James Abram Garfield
James Abram Garfield, twentieth President of the United States, was born November 19, 1831, in Orange, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio, son of Abram and Eliza (Ballon) Garfield, latter a native of New Hampshire, a relative of the celebrated Hosea Ballon. The genealogy of the Garfield family traces back to 1587, in which year a tract of land on the borders of Wales, near Chester, England, and not far from the celebrated picturesque vale of Llangollen, was given to James Garfield (or Gearfeldt) through the influence of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The Gearfeldts were probably descendants of the old Knights of Gaerfili Castle, whose prowess in arms and deeds of chivalry are frequently made mention of in English history. Their crest consisted of a helmet with the visor raised and an uplifted arm holding a drawn sword, and their motto was "In cruce vinco (In, or under, the cross I conquer). In 1630 Edward Geartield, of Chester, England, and who was born in 1575, came to America in a company of colonists, and from him, in a direct line, comes James A. Garfield.
Abram Garfield, father of our subject, born December 28, 1799, at Worcester, Otsego Co., N. Y., and who was one of the first settlers of the township of Orange, died in 1835, leaving a young family of four children, of whom James A. was the youngest, being at the time of his father's death only a year and a half old. The family were poor and were kept together only by the industry, energy and courage of the widowed mother. Young Garfield received a common school education while working on his mother's farm, and at the age of fourteen learned the carpenter's trade, while, two years later, he served for a few months as a boatman on the Ohio Canal. Through his own arduous efforts he obtained a college education, entering at the age of seventeen on a course of study, first in the Geauga Seminary, at Chester, Ohio, and a little later in the Eclectic Institute, then recently established at Hiram, this county, and not long after entering that institute he was made an assistant teacher. In 1854 he entered the Junior Class of Williams College, Massachusetts, having in a little more than three years fitted himself for college, and completed the two first years of college study. He was a favorite pupil of the venerable President Hopkins, and when he graduated, in 1856, he carried off one of the highest honors of his class. In obtaining his education Mr. Garfield was wholly dependent upon himself. His earnings, first as a carpenter, then as a teacher, supplemented by some small loans (subsequently repaid in full), carried him through his course of study.
Immediately after his graduation Mr. Garfield was chosen teacher of the ancient languages and literature in the institution at Hiram, and the following year he was elected Principal. He was an incessant and effective worker, frequently teaching six or seven hours a day, besides attending to the general supervision, and delivering numerous lectures on a great variety of topics, both before his students and before popular audiences.
In 1859, without solicitation or effort on his part, the Republican party in his district elected him to the Ohio Senate, and although the youngest member of that body, he immediately took rank with foremost Senators in ability, industry, and usefulness.
Just before the conclusion of his Senatorial services, the Southern Rebellion broke out. In accordance with all his political antecedents and convictions, Mr. Garfield at once espoused the cause of the Union against secession. Early in the autumn of 1861 he was made Colonel of the Forty-second Regiment of Ohio Vohinteers. This regiment, largely enlisted by his personal efforts, was rapidily organized, drilled, and prepared for the field. On the 17th of December it was ordered to eastern Kentucky, and its Colonel was placed in command of the Eighteenth Brigade of the Army of the Ohio. With this commaad Col. Garfield conducted a highly successful winter campaign against a force of rebels under the command of Humphrey Marshall. The victories of Middle Creek and Pound Gap were the first successes of the Union Army that year in the West. Their immediate result was the expulsion of the Confederate forces from eastern Kentucky. President Lincoln, recognizing the value of this success, promoted Col. Garfield to the rank of Brigadier-General.
Gen. Garfield now joined the army of Gen. Buell. He commanded the Twentieth Brigade at the battle of Shiloh, and in the subsequent operations around Corinth, Decatur, and Huntsville, Ala. In the winter of 1862-63 he was a member of the coutt-martial that tried Fitz-John Porter. In January of the latter year he was assigned to the Army of the Cumberland, then under the command of Gen. Rosecrans, who at once made him Chief of Staff of the array. In this position Gen. Garfield rendered distinguished services. He was the confidential adviser of the commander-in-chief. He participated in all the engagements in middle and southern Tennessee. He greatly distinguished himself for ability and bravery in the bloody battle of Chickamauga, and was immediately promoted to the rank of Major-General. Here Gen. Garfield's military career closed. He resigned his commission on the 5th of December, 1863, to enter another field of duty.
