James A. Garfield
Compiled
by D. A. Sharpe
U. S. President James A. Garfield's wife, Lucretia
Rudolph Garfield, is the sixth great grandchild of George Hills and Mary
Symonds, who, of course, are the eighth great grandparents of my wife, Suzanne
Margaret Boggess Sharpe. You can note that these sixth great grandparents as
the same sixth great grandparents of Presidents Fillmore and Pierce.
Quite an unusual heritage for this English born family to give to America three
sixth great grandchildren to serve in the White House!
James Abram
Garfield (November 19, 1831 Ð September 19, 1881) was the 20th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881,
until his assassination later that year. Garfield had served nine terms in the
House of Representatives, and had been elected to the Senate before his
candidacy for the White House, though he declined the Senate seat
once he was elected President. He is the only sitting House member to be
elected president.
Garfield was raised by his
widowed mother in humble circumstances on an Ohio farm. He worked at various
jobs, including on a canal boat, in his youth. Beginning at age 17, he attended several
Ohio schools, then studied at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, graduating in 1856.
A year later, Garfield
entered politics as a Republican.
He married Lucretia Rudolph in 1858, and served as a member of
the Ohio State Senate (1859Ð1861). Garfield opposed Confederate secession, served as a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga.
He was first elected to
Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio's 19th District. Throughout Garfield's extended congressional service after the
Civil War, he firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a
skilled orator.
Garfield initially agreed
with Radical Republican views regarding Reconstruction, but later favored a moderate approach for civil rights
enforcement for freedmen.
At the 1880 Republican National Convention, Senator-elect Garfield attended as
campaign manager for Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman, and gave the presidential nomination
speech for him. When neither Sherman nor his rivals Ð Ulysses S. Grant and James G. Blaine Ð could get enough votes to secure
the nomination, delegates chose Garfield as a compromise on the 36th ballot. In
the 1880 presidential election, Garfield conducted a low-key front porch campaign, and narrowly defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock.
Garfield's accomplishments as
president included a resurgence of presidential authority against senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, energizing American naval power, and purging corruption in the Post Office, all during his extremely short time in office. Garfield made
notable diplomatic and judiciary appointments, including a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He enhanced the powers of the presidency when he
defied the powerful New York senator Roscoe Conkling by appointing William H. Robertson to the lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York, starting a fracas that ended with
Robertson's confirmation and Conkling's resignation from the Senate. Garfield
advocated agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights
for African Americans.
A unique talent Garfield had
was the ability to write both Latin and Greek. It was said that he could write one with
his left hand at the same time of writing the other with the right hand. It is uncertain whether this contributed
materially to the success of his presidency.
He also proposed substantial
civil service reform, eventually passed by Congress in 1883 and signed into law
by his successor, Chester A. Arthur, as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.
James Garfield was an
ordained lay preacher in the Church of Christ. A Mr. Alanson Wilcox quoted Garfield
from a sermon in preached in1857:
"Men
are tending to materialism. Houses, lands, and worldly goods attract their
attention, and as a mirage lure them on to death. Christianity, on the other
hand leads only the natural body to death, and for the spirit, it points out a
house not built with hands, eternal in the heavens. Christianity teaches that
the converted are to receive the Holy Spirit. That they are sealed by it and
changed by it into the image of God. To assist men in understanding the
spiritual, a few material ordinances are still needed. Baptism, as an ordinance
derives its efficacy from God. Jesus commanded it. It brings the trusting soul
into the death of Christ. Its ends are spiritual good, and it shows to men and
angels that the man's spirit is obedient to the will of Christ. The Lord's
supper is an ordinance through which our weak conceptions can be raised up to
the spiritual Christ. In this simple 'in memoriam' we not only declare our
faith in the Christ of the past but in the present, who is alive forever more.
Let me urge you to follow Him, not as the Nazarene, the Man of Galilee, the carpenter's
son, but as the ever-living spiritual person, full of love and compassion, who
will stand by you in life and death and eternity."
On July 2, 1881, he was shot at
the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington D.C. by Charles J. Guiteau, a lawyer and writer with a grievance.
The wound was not immediately fatal for Garfield, but his doctors' uncleaned
and unprotected hands are said to have led to infection that caused his death
on September 19. Guiteau was convicted of the murder
and was executed in June 1882; he tried to name his crime as simple assault by blaming the doctors for
Garfield's death.
With his term cut short by
his death after only 200 days, and much of it spent in ill health trying to
recover from the attack, Garfield is little-remembered for other than his
assassination. Historians often forgo listing him in rankings of U.S.
presidents due
to the short length of his presidency.
Compiled
by:
Dwight Albert (D. A.) Sharpe
805 Derting Road East
Aurora, TX 78078-3712
817-504-6508