Encyclopedia
James Abram Garfield was the 20th
President of the United States and the second U.S. President to be
assassinated . His term was the second shortest in U.S. history, after
William Henry Harrison's. Holding office from March to September of 1881, President Garfield was in office for a total of just six months and fifteen days.
Early life
Garfield was born in
Orange Township, now
Moreland Hills, in 1833, when James Abram was 18 months old. He grew up cared for by his mother and an uncle.
In Orange Township, Garfield attended school, a predecessor of the Orange City Schools. From 1851 to 1854, he attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in
Hiram, Ohio. He then transferred to
Williams College in
Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he was a brother of
Delta Upsilon. He graduated in 1856 as an outstanding student who enjoyed all subjects except
chemistry. He then taught at the Eclectic Institute. He was an instructor in classical languages for the 1856-1857 academic year, and was made principal of the Institute from 1857 to 1860.
On November 11, 1858, he married
Lucretia Rudolph. They had eight children. A son,
James Rudolph Garfield, followed him into politics and became
Secretary of the Interior under President
Theodore Roosevelt.
Garfield decided that the academic life was not for him and studied law privately. He was admitted to the
Ohio bar in 1860. Even before admission to the bar, he entered politics. He was elected an Ohio state senator in 1859, serving until 1861. He was a
Republican all his political life.
In 1876, Garfield discovered a novel proof of the
Pythagorean Theorem using a
trapezoid while serving as a member of the House of Representatives.
Military career
With the start of the
Civil War, Garfield enlisted in the
Union Army, and was assigned to command the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. General
Don Carlos Buell assigned Colonel Garfield the task of driving
Confederate forces out of eastern
Kentucky in November 1861, giving him the 18th Brigade for the campaign. In December, he departed
Catlettsburg, Kentucky, with the 40th and 42nd Ohio and the 14th and 22nd Kentucky infantry regiments, as well as the 2nd Virginia Cavalry and McLoughlin's Squadron of Cavalry. The march was uneventful until Union forces reached
Paintsville, Kentucky, where Garfield's cavalry engaged the Confederate cavalry at Jenny's Creek on January 6, 1862. The Confederates, under
Brig. Gen. Humphrey Marshall, withdrew to the forks of Middle Creek, two miles from Prestonsburg, Kentucky, on the road to
Virginia. Garfield attacked on January 9. At the end of the day's fighting, the Confederates withdrew from the field, but Garfield did not pursue them. He ordered a withdrawal to Prestonsburg so he could resupply his men. His victory brought him early recognition and a promotion to the rank of brigadier general on January 11.
Garfield served as a brigade commander under Buell at the
Battle of Shiloh and under Thomas J. Wood in the subsequent Siege of Corinth. His health deteriorated and he was inactive until autumn, when he served on the commission investigating the conduct of
Fitz John Porter. In the spring of 1863, Garfield returned to the field as Chief of Staff for
William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Army of the Cumberland.
Later political career
In 1863, he re-entered politics, being elected to the
United States House of Representatives for the 38th Congress. Garfield was promoted to
major general after the
Battle of Chickamauga, shortly after he had had been elected. He left the army and returned to Ohio to take his seat in Congress. He succeeded in gaining re-election every two years up through 1878. In the House during the Civil War and the following
Reconstruction era, he was one of the most hawkish Republicans. In 1876, when
James G. Blaine moved from the House to the
United States Senate, Garfield became the Republican floor leader of the House.
In 1876, Garfield was a Republican member of the
Electoral Commission that awarded 22 hotly-contested electoral votes to
Rutherford B. Hayes in his contest for the Presidency against
Samuel J. Tilden. That year, he also purchased the property in
Mentor that reporters later dubbed
Lawnfield, and from which he would go on to conduct the first successful front porch campaign for the Presidency. The home is now maintained by the
National Park Service as the
James A. Garfield National Historic Site.
Election of 1880
In 1880, Garfield's life underwent tremendous change with the publication of the Morey letter, and the end of
Democratic U.S. Senator
Allen Granberry Thurman's term. The Ohio
legislature, which had recently again come under Republican control, chose Garfield to fill Thurman's seat. However, at the Republican National Convention Garfield gained support for the party's Presidential nomination, and on the 36th ballot Garfield was nominated, with virtually all of Blaine's and John Sherman's delegates breaking ranks to vote for the dark horse nominee. Ironically, the U.S. Senate seat to which Garfield had been chosen ultimately went to Sherman, whose Presidential candidacy Garfield had gone to the convention to support.
