James A.
Garfield
Twentieth
President of the United States
As the last of the log cabin
Presidents, James A. Garfield attacked political corruption and won back for
the Presidency a measure of prestige it had lost during the Reconstruction
period.
He was born in Cuyahoga County,
Ohio, in 1831. Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow
earning enough money for an education. He was graduated from Williams College
in Massachusetts in 1856, and he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic
Institute (later Hiram College) in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year
he was made its president.
Garfield was elected to the Ohio
Senate in 1859 as a Republican. During the secession crisis, he advocated
coercing the seceding states back into the Union.
In 1862, when Union military
victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek,
Kentucky, against Confederate troops. At 31, Garfield became a brigadier
general, two years later a major general of volunteers.
Meanwhile, in 1862, Ohioans
elected him to Congress. President Lincoln persuaded him to resign his
commission: It was easier to find major generals than to obtain effective
Republicans for Congress. Garfield repeatedly won re-election for 18 years,
and became the leading Republican in the House.
At the 1880 Republican
Convention, Garfield failed to win the Presidential nomination for his friend
John Sherman. Finally, on the 36th ballot, Garfield himself became the
"dark horse" nominee.
By a margin of only 10,000
popular votes, Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott
Hancock.
As President, Garfield
strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of
Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and
dispenser of patronage in New York. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a
list of appointments including many of Conkling's friends, he named Conkling's
arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested
the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the
Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal.
But Garfield would not submit:
"This...will settle the question whether the President is registering
clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States.... shall the
principal port of entry ... be under the control of the administration or
under the local control of a factional senator."
Conkling maneuvered to have the
Senate confirm Garfield's uncontested nominations and adjourn without acting
on Robertson. Garfield countered by withdrawing all nominations except
Robertson's; the Senators would have to confirm him or sacrifice all the
appointments of Conkling's friends.
In a final desperate move,
Conkling and his fellow-Senator from New York resigned, confident that their
legislature would vindicate their stand and re-elect them. Instead, the
legislature elected two other men; the Senate confirmed Robertson. Garfield's
victory was complete.
In foreign affairs, Garfield's
Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in
Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a
Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular
post shot the President.
Mortally wounded, Garfield lay
in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the
telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance
electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to
the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on
September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage.
