What Did Garfield Do As President

James Garfield was president for 199 days. That’s the number everyone remembers. It’s the trivia answer. Consider this: the footnote. But if you only know that number, you miss the actual story — a story about a man who might have been one of the most capable presidents we ever had, cut down before he could prove it.

Most people ask what did Garfield do as president* expecting a list of signed bills or vetoed legislation. Plus, the list is short. Still, he signed one major piece of legislation. But he made a handful of appointments. He started a fight with a powerful senator over a customs house. That’s the official record. But the official record lies by omission. What he did was try to drag the presidency — and the country — out of the spoils system and into something resembling merit. Plus, he died for it, essentially. Not from the bullet, exactly, but from the infection caused by doctors who didn't believe in germs. The irony is thick enough to choke on.

What Is the Garfield Presidency

It’s the "what if" presidency. On the flip side, the interrupted presidency. James A. Consider this: garfield took office on March 4, 1881. He was the last president born in a log cabin — a genuine self-made man who worked as a canal boy, a carpenter, a janitor, and a professor before becoming a Civil War general and a nine-term congressman. In practice, he didn't want the nomination. He went to the 1880 Republican convention to nominate John Sherman. After 36 ballots, the delegates stampeded to Garfield as a dark horse. He won the general election by a razor-thin popular vote margin (fewer than 10,000 votes nationwide) but a comfortable Electoral College win.

His presidency is defined by two things: the battle over patronage and the assassination. Everything else is context.

The spoils system was the air they breathed

To understand Garfield, you have to understand the spoils system. Still, it wasn't corruption at the margins; it was the government. When a new party took the White House, they fired tens of thousands of federal workers — postmasters, customs collectors, clerks — and replaced them with party loyalists. On the flip side, it was how parties funded themselves. Because of that, it was how machines maintained power. Now, it was why the Post Office was the largest employer in the country. Reformers called it "civil service reform." Machine politicians called it "the rights of the party." Garfield, surprisingly, came down on the reform side — not as a crusader at first, but as a man who believed competence mattered.

Why It Matters / Why People Care

Garfield matters because he represents a hinge point. Even so, the Gilded Age is usually taught as a parade of bearded non-entities: Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison. But Garfield was different. He was intellectually restless. He read German philosophy for fun. He devised an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. He spoke extemporaneously on tariff policy, currency, and education with a depth that made his contemporaries uncomfortable.

He also matters because his death changed the law. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act — the law that began dismantling the spoils system — passed in 1883 because Garfield’s assassination horrified the public into demanding it. That doesn't happen without Garfield's murder. But his successor, Chester Arthur, a machine politician to his core, signed it. So when people ask what did Garfield do as president*, the honest answer includes: he died in a way that forced the system to change.

There’s also the racial dimension. Garfield appointed Frederick Douglass as Recorder of Deeds for D.C. and pushed for federal aid to education — partly to help Black children in the South. Practically speaking, he gave a remarkable inaugural address declaring that "there can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. " He meant it. Whether he could have delivered is the great unanswered question.

How It Works: The 199 Days in Detail

The Garfield presidency moves fast. Here’s the breakdown.

The Conkling fight — the defining conflict

Roscoe Conkling ran New York. In practice, rutherford Hayes had tried to clean it up and failed. He controlled the New York Custom House — the single most lucrative patronage plum in the country. He was a senator, a boss, a tyrant in a frock coat. On top of that, the collector, Chester Arthur (yes, the future president), was Conkling’s man. Garfield decided to try again.

He nominated William Robertson, a Conkling enemy, for Collector of the Port of New York. Still, conkling invoked "senatorial courtesy" — the unwritten rule that a president doesn't appoint someone a home-state senator opposes without consultation. That's why garfield refused. Because of that, he told his secretary, "This... will settle the question whether the president is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States.

Conkling and his fellow New York senator, Thomas Platt, resigned in protest, expecting the state legislature to re-elect them as a vindication. Also, the legislature refused. Conkling’s machine broke. Because of that, garfield won. In real terms, it was the only real political fight of his presidency, and he won it decisively. Then he got shot.