On leaving the army Gen. Garfield took his seat in the House of Representatives, having been, in October, 1862, elected by the Nineteenth Ohio Congressional District its Representative to the Thirty-eighth Congress. He soon took rank among the ablest and most useful members of the House. During his first term he served on the Committee of Military Affairs, during the second on the Committee of Ways and Means. In the Fortieth Congress he was Chairman of the Military Committee, and in the Forty- first Chairman of the Committee of Banking and Currency. On the organization of the Forty-second Congress, he was made Chairman of the Committee of Appropriations, the most laborious and responsible position in the House. The duties growing out of these responsible positions were discharged in a manner highly creditable to himself and advantageous to the country. But it must not be supposed that they bounded the circle of his legislative life. Some of his special services were peculiarly onerous and valuable. In 1864, as Chairman of a special committee, he made a thorough examination into the affairs of the Printing Bureau of the Treasury Department. As Chairman of the Committee on Banking, he investigated the Gold Panic of 1870, and submitted to the House a valuable report of the investigation. In 1867 he introduced into the House, and carried through it, the bill creating the National Bureau of Education,—a most valuable bureau, which he defended against all assaults. But his most conspicuous and valuable services were in the field of the national finances. His continued thorough study of this difficult subject, for which his previous training well fitted him, rendered him the most thorough master of it in the House of Representatives, and one of the most thorough in the country. Convinced that the interest no less than the honor of the nation lay in that direction, he strenuously resisted all propositions looking toward repudiation and inflation, advocating, from the first, an honest payment of the public debt and a speedy return to specie payments.
January 13, 1880, the Ohio Legislature elected Gen. Garfield to the United States Senate, and in the same year he was chosen a delegate to the Republican Convention to meet at Chicago. Here, amid unqualified enthusiasm, he was nominated for the Presidential chair and was subsequently duly elected. But President Garfield was not destined to long enjoy his new-made honors, for the assassin-fiend was already shadowing his footsteps; the bullet that had its fatal billet had been cast in the mold. On July 2, 1881, while on the eve of stepping on board the train at the Baltimore Railway station, at Washington (for he was on his way to Long Branch, there to meet his wife), he was fired at twice by the graceless madman, Guiteau, the second shot taking effect, the bullet entering the President's side, tearing through the spine and lodging in the fiesh.
After long, lingering, painful suffering, heroically borne with true Christian spirit, the martyred President, in the quiet Francklyn Cottage, Long Branch, passed through "the Golden Gate" September 19, 1881. His remains repose in the beautiful Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio.
"Farewell! the leaf-strown earth enfolds
Our stay, our pride, our hopes, our fears,
And autumn's golden sun beholds
A nation bowed, a world in tears."
James A. Garfield had great powers of physical and mental endurance; he was strongly built and well proportioned, standing six feet high, a man of wide range of studies, taste and thought. Public duties did not engross all of his talents and attention, for in the spring of 1861, after a full course of legal reading, he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Ohio, and in 1866 he obtained the same standing in the Supreme Court of the United States. From the time of his admission to its bar, he every year argued cases in the latter tribunal.
He had great patience in the accumulation of facts, great skill in generalization and in the development of principles. In his chosen fields of statesmanship, probably no man in Congress had at command a larger body of systematized knowledge. As a public speaker, he was forcible and elegant. Some of his occasional papers and addresses have a high degree of merit. Of these may be mentioned his paper on "The American Census," read before the Social Science Association; his adresses on "College Education" and "The Future of the Republic," and his "Eulogy" on Maj.-Gen. George H. Thomas. He had large power over young men; and while an educator, many hundreds of students received from him a vigorous and healthy intellectual and moral impulse.
Mr. Garfield was married in 1858, to Miss Lucretia Rudolph, of Hiram, and was eminently happy in his domestic life. He was a member of the Christian or Disciples Church, and while a teacher at Hiram—though never intending to follow that calling—he was an acceptable, and even favorite, speaker in the pulpits of that denomination. While thoroughly progressive in his thoughts and tendencies, Mr. Garfield was far from being an extremist; abundant evidence of which can be found along the course of his whole public life. In 1872 Williams College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., as a recognition of his learning and ability.
From History of Portage County, Ohio, Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885