The Deadly Story of the U.S. Civil Service

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NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When James Garfield won the Presidency in 1880, Charles Guiteau got ready to accept his new government job. No one had actually offered him a job – but he'd campaigned for Garfield, so he assumed he'd be rewarded. That was the spoils system, and it was how the government worked.

But President Garfield didn't hire him. Guiteau was furious. And on July 2, 1881, he followed Garfield to a Washington D.C. train station and shot him.

Today on the show: how an assassination meant to restore the spoils system instead led to its end, and birthed the modern federal workforce.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from Snap Judgment.
0:02.3	Each episode is a movie of the mind.
0:05.2	Storytelling with a beat.
0:07.2	Raw, intimate, real.
0:09.4	Strap in.
0:10.4	Subscribe to Snap Judgment wherever you get your podcasts.
0:13.6	Music July 2nd 1881.
0:47.6	President James A. Garfield is about to board a train at the...
0:51.9	Baltimore and Potomac train station, which is in Washington, D.C.
0:56.0	He's headed to New Jersey with his sons to visit his ailing wife.
1:00.4	It's about 9.30 a.m.
1:02.0	And what he doesn't know is there's a man named Charles Guto.
1:06.2	Charles Guteau.
1:07.8	Who has been stalking him for weeks.
1:10.9	Garfield has no security detail with him.
1:18.6	Garfield walks into the train station and Guteau almost immediately steps out of the shadows.
1:23.6	With a pistol in his hand.
1:36.3	Okay. With a pistol in his hand. He fires two shots at President Garfield.
1:41.3	He shoots him once in his arm, and then he shoots him again in his back.
1:46.2	One bullet gets lodged just below his pancreas.
1:49.6	There's this sort of moment of shock and silence.
2:00.8	And then just the entire station just erupts and screams.
	...

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