James A



James A. Garfield - The Man

Years - 1831 - 1881

Presidential Term - 1881

Material taken partly from Pictorial History of American Presidents, by John and Alice Durant, @1955. And from American History for Young Folks, by Henry Davenport Northrop

James Abram Garfield was a blue-eyed blond with yellow hair and yellow beard. He was genial, easygoing and warmhearted. He was one of the few scholarly men of the Presidency. A lover of poetry and the classics, he wrote passable verse and could read and write Latin and Greek. (He used to entertain his friends by simultaneously writing Latin with one hand and Greek with the other.)

Born of poor parents in a shanty at Orange, Ohio, he was the last log cabin president. His father died when the boy was two leaving his widow in a one-room log cabin with four little children. For many years it was a life of struggle and privation. When James was only three years old a neighboring school was started in a little log-hut, and he was sent along with the other children. Before he was four years of age he had learned to read; and by the time he was ten, it is said, he had borrowed and read nearly all the books in his neighborhood.

At age ten young Jim went to work driving horses and mules on the towpath of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. He received twelve dollars a month for his work. He had a rags-to-riches career and worked hard and scraped together enough money to put himself through school and college. After his graduation from Williams College in 1856 he returned to Ohio and married his boyhood sweetheart, Lucretia Rudolph. At this time he was twenty-six years old and made President of Hiram Institute at Portage, Ohio, and professor of Latin and Greek. He served as President of the College for five years and during that time doubled the size of the student body. He found time to study law and was admitted to the bar just before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Garfield went off to war as a lieutenant colonel of Ohio volunteers and performed so brilliantly in the field that within a year he was a brigadier general – at 30, the youngest one in the army. Like Hayes, he was elected to Congress while still in the army, but unlike Hayes he resigned his commission (on the advice of Lincoln) and went to Washington. (His salary as Major-General was double that of a Congressman, but he felt he could do more good in Washington, so he gave up his military position.) There he served in the House for the next 18 years. Here he ranked as one of the most brilliant and trusted leaders of the Republican party. Early in 1880 he had been chosen a United States Senator from Ohio, but had been prevented from taking his seat in the Senate by his election to the Presidency.

During his life James Garfield never voiced special concern about his own safety – except once…

The ex-Civil War soldier was a fatalist and believed, as he told a friend shortly after he was elected president, that assassination “can no more be guarded against than death by lightning: and it is best not to worry about either.” But one day, four months into his term as president, Garfield suddenly and unexplainably became preoccupied with the possibility of death. He called in his Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, to discuss the murder of the secretary’s father.

Garfield of course, knew all about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Garfield wanted to know what the tragedy was like to someone on the inside. With some difficulty the Secretary of War recounted the story of the tragedy. Garfield asked a few questions and attempted to re-create the scene at Ford’s Theater. After a little more than an hour the secretary departed.

The meeting with Robert Todd Lincoln took place on June 30th. On July 2nd, Charles Guiteau fired two shots at President Garfield and mortally wounded him – only two days after the President had expressed concern about death for the first time in his life.

Charles J. Guiteau fired two shots at the President as he stood with Secretary of State – Blane in the Baltimore and Potomac depot in Washington. One shot grazed the President’s arm; the other entered his back fracturing the spine. The assassin was quickly collared and taken off to jail. In the weeks that followed, as the President lay suffering in the White House, well wishers brought a variety of medicines.

Alexander Graham Bell was summoned to the White House to find the exact location of the bullet by means of his induction-balance device.

(See article James Garfield Was Not Saved by the Telephone)

Soon after the attempt upon the life of President Garfield, a popular subscription was set on foot to provide a fund for the support of his family in the event of his death. The movement was successful, and over $330,000 were raised, and invested in United States bonds, for the benefit of the widow and children of the “Martyred President.”

The President lingered on through the hot summer. On September 6, he was moved in a special train to the seaside town of Elberton, New Jersey, where is wife constantly attended him and prepared all his meals. Garfield seemed to be recovering until September 9 when he woke with a chill and grew progressively weaker. He died that night at 10:30 p.m.

On November 14, 1881, in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, the trial of Guiteau began. He was defended by his brother-in-law, George Scoville, who argued that Guiteau was insane. The government contended that he was of sound mind, had long planned the murder and had acted for the sake of revenge. (Guiteau, seeking a consulate in France, had once gotten in to see Garfield, but nothing had come of the brief interview, nor of the steady stream of letters he subsequently sent to the President.) During the 10-week trial Guiteau acted like a madman most of the time. He shouted, constantly interrupted the Court and delivered long, incoherent speeches. On January 25th the trial ended. It took the jury only an hour to find that Guiteau was sane and guilty.

On June 30, 1882, the bearded, 44 year-old man was led to the gallows in the Washington jail before a crowd of more than 200 people, many of whom had paid fancy prices to see the execution. On the platform Guiteau read a prayer in which he called down the curse of the Almighty upon all who had been engaged in his trial and execution, and upon the nation at large, and denounced President Arthur as a coward and an ingrate. Finally he chanted a poem which he had written during the morning. He kept on talking after the black hood had been pulled over his face.

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