When it comes to the assassination of presidents, there are two that will immediately come to mind. However, Death By Lightning doesn’t focus on either Abraham Lincoln or john F. Kennedy, leading to questions about whether it’s even based on true events.
There are certainly some creative liberties taken with the new series, but that doesn’t stop it from being loosely based on truth. It’s also based on the non-fiction book Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard, which is based on the real events of the past.
Yes, President James Garfield was assassinated
Just like Death By Lightning tells us, President James Garfield was assassinated. It was at the hands of a man who was once a supporter of him, but how felt pushed out when he thought he should have been rewarded for helping Garfield win the presidency.
Garfield didn’t die immediately. It took two months, and he ended up dying of sepsis. It’s hard not to feel bad for him, even if he wasn’t someone everybody liked. Politics has always been a divisive thing.
The benefit of the story is that there’s not much that needed to be added or adapted to make it a compelling piece of drama. The real details of the assassination and the lead-up are crazy enough to make you think you’re watching something out of a fictionalized story.
The theme of corruption in politics in Death By Lightning
This isn’t just the story of an assassination, though. It’s a story of corruption, bureaucracy, and even of an unwilling man landing a position that would eventually lead to his death. No, Garfield wasn’t exactly a man who wanted to run the country, but it was something others wanted for him. He did always want to see the country move forward into the 19th century.
After all, this was taking place in 1881, as the country came off the back of the Civil War and needed to figure out what it wanted to be. If it wanted to remain an important country in the world, people had to take a stand, and that sometimes meant going against some loud voices.
These are stories that come up in politics time and time again. We just have to look at moments in the last 100 years to see how that is the case, and it makes for some compelling TV, even when set in the past.
Death By Lightning is a four-part miniseries available now on Netflix.
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