The new book An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder (Pegasus Crime, 2023) by Susan Wels is a true crime odyssey that explores a forgotten, astonishing chapter of American history, leading the reader from a free-love community in Upstate New York to the shocking assassination of President James Garfield. [Read more…] about Assassin in Utopia: The Oneida Community & The Garfield Assassination
James Garfield
Chester A. Arthur, The Spoils System & Civil Service Reform
Yates Street in Schenectady runs north and south from Union Street to Liberty Street, from the Friendship Baptist Church on Union Street to the Katbird Shop at the corner of Liberty and Yates.
In the late 1840s it was regularly traversed by the only former resident of Schenectady and the only graduate of Union College ever destined to occupy the office of President of the United States. [Read more…] about Chester A. Arthur, The Spoils System & Civil Service Reform
John Porter: Garfield Assassin Prosecutor from Waterford
The 20th President of the United States, James Garfield, was born in a log cabin in Ohio and was a mule driver on the Ohio & Erie Canal. A graduate of Williams College, he later became an attorney and a skilled orator, and was elected to Congress in 1862.
He then served as a Major General during the Civil War. In the 1880 election Garfield conducted a “Front Porch Campaign” and narrowly defeated another Civil War General, Gettysburg hero Winfield Scott Hancock. [Read more…] about John Porter: Garfield Assassin Prosecutor from Waterford