In the general election, Garfield defeated the Democratic candidate
Winfield Scott Hancock, another distinguished former Union Army general, by 214 electoral votes to 155. . President Garfield took office on March 4, 1881.
Presidency 1881
Policies
During his administration, Garfield tried to mediate Republican Party infighting. Garfield was a leader of the "Half-Breeds," who supported civil service reform and Hayes's relatively lenient treatment of the postwar South.
Vice President Chester A. Arthur was a member of the "Stalwarts," who advocated the retention of the patronage system and a tougher stance regarding the former Confederate states.
Administration and Cabinet
Supreme Court appointments
Garfield appointed one Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a renomination of a late term
Hayes nomination:
States admitted to the Union
noneAssassination
Garfield was shot by
Charles Julius Guiteau on July 2, 1881 at 9:30 a.m., less than four months after taking office. The President was walking through the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in
Washington, D.C., on his way to a college reunion, accompanied by
Secretary of State James G. Blaine and his sons, James and Harry. As he was being arrested after the shooting, Guiteau excitedly said, "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now," which briefly led to unfounded suspicions that Arthur or his supporters had put Guiteau up to the crime. . Guiteau was upset because of the rejection of his repeated attempts to be appointed as the United States consul in
Paris—a position for which he had absolutely no qualifications—and was mentally ill. Garfield's assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883.
One bullet grazed his arm, but the second bullet that struck Garfield lodged in his back and could not be found.
Alexander Graham Bell devised a
metal detector in an attempt to find the bullet, but the metal bedframe Garfield was lying on made the instrument malfunction. Because metal bedframes were relatively rare, the cause of the instrument's deviation was unknown at the time. Garfield became increasingly ill over a period of several weeks due to infection, which caused his heart to weaken. 80 days after he was shot, Garfield died of a massive
heart attack or a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, following blood poisoning and bronchial
pneumonia, at 10:35 p.m. on Monday September 19, 1881 in
Elberon, New Jersey, exactly two months before his 50th birthday. The ailing President had been moved to Elberon, a seaside community, in the vain hope that the fresh air and quiet there might aid his recovery.
Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors attending him been more capable. Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so.
Guiteau was found guilty of assassinating Garfield, despite his lawyers raising an insanity defense. He insisted that incompetent medical care had really killed the President; although historians generally agree that was a contributing factor, it was not a legal defense. Guiteau was sentenced to death, and was executed by hanging on June 30, 1882 in Washington, D.C.
Garfield was buried, with great and solemn ceremony, in a
mausoleum in
Lakeview Cemetery in
Cleveland, Ohio. The monument is decorated with five
terra cotta bas relief panels by sculptor
Caspar Buberl, depicting various stages in Garfield's life. In 1887, the
James A. Garfield Monument was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
Trivia
- Garfield was a minister and an elder for the Christian Church , making him the first preacher to serve as President. He is also claimed as a member of the Church of Christ, as the different branches did not split until the 20th Century. When he left to take up the office it is said when he relinquished his Eldership, "I resign the highest office in the land to become President of the United States."
- Garfield was a member of the Delta Upsilon International Fraternity.
...
, Garfield is the only person who was elected President directly from the
United States House of Representatives.
...
, Garfield is the only person in US history to be a Congressman, Senator-elect, and President-elect at the same time.
- Garfield was the first president to be ambidextrous. He could simultaneously write in Latin with one hand, and Ancient Greek with the other.
- In the famous drawing of Guiteau shooting Garfield, it is actually believed that the color of their suits at the time was reversed.
- The assassination is also mentioned in the Johnny Cash tune, "Mister Garfield " according to the album sleeve written by J. Elliot, released in 1965 by Columbia Records, and re-recorded for the 1972 album "America - A 200 Year Salute in Story And Song", as well in the song "Charles Giteau" by Kelly Harrell & the Virginia String Band as included in the Anthology of American Folk Music.
- In the 1992 film Unforgiven, set in 1881, the character English Bob mocks his fellow travelers for the murder of President Garfield, comparing the republican system of government unfavorably with the monarchical. "If you were to try to assassinate a king, sir, the, how shall I say it, the aura of royalty would cause you to miss. But, the President, I mean, why not shoot the President?"
Further reading
- Ackerman, Kenneth D. Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of James A. Garfield, Avalon Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-7867-1396-8 and 0786711515 . Teacher, Soldier, President. The life of J.A. Garfield.
External links
- Edwin Erle Sparks describes how the 1880 Republican convention began with Ulysses S. Grant well in the lead and ended with James A. Garfield -- the darkest of dark-horses -- walking away with the nomination.
