Early life

James Abram Garfield was born in a log cabin near Orange in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on November 19, 1831. He grew up on his family's farm. His father died when he was a small child, leaving the family quite poor.

As a teenager James dreamed of becoming a sailor and seeing the world. He was unable to get a job on a lake steamer, however. Instead he worked for a time on a boat on the Ohio Canal between Cleveland, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Education and marriage

Garfield was always a good student. He attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College) in Ohio and graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856. Garfield then returned to the Eclectic Institute as a professor of ancient languages. In 1857, at age 25, he became the school's president.

The next year Garfield married Lucretia Rudolph. She had been a student of his at the Eclectic Institute. They had seven children, two of whom died in infancy.

Legislator and Civil War general

Garfield studied law and was ordained as a minister, but he soon turned to politics. He became a member of the new Republican Party. In 1859 he was elected to the Ohio legislature.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Garfield became a Union officer. He commanded troops in the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga. His distinguished service earned him the rank of major general.

In 1862, while he was still in the Army, Garfield was nominated and elected to the United States Congress. He represented Ohio in the House of Representatives until 1880. Congressman Garfield supported strict policies toward the Southern states that had been defeated in the Civil War. He also became an expert on such national financial matters as currency and taxation. In 1880 the Ohio legislature elected him to the United States Senate.

Nomination and election

In 1880 Garfield went to the Republican national convention in Chicago to help choose the Republican candidate for president. He made a fiery nominating speech for John Sherman, a fellow Ohioan. Garfield impressed so many with his speech that he, not Sherman, became the focus of attention. By the end of the convention Garfield was chosen to be the candidate.

Garfield's Democratic opponent in the election was Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a Civil War veteran. Garfield won the presidency with 214 electoral votes to Hancock's 155.

A brief administration

Garfield tried to put together a Cabinet that would satisfy all groups within the Republican Party. He soon angered the conservative Republicans known as the Stalwarts, however, by continuing the civil-service reform begun under President Rutherford B. Hayes.

The leader of the Stalwarts was the powerful New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. Senator Conkling had built up a political machine in his state by giving out public offices to reward party workers. Garfield wanted to control all appointments so he named Conkling's bitterest political enemy to be collector of the New York Custom House. Conkling resigned from the Senate in protest. Garfield's actions strengthened the independence and power of the presidency.

Garfield complained in his journal of the steady stream of office seekers. One was Charles J. Guiteau, a Stalwart. When the president refused his request, Guiteau resolved to kill him.

On July 2, 1881, Guiteau shot Garfield in the back at a railroad station in Washington, D.C. The president lay ill for 80 days before dying on September 19, 1881. Vice President Chester A. Arthur, who had already assumed many of the president's duties, officially took office the next day. Garfield was buried in Cleveland.