Tomb Raiding
By The James Garfield tomb is perhaps my favorite example of Gilded Age hyperbolic self-memorialization. This amazing building mythologizes our 20th president and his incalculable contributions to the nation both through finery inside the tomb and stone carvings adorning it. Essentially, when Garfield died, Republican leaders and plutocrats decided to put on a show and give him the temple they wanted for themselves. Emphasized are Garfield’s role in saving the Union and freeing the slaves, which, again, is really a projection of how these men saw themselves, regardless of their actions after the war.
With a tomb like that, you’d think Garfield was something more than a Republican political hack.
Unfortunately, the followers of Winfield Scott Hancock have struck back:
Even in death, President James A. Garfield can’t seem to catch a break.
Last week, someone apparently broke into Garfield’s tomb in the Cleveland suburbs and stole 13 commemorative spoons from a display case.
“We were like, ‘Really? They took spoons?’ ” said Katherine Goss, president and chief executive of Lake View Cemetery, which houses the Garfield tomb.
The spoons, Goss said, “would be hard to sell in a historical auction because everyone would wonder where they came from.”
The thieves left behind several other pieces of memorabilia and even some cash in a donation box, Goss said, leading her to guess that “someone had to prove that they had been inside the monument — so they had to take something.”
The evidence left behind by the burglars, she said, included a broken stained-glass window, a T-shirt, two cigarette butts and, of course, an empty bottle of Fireball cinnamon whiskey.
No doubt it was an issue over tariffs related to Fireball cinnamon whiskey.