Kaylee gets nerdy about history, or five facts from “Destiny of the Republic,” this lovely book I got for Christmas about James Garfield’s assassination:

1. James Garfield, who grew up in extreme poverty in Ohio, didn’t even want to run for president; he gave a great speech at the Republican Convention nominating this other guy, and he spoke so well that eventually people began nominating him instead, and Garfield was like, “What the fuck? You can’t nominate me, I’m not running, I don’t want to be president, didn’t you hear me nominate this other guy?” (okay, that quote was paraphrased), but he won the nomination anyway, even beating Grant, who had already been president three times.

2. His vice president, Chester Arthur, was chosen for him as a symbolic statement of party unity. Arthur was largely regarded as an idiot who only cared about clothes and dinner parties, and a puppet of the New York senator and Garfield’s biggest critic, Conkling. The prospect of him becoming president horrified the American public. But when Garfield got shot, Arthur freaked out because he REALLY did not want to be president and got genuinely emotional. He spent a long time hiding out in this disheveled house. Upon Garfield’s death, his doorkeeper refused to get a statement from Arthur for the press: “I daren’t ask him. He is sitting alone in his room sobbing like a child with his head on his desk and his face buried in his hands.” Arthur pulled away from Conkling and instead started taking advice from a stranger who wrote him letters, an unmarried, 32-year-old invalid named Julia Sand.

3. The gunshot that eventually killed Garfield shouldn’t have been fatal; even if they’d just left him alone, he probably would have lived. But most prominent American doctors then didn’t believe in germs and, because they didn’t sterilize anything, ended up badly infecting him, which makes me so grateful for modern medicine I don’t even know what to do.

4. Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son, was Garfield’s secretary of war, and was there not only when his dad got shot, but when Garfield got shot as well. “My God,” he muttered. “How many hours of sorrow I have passed in this town.” Later, he was also there when McKinley got shot, making him the only one to be present at three of America’s four presidential assassinations.

5. Garfield seems like he was a great guy, and generally beloved by the American public. But just before he died, he started to worry that because he was president for so short a time, he wouldn’t be remembered. And he’s not, really. Remembered, I mean. I didn’t know anything about him before I read this book. And that makes me sad, because he seems like he was pretty fantastic. This story is a good one, better than I knew, and there are SO MANY MORE great facts that I didn’t even put on this list (i.e. Alexander Graham Bell’s role in all of this). So. I guess I just want more people to think about James Garfield. Which is why I wrote this post.