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.
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James
Garfield