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James A. Garfield (1881- September 1881)

James Abram Garfield was a teacher, college principal, lay preacher, lawyer, Ohio state senator, Union army general, Congressman, U.S. Senator, and President of the United States for 200 days in 1881.

Twentieth President of the United States. Born at Orange, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Nov. 19, 1831. Died at Elberon, N. J., Sept. 19, 1881. President Hiram College, Ohio, 1856-61. Member of Ohio Senate 1859-61. Lieutenant-Colonel of Ohio Volunteers 1861. Defeated Gen. Humphrey Marshall at the Battle of Middle Creek, Jan. 10, 1862. Promoted to Brigadier-General 1862. Made Major-General 1863 by President Lincoln. Member of Congress from Ohio 1863-80. Member Electoral Commission 1877. United States Senator 1880. Elected Republican candidate for President 1880, with Chester A. Arthur as Vice-President, and inaugurated President of the United States March 4, 1881, defeating Hancock, Democratic candidate. Shot at Washington in Pennsylvania Station by Charles Guiteau, July 2, 1881. Buried Lake View, Cleveland, Ohio.

Born in 1831 in a log cabin in Orange Township, Ohio, James A. Garfield surmounted poverty by hard work and study. He attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) and graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts, with honors. Strong interests in religion and education led Garfield to become a teacher, college principal, and lay preacher, all by the age of 28. He married Lucretia Rudolph, a childhood friend, in 1858; they would have five sons and two daughters.

A self-made man, Garfield was an early Republican Party member who was elected Ohio state senator in 1858 campaigning on the party's anti-slavery platform. He entered the United States Army as a lieutenant colonel of volunteers in 1861 and, although he had no formal military training or experience, advanced to brigadier general by March 1862. He fought in the Battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh and Chickamauga and was promoted to major general in 1863, shortly before being elected to Congress, running on an anti-slavery platform. Garfield was elected to the United States House of Representatives in November, 1862, but stayed with his troops until December, 1863, when the 38th Congress convened.

Garfield was reelected to Congress eight more times and over his 17-year congressional career, chaired the Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees and sat on the Ways and Means Committee. He was also a member of the commission that decided the disputed 1876 presidential election in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes. He was elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio legislature early in 1880.

Garfield served 17 years in the House of Representatives. A leader of the Radical Republicans, he believed strongly in a stern Reconstruction and conservative hard money economic policies. He was one of many members of Congress peripherally involved in the scandals of the Grant Administration but emerged relatively unscathed. He also served as one of the Republicans on the commission that awarded Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the contested presidential election of 1876.

Garfield purchased his farm in Mentor, Ohio in 1876, while he served in the House of Representatives. He wanted a place where he could, “put my boys at work and teach them farming” and “where I can touch the earth and get some strength from it.” An enthusiastic farmer, he spent many hours conducting agricultural experiments.

At the Republican Convention in June 1880, Garfield won the nomination for the presidency on the 36th ballot as a “dark horse” candidate. He conducted much of his successful and precedent-setting "front porch” campaign at Lawnfield. Garfield maintained an office in the main house, which Lucretia called his “Snuggery,” for private meetings and conversations. He converted a small building formerly used as his personal library into his campaign headquarters and equipped it with a temporary telegraph to send and receive messages, including the results of the election. He entertained an endless procession of visitors. The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, whose tracks ran across the farm, routed special excursions to Mentor and set up a stop at Garfield Lane, the pathway leading to the house.

As president, Garfield hoped to reunite the Republican Party, which was split into two factions over personal differences and the distribution of political appointments. Much like his predecessor Garfield supported inquiries into corruption even among his own cabinet members, winning high marks from reformers. A scholar at heart, he sought to create a Federal department of education and served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institute.

He did not live to achieve his hopes of reforming the civil service and fighting inflation. On July 2, 1881, only months after his inauguration, Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office-seeker, shot Garfield twice in the back. When Guiteau, a lawyer with a history of mental illness, shot Garfield in the back on July 2, 1881, he thought God had told him to shoot the president. He also thought he had killed the president, but it wasn't the bullet that did the job. Over the next few weeks, surgeons tried to locate the bullet in the president's back. Even Alexander Graham Bell tried to help by inventing a metal detector. Unfortunately for the president, the bullet was imbedded so deeply in his body that the metal detector could not locate it. Even more unfortunate was that the importance of sterilization in the operating room hadn't been realized yet. It was the infection, caused by doctors probing the president's wound with unwashed hands, that eventually killed James A. Garfield. After struggling for his life for two months, Garfield died on September 19.