James Abram Garfield
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From Poverty-To Preacher-To President
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Republican, Twentieth President: 1881
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One of America’s least known presidents, James Abram Garfield was among the best equipped men to ever assume the office. Born into poverty in 1831 in a Northeast Ohio log cabin, Garfield was to become an extremely gifted orator and intellectual thinker as well as a captivating minister, debater, campaigner, and legislator.

Uneducated during his childhood, he wanted to “go to sea” but settled briefly upon riding mules which pulled the barges along the canal between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. A near drowning experience brought him home to a late education and to the ministry. In the 1850’s Garfield became an adherent of the Disciples of Christ, a foundation that Garfield would continually embrace. Yet his growth as a student, minister, professor,then Hiram College president forced him to look at the Bible in a more critical manner. His preparation for his debate with John Denton, the Freethinker (atheist/evolutionist) in 1858, introduced Garfield to the sciences. His debating style brought him to the attention of the Ohio’s Western Reserve political leaders.

His Disciples of Christ found the Bible silent about slavery, but Garfield’s contact with Calvinist clergy while at Williams College in New England helped him see slavery as a moral evil that to abolish, might require the blood of a nation. He believed that war was necessary to remove slavery from American soil and to, at whatever costs, preserve the Union. Garfield was to fight for the North as a two-star general. In 1863, upon advice from President Abraham Lincoln, he was to resign his commission in the Union Army and accept election as a Republican into the U. S. Congress (five years later he voted for impeachment of President Andrew Johnson), where he was to rise to House Minority Leader.

In 1880, Garfield gained the Republican nomination for president as a compromise on the 36th ballot. He won a close general election against the Democratic nominee, General Hancock and assumed office on March 4, 1881. He had just been able to complete cabinet appointments when shot from behind on July 2, 1881 by Charles Julius Guiteau. Garfield believed in both the concept and reality of democracy; in freedom, equality, and dignity for all Americans; and in the overall wisdom of the masses. If the masses were too poorly equipped to vote wisely, then educate them, he advised. Garfield’s vision for the Presidency was the final healing between the North and the South. It was a vision cut short by an assassin’s bullet.

“Equality” implies “that every man shall have an equal right to use the faculties and means of happiness which God had given him, as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with the rights of others. It implies the largest liberty of the individual that would not make liberty minister to anarchy and injustice.”
—July 4, 1860

“Now that slavery is abolished, we can truly say that through our political society there run no fixed horizontal strata above whichnone can pass. Our society resembles rather the waves of the ocean, whose every drop may move freely among its fellows,and may rise toward the light until it flashes on the crest of the highest wave.”
—March, 1879

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Historical Portrayal Setting
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The date is July 2, 1881. President James A. Garfield is having a relaxing morning in the White House. Later he will be beginning the first vacation of his short presidency. After considerable difficulty with various Republican party factions, he has finally been able to complete his cabinet. Now he can relax for a few weeks. His plans are to pick up his wife, Lucretia, who has been ill, and daughter in New Jersey and then proceed to Williamstown, Massachusetts, to drop off his sons, Harry and Jim, at his alma mater, Williams College, before going back to his beloved Lawnfield home and farm in Mentor, Ohio.

However, before he departs for the Baltimore & Potomac Train Station in Washington, he has agreed to speak briefly to a group of visitors to Washington, DC, who have gathered in the White House at the invitation of the new Secretary of State, James G. Blaine. The President has been upstairs playing with his children, but is now prepared to visit briefly with the assembled guests. Let us go back in time to 1881. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Secretary of State James G. Blaine who will introduce President Garfield.

Secretary of State James G. Blaine
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“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce to you one of the most unique and gifted men to ever assume the Presidency of the United States. Born in a log cabin in the frontier of Northeast Ohio and raised in poverty by his mother, Eliza, our new president did not attend formal schools until he was in his late teens. Yet this man was to become an accomplished Disciples of Christ minister, college president, two-star general in the Civil War, lawyer, and minority leader of Congress, before defeating former President Grant, John Sherman of Ohio, and myself in the Republican Party nomination process in Chicago last year. That was followed by a vigorous political campaign and a close election victory over the Democratic nominee, General Hancock.

“Since I find President Garfield’s rise from abject poverty to the presidency a great inspiration for Americans everywhere, I have asked him to share with you several of the key events that most impacted and shaped his life, plus share his vision for the future. Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the President of the United States, James A. Garfield.”

Just a few moments after President Garfield left the White House on July 2, 1881, he was shot twice from behind by Charles Julius Guiteau. He survived until September 19 while resting in Elberon, New Jersey. While he lingered, the nation was kept abreast of every medical announcement, and when he died, the American people went into extended mourning, much more so than fifteen years earlier when Abraham Lincoln had been shot. Chester A. Arthur assumed the office of the Presidency and served for four years. Secretary of State Blaine was to be the Republican nominee for President and lost in 1884. Charles Guiteau, a deranged and disappointed office seeker, was executed in 1882.

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