"Garfield appointed four black men, among them Frederick Douglass, to posts in his administration. We are left to wonder today what a president of conviction and conscience such as Garfield might have done to rouse the country and lead it against the vicious new institutions of repression and virtual re-enslavement that were taking hold in the American South, with the silent acquiescence of the north. We will never know, of course, what the limits of his leadership might have been, but it would seem, from the grief at his passing and the memorials that remain, that he was a president who left more of a mark on the people’s consciousness in a few months than some others have in four years and more."
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Presidents of the United StatesMurdered peopleRepublican Party (United States) politiciansPoliticians from ClevelandUnited States presidential candidates, 1880
Original Language: English
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Sources
The New York Times, "For the briefest time, President Garfield was an inspiration" (17 February 2013), The Post's View, New York
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_A._Garfield
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James A. Garfield
James Abram Garfield (19 November 1831 – 19 September 1881) was the 20th president of the United States of America in 1881, and the second U.S. president to be assassinated. His term was the second shortest in U.S. history, after William Henry Harrison's. Holding office from March to September of 1881, President Garfield was in office for a total of just six months and fifteen days. A Republican, he supported civil rights and freedoms for African Americans.
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