The Secret Service had been established sixteen years earlier, just a few months after President Lincoln’s assassination, but it had been created to fight counterfeiting, not to protect the president. Over the years, the agency’s duties had broadened to include law enforcement, but no particular attention was given to the White House. Then, the year before Garfield took the oath of office, Congress cut the Secret Service’s annual budget nearly in half, to just $60,000, and restricted its agents, once again, to investigating counterfeiting cases.
