Editing James A. Garfield (section)

===Civil rights and education===
[[File:Jgarfield.jpeg|thumb|200px|alt=Formal seated portrait in oils|Official White House portrait of James Garfield, 1881]]
Garfield believed the key to improving the state of African American civil rights was government supported education.{{sfn|Doenecke|1981|p=48}} During Reconstruction, [[freedman|freedmen]] had gained citizenship and suffrage, which enabled them to participate in government, but Garfield believed their rights were being eroded by Southern white resistance and illiteracy, and he was concerned that blacks would become America's permanent "[[peasantry]]".{{sfn|Doenecke|1981|pp=48–49}} He proposed a "universal" education system funded by the federal government. In February 1866, as a congressman from Ohio, Garfield and Ohio School Commissioner Emerson Edward White had drafted a bill for the National Department of Education. They believed that through the use of statistics they could push the US Congress to establish a federal agency for school reform.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Steudeman|first=Michael J.|date=May 2018|title=From Civic Imperative to Bird's-Eye View: Renegotiating the Idioms of Education Governance during the Reconstruction Era|journal=History of Education Quarterly|language=en|volume=58|issue=2|pages=199–228|doi=10.1017/heq.2018.3|issn=0018-2680|doi-access=free}}</ref> But by the time of Garfield's presidency, Congress and the northern white public had lost interest in African-American rights, and Congress did not pass federal funding for universal education during his term.{{sfn|Doenecke|1981|pp=48–49}} Garfield also worked to appoint several African Americans to prominent positions: [[Frederick Douglass]], recorder of deeds in Washington; [[Robert B. Elliott|Robert Elliot]], special agent to the Treasury; [[John M. Langston]], [[Haiti]]an minister; and [[Blanche Bruce|Blanche K. Bruce]], register to the Treasury. Garfield believed Southern support for the Republican Party could be gained by "commercial and industrial" interests rather than race issues and began to reverse Hayes's policy of conciliating Southern Democrats.{{sfn|Doenecke|1981|pp=49–50}} He appointed [[William H. Hunt]], a Republican from Louisiana, as Secretary of the Navy.{{sfn|Doenecke|1981|pp=49–50}} To break the hold of the resurgent Democratic Party in the Solid South, Garfield took patronage advice from Virginia Senator [[William Mahone]] of the biracial independent [[Readjuster Party]], hoping to add the independents' strength to the Republicans' there.{{sfn|Doenecke|1981|pp=50–53}}