Crown of Thorns: Political Martyrdom in America From Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr.

4. Sacrifice for Law and Order

Sacrifice tar Law aid Irder wo American presidents besides Lincoln fell victim to an assassin's bullet within less than forty years. On July 2, 1881, James Abraham Garfield, the twentieth president of the United States, was shot by a disappointed office seeker in Washington, D.C., and died eighty days later on September 19, 1881. Twenty years later, on September 8, 1901, William McKinley was shot by a self-proclaimed anarchist in Buffalo, New York, and died on September 14, 1901. These two presidents belonged to the dominant Republican party, which represented the legitimate and conservative political establishment of the Gilded Age. As political leaders killed while representing the existing order, they had the potential for becoming celebrated martyrs for the American established elite. But unlike Lincoln their martyr image was very short-lived. For reasons this chapter will explore, Garfield and McKinley never became national martyrs for later generations. Their tragedy was a traumatic and meaningful event to their contemporaries, but it never transcended the conservative social milieu of the Republican party. When President Garfield died after a long period of suffering, Charles Henry Parkhurst, a Presbyterian clergyman and social reformer, declared "We do not understand it. ... We have got to feel that in it God teaches us and stand face to face with Him."1 Henry Ward Beecher; Dr. Hinsdale (the president of Hiram College where Garfield studied and worked), and the editor of the Chicago Tribune, all expressed a similar sense of wonder at the mystery of divine ways.2 Twenty years later, when President McKinley was killed, John Wanamaker, a wealthy businessman, also turned to God's 83 4 T 84 CROWN OF THORNS mysterious design for an explanation.3 This sense of wonder, however, was also accompanied by a more bitter and indignant reaction. Many members of the political elite asked how such a terrible event could happen three times, in the only free country in the world that had never experienced tyranny or repression. The recurring political assassinations generated anxieties and fears in the hearts of many public figures. While contemporaries expressed deep concern regarding the endurance and well-being of the United States in the face of such assaults on their presidents,4 they also sought to make sense of the tragedies through rhetoric that turned the assassinated presidents into celebrated martyrs. Immediately following President Garfield's death, various spokesmen compared his character and career to those of Abraham Lincoln.5 William M. Thayer, a popular writer of success stories, summed up the similarities between the two presidents in his book From Log Cabin to the White House: Both had been born in a log cabin, had grown up as poor but talented orphans, become farmers and woodchoppers, and dedicated themselves to self-education through extensive reading. They had started their careers as teachers in the backwoods, then studied law while engaging in other occupations to make a living. Both had been army officers, attained national prominence as compromise candidates, and achieved popular support as a result of their election. "Both died in presidential office by the shot of an assassin. History has no parallel for such an amazing fact. . . . Beginning life in the obscurity of the wilderness and ending it on the summit of renown! Their first home—a log cabin! Their last—the White House."6 When McKinley died some speakers also stressed previous political assassinations , 7 but most of them ignored Garfield and emphasized the similarities between McKinley and Lincoln alone.8 According to Bishop Andrews who delivered the funeral sermon for McKinley, William of Orange, Cromwell, Washington, and Lincoln were the heroes with whom McKinley's name would be compared.9 Despite the analogy with Lincoln, the addresses and tributes to Garfield and McKinley lacked the mythical dimension of the individual martyr. While Lincoln was seen as both a witness to divine truth and an embodiment of human devotion to duty, the other martyred presidents were portrayed only as faithful and virtuous human beings. Most speakers and writers depicted them as typical Americans and interpreted the significance of their career in terms of human experience. They remained human also in their suffering and death and lacked the unique status of Lincoln, whose SACRIFICE FOR LAW AND ORDER 85 figure often appeared to loom above ordinary persons.10 By using the term martyr without its transcendental significance, contemporaries actually misinterpreted the exact meaning of the word. Instead...