James Abram Garfield

James Abram Garfield (1831-1881) was President of the United States, born in Orange, Ohio. He reared amid lowly surroundings. At the age of ten began to help his widowed mother by working as a farmservant. However, an invincible passion for learning prompted him to devote the long winters to study, till he was able as a student to enter Hiram College, and subsequently to William's College, Massachusetts, where, in 1856, he graduated. In the following year he became President of Hiram College, and devoting his attention to the study of law, in 1859 became a member of the State Senate. He took an active part on the side of the Federalists in the Civil War, and distinguished himself in several engagements, rising to be major-general. In his thirty-third year he entered Congress, and soon came to the front, acting latterly as leader of the Republican party. In 1880, he became a member of the Senate, and in the same year was elected to the Presidency. He signalised his tenure of the presidential office by endeavouring to purify and reform the civil service, but this attempt drew on him the odium of a section of his party, and on the 2nd July 1881 he was shot down by Charles Guiteau, a disappointed place-hunter. After a prolonged struggle with death he succumbed on the 19th of September.

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James Africanus Horton, James Agee, James and Horace Smith, James Anderson, James Anderson the writer