• Born November 19, 1831 in Orange Township now Moreland Hills, Ohio

• Youngest of five children• His father, Abram Garfield,

died when James was 2 years old

• Brought up by his mother, Eliza, a brother, and an uncle

• Started school at the age of 3• 1849, attended Geauga Academy in Chester,

Ohio where he met his future wife Miss Lucretia Rudolph

• From 1851-1854, attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College)

• Graduated from Williams college in 1856 as an outstanding student & a brother of Delta Upsilon fraternity

• Drove canal boat teams to earn money for schooling

• While home from school he helped with harvest and learned & practiced carpentry

• Was the professor of Latin and Greek and later the president of Western Reserve Eclectic Institute

• State senator, major general in the National Army, & a representative-elect to the National Congress

• August 1861, Garfield organized the 42nd Ohio Infantry going from lieutenant colonel to colonel within in a few weeks

• January 1862 at the battle of Middle Creek, his greatly outnumbered brigade defeated the Confederates leaving him in control of eastern Kentucky

• By September 1863, was a major general, the youngest officer to hold this rank

• December 1863, resigned from the Army to take his seat in the House of Representatives, which he had been elected to the previous year without ever having campaigned

• Became president in December 1863 beating out Winfield S. Hancock

• Vice-President was Chester A. Arthur

• Was a Republican who supported voting rights for blacks and the seizure of the property of those who had served the Confederacy

• Allegedly connected to 2 incidents that tarnished his record, but was still reelected to another term

• July 2, 1881, while passing through the waiting room of the Baltimore and Potomac railroad depot with close friend Mr. James G. Blaine, Charles Guiteau, a lawyer who’s application to be the U. S. ambassador to France was denied, fired two shots at President Garfield.

• One bullet grazed his arm but the other entered his back fracturing a rib and lodging itself somewhere inside Garfield’s body.

• Guiteau, a religious fanatic stated that he shot Garfield in order “to unite the Republican Party and save the Republic”. Guiteau readily gave himself up after the shooting and the Washington police arrested him.

• In order to find the bullet, Alexander Graham Bell devised a crude metal detector

• If Bell, unaware that the White House had newly invented coil spring mattresses, had moved Garfield from the bed, he would have likely found the bullet and the surgeons could’ve saved the president’s life.

• After a lot of prodding and digging, the doctors had taken a 3-inch wound and turned it into a 20-inch gouge that was massively infected

• Garfield lingered between life and death for more than 10 weeks before dieing on September 19, 1881 with apparent blood poisoning

• Garfield was the first left-handed president. • James Garfield could write Latin with one hand

and Greek with the other. • The last of seven presidents born in a log

cabin, Garfield weighed 10 pounds at birth. • He was the first president to campaign in two

languages -- English and German. • On election day, November 2, 1880, he was at

the same time a member of the House, Senator-elect and President-elect.

• His mother was the first president's mother to attend her son's inauguration.