James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881)

James Garfield, the 20^th President of the United States, was the last person who came from log-cabin beginnings to be elected to the highest office in the land. Garfield was born in the Ohio countryside on a farm. At less than two years old, his father died and the family struggled to get by living in abject poverty. By hard work and determination, Garfield rose to the presidency. As a teenager, Garfield took a job working on the Erie Canal on a construction crew but was determined to gain an education. He turned out to be a gifted learner and was hired at Hiram College to teach where he had been a student. Garfield was elected as an Ohio State Senator, nine-time United States Congressman from Ohio, and served as a General in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war in Congress, Garfield was a tireless supporter of freed slaves and political reform railing against the political spoils system.

Garfield was a skilled and compelling orator. In 1880, at the Republican National Convention he was asked to give a nomination speech for the Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, who was running for the presidency. His spellbinding speech so moved the conventioneers that Garfield himself was nominated on the 35^th ballot.

Only four months into Garfield’s presidency, Charles Guiteau, a dissatisfied office seeker and lunatic, shot the president twice once in the arm and once in the back. For the following 80 days Dr. D. Willard Bliss directed the care of the wounded Garfield. But it was not the assassin’s bullets that killed the felled president, but the inept care he received. Bliss believed that the antiseptic and sterilized operating conditions that Joseph Lister wrote about was quackery. In fact, Garfield’s bullet wound was searched by the bare and unwashed hands nine times without antiseptic on the day he was shot which led to the infections that riddled and weakened his body.  A new book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard details the apalling medical care that President Garfield received before his death.

The white marble sculpture of James A. Garfield

This white Carrara marble sculpture by Alexander Doyle captures James Garfield just as he stood beside a chair to deliver a speech in Congress.

The dome of the Garfield Tomb

The dome of the Garfield Monument depicts angels from the four corners—North, South, East, and West–of America mourning the loss of the President.

The last of five bas-reliefs on the porch of the Garfield Tomb

 The scene of Garfield’s death at Elberon, New Jersey

The crypt displaying the casket of President Garfield

Below the great hall with the statue of Garfield is the crypt that displays Garfield’s bronze flag-draped coffin next to Lucretia’s casket. Two urns are placed in the crypt—that hold the remains of Mollie Garfield Stanley-Brown, their daughter, and her husband, and former devoted secretary to President Garfield.