By Jeremy Dibbell

By tradition, our July Object of the Month highlight tends to be related in some way to the Fourth of July. This year’s is no exception: it’s a broadside issued by the Foxborough Fourth of July Committee, informing the town’s residents that the Fourth of July celebrations will go forward as planned. In fact, the Committee suggests that “the observance of INDEPENDENCE DAY be carried out with renewed enthusiasm because the attempt to our PRESIDENT has so far been unsuccessful and will, it is hoped, undoubtedly fail.”

President James A. Garfield had been shot by Charles Guiteau just two days earlier at a Washington train station, where he was preparing to board a train for Massachusetts (he was to give a speech at his 25th college reunion at Williams College). The president clung to life for eighty days, suffering through various attempts by doctors to find and remove a bullet lodged near his spine. He died on 19 September, the second murdered president in two decades.

You can read more about the Foxborough broadside, Garfield, and Guiteau here.