• Born November 19, 1831 in
Orange Township now
Moreland Hills, Ohio
• Youngest of five children
• His father, Abram Garfield,
died when James was 2
years old
• Brought up by his mother,
Eliza, a brother, and an
uncle
• Started school at the age of 3
• 1849, attended Geauga Academy in Chester,
Ohio where he met his future wife Miss Lucretia
Rudolph
• From 1851-1854, attended the Western Reserve
Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College)
• Graduated from Williams college in 1856 as an
outstanding student & a brother of Delta Upsilon
fraternity
• Drove canal boat teams to earn money for
schooling
• While home from school he helped with harvest
and learned & practiced carpentry
• Was the professor of Latin and Greek and later
the president of Western Reserve Eclectic
Institute
• State senator, major general in the National
Army, & a representative-elect to the National
Congress
• August 1861, Garfield organized the 42nd Ohio
Infantry going from lieutenant colonel to colonel
within in a few weeks
• January 1862 at the battle of Middle Creek, his
greatly outnumbered brigade defeated the
Confederates leaving him in control of eastern
Kentucky
• By September 1863, was a major general, the
youngest officer to hold this rank
• December 1863, resigned from the Army to take
his seat in the House of Representatives, which
he had been elected to the previous year without
ever having campaigned
• Became president in December
1863 beating out Winfield S.
Hancock
• Vice-President was Chester A.
Arthur
• Was a Republican who supported
voting rights for blacks and the
seizure of the property of those who
had served the Confederacy
• Allegedly connected to 2 incidents
that tarnished his record, but was
still reelected to another term
• July 2, 1881, while passing through the waiting room of
the Baltimore and Potomac railroad depot with close
friend Mr. James G. Blaine, Charles Guiteau, a lawyer
who’s application to be the U. S. ambassador to France
was denied, fired two shots at President Garfield.
• One bullet grazed his arm but the other entered his back
fracturing a rib and lodging itself somewhere inside
Garfield’s body.
• Guiteau, a religious fanatic stated that he shot Garfield in
order “to unite the Republican Party and save the
Republic”. Guiteau readily gave himself up after the
shooting and the Washington police arrested him.
• In order to find the bullet, Alexander Graham Bell
devised a crude metal detector
• If Bell, unaware that the White House had newly invented coil
spring mattresses, had moved Garfield from the bed, he would
have likely found the bullet and the surgeons could’ve saved
the president’s life.
• After a lot of prodding and digging, the doctors had taken a 3inch wound and turned it into a 20-inch gouge that was
massively infected
• Garfield lingered between life and death for more than 10
weeks before dieing on September 19, 1881 with apparent
blood poisoning
• Garfield was the first left-handed president.
• James Garfield could write Latin with one hand
and Greek with the other.
• The last of seven presidents born in a log
cabin, Garfield weighed 10 pounds at birth.
• He was the first president to campaign in two
languages -- English and German.
• On election day, November 2, 1880, he was at
the same time a member of the House,
Senator-elect and President-elect.
• His mother was the first president's mother to
attend her son's inauguration.