Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast · Blue Ewe Media

MoNo Encore: The Murder of President James Garfield w/ Candice Millard

·59 min·3 clips

Guiteau waits at the Baltimore and Potomac train station and shoots Garfield twice.

1. Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast revisits the assassination of President James Garfield and Candace Millard's book Destiny of the Republic. 2. Host Eric Rivenes interviews Candace Millard, a New York Times bestselling author of The River of Doubt, Hero of the Empire, and Destiny of the Republic. 3. The episode asks why Garfield's murder matters beyond the familiar Lincoln and Kennedy cases, and why Alexander Graham Bell appears in the story. 4. Millard says she came to Garfield through research on Bell's induction balance and then found Garfield's life far more remarkable than she expected. 5. Garfield is described as born in poverty in Ohio, with a father who died before he was two and no shoes until age four. 6. His mother and older brother saved $17 so he could go to school at Hiram, where he worked as a carpenter and janitor. 7. By his sophomore year, Garfield was made professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. 8. At 26, Garfield became university president and later wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem while serving in Congress. 9. Millard says Garfield entered politics without campaigning and was appointed to committees on military affairs, banking, currency, and appropriations. 10. She emphasizes his support for abolition, black suffrage, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the Union cause in the Civil War. 11. The 1880 Republican National Convention becomes the turning point when Garfield is asked to deliver John Sherman's nominating address. 12. Garfield's speech draws a shouted response of 'We want Garfield,' and the convention takes 36 ballots to settle on him as nominee. 13. Millard describes Roscoe Conkling as vain, powerful, and furious about Garfield's nomination, with control over the New York Customs House. 14. To placate Conkling, Garfield is paired with Chester A. Arthur, who had been one of Conkling's closest allies. 15. Garfield does not campaign, stays at Longfield in Ohio, and even gives a campaign speech in German from his front porch. 16. Charles Guiteau is presented as a failed lawyer, evangelist, and commune member who believes he deserves a government post for supporting Garfield. 17. When Guiteau is rejected by James Blaine, he claims a divine message that Garfield should die and Chester Arthur should become president. 18. Millard says Garfield had essentially no protection, and Guiteau stalks him through Washington, D.C. before the shooting at the Baltimore and Potomac train station. 19. The interview is conversational, detailed, and heavily grounded in historical reconstruction from trial transcripts, newspapers, and Millard's research. 20. Listeners who like presidential history, true crime, and Gilded Age politics will likely stay engaged, while listeners seeking a short, light conversation may skip it.

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