James+Garfield

= //James A. Garfield// =

20th President of the United States
James Garfield was born in a log cabin in Orange Township, Ohio on November 19, 1831. He was of Welsh ancestry, and his father, Abram Garfield, died when James was only 17 months old, so he was raised with the efforts of his mother Eliza Ballou, uncle, and sisters. While in Orange Township, Garfield attended Orange City Schools. He then went to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Hiram, Ohio. He transferred to Williams College located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He was an outstanding well rounded student who graduated in 1856.

James Garfield spent a short time preaching at Franklin Circle Christian Church, and then considered becoming a principal of a high school in New York. He did not get the job, so he taught at Eclectic Institute. He taught classical languages and was made the principal from 1857 until 1860. He married Lucretia Rudolph in 1858, and they had seven children: Eliza Arabella Garfield, Harry Augustus Garfield, James Rudolph Garfield, Mary Garfield, Irvin M. Garfield, Abram Garfield, and Edward Garfield. In the middle of the 1860s, Garfield admitted to an affair with Lucia Calhoun, and his wife forgave him. Garfield decided not to remain in academic life and ended up studying law. He joined the Ohio bar in 1860.

James A. Garfield was thirty-two years old when he entered congress. In December 1863, he started his first term as a representative for his home district. He was reelected for eight successive terms to the same office. His military reputation had preceded him and secured for him a place in the Committee on Military Affairs, then the most important in congress. Garfield was a loyal Republican. He favored a policy of “hard money” the principle that all paper money issued by the government should be secured by gold or silver. After the Civil War he sided with the radical faction of the Republican Party, supporting seizure of the property of those who had served the Confederacy and demanding voting rights for blacks.

He was transferred in April to the West in time to participate in the Battle of Shiloh. He also fought at Chickamuaga,eventually reaching the rank of major general.

Later political career in 1863, his re-entered politics, being elected to the house of representative that year. He succeeded in gaining re-election every two years up until 1878. In the House of Representative during the Civil War period and the following Reconstruction Era, he was one of the most hawkish Republicans, seeking to defeat and later weakened the South at every opportunity. In 1876, when James G. Blaine moved from the House of the Senate, Garfield became the Republican floor leader of the House.

Presidency in 1880, his life underwent a major change. It began with the impending end of the term of Ohio's Democratic Senator, Allen G. Thurman. Since the Ohio legislature was to choose a Senator, and had recently changed from Democratic to Republican control, Thurman would not be reelected. Garfield was its choice. But before he could ever sit in the Senate, the Republicans held their Presidential nominating convention, and he was leader among this in the convention who opposed renominating former President Ulysses S. Grant for a third term. He supported the Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman of Ohio, but when neither Grant, Sherman, nor Blaine could win the majority of delegates' votes, Garfield was nominated as the republican candidate for the presidency himself. Consequently Garfield declined the seat in the United States Senate to which he had just been elected by the Ohio Legislature. He defeated the Democratic candidate, Winfield Hancock, by 214 electoral votes to 155. The popular vote was much closer. He took office in 1881.

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Assassination Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2,1881, just a few months after taking office. Garfield's assassin was apparently upset by being passed over as the United States consul in Paris. One of the bullets that struck Garfield lodged in his back could not be found. (Alexander Graham Bell devised a metal detector in an attempt to find the bullet, but the metal bed frame he was lying on confused the instrument.) He became increasingly ill over a period of several months because of infection and died September 19, 1881 in Elberon, New Jersey.

__SOURCES: __ http://www.jamesgarfield.org http://www.americanpresident.org/presidents/president.asp?PresidentNumber=20 worldbook g.8 2006 edition p.40 The American Presidents the office and men 2 1861-1932 Ref. 973.03 Ame Introduced by Micheal Witkowski http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/garfield/essays/biography/2