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.