GARFIELD, JAMES ABRAM
James Abram Garfield was a soldier and congressman
who became the twentieth president
of the United States.His inability to perform the
duties of office following an assassination
attempt on July 2, 1881, raised, for the second
time in U.S. history, the question of presidential
succession.
Garfield was born November 19, 1831, in a
log cabin near the town of Orange in Cuyahoga
County, Ohio. He was the fourth and final child
of Abram Garfield and Eliza Ballou Garfield.
Garfield’s father’s ancestors were among the
original settlers of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. In 1827 the father carried their pioneering
spirit to Ohio, where he worked on an Ohio
Canal construction crew. By the time Garfield
was born, his father was a struggling farmer and
a founding member of the local Disciples of
Christ church. In 1833, when Garfield was just
two years old, his father died suddenly, leaving
the family in poverty.
Garfield’s mother, a descendant of an old
Rhode Island family, was a remarkable woman.
After her husband’s death, she ran the small
family farm on her own and saw to it that
Garfield and his siblings worked hard, attended
church, and finished school.
After completing his studies at the local
school in Orange, Garfield enrolled at the Western
Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College),
at Hiram, Ohio. He eventually went on to
Williams College, in Massachusetts.After graduating
from Williams with the class of 1856, he
returned to the institute at Hiram and assumed
the duties of teacher and later principal. On
November 11, 1858, he married Lucretia
Rudolph, his childhood friend, fellow student,
and pupil.
In addition to teaching and tending to the
administration of the institute, Garfield frequently
served as a lay speaker in Disciples of
Christ churches throughout northern Ohio. Like
many members of his church, Garfield advocated
free-soil principles and was a firm supporter of
the newly organized REPUBLICAN PARTY. (Free-
Soilers were opposed to the expansion of SLAVERY
in the western states and territories.)
With his natural speaking ability, Garfield
soon found himself in the political arena. In
1859 he was elected to the Ohio state senate. As
the United States neared civil war, Garfield put
his speaking abilities to work for the Union,
recruiting men and raising troops for battle.
In the summer of 1861, he followed his own
advice and recruited a group of volunteers from
his former school. He assembled the Fortysecond
Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and served as
the unit’s lieutenant colonel and later colonel.
Though he had no military experience, Garfield
did have a voracious appetite for knowledge and
access to books that could guide his command.
He and his men fought at the Battle of Shiloh, in
western Tennessee. Garfield left the field when
he became ill. After recovering he returned as
chief of staff under Major General William S.
Rosencrans, with whom he fought at Chickamauga,
Georgia.
After Chickamauga, Garfield was promoted
to brigadier general of volunteers, and he was
elected, in absentia, to a seat in the U.S.House of
Representatives. It has been suggested that
Garfield was reluctant to surrender his command
and take the seat, but he acquiesced when
President ABRAHAM LINCOLN pointed out that
brigadier generals were in far greater supply
than administration Republicans.
In December 1863 Garfield took his seat in
the Thirty-eighth Congress as the Republican
representative from the nineteenth congressional
district of Ohio. When the Republicans
became the minority party in the House after
the election of 1864, Garfield and Congressman
James G. Blaine, of Maine, emerged as minority
party leaders. Garfield distinguished himself as
chairman of the committee on appropriations,
and he established himself as an expert on the
budget. He also focused his attention on legislation
related to Reconstruction policies in the
South, protective tariff issues, and the maintenance
of a sound currency. When Blaine was
elected to the Senate in 1876, Garfield became the House minority leader—a position he held
for the remainder of his congressional service.
Garfield held his House office for eighteen
years, for the most part easily winning the nomination
of his party and the vote of the electorate
as each term concluded. Only once during his
time in the House was his reelection in question.
In the early 1870s, the Republican party was
discredited by allegations of scandal in the
administration of President Ulysses S. Grant—
including the Crédit Mobilier scandal. Crédit
Mobilier of America was a construction company
established to build the Union Pacific Railroad.
It became known that Garfield was among
a group of congressmen who had accepted stock
in Crédit Mobilier, in exchange for legislative
consideration. Garfield ultimately refused the
stock, but it took him two years to do so. His
critics maintained that he decided not to take
the stock only because the issue had placed him
in political hot water.
During the same period, Garfield accepted a
retainer for legal services from a Washington,
D.C., company seeking to supply paving materials
in the nation’s capital. He argued that
because he had no direct connection to city government,
there was no conflict of interest. Not
everyone shared his opinion.
Though many public servants of the day
conducted personal business while in office,
Garfield found it increasingly difficult to distinguish
clients who wanted his legal advice from
those who wanted his political influence.
Garfield was reelected in 1874, despite the controversy,
but to avoid future problems, he ceased
taking outside legal clients. The incident also
fueled Garfield’s desire to eliminate political
patronage in the civil service system.
Garfield took an active role in the 1876 presidential
election of RUTHERFORD B. HAYES.
When Senator JOHN SHERMAN, of Ohio, was
named to the Hayes cabinet, Garfield expressed
an interest in filling his vacant Senate seat.Needing
Garfield in the House, Hayes discouraged
him from pursuing the matter. Near the close of
Hayes’s term, there was talk that Sherman would
seek to regain his Senate seat, but he chose
instead to seek his party’s nomination for the
presidency. It was widely presumed that Sherman
supported Garfield’s election to the Senate
in exchange for Garfield’s support at the Republican
convention, but no such deal was struck.
