Garfield, James A. (1831-1881)

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James A. Garfield (1831-1881)

President of the united states, 1881

The Brief Presidency of a Reform Republican. James A. Garfield’s short presidency was dominated by the continuing fight over political patronage and attempts to institute a series of reforms, reflecting the extent to which corruption in federal employment and contracts had nearly immobilized the federal government by the early 1880s.

Background. The last American president to be born in a log cabin, James Abram Garfield was born on 19 November 1831 in a remote area of northern Ohio, near the communities of North Union and Kirkland. For a brief time in 1848 he worked as a canal boy, trudging along towpaths with the horses that pulled the barges. After Garfield, who could not swim, had to be rescued from the canal fourteen times in the space of six weeks, he decided to enroll in Geauga Academy in Chester, Ohio. In November 1849 Garfield left the academy and began teaching at rural schools and working as a carpenter, earning money while continuing his education at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Hiram, Ohio (later Hiram College). A devout member of the Disciples of Christ, he also honed his oratorical skills as a preacher in local churches. Admitted to the junior class of Williams College in Wil-liamstown, Massachusetts, in 1854, Garfield worked his way through school, graduating in 1856.

Early Career. Returning to Ohio, Garfield worked as a teacher and later president at the Eclectic Institute and became involved in local Republican politics. On 11 November 1858 he married Lucretia Randolph, and in October 1859 he was elected to the Ohio state senate on the Republican ticket. Garfield joined the Union army after the outbreak of the Civil War and was made lieutenant colonel of the Forty-second Ohio Regiment. Although he had no military training, he studied military texts and served with distinction at the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga. He was elected to Congress in 1862 as a Lincoln Republican and was mustered out of the army as major general before Congress convened in December 1863. Serving in the House of Representatives through 1880, he continued to gain recognition, emerging as a Republican leader in the House.

Republican Presidential Candidate. In 1880 the Ohio legislature elected Garfield to the U.S. Senate, but he never served in that body. During the Republican National Convention of 1880, Garfield, who was campaign manager for presidential hopeful John Sherman, emerged as a dark-horse candidate in his own right and won the nomination. To satisfy the New York Stalwart faction, which opposed Garfield and Sherman, the party selected Chester A. Arthur of New York for his running mate. In November Garfield defeated Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, another veteran of the Civil War, in a close election.

Presidency. During the winter of 1880-1881 Garfield put together a list of appointees for his new administration. The Stalwarts were outraged to discover that—like Rutherford B. Hayes before him—Garfield had ignored the recommendations of the New York Republican Party, especially in his choice of James G. Blaine for secretary of state and Wayne MacVeagh as attorney general, but he assuaged some of their ire by appointing Stalwart Thomas James to the position of postmaster-general. During the early months of his administration he vigorously prosecuted the Star Route Frauds, a scheme involving an assistant postmaster-general, through which excessive government charges were funneled to contractors for western mail-delivery routes.

Assassination. On 2 July 1881 Garfield set out for a vacation in New England. At the train station in Washington, D.C., he was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a de-ranged, disappointed office seeker who had been plotting the assassination of the president for more than a month. Garfield was seriously wounded. For about three weeks his condition seemed to improve, but then he went into a slow decline, lingering on, confined to his bed, until his death on 19 September 1881.