The Star Route scandal — cleaning house

Before the Conkling fight exploded, Garfield’s Postmaster General, Thomas Lemuel James, uncovered the Star Route frauds. Contractors were bribing officials for lucrative mail delivery contracts on "star routes" (rural routes marked with an asterisk in the ledger). The ring reached into the previous administration. Garfield’s response was blunt: "Go ahead, no matter where it leads." He didn't protect his party. He didn't bury the investigation. That sounds like bare minimum today. In 1881, it was remarkable.

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Tariff and currency — the policy vacuum

Garfield didn't have time for legislative achievements. He had views, though. He favored a moderate tariff for revenue only — not protectionism. Consider this: he supported the gold standard but thought the "Crime of '73" (demonetizing silver) had been a mistake. He wanted federal aid to education, especially in the South. He wanted a civil service law. Think about it: he outlined a vision in his inaugural: "The elevation of the Negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution. Because of that, " Strong words. No time to legislate them.

The assassination — July 2, 1881

Charles Guiteau was a delusional office seeker. Worth adding: he believed he’d earned a consulship in Paris by writing a speech for Garfield (a speech Garfield never used). When the Conkling fight made patronage appointments a flashpoint, Guiteau decided God wanted him to kill the president so Arthur would take over and reward him. He shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station. One bullet grazed the arm. The other lodged in the back, behind the pancreas.

Garfield didn't die immediately. He lingered for 79 days. Summer in Washington. The doctors probed the wound with unwashed fingers and unsterilized instruments. They fed him through the rectum (beef bouillon, egg yolks, whiskey, opium). Still, alexander Graham Bell tried to locate the bullet with an early metal detector — but the metal bed frame confused it, and the doctors only let him search the right side. The bullet was on the left. Infection spread. Garfield wasted from 210 pounds to 130. He died in Elberon, New Jersey, on September 19.

The medical incompetence is its own chapter. But the political result was immediate: the country watched a president die

The nation’s gaze hardened on the White House as Garfield’s body was carried back to Washington, the capital draped in mourning but also in a palpable sense of unfinished business. Arthur, a man long associated with the very patronage machine that had so vexed the president, found himself thrust into the role of commander‑in‑chief amid a storm of speculation about who would truly wield power. Vice President Chester A. Arthur’s first act was to keep the cabinet intact, a pragmatic move that reassured lawmakers while allowing him to assess the damage the scandal had wrought on the Republican Party.

Within weeks, Arthur convened a special session of Congress to address the corruption that had festered under his predecessor. Still, the Star Route investigations, already underway, were expanded to include every federal contract involving transportation and communications. The result was the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883—commonly known as the Pendleton Act—which established a merit‑based system for federal employment and created the Civil Service Commission to oversee competitive examinations. Though the legislation was not Garfield’s brainchild, it fulfilled the promise he had articulated in his inaugural address: a government that rewarded competence over cronyism.

Arthur’s presidency also saw the resolution of the tariff debate that had lingered in Garfield’s mind. By moderating protective duties and emphasizing revenue generation, the administration helped stabilize the economy without alienating industrial interests. The gold standard remained intact, but the president signaled a willingness to reconsider the “Crime of ’73” if silver interests could demonstrate a viable path to monetary stability—a compromise that kept the nation’s financial markets from spiraling.

The assassination itself became a catalyst for change beyond civil service reform. Newspapers across the country called for stricter security for the president, and Congress eventually appropriated funds for a permanent protective detail, the precursor to today’s Secret Service uniform guard. The public’s horror at the sight of a president bleeding to death in a hospital also spurred a wave of sympathy for Garfield’s reformist agenda, turning him into a martyr for good‑government advocates.

In the years that followed, Garfield’s brief tenure was revisited by historians who saw in his truncated term a snapshot of a nation at a crossroads. But the Star Route scandal exposed the depth of political corruption, while the tariff and currency debates hinted at the complexities of balancing regional interests. Most importantly, his death underscored the fragility of democratic institutions when personal ambition and violent extremism intersect.

Chester A. On top of that, arthur’s presidency, once dismissed as a caretaker’s interlude, ultimately delivered reforms that outlived the man who never got to see them through. On the flip side, james A. Garfield’s legacy, forged in a single, tragic act, endures as a reminder that even a president cut down in his prime can still shape the course of a nation. The lessons of 1881—transparency over concealment, merit over patronage, and the need to protect the office—remain as relevant today as they were in the days when a bullet changed the trajectory of American governance.