On July 2, 1881, the 20th president of the United States, James A. Garfield, was shot in the back as he walked through a Washington, D.C. railway station.  His deranged assassin, Charles Guiteau, is frequently described as a “disgruntled office-seeker,” and indeed he was:  Guiteau considered himself responsible for Garfield’s election and demanded repeatedly to be appointed consul to Paris. The stricken president lingered through the summer heat, suffering from infection, blood poisoning, and pneumonia.  He succumbed to a massive heart attack on September 19, 1881.  

Garfield’s death was deeply disturbing to a nation still governed by the Civil War generation. This was especially true of future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of the most influential American thinkers of his (or any other) time.  Holmes saw the worst of the worst during his three years with the Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which suffered more battle deaths than all but four Union regiments during the Civil War. Wounded three times, Holmes survived, but the war convinced him that certitude is dangerous, and that only democracy can prevent competing conceptions of how to live from overheating and leading to violence.  Whereas some people at the time, for example, white supremacists and opponents of woman suffrage, worried that expanded access to democracy would destroy American civilization, Holmes was convinced that the only way to preserve the Republic, restored through the sacrifice of millions, was to make sure that the political playing field was as accessible and even as possible.  Everyone must have a say.

Three trends work against this goal today:  restrictive voter laws, campaign finance rules tilted towards the super-rich, and gerrymandering.  This week the Supreme Court will hear an important gerrymandering case from Wisconsin.

Read more at HuffPost