Review: Why You’ve Probably Never Heard of James Garfield’s Assassin

Mike Makowsky opens Death by Lightning, a four-part miniseries he wrote and produced, with a chilling line: “This is a true story about two men the world forgot. One was the 20th president of the United States. The other shot him.” Yet this drama about President James Garfield and assassin Charles Guiteau reminds us that we should wish for more forgettable presidents.

Garfield, played by Michael Shannon, is depicted as a quiet, reserved statesman who reluctantly becomes the Republican nominee only after a unifying speech vaults him above party factions. As the political drama unfolds, the series shows glimpses of Guiteau’s increasingly erratic life and the strange ways he keeps crossing paths with Garfield on the road to a fateful morning at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station where Guiteau shot Garfield.

Unlike John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, Guiteau is largely forgotten—not because his crime was trivial, but because he shot a president who left little lasting impact on Americans’ lives. Though Guiteau fascinated the public during his trial and execution, and his brain even spent time on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, he and Garfield are both footnotes in history—and that’s for the best. Politicians (and political violence) shouldn’t take up permanent space in our heads.