In due course the Ohio legislature elected
Garfield to the U.S. Senate for a six-year term to
begin in 1881, and he attended the 1880 Republican
National Convention in Chicago as head of
the Ohio delegation. Because of home state support
for Sherman, Garfield reluctantly agreed to
act as Sherman’s floor manager and to canvass
for delegates on his behalf—even though Senator
Blaine, Garfield’s old friend and colleague,
was also seeking the party’s nomination.
Garfield was a formidable and well-known
figure at the convention. His persuasive skill on
the floor did not go unnoticed. He kept Sherman’s
chances alive by fighting for the delegates’
freedom to vote their choice, and by opposing a
unit rule that forced delegations to cast all their
votes for the candidate holding the majority of
votes within a state delegation. Former president
Grant, who was also running for nomination,
and his supporters, called the Stalwarts, supported
the unit rule because Grant held the
majority in many delegations.
Garfield managed to block the nominations
of Blaine and Grant, but he could not secure a
majority for Sherman. With the convention
deadlocked, twenty Wisconsin delegates made a
bold move on the thirty-fifth ballot and, in
protest, cast twenty votes for Garfield.
On the next ballot, Garfield found himself
the unanimous choice of the convention and the
unwitting beneficiary of his own floor maneuvering.
CHESTER A. ARTHUR was named his running
mate. Blaine followers supported the ticket,
and most Sherman followers were willing to
overlook the manner in which the nomination
had been secured, but Grant’s forces never forgave
Garfield for his opposition.
Garfield pacified unhappy Sherman supporters
by surrendering his new Senate seat,
enabling Sherman to return to his old post.
Throughout the summer of 1880, Garfield
attempted to meet with the national committee
and with Grant supporters, but he was never
given an audience. In November Garfield
returned to his farm in Mentor, Ohio, to wait
them out.
Finally, on the eve of the election, Grant was
persuaded to recognize Garfield as the party’s
choice. Grant and his followers were invited to
the Garfield farm for a historic meeting, often
called the Mentor Summit.What was said at the
meeting—and what was promised—has been
the subject of much debate. Grant thought he
had extracted a personal promise from Garfield
that, in exchange for Grant’s support, the Stalwarts
would be named to influential posts in the
new administration.
With the help of Grant’s supporters, Garfield
won the election by a narrow margin over
Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Between the
election and the inauguration, Garfield busied
himself with the selection of his cabinet. All factions
of the party called on the president-elect to
lobby for their preferred nominees, but Grant
Stalwarts remained assured that Garfield would
bow to their influence. Garfield’s first known
appointment, making Blaine SECRETARY OF
STATE, caused an uproar among the Grant faction
and was viewed as a breach of the promises
made at Mentor. Garfield nevertheless remained
committed to building a conciliation cabinet
that would balance everyone’s interests and
eliminate political patronage jobs—and kept the
rest of his choices well guarded until inauguration
day,March 4, 1881.
The first months of his term continued to be
plagued with appointment and confirmation
battles. Grant supporters continued to believe
that he should have been the party’s presidential
nominee and that in an election deal Garfield
had agreed to consult Grant about appointments.
Those in the Senate who supported
Grant rallied to systematically reject undesirable
appointments, but Garfield was equally stubborn.
Of the Stalwarts’ attempt to derail his
nomination for collector of customs for the port
of New York City, Garfield said, “They may take
him out of the Senate head first or feet first, but
I will never withdraw him.”
Though confirmation battles consumed a
majority of Garfield’s time, he also carried out
other presidential duties and commitments. On
July 2, 1881, he was en route to a speaking
engagement at his alma mater Williams College,
when lawyer Charles J. Guiteau shot him at a
Washington, D.C., railroad station. Described as
an erratic character, Guiteau shouted to a crowd
at the railroad station that he was a Stalwart.
Garfield lingered for eleven weeks. Daily
reports from physicians showed that he was
unable to carry out his responsibilities. By
August the question of Garfield’s succession was
being discussed in the press and debated by constitutional
scholars. It was agreed that the vice
president was constitutionally allowed to assume
the president’s powers and duties, but it was not
clear whether he should serve as acting president
until Garfield recovered, or assume the office
itself and displace Garfield altogether. The pertinent
provision of the Constitution—Article II,
Section 1, Clause 6—was ambiguous, and expert
opinion was still divided over the precedent set
by JOHN TYLER, who had taken the oath of office
in 1841 after the death of President WILLIAM H.
HARRISON, rather than merely assuming Harrison’s
duties until the next election.
Because Congress was not in session, the
issue could not be debated there, but it was
addressed by Garfield’s cabinet members on
September 2, 1881. They agreed that it was time
for the vice president to assume Garfield’s
duties, but they too were divided as to the permanence
of the vice president’s role. The problem
was never resolved because Garfield died
September 19, 1881, before any action was taken
by the cabinet or the vice president. Following
the precedent set by Tyler, Arthur took the oath
of office and assumed the presidency, following
Garfield’s death.
Garfield’s unexpected nomination, bitter
election, and tragic death often overshadow his
previous accomplishments and his presidential
agenda. His efforts to build a conciliation cabinet
and to purge administrative agencies of old
patronage jobs made him a strong advocate of battles preceding his murder probably caused
Congress to pass civil service reforms in 1883
that were far broader in reach and scope than
anything Garfield had envisioned.
FURTHER READINGS
Peskin, Allan. 1999. Garfield: A Biography. Kent, Ohio: Kent
State Univ. Press.
civil service reforms. Ironically, the appointment
