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James Garfield and the 1876 Centennial Exposition: a skeptic goes to the opening

James A. Garfield doubted the idea of the 1876 Centennial Exposition for years before he went to its opening. This National Park Service article, the first of two parts by a ranger at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site, uses his diary to show how the Philadelphia fair looked to a congressman who worried about its cost and its politics.

Cover of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition, 1876

Cover of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exposition, 1876. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Expositions as an idea

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Historical Register called the Philadelphia event the "most stupendous and successful competitive exposition that the world ever saw." It was not the first. The craze for expositions began in 1851 with the Crystal Palace Exposition in London, which Prince Albert worked to make reflect "the advancement of industry" and "the interests of the laboring people" while showing English affluence. Paris held one in 1867 and Vienna in 1873. The American Centennial was meant to show material progress, and, as important, to help heal a society torn apart by civil war.

An engraving of the Crystal Palace, a large glass building with a round window on the top floor

The Crystal Palace, London. Image from the National Park Service's page.

A skeptic's diary

Garfield was an early skeptic. His diary entry of December 13, 1872 said Congress had been drawn into the scheme unconsciously and was nearly committed to large appropriations, which should have been done more openly. On May 5, 1874 he was "some troubled" and thought on the whole Congress ought not to incur the expense of $3,000,000. He disliked the international side, which he called "a great mistake" that would end in "disaster and failure," and said a national celebration would please him. As Chair of the House Appropriations Committee he may have seen the international side as an unaffordable expense.

The Centennial also became caught up in partisan and sectional politics. On January 10, 1876 he noted a pending bill to grant general amnesty to former Confederates, allowing them to hold public office. A Pennsylvania congressman offered to trade passage of the amnesty for money for the Centennial, which Garfield thought greatly reduced the chance of an appropriation. He was also bothered by a southern congressman's attack on the Centennial as unconstitutional.

A view of the Paris Exposition of 1867 from above

The Paris Exposition of 1867. Image from the National Park Service's page.

The fair goes ahead

The Centennial went ahead with a mere $500,000 from Congress, the bulk of the funding having been raised elsewhere. Dozens of nations were invited and dozens came, among them England, France, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Japan, China, Russia, Brazil, Egypt and Australia, and hundreds of workers who built the grounds included many Japanese, Turkish and Russian laborers. The finished site covered 230 acres of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, and a visitor was said to be awed by the sheer size of everything.

President Grant opened it on May 10, 1876, and Garfield attended with his wife Lucretia. They drove into the city early for shopping, found most stores closed and the streets full of processions, and then sat on the stand in front of the Art Hall under a sky that had cleared. Nearly one hundred thousand people watched the ceremony, but Garfield wrote that what impressed him most was the sound of a thousand trained singers performing Whittier's hymn. Afterward the couple went to the Art Gallery and Machinery Hall, where they met the President with the Empress of Brazil. He ended the entry noting that after an hour in Machinery Hall, the United States would "doubtless make relatively the best exhibition," a sign of the country's growing industrial power.

Portrait of Congressman James A. Garfield in a straw hat

Congressman James A. Garfield. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Sources

National Park Service article by Alan Gephardt, Park Ranger, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, written August 2014 for the Garfield Observer (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/james-a-garfield-and-the-centennial-exposition-of-1876-part-i.htm), a U.S. government work in the public domain. The author's introduction about an online collection of images is left out.
National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.