Death by Lightning | Netflix show revisits assassination of US President that changed American history

At the Republican National Convention of 1880, delegates were bitterly divided. It took 36 ballots to settle on a nominee. Among the attendees was an Ohio congressman and former farmer who had come merely to support another candidate. But when he took the stage, his speech electrified the hall so powerfully that delegates nominated him instead. Within months, the reluctant politician was sworn in as the 20th President of the United States, with Chester Arthur as his vice president.

This was James Garfield, the president whose rise and death form the heart of Death by Lightning, Netflix’s latest historical drama. What begins as a tale of political triumph soon spirals into obsession, madness, and a crime that stunned a nation.

Garfield’s life embodied the American dream. Born into poverty near Cleveland and raised by a widowed mother, he worked his way through school as a janitor before becoming a college president at 27. He served as a Union general during the Civil War and went on to spend eight terms in Congress, championing education, civil rights, and the abolition of slavery. Garfield entered the White House determined to modernise government and promote merit-based appointments.

But his presidency was cut short just four months into his term. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot at a Washington train station by Charles Guiteau, not a political rival or conspirator, but a delusional drifter who believed killing the president would make him a hero.

Guiteau, convinced that he had helped Garfield win the election, demanded a diplomatic post, ideally as ambassador to France, a country with which he had no connection beyond his French-sounding name. When his pleas went unanswered, his frustration hardened into obsession. He purchased an ivory-handled revolver and ambushed Garfield in broad daylight, convinced that the president’s death would secure him glory and gratitude.

Guiteau was arrested on the spot, tried for murder, and executed the following year.

Garfield lived for over two months before succumbing to infection, not the bullet itself, on September 19, 1881. His death spurred the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which established merit-based hiring in the US federal government recruitment process.

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