As I understand it, he wasn’t in office long enough to really have an effect on the country. So what would have happened if the man’s gun had misfired and the President’s men had hustled Garfield away? How would history have been changed, if at all? Or was this not a “critical” assassination?
I don’t know and it was James Garfield. John Garfield was a top notch movie actor of the late 1930’s who died much to young.
My guess: Garfield would have ceded most of what is now the Pacific Northwest to India and most of the nation would have converted to Christian Science on a lark.
(A more fiercely debatable question, imo, would be “What would have happened if the North hadn’t accepted the compromise that put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House in 1876?” as had they not Reconstruction would have been extended and the Jim Crow Laws might not have come to pass.)
I’d always heard it and read it as “James”. My mistake.
Well, his assassin certainly thought he had changed History. Guiteau, Garfield’s killer, proclaimed loudly, “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now,”**. Which briefly led to all kinds of suspicions and conspiracies that Arthur or his supporters had colluded with Guiteau. Guiteau saying this was like Oswald after being arrested for shooting JFK proclaiming “I am the Southern Democrat of Southern Democrats! Johnson is President now!”
I think this proclamation helped make the assassination less a political U-turn than it might otherwise have been. Arthur and Garfield were polar opposites and represented different factions within the party, however Arthur was succeeding a president (who had only won by a few 1,000 votes) and didn’t have the political mandate to do much that Garfield wouldn’t do. He was also dying from Brights disease and some speculate that this kept his Tammany Hall loyalties in the background. Whatever, once Arthur got in he enraged his faction by following more closely Garfield’s line than his own factions. I think it is fair to say this was a close election and more of Garfield’s policies were put in place because he was killed than would have had he not been assassinated. For instance, like the Civil Rights Act’s passage 80 some odd years later, Garfield’s assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883…. which Arthur’s faction probably wouldn’t have pushed for on its own, and the Democrats wouldn’t have pushed for. That strong civil service reform changed history I have no doubt – but it is not dramatic like Booth Missing or Hitler being killed in ‘44
**Wiki tells us:
Garfield was a leader of the “Half-Breeds,” who supported civil service reform and Hayes’s relatively lenient treatment of the postwar South. His Vice President, Chester A. Arthur of New York, was a member of the “Stalwarts,” who advocated the retention of the patronage system and a tougher stance regarding the former Confederate states.
What crummy moderator edited the title and rendered my post incomprehensible?
If we told you, we’d have to kill you. (I am not responsible for this particular action.)
I’ll let it go this time since it’s not worth going to the mattresses over. But watch it.
Going to the mattresses over? Dave, you’re really not my type.
It was me, I confess. 
Sigh. All these kids have on their minds is sex, sex, sex.
The Godfather, Mario Puzo, Book 1, Chap. 6 -
"He would tell Paulie that their job today was to find an apartment in case the Family decided to ‘go to the mattresses.’ ”
“Whenever a war between the Families became bitterly intense, the opponents would set up headquarters in secret apartments where the ‘soldiers’ could sleep on mattresses scattered through the rooms. … it was always smarter to live in some secret place where your everyday movements could not be charted either by your opponents or by some police who might arbitrarily decide to meddle.”
“And so usually a trusted caporegime would be sent out to rent a secret apartment and fill it with mattresses. That apartment would be used as a sally port into the city when an offensive was mounted.”
(I hope the OP’s question has been dealt with enough so this horseplay doesn’t gum up the works.)
You wouldn’t have written this post, which means I wouldn’t have typed this response, thereby heading home from work 2 minutes earlier than I did and being in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting smushed by a meteor crashing into I-494. So you see: Garfield’s murder saved my life.
I mostly agree with Jimmmy. Other than passage of civil service reform, I don’t know that much else would’ve changed. The U.S. wasn’t in any war in 1881-1885, Western expansion was going to go on pretty much the same no matter who lived in the White House, and the Progressive era was still a few years down the road. In the great sweep of American history, it was a very quiet time. Chester Arthur followed Garfield’s program (such as it was) in pretty much every respect; even *ubercynic * Mark Twain said he was very pleased by Arthur’s work as President.
Still, it’s a shame Garfield died - largely due to his doctors’ bungling. He was a Civil War hero, very smart, honest, good-humored and even-tempered. My favorite Garfield factoid: he was both multilingual and ambidextrous, and could write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other simultaneously.
I’d like to see Dubya try that…
Even more impressive, he could gobble twice his weight in lasagna at a single sitting! 
That was Taft, I think.
Garfield may have been better off going down in history as a tragic martyr. As an actual President, he might not be as highly regarded. In his lifetime, Garfield was regarded as an honest but ineffective politician - a real smart guy but he didn’t get things done. If he had served out his term, the canny political machine operators who had their systems in place probably would have thwarted any real reform.
That’s silly. Who would name a cat Taft?
I also think it was Mark Twain who said, “No one could ever accuse President Arthur of putting off til tomorrow what could be done today.” He was most comfortable in administrative matters and really had no desire to be President; however, once he became President he proved to be quite able.
Arthur was very much the bon vivant , and loved entertaining, eating, and drinking. A group of women advocating prohibition once complained to him about liquor in the White House and he responded, “I may be President of the United States, but what I do in my private life is no one’s damn business.” We could probably use that kind of candor again.
I think it is criminal that Arthur’s house at 123 Lexington Avenue, where he took the oath of office and lived out his life after his presidency, is now home to an oriental grocery and apartments.
Don’t knock it. A cat named Taft might be worth some kind of plaque.
Of course, it could be a cat-Taft-trophy too.
Well, W.H. Taft was a notorious “Fat Cat,” so in a sense, sombody did.
Since Garfield was a Restoration Movement/Church of Christ minister back in the days before the sect’s many schisms, & the only member of a Restoration Movement church ever elected PotUS, his assassination so soon after inauguration is a little poignant for some of us from that religious background.