John Sherman (1823 – 1900)

Death by Lightning: The Man who Launched the Garfield Presidency

As we approach Presidents’ Day next Monday, John Sherman is the next horoscope to fill out the constellation of men surrounding the rise and fall of President James A. Garfield. In the Netflix series Death by Lightning, Sherman barely registers—a fleeting background figure in the Republican machine. In reality, he stood at the center of the drama that produced Garfield’s presidency. It was Garfield’s nomination of Sherman for the Republican presidential ticket on 5 June 1880 that set the convention’s machinery in motion; when delegates failed to secure the nomination for Ulysses S. Grant, James G. Blaine, or Sherman himself, the deadlock opened the door to Garfield’s emergence as the dark-horse compromise. By 1880, Sherman had earned his place at the top tier of Republican power through decades of legislative leadership—war finance, national banking, currency stabilization, and, most recently, the successful execution of the Resumption Act, which restored greenbacks to gold parity in 1879. For contemporaries, Sherman was not a bit player but one of the party’s principal architects of modern fiscal governance.

Astrologically, Sherman’s chart explains both his reach and his ceiling. With Leo rising and the Sun in the 10th house, he enjoys sustained public rank and access to the highest offices of the state; his Moon’s application to a Gemini stellium in the 11th house, with Jupiter in sect as victor, describes a career built on committees, rules, and institutional networks that expand the scope of federal power through law. This is the chart of a master legislator: durable influence, technical command, and the ability to scale policy to the national level. Yet Sherman is born under a New Moon with the Moon combust, a configuration that places him close to authority while limiting the specifically lunar talent for unifying rival factions behind himself. He becomes indispensable to the machinery of power without becoming the singular figure who commands it by personal magnetism. The astrology fits a man whose authority grows with institutions, not with charisma.

This tension helps explain why Garfield’s objective at the 1880 Republican National Convention was to nominate Sherman for president. Garfield entered the convention as Sherman’s campaign manager and floor general, believing that Sherman’s legislative stature, financial achievements, and standing within the party’s governing elite made him the natural choice to unify the Republicans after Ulysses S. Grant’s third-term bid stalled. The effort failed not because Sherman lacked accomplishments, but because his coalition could not be welded into a final majority; the deadlock instead elevated Garfield himself as the compromise nominee. The chart tells the story in advance: John Sherman is built to expand and stabilize the system, not to personify it.