Tuesday, January 02, 2018
Garfield lost California, by just 144 votes. But he won the election. Although he had a wide margin of victory in the electoral college, in the popular vote Garfield’s margin of victory was the slimmest in the history of U.S. presidential elections: fewer than 10,000 votes separated the two candidates.
The scandal of the Morey letter dragged on for years after the election, though, even after Garfield was assassinated (for unrelated reasons) six months into his term. The journalist who originally published the letter, Kenward Philp, was put on trial for libel and forgery. Described by a contemporary paper as “a little fellow with a high forehead,” he’d been known as a political prankster, which didn’t help his case.
But Philp was acquitted of the crime.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morey-letter-scandal-1880-garfield
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