An October 1880 "Advertiser Extra" headed "Garfield's Death Warrant" printed a facsimile of the Morey letter, a forgery signed "J. A. Garfield," to turn wage-earners' fear of Chinese labor against him and toward Hancock.
What the sheet prints
Content note: the sheet is an anti-Chinese appeal built on a forged document. This page describes it without repeating its argument as fact.
The headline calls the letter Garfield's death warrant. Below it is a facsimile of a handwritten letter dated 23 January 1880, addressed to H. L. Morey of the Employers' Union in Lynn, Massachusetts, and signed "J. A. Garfield." The letter says that employers have a "right to buy labor where they can get it cheapest" and that a treaty with China should stand. The extra then admits that Garfield has denied writing it, insists it is "true," and ends by telling readers to "resolve to vote for Gen. Hancock, the honest friend of American labor."
The archive does not give a full transcription of the sheet. The phrases above are the ones its record quotes.
Who issued it
The sheet calls itself an "Advertiser Extra" and names no publisher. The archive classes it as a pro-Hancock newspaper extra, dates it October 1880, and marks the source as blurred, meaning the real issuer is hidden. That is fitting. A forgery travels best when no one has to sign for it.
How to read it
The record states it plainly: the letter was a forgery. Everything else on the sheet depends on that letter, so the sheet is false at its foundation. The extra knew the letter was disputed, because it reports Garfield's denial, and printed it anyway with a bare assurance that it was true. That is the order of operations worth remembering. The denial was on the page. The reader was told to ignore it.
The target was not only Garfield. The letter's sting depends on fear of Chinese workers, who appear here as a threat to American wages and nothing more. The archive tags the sheet for fear appeal and scapegoating. An immigrant group with no vote was used as the weight on a lie aimed at a candidate. That was wrong twice over.
No censor was needed to answer it. A denial, a press willing to print it, and voters willing to read past the headline are the remedies a free country has. Earlier that summer Puck had already mocked both parties for agreeing on an anti-Chinese plank.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Garfield's Death Warrant: "Advertiser Extra" reproducing the Morey letter, October 1880. Pro-Hancock newspaper extra; publisher not named on the sheet.
- Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Printed Ephemera Collection, Portfolio 160, Folder 14b. loc.gov/item/2020781913, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain, no known copyright.
