VESTIGES OF EVOLUTION IN A PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY: EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPTS IN THE BOOKS OF JAMES A. GARFIELD, TWENTIETH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Before 1860, James A. Garfield (1831-1881), a lay preacher and educator who would become the 20^th president of the United States, expressed opposition to evolutionary concepts. His views would change over time, and the books preserved in the library at his home in Mentor, Ohio, provide insights into this change. These books include a variety of geological and biological works that addressed evolutionary concepts, ranging from Robert Chambers’s provocative book, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, to Thomas Huxley’s 1871 Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews.

Garfield argued against the concepts of spontaneous generation and progressive development as presented by lecturer William Denton (1823-1883) in a multipart debate in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, in 1858. His early opposition was in accord with a number of early geological texts, including Samuel St. John’s 1851 Elements of Geology, which Garfield had purchased in 1851. That book recognized extinction and deep time, but not evolution of species over time. Garfield’s early opposition to pre-Darwinian evolutionary concepts did not include acceptance of a young Earth, to the disappointment of some of his supporters. The underlining, marginal notes, and protruding pages in Garfield’s books point to a special interest in the relationship between religious and scientific thought. Two sections of Garfield’s copy of Edward Hitchcock’s 1852 Religion of Geology, for example, stand out as being more perused. These sections include discussions of reconciliation of religion and science and of the role of a higher power.

Garfield’s library includes an 1860 edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species and an 1871 edition of Thomas Huxley’s Lay Sermons. Both books have Garfield’s bookplate, but both lack dates of acquisition. Their presence is consistent with Garfield’s published remarks and the inference of Allan Peskin, Garfield’s primary biographer, that Garfield’s views changed over time. As a legislator Garfield would become a strong supporter of geological surveys and of the Smithsonian Institution, and of evolutionist scientists such as John Wesley Powell.