[181] Brady resigned and was indicted for conspiracy, though jury trials in 1882 and 1883 found Brady not guilty.[183]

Civil rights and education[edit]
Official White House portrait of James Garfield, 1881
Garfield believed the key to improving the state of African American civil rights was government supported education.[184] During Reconstruction, freedmen had gained citizenship and suffrage, which enabled them to participate in government, but Garfield believed their rights were being eroded by Southern white resistance and illiteracy, and he was concerned that blacks would become America's permanent "peasantry".[185] He proposed a "universal" education system funded by the federal government. In February 1866, Garfield and Ohio School Commissioner Emerson Edward White drafted a bill for the National Department of Education. They believed that through the use of statistics they could push the US Congress to establish a federal agency for school reform.[186] But Congress and the northern white public had lost interest in African-American rights, and Congress did not pass federal funding for universal education during Garfield's term.