‘Death by Lightning’ is parabolic
Photograph by René DeAnda on Unsplash
Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot
Collecting bribes at the docks. A willing and willful cog in the political machine. Adept at roughing up a politician or two in the wee hours of the morning. By all accounts, a ruffian.
The son of a respected Baptist minister, Chester A. Arthur became the 21st President of the United States after the shooting in the summer of 1881 of President James Garfield and the mishandling of his treatment by doctors unconvinced of the need to sterilize their tools and hands when treating the wounds.
For good reason, people feared the worst as Arthur ascended improbably again to higher office. If Arthur ran the country now, would his own political bosses be pulling the strings yet again, this time well beyond New York State? Arthur made his career as a powerful (though corrupt) import official where the majority of imported goods flowed through the Port of New York.
Arthur only joined the Republican ticket in 1880, when Garfield unexpectedly became the Presidential nominee. A veritable study in restraint compared to Arthur, Ohio politician James Garfield was himself a lay preacher in the Disciples of Christ tradition and campaigned for president by staying home on the farm, eschewing whistle-stop tours and stump speeches. Garfield’s commitment to progressive government reform and his moral fiber was a threat to everything that made Arthur’s career to date.
This less-recalled chapter of US history is dramatized by the new Netflix miniseries “Death by Lightning.” Michael Shannon portrays Garfield as calm and measured, with a genuine desire to serve his country. The comedic actor Nick Offerman plays the rough and roguish Arthur, a hardened yet buffoonish lout at the side of his political boss Senator Roscoe Conkling.
The assassin Charles Guiteau serves as a narrative third rail between the pragmatic piety of Garfield and the veritable hedonism of Arthur. Filled with great visions of self-grandeur and convinced of his own ascendance in this world, Guiteau becomes convinced Garfield would grant him a position in the federal civil service. Feeling spurned and turned away because of his erratic behavior, Guiteau decides he must fulfill a God-ordained destiny to kill Garfield so Arthur can be President. In truth, Guiteau’s grasp on reality wobbles. He is a failure no matter where he goes, yet he persists in any act or statement that gains him attention, even if he cannot “read” the room as people start looking for ways out of the conversations shortly thereafter.
The story’s tragedy lies in the ease with which Guiteau can fulfill his plans shooting Garfield in the Washington, DC, train station, a far cry from today’s heightened 24/7 security for a U.S. President. Guiteau’s madness might have been treatable in our day, yet at the time, he was brushed aside by people who only later realized the danger he posed.
Dramatizations of history, like Netflix’s “Death by Lightning,” can be parabolic. We learn something about human nature and the inevitable choices we must make, no matter what station we arise to in this life.
Despite a misfortune-shortened term, Garfield leveraged a great deal of change, including his appointment of Blanche K. Bruce as Register of the Treasury, making Bruce the first African American official whose signature appeared on U.S. currency. What Garfield could have achieved further, if it were not for Guiteau’s bullet and his own medical team’s mishandling of his care, might have changed the United States for the better. Garfield’s reforms for the civil service did see some furtherance, ironically by Chester A. Arthur using his one term in office to carry out reforms, thanks to Garfield’s legacy shaping (haunting?) his Presidency.
In the Netflix miniseries, religion otherwise plays little overtly into Garfield and Arthur’s portrayal in this Netflix adaptation of Candice Millard’s book “Destiny of the Republic” (Doubleday, 2011). Garfield attends worship and keeps an ascetic life, regardless of being at the farmhouse in Ohio or later in the White House, while Arthur is more at home joyfully inebriated and dancing the night away.
Reading Millard’s nonfiction book, we see more of the religious framework of Garfield and Arthur. As much as Garfield preached what he practiced, Arthur seems the example of some preachers’ kids: rebellious and quite a handful. The Rev. William A. Arthur was an Irish immigrant, whose ministry throughout Vermont and New York was well regarded. A local post office in the Albany, NY, area recently added a historic display, remembering William Arthur and the post office being in the long-closed First Baptist Church of Newtonville, where Arthur was said to fill the pulpit in his later years.
At best, Chester A. Arthur became a little better in his Presidential term, though his post-Presidency was short as he died shortly after his term and was buried in the Albany (NY) Rural Cemetery, a gravesite now visited by the occasional tourist looking for who else “famous” is buried therein. James Garfield’s promise was cut short by a mentally disturbed person’s bullet and a medical team too arrogant to consider newly emerging studies about infection and sanitary medical practices.
The “Death by Lightning” miniseries brings to light a time that the average American might have forgotten. The past can be a murky place of memory and subjectivity. Such dramatizations may take their liberties for dramatic license, yet I often view them as parabolic. We learn something about human nature and the inevitable choices we must make, no matter what station we arise to in this life. Garfield and Arthur (and even Guiteau) are faint memories over a century later, yet in the historian or dramatist’s hands, we are given lessons worth remembering.
In the present day, we deal with times where trust in the government and institutions (including religious ones) is low, polarization is rife, and anxieties escalate to heights that feel unprecedented. It can be humbling to remember that human history is not all in a golden hue or seen through rose-colored glasses. We would do well to remember that we are “frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,” as the hymn “O Worship the King” reminds us.
Sorting out how we live during this time (however we define it for political, societal, or religious purposes), we must take care to understand the ruffian might be redeemable, the generally good can suffer tragedy, and the era’s own sort of ambiguous tensions are a matter of trying our best and keeping faith that something good and noble still might come, despite it all.
Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot is executive minister, American Baptist Churches of New York State.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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