government-- "oversight" before that was a declared function of Congress--and this in an era in which even the Chairman had no more staff than a parttime, shorthand secretary and walked or took the horse-drawn street car from the Capitol to one agency and another. One biographer wrote that Garfield "acquired an unsurpassed knowledge of the inner workings of government." We like to think that within our domain, we have inherited that knowledge.

In addition to heading Appropriations, Garfield at other times chaired two other major committees, Military Affairs, and Banking and Currency. His early ambition to be boss of Ways & Means went unrealized. Like every elected politician, he had to straddle sometimes between personal conviction and constituent interest. For example, he favored low tariffs but in deference to Ohio smelters supported high duties on imported steel. Garfield was a firm believer in gold and sound money and an opponent of the inflationists, but over time as he listened to the arguments for silver he came to see merit in bimetalism. He was humanly inconsistent. He championed civil service reform and disliked obligatory kickbacks by office-holders to political party, but he expected those he helped win appointments to support his campaigns.

Under Garfield 's brief presidency, wrote a late 20th century biographer, "began that accretion of presidential power that has lasted to our own day." That may be a tad generous, but there is no doubt that Garfield was a force. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a memorable visage, with dark whiskers and piercing eyes. After his party lost its House majority in the 1876 election, relieving him of many legislative duties, he became more of a party man. When a deadlocked 1880 Republican convention tapped Garfield for president as a compromise candidate, he had already been elected to the Senate by the Ohio legislature.

As husband and father, he spent many an evening at home with his wife, Lucretia (their correspondence has been published) and their several children, enjoying the view from the parlor of Franklin Square or absorbing himself in his library's 3,000 books. As we tread D&A's second-floor suite, we walk in his footsteps.